History of Philosophy, vols 1-9

A HISTORY
OF

PHILOSOPHY

A HISTORY
OF

PHILOSOPHY

VOLUME II

Medieval Philosophy

Frederick Gopleston, S.J.

i

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Imprimatur: Joseph, Arehiepiscopus Birmingamiensis Die 24 Aprilis 1948

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publieation Data

Copleston, Frederick Charles.

A history of philosophy / Frederick Copleston.
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes..

Contents: v. 1. Greece and Rome—v. 2. Augustine to Scotus—v.

3. Middle Ages and early Renaissance.

1. Philosophy, Ancient. 2. Philosophy, Medieval. 3. Philosophy,
Renaissance. I. Title.

B72.C62 1993
190—dc20 92-34997

CIP

Volume II copyright 1950 by Frederick Copleston
ISBN 0-385-46844-X
35798642
All Rights Reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

Chapter Page

I. Introduction .i

Part I

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES
II. The Patristic Period. 13

Christianity and Greek philosophy—Greek Apologists
(Aristides, St. Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras,
Theophilus)—Gnosticism and writers against Gnosticism
(St. Irenaeus, Hippolytus)—Latin Apologists (Minucius
Felix, Tertullian, Arnobius, Lactantius)—Catechetical
School of Alexandria (Clement, Origen)—Greek Fathers
(St. Basil, Eusebius, St. Gregory of Nyssa)—Latin
Fathers (St. Ambrose)—-St. John Damascene—Summary.

III. St. Augustine— I . 4 °

Life and writings—St. Augustine and Philosophy.

IV. St. Augustine— II: Knowledge 51

Knowledge with a view to beatitude—Against scepticism
—Experiential knowledge—Nature of sensation—Divine
ideas—Illumination and Abstraction.

V. St. Augustine—III: God.68

Proof of God from eternal truths—Proofs from creatures
and from universal consent—The various proofs as stages
in one process—Attributes of God—Exemplarism.

VI. St. Augustine— IV: The World ... 74

Free creation out of nothing—Matter— Rationes seminales
—Numbers—Soul and body—Immortality—Origin of
soul.

VII. St. Augustine— V: Moral Theory 8i

Happiness and God—Freedom and Obligation—Need of
grace—Evil—the two Cities.

VIII. St. Augustine— VI: The State ... 87

The State and the City of Babylon not identical—The
pagan State does not embody true justice—Church
superior to State.

IX. The Pseudo-Dionysius. 91

Writings and author—Affirmative way—Negative way—
Neo-Platonic interpretation of Trinity—Ambiguous teach¬
ing on creation—Problem of evil—Orthodoxy or unor¬
thodox y?

X. Boethius, Cassiodorus, Isidore .101

Boethius's transmission of Aristotelian ideas—Natural
theology—Influence on Middle Ages—Cassiodorus on the
seven liberal arts and the spirituality of the soul—
Isidore's Etymologies and Sentences.

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

Part II

THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

Chapter Page

XI. The Carolingian Renaissance . .106

Charlemagne—Alcuin and the Palatine School—Other
schools, curriculum, libraries—Rhabanus Maurus.

XII. John Scotus Eriugena— I .112

Life and works.

XIII. John Scotus Eriugena— II .116

Nature—God and creation—Knowledge of God by affir¬
mative and negative ways; inapplicability of categories
to God—How, then, can God be said to have made the
world?—Divine Ideas in the Word—Creatures as partici¬
pations and theophanies; creatures are in God—Man's
nature—Return of all things to God—Eternal punish¬
ment in light of cosmic return—Interpretation of John
Scotus’s system.

Part III

THE TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES
XIV. The Problem of Universals . . .136

Situation following death of Charlemagne—Origin of dis¬
cussion in texts of Porphyry and Boethius—Importance
of the problem—Exaggerated realism—Roscelin's 'nomi¬
nalism'—St. Peter Damian’s attitude to dialectic—
William of Champeaux—Abelard—Gilbert de la Porr6e
and John of Salisbury—Hugh of St. Victor—St. Thomas
Aquinas.

XV. St. Anselm of Canterbury .... 156

St. Anselm as philosopher—Proofs of God's existence in
the Monologium— The proof of God's existence in the
Proslogium —Idea of truth and other Augustinian elements
in St. Anselm’s thought.

XVI. The School of Chartres.166

Universalism of Paris, and systematisation of sciences in
twelfth century—Regionalism, humanism—Platonism of
Chartres—Hylomorphism at Chartres— Prima facie pan¬
theism—John of Salisbury’s political theory.

XVII. The School of St. Victor .... 175

Hugh of St. Victor; proofs of God’s existence, faith,
mysticism—Richard of St. Victor; proofs of God’s exis¬
tence—Godfrey of St. Victor and Walter of St. Victor.

XVIII. Dualists and Pantheists .... 183

Albigensians and Cathari—Amalric of Bene—David of
Dinant.

Part IV

ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY TRANSLATIONS
Chapter Page

XIX. Islamic Philosophy. 186

Reasons for discussing Islamic philosophy—Origins of
Islamic philosophy—Alfarabi — Avicenna—Averroes —

Dante and the Arabian philosophers.

XX. Jewish Philosophy. 201

The Cabala—Avicebron—Maitnonides.

XXI. The Translations. 205

The translated works—Translations from Greek and from
Arabic—Effects of translations and opposition to Aris-
toteliauism.

Part V

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

XXII. Introduction. 212

The University of Paris—Universities closed and privi¬
leged corporations—Curriculum—Religious Orders at
Paris—Currents of thought in the thirteenth century.

XXIII. William of Auvergne. 218

Reasons for treating of William of Auvergne—God and
creatures; essence and existence—Creation by God
directly and in time—Proofs of God’s existence—Hylo-
morphism—The soul—Knowledge—William of Auvergne
a transition-thinker.

XXIV. Robert Grosseteste and Alexander of Hales 228

(а) Robert Grosseteste's life and writings—Doctrine of
light—God and creatures—Doctrine of truth and of illu¬
mination.

(б) Alexander of Hales’s attitude to philosophy—Proofs
of God’s existence—The divine attributes—Composition
in creatures—Soul, intellect, will—Spirit of Alexander’s
philosophy.

XXV. St. Bonaventure—I. 240

Life and works—Spirit—Theology and philosophy—
Attitude to Aristotelian ism.

XXVI. St. Bonaventure—II: God’s Existence 250

Spirit of Bonaventure's proofs of God’s existence—

Proofs from sensible world —A priori knowledge of God
—The Anselmian argument—Argument from truth.

XXVII. St. Bonaventure—III: Relation of Creatures

to God. 258

Exemplarism—The divine knowledge—Impossibility of
creation from eternity—Errors which follow from denial
of exemplarism and creation—Likeness of creatures to
God, analogy—Is this world the best possible world?

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

Chapter

XXVIII. St. Bonaventure—IV: The Material Creation 271

Hylomorphic composition in all creatures—Individuation
—Light—Plurality of forms— seminales .

XXIX. St. Bonaventure—V: The Human Soul . 278

Unity of human soul—Relation of soul to body—Immor¬
tality of the human soul—Falsity of Averroistic mono¬
psychism—Knowledge of sensible objects and of first
logical principles—Knowledge of spiritual realities—Illu¬
mination—The soul's ascent to God—Bonaventure as
philosopher of the Christian life.

XXX. St. Albert the Great.293

Life and intellectual activity—Philosophy and theology
—God— Creation—The soul—Reputation and importance
of St. Albert.

XXXI. St. Thomas Aquinas—I ..... 3 ° 2

Ufe—Works—Mode of exposing St. Thomas's philosophy
—The spirit of St. Thomas’s philosophy.

XXXII. St. Thomas Aquinas—II: Philosophy and

Theology ....... 3 * 2

Distinction between philosophy and theology—Moral
necessity of revelation—Incompatibility of faith and
science in the same mind concerning the same object—

Natural end and supernatural end—St. Thomas and St.
Bonaventure—St. Thomas as ‘innovator’.

XXXIII. St. Thomas Aquinas—III: Principles of Created

Being ....... 3 2 4

Reasons for starting with corporeal being—Hylomorphism
—Rejection of rationes seminales —Rejection of plurality
of substantial forms—Restriction of hylomorphic compo¬
sition to corporeal substances—Potentiality and act—
Essence and existence.

XXXIV. St. Thomas Aquinas—IV: Proofs of God’s

Existence ....... 336

Need of proof—St. Anselm's argument—Possibility of
proof—The first three proofs—The fourth proof—The
proof from finality—-The third way’ fundamental.

XXXV. St. Thomas Aquinas—V: God’s Nature . 347

The negative way—The affirmative way—Analogy—

Types of analogy—-A difficulty—The divine ideas—No
real distinction between the divine attributes—God as
existence itself.

XXXVI. St. Thomas Aquinas—VI: Creation . . 363

Creation out of nothing—God alone can create—God
created freely—The motive of creation—Impossibility of
creation from eternity has not been demonstrated—Could
God create an actually infinite multitude?—Divine omni¬
potence—The problem of evil.

Chapter Page

XXXVII. St. Thomas Aquinas—VII: Psychology . . 375

One substantial form in man—The powers of the soul—

The interior senses—Free will—The noblest faculty—
Immortality—The active and passive intellects are not
numerically the same in all men.

XXXVIII. St. Thomas Aquinas—VIII: Knowledge . . 388

'Theory of knowledge' in St. Thomas—The process of
knowledge; knowledge of the universal and of the parti¬
cular—The soul's knowledge of itself—The possibility of
metaphysics.

XXXIX. St. Thomas Aquinas—IX: Moral Theory. . 398

Eudaemonism—The vision of God—Good and bad—The
virtues—The natural law—The eternal law and the
foundation of morality in God—Natural virtues recognised
by St. Thomas which were not recognised by Aristotle;
the virtue of religion.

XL. St. Thomas Aquinas—X: Political Theory . 412

St. Thomas and Aristotle—The natural origin of human
society and government—Human society and political
authority willed by God—Church and State—Individual
and State — Law — Sovereignty — Constitutions — St.
Thomas's political theory an integral part of his total
system.

Note on St. Thomas's aesthetic theory.

XLI. St. Thomas and Aristotle: Controversies 423

St. Thomas's utilisation of Aristotle—Non-Aristotelian
elements in Thomism—Latent tensions in the Thomist
synthesis—Opposition to Thomist 'novelties’.

XLIL Latin Averroism: Siger of Brabant . 435

Tenets of the 'Latin Averroists’—Siger of Brabant—

Dante and Siger of Brabant—Opposition to Averroism;
condemnations.

XLIII. Franciscan Thinkers.442

Roger Bacon, life and works—Philosophy of Roger Bacon
—Matthew of Aquasparta—Peter John Olivi—Roger
Marston—Richard of Middleton—Raymond Lull.

XLIV. Giles of Rome and Henry of Ghent . . 460

(a) Giles of Pome. Life and works—The independence of
Giles as a thinker—Essence and existence—Form and
matter; soul and body—Political theory.

(£) Henry of Ghent. Life and works—Eclecticism, illus¬
trated by doctrines of illumination and innatism—Idea
of metaphysics—Essence and existence—Proofs of God’s
existence—General spirit and significance of Henry's
philosophy.

XLV. Scotus—I.476

Life—Works—Spirit of Scotus's philosophy.

CONTENTS

Chapter Page

XLVI. Scotus —II: Knowledge .487

The primary object of the human intellect—Why the in¬
tellect depends on the phantasm—The soul’s inability to
intuit itself in this life—Intellectual apprehension of the
individual thing—Is theology a science?—Our knowledge
is based on sense-experience, and no special illumination
is required for intellectual activity—Intuitive and
abstractive knowledge—Induction.

XLVII. Scotus— III: Metaphysics .... 500

Being and its transcendental attributes—The univocal
concept of being—The formal objective distinction—
Essence and existence—Universal—Hylomorphism—
Rationes semtnales rejected, plurality of forms retained
—Individuation.

XLVTII. Scotus— IV: Natural Theology . 518

Metaphysics and God—Knowledge of God from creatures
—Proof of God's existence—Simplicity and intelligence
of God—God's infinity—The Anselmian argument—

Divine attributes which cannot be philosophically
demonstrated—The distinction between tne divine attri¬
butes—The divine ideas—The divine will—Creation.

XLIX. Scotus—V: The Soul.535

The specific form of man—Union of soul and body—Will
and intellect—Soul's immortality not strictly demon¬
strated.

L. Scotus— VI: Ethics. 545

Morality of human acts—Indifferent acts—The moral
law and the will of God—Political authority.

LI. Concluding Review.552

Theology and philosophy—'Christian philosophy’—The
Thomist synthesis—Various ways of regarding and inter¬
preting mediaeval philosophy.

APPENDICES

I. Honorific Titles applied in the Middle Ages

to Philosophers treated of in this Volume 567

II. A Short Bibliography . . ... 568

Index of Names.589

Index of Subjects.598

MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1. In this second volume of my history of philosophy I had
originally hoped to give an account of the development of philo¬
sophy throughout the whole period of the Middle Ages, under¬
standing by mediaeval philosophy the philosophic thought and
systems which were elaborated between the Carolingian renaissance
in the last part of the eighth century a.d. (John Scotus Eriugena,
the first outstanding mediaeval philosopher was bom about 810)
and the end of the fourteenth century. Reflection has convinced
me, however, of the advisability of devoting two volumes to
mediaeval philosophy. As my first volume 1 ended with an account
of neo-Platonism and contained no treatment of the philosophic
ideas to be found in the early Christian writers, I considered it
desirable to say something of these ideas in the present volume.
It is true that men like St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine
belonged to the period of the Roman Empire, that their philo¬
sophic affiliations were with Platonism, understood in the widest
sense, and that they cannot be termed mediaevals; but the fact
remains that they were Christian thinkers and exercised a great
influence on the Middle Ages. One could hardly understand St.
Anselm or St. Bonaventure without knowing something of St.
Augustine, nor could one understand the thought of John Scotus
Eriugena without knowing something of the thought of St. Gregory
of Nyssa and of the Pseudo-Dionysius. There is scarcely any need,
then, to apologise for beginning a history of mediaeval philosophy
with a consideration of thinkers who belong, so far as chronology
is concerned, to the period of the Roman Empire.

The present volume, then, begins with the early Christian period
and carries the histoiy of mediaeval philosophy up to the end of
the thirteenth century, including Duns Scotus (about 1265-1308).
In my third volume I propose to treat of the philosophy of the
fourteenth century, laying special emphasis on Ockhamism. In

1 A History of Philosophy, Vol. I, Greece and Rome, London, 1946 .

I

2

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

3

that volume I shall also include a treatment of the philosophies of
the Renaissance, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and of
the ‘Silver Age' of Scholastic thought, even though Francis Suarez
did not die until the year 1617, twenty-one years after the birth
of Descartes. This arrangement may appear to be an arbitrary
one, and to some extent it is. But it is extremely doubtful if it is
possible to make any hard and fast dividing line between mediaeval
and modem philosophy, and a good case could be made out for
including Descartes with the later Scholastics, contrary to tradi¬
tion as this would be. I do not propose, however, to adopt this
course, and if I include in the next volume, the third, some philo¬
sophers who might seem to belong properly to the ‘modem period',
my reason is largely one of convenience, to clear the decks, so that
in the fourth volume I may develop in a systematic manner the
interconnection between the leading philosophical systems from
Francis Bacon in England and Descartes in France up to and
including Kant. Nevertheless, whatever method of division be
adopted, one has to remember that the compartments into which
one divides the history of philosophic thought are not watertight,
that transitions are gradual, not abrupt, that there is overlapping
and interconnection, that succeeding systems are not cut off from
one another with a hatchet.

2. There was a time when mediaeval philosophy was considered
as unworthy of serious study, when it was taken for granted that
the philosophy of the Middle Ages was so subservient to theology
that it was practically indistinguishable therefrom and that, in so
far as it was distinguishable, it amounted to little more than a
barren logic-chopping and word-play. In other words, it was taken
for granted that European philosophy contained two main periods,
the ancient period, which to all intents and purposes meant the
philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, and the modem period, when
the speculative reason once more began to enjoy freedom after the
dark night of the Middle Ages when ecclesiastical authority reigned
supreme and the human reason, chained by heavy fetters, was
compelled to confine itself to the useless and fanciful study of
theology, until a thinker like Descartes at length broke the chains
and gave reason its freedom. In the ancient period and the modem
period philosophy may be considered a free man, whereas in the
mediaeval period it was a slave.

Apart from the fact that mediaeval philosophy naturally shared
in the disesteem with which the Middle Ages in general were

commonly regarded, one factor which was partly responsible for
the attitude adopted towards mediaeval thinkers was doubtless
the language used concerning Scholasticism by men like Francis
Bacon and Ren6 Descartes. Just as Aristotelians are prone to
evaluate Platonism in terms of Aristotle's criticism, so admirers of
the movement apparently initiated by Bacon and Descartes were
prone to look on mediaeval philosophy through their eyes, unaware
of the fact that much of what Francis Bacon, for instance, has to
say against the Scholastics could not legitimately be applied to the
great figures of mediaeval thought, however applicable it may have
been to later and ‘decadent' Scholastics, who worshipped the letter
at the expense 'of the spirit. Looking on mediaeval philosophy
from the very start in this light historians could perhaps scarcely
be expected to seek a closer and first-hand acquaintance with it:
they condemned it unseen and unheard, without knowledge either
of the rich variety of mediaeval thought or of its profundity: to
them it was all of a piece, an arid playing with words and a slavish
dependence on theologians. Moreover, insufficiently critical, they
failed to realise the fact that, if mediaeval philosophers were in¬
fluenced by an external factor, theology, modem philosophers
were also influenced by external factors, even if by other external
factors than theology. It would have seemed to most of these
historians a nonsensical‘proposition were one to suggest to them
that Duns Scotus, for example, had a claim to be considered as
a great British philosopher, at least as great as John Locke, while
in their praise of the acumen of David Hume they were unaware
that certain thinkers of the late Middle Ages had already
anticipated a great deal of the criticism which used to be con¬
sidered the peculiar contribution to philosophy of the eminent
Scotsman.

I shall cite one example, the treatment accorded to mediaeval
philosophy and philosophers by a man who was himself a great
philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. It is an interesting
example, since Hegel's dialectical idea of the history of philosophy
obviously demanded that mediaeval philosophy should be por¬
trayed as making an essential contribution to the development of
philosophic thought, while Hegel personally was no mere vulgar
antagonist of mediaeval philosophy. Now, Hegel does indeed
admit that mediaeval philosophy performed one useful function,
that of expressing in philosophic terms the ‘absolute content’ of
Christianity, but he insists that it is only formalistic repetition

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

5

4

of the content of faith, in which God is represented as something
'external', and if one remembers that for Hegel faith is the mode
of religious consciousness and is definitely inferior to the philo¬
sophic or speculative standpoint, the standpoint of pure reason, it
is clear that in his eyes mediaeval philosophy can be philosophy
only in name. Accordingly he declares that Scholastic philosophy
is really theology. By this Hegel does not mean that God is not
the object of philosophy as well as of theology: he means that
mediaeval philosophy considered the same object as is considered
by philosophy proper but that it treated that object according to
the categories of theology instead of substituting for the external
connections of theology (for example, the relation of the world to
God as external effect to free creative Cause) the systematic,
scientific, rational and necessary categories and connections of
philosophy. Mediaeval philosophy was thus philosophy according
to content, but theology according to form, and in Hegel’s eyes
the history of mediaeval philosophy is a monotonous one, in which
men have tried in vain to discern any distinct stages of real
progress and development of thought.

In so far as Hegel’s view of mediaeval philosophy is dependent
on his own particular system, on his view of the relation of religion
to philosophy, of faith to reason, of immediacy to mediacy, I can¬
not discuss it in this volume; but I wish to point out how Hegel’s
treatment of mediaeval philosophy is accompanied by a very real
ignorance of the course of its history. It would be possible no
doubt for an Hegelian to have a real knowledge of the develop¬
ment of mediaeval philosophy and yet to adopt, precisely because
he was an Hegelian, Hegel’s general standpoint in regard to it; but
there can be no shadow of doubt, even allowing for the fact that
the philosopher did not himself edit and publish his lectures on the
history of philosophy, that Hegel did not possess the real know¬
ledge in question. How could one, for instance, attribute a real
knowledge of mediaeval philosophy to a writer who includes Roger
Bacon under the heading ‘Mystics’ and simply remarks ‘Roger
Bacon treated more especially of physics, but remained without
influence. He invented gunpowder, mirrors, telescopes, and died
in 1297’? The fact of the matter is that Hegel relied on authors
like Tennemann and Brucker for his information concerning
mediaeval philosophy, whereas the first valuable studies on
mediaeval philosophy do not antedate the middle of the nineteenth
century.

In adducing the instance of Hegel I am not, of course, concerned
to blame the philosopher: I am rather trying to throw into relief
the great change that has taken place in our knowledge of mediaeval
philosophy through the work of modem scholars since about 1880.
Whereas one can easily understand and pardon the misrepresenta¬
tions of which a man like Hegel was unconsciously guilty, one
would have little patience with similar misrepresentations to-day,
after the work of scholars like Baeumker, Ehrle, Grabmann, De
Wulf, Pelster, Geyer, Mandonnet, Pelzer, etc. After the light that
has been thrown on mediaeval philosophy by the publication of
texts and the critical editing of already published works, after the
splendid volumes brought out by the Franciscan Fathers of
Quaracchi, after the publications of so many numbers of the
Beitrage series, after the production of histories like that of
Maurice De Wulf, after the lucid studies of Etienne Gilson, after
the patient work done by the Mediaeval Academy of America, it
should no longer be possible to think that mediaeval philosophers
were ‘all of a piece’, that mediaeval philosophy lacked richness
and variety, that mediaeval thinkers were uniformly men of low
stature and of mean attainments. Moreover, writers like Gilson
have helped us to realise the continuity between mediaeval and
modem philosophy. Gilson has shown how Cartesianism was more
dependent on mediaeval thought than was formerly supposed. A
good deal still remains to be done in the way of edition and inter¬
pretation of texts (one needs only to mention William of Ockham’s
Commentary on the Sentences), but it has now become possible to
see the currents and development, the pattern and texture, the
high lights and low lights of mediaeval philosophy with a synoptic
eye.

3. But even if mediaeval philosophy was in fact richer and more
varied than has been sometimes supposed, is it not tme to say
that it stood in such a close relation to theology that it is practi¬
cally indistinguishable therefrom? Is it not, for example, a fact
that the great majority of mediaeval philosophers were priests and
theologians, pursuing philosophic studies in the spirit of a
theologian or even an apologist?

In the first place it is necessary to point out that the relation of
theology to philosophy was itself an important theme of mediaeval
thought and that different thinkers adopted different attitudes in
regard to this question. Starting with the endeavour to understand
the data of revelation, so far as this is possible to human reason.

6

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

early mediaevals, in accordance with the maxim Credo , ut inielli-
gam, applied rational dialectic to the mysteries of faith in an
attempt to understand them. In this way they laid the founda¬
tions of Scholastic theology, since the application of reason to
theological data, in the sense of the data of revelation, is and
remains theology: it does not become philosophy. Some thinkers
indeed, in their enthusiastic desire to penetrate mysteries by
reason to the utmost degree possible, appear at first sight to be
rationalists, to be what one might call Hegelians before Hegel.
Yet it is really an anachronism to regard such men as 'rationalists’
in the modem sense, since when St. Anselm, for example, or
Richard of St. Victor, attempted to prove the mystery of the
Blessed Trinity by 'necessary reasons’ they had no intention of
acquiescing in any reduction of the dogma or of impairing the
integrity of divine revelation. (To this subject I shall return in
the course of the work.) So far they were certainly acting as
theologians, but such men, who did not make, it is true, any very
clear delimitation of the spheres of philosophy and theology, cer¬
tainly pursued philosophical themes and developed philosophical
arguments. For instance, even if St. Anselm is primarily important
as one of the founders of Scholastic theology, he also contributed
to the growth of Scholastic philosophy, for example, by his
rational proofs of God's existence. It would be inadequate to dub
Abelard a philosopher and St. Anselm a theologian without quali¬
fication. In any case in the thirteenth century we find a clear
distinction made by St. Thomas Aquinas between theology, which
takes as its premisses the data of revelation, and philosophy (in¬
cluding, of course, what we call 'natural theology’), which is the
work of the human reason unaided positively by revelation. It is
true that in the same' century St. Bona venture was a conscious
and determined upholder of what one might call the integralist,
Augustinian view; but, though the Franciscan Doctor may have
believed that a purely philosophical knowledge of God is vitiated
by its very incompleteness, he was perfectly well aware that there
are philosophical truths which are ascertainable by reason alone.
The difference between him and St. Thomas has been stated thus . 1
St. Thomas held that it would be possible, in principle , to excogi¬
tate a satisfactory philosophical system, which, in respect of know¬
ledge of God for instance, would be incomplete but not false,

1 This bald statement, however, though sponsored by M. Gilson, requires a
certain modification. See pp. 245—q.

7

whereas St. Bonaventure maintained that this very incomplete¬
ness or inadequacy has the character of a falsification, so that,
though a true natural philosophy would be possible without the
light of faith, a true metaphysic would not be possible. If a
philosopher, thought St. Bonaventure, proves by reason and
maintains the unity of God, without at the same time knowing
that God is Three Persons in One Nature, he is attributing to God
a unity which is not the divine Unity.

In the second place, St. Thomas was perfectly serious when he
gave philosophy its 'charter 1 . To a superficial observer it might
appear that when St. Thomas asserted a clear distinction between
dogmatic theology and philosophy, he was merely asserting a
formalistic distinction, which had no influence on his thought and
which he did not take seriously in practice; but such a view would
be far from the truth, as can be seen by one example. St. Thomas
believed that revelation teaches the creation of the world in time,
the world’s non-eternity; but he maintained and argued stoutly
that the philosopher as such can prove neither that the world
was created from eternity nor that it was created in time, although
he can show that it depends on God as Creator. In holding to
this point of view he was at variance with, for example, St.
Bonaventure, and the fact that he maintained the point of view
in question shows clearly that he seriously accepted in practice
his theoretical delimitation of the provinces of philosophy and
dogmatic theology.

In the third place, if it were really true to say that mediaeval
philosophy was no more than theology, we should expect to find
that thinkers who accepted the same faith would accept the same
philosophy or that the differences between them would be confined
to differences in the way in which they applied dialectic to the
data of revelation. In point of fact, however, this is very far from
being the case. St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Duns
Scotus, Giles of Rome, and, one may pretty safely say, William of
Ockham accepted the same faith, but their philosophical ideas
were by no means the same on all points. Whether or not their
philosophies were equally compatible with the exigencies of
theology is, of course, another question (William of Ockham’s
philosophy could scarcely be considered as altogether compatible
with these exigencies); but that question is irrelevant to the point
at issue, since, whether they were all compatible with orthodox
theology or not, these philosophies existed and were not the same.

8

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

9

The historian can trace the lines of development and divergence
in mediaeval philosophy, and, if he can do this, there must clearly
be such a thing as mediaeval philosophy: without existence it
could not have a history.

We shall have to consider different views on the relation between
philosophy and theology in the course of this work, and I do not
want to dwell any more on the matter at present; but it may be
as well to admit from the very start that, owing to the common
background of the Christian faith, the world presented itself for
interpretation to the mediaeval thinker more or less in a common
light. Whether a thinker held or denied a clear distinction between
the provinces of theology and philosophy, in either case he looked
on the world as a Christian and could hardly avoid doing so. In
his philosophic arguments he might prescind from Christian revela¬
tion, but the Christian outlook and faith were none the less there
at the back of his mind. Yet that does not mean that his philo¬
sophic arguments were not philosophic arguments or that his
rational proofs were not rational proofs: one would have to take
each argument or proof on its own merits or demerits and not
dismiss them as concealed theology on the ground that the writer
was a Christian.

4. Having argued that there really was such a thing as mediaeval
philosophy or at any rate that there could be such a thing, even
if the great majority of mediaeval philosophers were Christians and
most of them theologians into the bargain, I want finally to say
something about the aim of this book (and of the succeeding
volume) and the way in which it treats its subject.

I certainly do not intend to attempt the task of narrating all
the known opinions of all known mediaeval philosophers. In other
words, the second and third volumes of my history are not
designed to constitute an encyclopaedia of mediaeval philosophy.
On the other hand, it is not my intention to give simply a sketch
or series of impressions of mediaeval philosophy. I have en¬
deavoured to give an intelligible and coherent account of the
development of mediaeval philosophy and of the phases through
which it passed, omitting many names altogether and choosing
out for consideration those thinkers who are of special importance
and interest for the content of their thought or who represent and
illustrate some particular type of philosophy or stage of develop¬
ment. To certain of these thinkers I have devoted a considerable
amount of space, discussing their opinions at some length. This

fact may possibly tend to obscure the general lines of connection
and development, but, as I have said, it was not my intention to
provide simply a sketch of mediaeval philosophy, and it is probably
only through a somewhat detailed treatment of the leading philo¬
sophical systems that one can bring out the rich variety of
mediaeval thought. To place in clear relief the main lines of
connection and development and at the same time to develop at
some length the ideas of selected philosophers is certainly not an
easy task, and it would be foolish to suppose that my inclusions
and omissions or proportional allotment of space will be acceptable
to everybody: to miss the trees for the wood or the wood for the
trees is easy enough, but to see both clearly at the same time is not
so easy. However, I consider it a task worth attempting, and
while I have not hesitated to consider at some length the philo¬
sophies of St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, Duns Scotus and Ockham,
I have tried to make intelligible the general development of
mediaeval philosophy from its early struggles, through its splendid
maturity, to its eventual decline.

If one speaks of a ‘decline', it may be objected that one is
speaking as philosopher and not as historian. True enough, but
if one is to discern an intelligible pattern in mediaeval philosophy,
one must have a principle of selection and to that extent at least
one must be a philosopher. The word 'decline' has indeed a valua-
tional colouring and flavour, so that to use such a word may seem
to constitute an overstepping of the legitimate territory of the
historian. Possibly it is, in a sense; but what historian of philosophy
was or is merely an historian in the narrowest meaning of the term?
No Hegelian, no Marxist, no Positivist, no Kantian writes history
without a philosophic viewpoint, and is the Thomist alone to be
condemned for a practice which is really necessary, unless the
history of philosophy is to be rendered unintelligible by being
made a mere string of opinions?

By 'decline', then, I mean decline, since I frankly regard
mediaeval philosophy as falling into three main phases. First
comes the preparatory phase, up to and including the twelfth
century, then comes the period of constructive synthesis, the
thirteenth century, and finally, in the fourteenth century, the
period of destructive criticism, undermining and decline. Yet
from another point of view I should not hesitate to admit that the
last phase was an inevitable phase and, in the long run, may be of
benefit, as stimulating Scholastic philosophers to develop and

10

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

ii

establish their principles more firmly in face of criticism and,
moreover, to utilise all that subsequent philosophy may have to
offer of positive value. From one point of view the Sophistic phase
in ancient philosophy (using the term 'Sophist' in more or less the
Platonic sense) constituted a decline, since it was characterised by,
among other things, a flagging of constructive thought; but it was
none the less an inevitable phase in Greek philosophy, and, in the
long run, may be regarded as having produced results of positive
value. No one at least who values the thought of Plato and
Aristotle can regard the activity and criticism of the Sophists as
an unmitigated disaster for philosophy.

The general plan of this volume and of its successor is thus the
exhibition of the main phases and lines of development in mediaeval
philosophy. First of all I treat briefly of the Patristic period, going
on to speak of those Christian thinkers who had a real influence on
the Middle Ages: Boethius, the Pseudo-Dionysius and, above all,
St. Augustine of Hippo. After this more or less introductory part
of the volume I proceed to the preparatory phase of mediaeval
thought proper, the Carolingian renaissance, the establishment
of the Schools, the controversy concerning universal concepts and
the growing use of dialectic, the positive work of St. Anselm in the
eleventh century, the schools of the twelfth century, particularly
those of Chartres and St. Victor. It is then necessary to say some¬
thing of Arabian and Jewish philosophy, not so much for its own
sake, since I am primarily concerned with the philosophy of
mediaeval Christendom, as for the fact that the Arabs and Jews
constituted an important channel whereby the Aristotelian system
in its fullness became known to the Christian West. The second
phase is that of the great syntheses of the thirteenth century, the
philosophies of St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas and Duns
Scotus in particular. The succeeding phase, that of the fourteenth
century, contains the new directions and the destructive criticism
of the Ockhamist School in a wide sense. Finally, I have given a
treatment of the thought which belongs to the period of transition
between mediaeval and modern philosophy. The way will then be
clear to start a consideration of what is generally called 'modem
philosophy' in the fourth volume of this history.

In conclusion it may be as well to mention two points. The
first is that I do not conceive it to be the task of the historian of
philosophy to substitute his own ideas or those of recent or con¬
temporary philosophers for the ideas of past thinkers, as though

the thinkers in question did not know what they meant. When
Plato stated the doctrine of reminiscence, he was not asserting
neo-Kantianism, and though St. Augustine anticipated Descartes
by saying Si Jailor , sum, it would be a great mistake to try to
force his philosophy into the Cartesian mould. On the other hand,
some problems which have been raised by modem philosophers
were also raised in the Middle Ages, even if in a different setting,
and it is legitimate to draw attention to similarity of question or
answer. Again, it is not illegitimate to ask if a given mediaeval
philosopher could, out of the resources of his own system, meet
this or that difficulty which a later philosopher has raised. There¬
fore, although I have tried to avoid the multiplication of references
to modem philosophy, I have on occasion permitted myself to
make comparisons with later philosophies and to discuss the ability
of a mediaeval system of philosophy to meet a difficulty which is
likely to occur to a student of modern thought. But I have strictly
rationed my indulgence in such comparisons and discussions, not
only out of considerations of space but also out of regard for
historical propriety.

The second point to be mentioned is this. Largely owing to the
influence of Marxism there is a certain demand that an historian
of philosophy should draw attention to the social and political
background of his period and throw light on the influence of social
and political factors on philosophic development and thought. But
apart from the fact that to keep one's history within a reasonable
compass one must concentrate on philosophy itself and not on
social and political events and developments, it is ridiculous to
suppose that all philosophies or all parts of any given philosophy
are equally influenced by the social and political milieu . To under¬
stand a philosopher's political thought it is obviously desirable to
have some knowledge of the actual political background, but in
order to discuss St. Thomas's doctrine on the relation of essence
to existence or Scotus's theory of the univocal character of the
concept of being, there is no need at all to introduce references to
the political or economic background. Moreover, philosophy is
influenced by other factors as well as politics and economics.
Plato was influenced by the advance of Greek mathematics;
mediaeval philosophy, though distinguishable from theology, was
certainly influenced by it; consideration of the development of
physics is relevant to Descartes's view of the material world;
biology was not without influence on Bergson, and so on. I regard

12

INTRODUCTION

it, therefore, as a great mistake to dwell so exclusively on econo¬
mics and political development, and to explain the advance of
other sciences ultimately by economic history, that one implies
the truth of the Marxist theory of philosophy. Apart, then, from
the fact that considerations of space have not permitted me to say
much of the political, social and economic background of mediaeval
philosophy, I have deliberately disregarded the unjustifiable
demand that one should interpret the 'ideological superstructure*
in terms of the economic situation. This book is a history of a
certain period of mediaeval philosophy: it is not a political history
nor a history of mediaeval economics.

PART I

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

CHAPTER II

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD

Christianity and Greek philosophy—Greek Apologists ( Aristides ,

St. Justin Martyr , Tatian , Athenagoras, Theophilus) — Gnos¬
ticism and writers against Gnosticism (St. Irenaeus, Hippolytus)

—Latin Apologists (Minucius Felix , Tertullian , Arnobius,
Lactantius)—Catechetical School of Alexandria ( Clement , Origen)

—Greek Fathers (St. Basil, Eusebius, St. Gregory of Nyssa )—
Latin Fathers (Stf. Ambrose) — St. John Damascene — Summary,

i. Christianity came into the world as a revealed religion: it
was given to the world by Christ as a doctrine of redemption and
salvation and love, not as an abstract and theoretical system, and
He sent His Apostles to preach, not to occupy professors’ chairs.
Christianity was 'the Way*, a road to God to be trodden in
practice, not one more philosophical system added to the systems
and schools of antiquity. The Apostles and their successors were
bent on converting the world, not on excogitating a philosophical
system. Moreover, so far as their message was directed to the
Jews, the Apostles had to meet theological rather than philoso¬
phical attacks, while, in regard to the non-Jews, we are not told,
apart from the account of St. Paul's famous sermon at Athens, of
their being confronted with, or of their approaching, Greek
philosophers in the academic sense.

However, as Christianity made fast its roots and grew, it
aroused the suspicion and hostility, not merely of the Jews and
the political authorities, but also of pagan intellectuals and writers.
Some of the attacks levelled against Christianity were due simply
to ignorance, credulous suspicion, fear of what was unknown, mis¬
representation; but other attacks were delivered on the theoretical
plane, on philosophical grounds, and these attacks had to be met.
This meant that philosophical as well as theological arguments
had to be used. There are, then, philosophical elements in the
writings of early Christian apologists and Fathers; but it would
obviously be idle to look for a philosophical system, since the

13

i 4 PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

interest of these writers was primarily theological, to defend the
Faith. Yet, as Christianity became more firmly established and
better known and as it became possible for Christian scholars to
develop thought and learning, the philosophical element tended
to become more strongly marked, especially when there was ques¬
tion of meeting the attacks of pagan professional philosophers.

The influence of apologetic on the growth of Christian philo¬
sophy was clearly due primarily to a cause external to Christianity,
namely hostile attack; but there was also another reason for this
growth which was internal, independent of attacks from outside.
The more intellectual Christians naturally felt the desire to
penetrate, as far as it was open to them to do so, the data of
revelation and also to form a comprehensive view of the world
and human life in the light of faith. This last reason operated in
a systematic way perhaps later than the first and, so far as the
Fathers are concerned, reached the zenith of its influence in the
thought of St, Augustine; but the first reason, the desire to pene¬
trate the dogmas of the Faith (an anticipation of the Credo , ut
intelligam attitude), was operative in some way from the begin¬
ning. Partly through a simple desire to understand and appreciate,
partly through the need of further clearer definition of dogma in
face of heresy, the original data of revelation were rendered more
explicit, ‘developed', in the sense of the implicit being made
explicit. From the beginning, for instance, Christians accepted the
fact that Christ was both God and Man, but it was only in the
course of time that the implications of this fact were made clear
and were enshrined in theological definitions, for example, that
the perfect human Nature of Christ implied His possession of a
human will. Now, these definitions were of course theological,
and the advance from the implicit to the explicit was an advance
in theological science; but in the process of argument and definition
concepts and categories were employed which were borrowed from
philosophy. Moreover, as the Christians had no philosophy of their
own to start with (i.e. in the academic sense of philosophy), they
very naturally turned to the prevailing philosophy, which was
derived from Platonism but was strongly impregnated with other
elements. As a rough generalisation, therefore, one may say that
the philosophic ideas of the early Christian writers were Platonic
or neo-Platonic in character (with an admixture of Stoicism) and
that the Platonic tradition continued for long to dominate
Christian thought from the philosophic viewpoint. In saying this,

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD

15

however, one must remember that the Christian writers did not
make any clear distinction between theology and philosophy: they
aimed rather at presenting the Christian wisdom or ‘philosophy'
in a very wide sense, which was primarily theological, though it
contained philosophical elements in the strict sense. The task of
the historian of philosophy is to isolate these philosophic elements:
he carjnot reasonably be expected to present an adequate picture
of early Christian thought, for the very good reason that he is not,
ex hypothesi, an historian of dogmatic theology or of exegesis.

Since on the one hand pagan philosophers were inclined to
attack the Church and her doctrine, while on the other hand
Christian apologists and theologians were inclined to borrow the
weapons of their adversaries when they thought that these
weapons could serve their purpose, it is only to be expected that
the Christian writers should show a divergence of attitude in regard
to ancient philosophy, according as they chose to regard it as a foe
and rival of Christianity or as a useful arsenal and store-house or
even as a providential preparation for Christianity. Thus while in
Tertullian's eyes pagan philosophy was little more than the foolish¬
ness of this world, Clement of Alexandria regarded philosophy as
a gift of God, a means of educating the pagan world for Christ, as
the Jews’ means of education had been the Law. He thought
indeed, as Justin thought before him, that Plato had borrowed his
wisdom from Moses and the Prophets (a Philonic contention); but
just as Philo had tried to reconcile Greek philosophy with the Old
Testament, so Clement tried to reconcile Greek philosophy with
the Christian religion. In the end, of course, it was the attitude of
Clement, not that of Tertullian, which triumphed, since St.
Augustine made abundant use of neo-Platonic ideas when present¬
ing the Christian Weltanschauung.

2. As the first group of those Christian writers whose works
contain philosophic elements one can count the early apologists
who were particularly concerned to defend the Christian faith
against pagan attack (or rather to show to the Imperial authorities
that Christianity had a right to exist), men like Aristides, Justin,
Melito, Tatian, Athenagoras and Theophilus of Antioch. In a brief
sketch of Patristic philosophy, a sketch which is admittedly only
included by way of preparation for the main theme of the book,
one can treat neither of all the apologists nor of any one of them
fully: my intention is rather to indicate the sort of philosophical
elements which their works contain.

i6

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

(i) Marcianus Aristides, styled a 'philosopher of Athens’, wrote
an Apology, which is to be dated about a.d. 140 and is addressed
to the Emperor Antoninus Pius. 1 A good deal of this work is
devoted to an attack on the pagan deities of Greece and Egypt,
with some animadversions on the morals of the Greeks; but at the
beginning Aristides declares that ‘amazed at the arrangement of
the world’, and understanding that ‘the world and all that is
therein are moved by the impulse of another’, and seeing that
‘that which moveth is more powerful than that which is moved’,
he concludes that the Mover of the world 'is God of all, who made
all for the sake of man’. Aristides thus gives in a very compen¬
dious form arguments drawn from the design and order in the
world and from the fact of motion, and identifies the designer and
mover with the Christian God, of whom he proceeds to predicate
the attributes of eternity, perfection, incomprehensibility, wisdom,
goodness. We have here, then, a very rudimentary natural
theology presented, not for purely philosophic reasons, but in
defence of the Christian religion.

(ii) A much more explicit attitude towards philosophy is to be
found in the writings of Flavius Justinus (St. Justin Martyr), who
was bom at Neapolis (Nablus) of pagan parents about a.d. ioo,
became a Christian, and was martyred at Rome about 164. In his
Dialogue with Trypho he declares that philosophy is a most
precious gift of God, designed to lead man to God, though its true
nature and its unity have not been recognised by most people, as
is clear from the existence of so many philosophical schools.* As
to himself, he went first for instruction to a Stoic, but, finding the
Stoic doctrine of God unsatisfactory, betook himself to a Peri¬
patetic, whose company he soon forsook, as he turned out to be
a grasping fellow. 3 From the Peripatetic he went, with zeal still
unabated, to a Pythagorean of repute, but his own lack of acquain¬
tance with music, geometry and astronomy unfitted him for
philosophy in his prospective teacher’s eyes, and as he did not
wish to spend a lot of time in acquiring knowledge of these
sciences, he turned to the Platonists and was so delighted with the
doctrine of the immaterial Ideas that he began to expect a clear
vision of God, which, says Justin, is the aim of Plato’s philosophy. 4
Shortly afterwards, however, he fell in with a Christian, who
showed him the insufficiency of pagan philosophy, even of that of

1 Quotations from the edition published in Texts and Studies, Vol. I.

* a, 1. * 2, 3. * 2, 4-6.

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD

*7

Plato . 1 Justin is thus an example of the cultured convert from
paganism, who, feeling his conversion as the term of a process,
could not adopt a merely negative and hostile attitude to Greek
philosophy.

Justin's words concerning Platonism in the Dialogue show
clearly enough the esteem in which he held the Platonic philosophy.
He prized its doctrine of the immaterial world and of the being
beyond essence, which he identified with God, though he became
convinced that the sure and safe and certain knowledge of God,
the true 'philosophy', is to be attained only through the acceptance
of revelation. In his two Apologies he makes frequent use of
Platonic terms, as when he speaks of God as the 'Demiurge '. 2 I
am not suggesting that when Justin makes use of Platonic or
neo-Platonic words and phrases he is understanding the words in
precisely the Platonic sense: the use of them is rather the effect of
his philosophic training and of the sympathy which he retained for
Platonism. Thus he does not hesitate on occasion to point out
analogies between Christian and Platonic doctrine, in regard, for
example, to reward and punishment after death , 3 and his admira¬
tion for Socrates is evident. When Socrates, in the power of logos ,
or as its instrument, tried to lead men away from falsehood into
truth, evil men put him to death as an impious atheist: so
Christians, who follow and obey the incarnate Logos itself and
who denounce the false gods, are termed atheists . 4 In other words,
just as the work of Socrates, which was a service of truth, was a
preparation for the complete work of Christ, so the condemnation
of Socrates was, as it were, a rehearsal or anticipation of the
condemnation of Christ and His followers. Again, the actions of
men are not determined, as the Stoics thought, but they act rightly
or wrongly according to their free choice, while it is owing to the
activity of the evil demons that Socrates and those like him are
persecuted, while Epicurus and those like him are held in honour . 6

Justin thus made no clear distinction betv/een theology and
philosophy in the strict sense: there is one wisdom, one 'philo¬
sophy', which is revealed fully in and through Christ, but for
which the best elements in pagan philosophy, especially Platonism,
were a preparation. In so far as the pagan philosophers divined
the truth, they did so only in the power of logos : Christ, however,
is the Logos itself, incarnate. This view of Greek philosophy and

1 3, 1 flf. * E.g. Apol., I, 8, 2. * Ibid., I, 8, 4.

'Ibid., I, 5, 3 flf. 'Ibid., II f 6 (7), 3.

18 PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

of its relation to Christianity was of considerable influence on
later writers.

(iii) According to Irenaeus, 1 Tatian was a pupil of Justin. He
was of Syrian nationality, was educated in Greek literature and
philosophy, and became a Christian. There is no real reason for
doubting the truth of the statement that Tatian was in some sense
a pupil of Justin Martyr, but it is quite clear from his Address to
the Greeks that he did not share Justin's sympathy for Greek
philosophy in its more spiritual aspects. Tatian declares that we
know God from His works; he has a doctrine of the Logos, distin¬
guishes soul (4^x^) from spirit (irveujxa), teaches creation in time
and insists on free-will; but all these points he could have got from
the Scriptures and Christian teaching: he had little use for Greek
learning and Greek thought, though he can hardly have escaped
its influence altogether. He was in fact inclined to excessive
rigorism, and we learn from St. Irenaeus and St. Jerome 2 that
after Justin's martyrdom Tatian fell away from the Church into
Valentinian Gnosticism, subsequently founding the sect of the
Encratites, denouncing not only the drinking of wine and the use
of ornaments by women but even marriage as such, which he said
was defilement and fornication. 3

Tatian certainly recognised the human mind’s ability to prove
God's existence from creatures and he made use of philosophical
notions and categories in the development of theology, as when he
maintains that the Word, proceeding from the simple essence of
God, does not 'fall into the void', as human words do, but remains
in its subsistence and is the divine instrument of creation. He
thus uses the analogy of the formation of human thought and
speech to illustrate the procession of the Word, and, while holding
to the doctrine of creation, he uses language reminiscent of the
Timaeus in respect of the Demiurge. But, if he made use of terms
and ideas taken from pagan philosophy, he did not do so in any
spirit of sympathy, but rather with the notion that the Greek
philosophers had taken from the Scriptures whatever truth they
possessed and that whatever they added thereto was nothing but
falsity and perversion. The Stoics, for instance, perverted the
doctrine of providence by the diabolic theory of fatalistic deter¬
minism. It is indeed something of an historical irony that a writer
who betrayed so pronounced an hostility towards Greek thought

1 Against the Heresies, 1 , 28, 1 K.g. Adv. Jovin., 1, 3; Comm, in Amos.

3 Iren., Against the Heresies, I, 28.

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD 19

and who drew so sharp a distinction between pagan 'sophistry'
and Christian wisdom should himself end in heresy.

(iv) A more tactful approach to the Greeks, and one in harmony
with that of Justin Martyr, was the approach of Athenagoras, who
addressed to the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus,
'conquerors of Armenia and Sarmatia, and above all philosophers’,
a Plea for the Christians (irpeofSeta rrepl xp l <mav<ov) about the year
a.d. 177. In this book the author is concerned to defend the
Christians against the three accusations of atheism, cannibalistic
feasts and incest, and in answering the first accusation he gives a
reasoned defence of the Christian belief in one eternal and spiritual
God. First of all he cites various Greek philosophers themselves,
for instance Philolaus, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics. He quotes
Plato in the Timaeus to the effect that it is difficult to find the
Maker and Father of the universe and impossible, even when He
is found, to declare Him to all, and asks why Christians, believing
in one God, should be called atheists, when Plato is not so called
because of his doctrine of the Demiurge. The poets and philo¬
sophers, moved by a divine impulse, have striven to find God and
men pay heed to their conclusions: how foolish it would be, then,
to refuse to listen to the very Spirit of God, speaking through the
mouths of the Prophets.

Athenagoras then goes on to show that there cannot be a multi¬
tude of material gods, that God, who forms matter, must transcend
matter (though he scarcely succeeds in conceiving God without
relation to space), that the Cause of perishable things must be
imperishable and spiritual, and he appeals especially to the testi¬
mony of Plato. He thus adopts the same attitude as that of Justin
Martyr. There is one true 'philosophy’ or wisdom, which is
attained adequately only through the Christian revelation, though
Greek philosophers divined something of the truth. In other
words, their very respect for the Greek thinkers and poets should
lead thoughtful men like Marcus Aurelius to appreciate and esteem,
even if not to embrace, Christianity. His primary purpose is
theological and apologetic, but he utilises philosophic arguments
and themes in his pursuit of that purpose. For instance, in his
attempt to prove the reasonable character of the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body, he makes clear his conviction, as against
the Platonic view, that the body belongs to the integral man, that
man is not simply a soul using a body. 1

1 On the Resurrection .

20

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD

21

(v) A similar appeal to the intelligent pagan was made by
Theophilus of Antioch in his Ad Autolycum, written about a.d. 180.
After emphasising the fact that moral purity is necessary for any¬
one who would know God, he proceeds to speak of the divine
attributes, God’s incomprehensibility, power, wisdom, eternity,
immutability. As the soul of man, itself invisible, is perceived
through the movements of the body, so God, Himself invisible, is
known through His providence and works. He is not always
accurate in his account of the opinions of Greek philosophers, but
he clearly had some esteem for Plato, whom he considered 'the
most respectable philosopher among them’, 1 though Plato erred in
not teaching creation out of nothing (which Theophilus clearly
affirms) and in his doctrine concerning marriage (which Theophilus
does not give correctly).

3. The foregoing Apologists, who wrote in Greek, were mainly
concerned with answering pagan attacks on Christianity. We can
now consider briefly the great opponent of Gnosticism, St.
Irenaeus, to whom we add, for the sake of convenience, Hippolytus.
Both men wrote in Greek and both combated the Gnosticism which
flourished in the second ceritury a.d., though Hippolytus's work
has a wider interest, containing, as it does, many references to
Greek philosophy and philosophers.

Of Gnosticism suffice it to say here that, in general, it was a
monstrous conflation of Scriptural and Christian, Greek and
Oriental elements, which, professing to substitute knowledge
(gnosis) for faith, offered a doctrine of God, creation, the origin
of evil, salvation, to those who liked to look upon themselves as
superior persons in comparison with the ordinary run of Christians.
There was a Jewish Gnosticism before the ‘Christian’ form, and
the latter itself can be looked on as a Christian heresy only in so
far as the Gnostics borrowed certain specifically Christian themes:
the Oriental and Hellenic elements are far too conspicuous for it
to be possible to call Gnosticism a Christian heresy in the ordinary
sense, although it was a real danger in the second century and
seduced those Christians who were attracted by the bizarre theoso-
phical speculations which the Gnostics offered as 'knowledge’. As
a matter of fact, there were a number of Gnostic systems, such as
those of Cerinthus, Marcion, the Ophites, Basilides, Valentinus.
We know that Marcion was a Christian who suffered excommuni¬
cation; but the Ophites were probably of Jewish-Alexandrian

1 Ad Autol., 3, 6.

origin, while in regard to famous Gnostics like Basilides and
Valentinus (second century) we do not know that they were ever
Christians.

Characteristic of Gnosticism in general was a dualism between God
and matter, which, though not absolute, approached that of the later
Manichaean system. The resulting gulf between God and matter
was filled up by the Gnostics with a series of emanations or inter¬
mediary beings in which Christ found a place. The complement of
the process of emanation was the return to God by way of salvation.

In the system of Marcion, as one would expect, the Christian
element was to the fore. The God of the Old Testament, the
Demiurge, is inferior to the God of the New Testament, who
remained unknown until He revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. In
the systems of Basilides and Valentinus, however, the Christian
element is less important: Christ is depicted as an inferior being
(an Eon) in a fantastic hierarchy of divine and semi-divine emana¬
tions, and His mission is simply that of transmitting to man the
salvific knowledge or gnosis. As matter is evil, it cannot be the
work of the Supreme God, but it is due to the ‘great Archon', who
was worshipped by the Jews and who gave himself out as the one
Supreme God. The Gnostic systems were thus not dualistic in the
full Manichaean sense, since the Demiurge, identified with the God
of the Old Testament, was not made an independent and original
principle of evil (the neo-Platonic element was too prominent to
admit of absolute dualism), and their main common characteristic
was not so much the tendency to dualism as the insistence on
gnosis as the means of salvation. The adoption of Christian
elements was largely due to the desire to absorb Christianity, to
substitute gnosis for faith. To enter further upon the differentiat¬
ing features of the various Gnostic systems and to detail the series
of emanations would be a tiresome and profitless task: it is enough
to point out that the general framework was a mixture of Oriental
and Greek (e.g. neo-Pythagorean and neo-Platonic) themes, with
a varying dosage of Christian elements, taken both from Chris¬
tianity proper and from apocryphal and spurious documents. To
us to-day it is difficult to understand how Gnosticism could ever
have been a danger to the Church or an attraction to any sane
mind; but we have to remember that it arose at a time when a
welter of philosophical schools and mystery-religions was seeking
to cater for the spiritual needs of men. Moreover, esoteric and
theosophical systems, surrounded with the pseudo-glamour of

22

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD

23

'eastern wisdom', have not entirely lost their attraction for some
minds even in much more recent times.

(i) St. Irenaeus (born about a.d. 137 or 140), writing against
the Gnostics in his Adversus Haereses , affirms that there is one
God, who made all things, Creator of heaven and earth. He appeals,
for example, to the argument from design and to that from uni¬
versal consent, observing that the very heathen have learnt from
creation itself, by the use of reason, the existence of God as
Creator. 1 God created the world freely, and not by necessity. 2
Moreover, He created the world out of nothing and not out of
previously existing matter, as the Gnostics pretend relying on
'Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Plato 1 . 3 But, though the human
mind can come to know God through reason and revelation, it
cannot comprehend God, whose essence transcends the human
intelligence; to pretend to know the ineffable mysteries of God and
to go beyond humble faith and love, as the Gnostics do, is mere
conceit and pride. The doctrine of reincarnation is false, while the
revealed moral law does not abrogate, but fulfils and extends, the
natural law. In fine, 'the teaching of the Apostles is the true
gnosis’A

According to Irenaeus the Gnostics borrowed most of their
notions from Greek philosophers. Thus he accuses them of borrow¬
ing their morals from Epicurus and the Cynics, their doctrine of
reincarnation from Plato. In this tendency to attach Gnostic
theories to Greek philosophies Irenaeus was closely followed by

(ii) Hippolytus (died probably about a.d. 236), who was a
disciple of Irenaeus, according to Photius, 5 and certainly utilised
his teaching and writing. In the Proemium to his Philosophumena
(now generally attributed to Hippolytus) he declares his intention,
only imperfectly fulfilled, of exposing the plagiarism of the Gnostics
by showing how their various opinions were taken from Greek
philosophers, though they were made worse by the Gnostics, and,
in order to do this more easily, he first recounts the opinions of the
philosophers, relying for his information mainly, if not entirely, on
the doxography of Theophrastus. The information, however, is
not always accurate. His main accusation against the Greeks
is that they glorified the parts of the creation with dainty
phrases, but were ignorant of the Creator of all things, who
made them freely out of nothing according to His wisdom and
foreknowledge.

1 2, q, 1. * 2, 1, 1; 2. 5, 3. * 2, 14. 4. 4 4, 33, 8. 6 Bibl. cod. 121

4. The foregoing authors wrote in Greek; but there was also a
group of Latin Apologists, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Amobius
and Lactantius, of whom the most important is Tertullian.

(i) It is uncertain whether Minucius Felix wrote before or after
Tertullian, but in any case his attitude towards Greek philosophy,
as shown in his Octavius , was more favourable than Tertullian’s.
Arguing that God's existence can be known with certainty from
the order of nature and the design involved in the organism,
particularly in the human body, and that the unity of God can
be inferred from the unity of the cosmic order, he affirmed that
Greek philosophers, too, recognised these truths. Thus Aristotle
recognised one Godhead and the Stoics had a doctrine of divine
providence, while Plato speaks in almost Christian terms when he
talks in the Timaeus of the Maker and Father of the universe.

(ii) Tertullian , however, speaks in a rather different way of
Greek philosophy. Born about a.d. 160 of pagan parents and
educated as a jurist (he practised in Rome), he became a Christian,
only to fall into the Montanist heresy, a form of rigorous and
excessive Puritanism. He was the first outstanding Christian
Latin writer, and in his works his contempt for paganism and
pagan learning is made clear and explicit. What have the philo¬
sopher and the Christian in common, the disciple of Greece, the
friend of error, and the pupil of heaven, the foe of error and friend
of truth? 1 Even Socrates' wisdom did not amount to much, since
no one can really know God apart from Christ, nor Christ apart
from the Holy Spirit. Moreover, Socrates was, self-confessedly,
guided by a demon! 2 As to Plato, he said that it was hard to find
the Maker and Father of the universe, whereas the simplest
Christian has already found Him. 3 Moreover, the Greek philo¬
sophers are the patriarchs of the heretics, 4 inasmuch as Valentinus
borrowed from the Platonists, Marcion from the Stoics, while the
philosophers themselves borrowed ideas from the Old Testament
and then distorted them and claimed them as their own. 6

However, in spite of the antithesis he makes between Christian
wisdom and Greek philosophy, Tertullian himself developed philo¬
sophical themes and was influenced by the Stoics. He affirms that
the existence of God is known with certainty from His works, 6
and also that from the uncreatedness of God we can argue to His
perfection (/ mperfectum non potest esse t nisi quod factum est )] 1 but he

1 Apol., 46. * De A luma, 1. 1 Apol., 46. 1 De Anitna, 3.

* Apoi, 47. • De Resurrect ., 2-3. 7 Herm., 28.

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD

25

24

makes the astounding statement that everything, including God,
is corporeal, bodily. 'Everything which exists is a bodily existence
sui generis , Nothing lacks bodily existence but that which is
non-existent': 1 'for who will deny that God is a body, although
"God is a Spirit"? For Spirit has a bodily substance of its own
kind, in its own form,' 2 Many writers have concluded from these
statements that Tertullian maintained a materialistic doctrine and
held God to be really a material being, just as the Stoics considered
God to be material: some, however, have suggested that by 'body'
Tertullian often meant simply substance and that when he attri¬
butes materiality to God, he is really simply attributing substan¬
tiality to God. On this explanation, when Tertullian says that
God is a corpus sui generis , that He is corpus and yet spiritus , he
would mean that God is a spiritual substance: his language would
be at fault, while his thought would be acceptable. One is certainly
not entitled to exclude this explanation as impossible, but it is
true that Tertullian, speaking of the human soul, says that it must
be a bodily substance since it can suffer. 3 However, he speaks
ambiguously even on the nature of the soul, and in his Apology 4
he gives as a reason for the resurrection of the bodies of the wicked
that' the soul is not capable of suffering without the solid substance,
that is, the flesh'. It is probably best to say, then, that, while
Tertullian's language often implies materialism of a rather crass
sort, his meaning may not have been that which his language
would often imply. When he teaches that the soul of the infant is
derived from the father's seed like a kind of sprout ( surculus ,
tradux ), 5 he would seem to be teaching a clearly materialistic
doctrine; but this 'traducianism' was adopted partly for a theologi¬
cal reason, to explain the transmission of original sin, and some
later writers who inclined to the same view, did so for the same
theological reason, without apparently realising the materialistic
implications of the doctrine. This does not show, of course, that
Tertullian was not a materialist; but it should at least lead one to
hesitate before forming the conviction that his general meaning
always coincided with the words he used. His assertion of the
freedom of the will and of the natural immortality of the soul will
scarcely fit in, from the logical viewpoint, with sheer materialism;
but that again would not justify one in flatly denying that he was

1 De Came Christi, n 1 Adv. Prax., 7. * De Anxma, 7; cf. 8,

4 48. 5 Cf. De Anima, 19.

a materialist, since he may have held a materialistic theory without
realising the fact that some of the attributes he ascribed to the soul
were incompatible with a fully materialist position.

One of the great services rendered by Tertullian to Christian
thought was his development of theological and, to some extent,
of philosophical terminology in the Latin language. Thus the
technical use of the word persona is found for the first time in his
writings: the divine Persons are distinct as Personae, but they are
not different, divided, substantiaeA In his doctrine of the Word 2 he
appeals explicitly to the Stoics, to Zeno and Cleanthes. 3 However,
of Tertullian’s theological developments and of his orthodoxy or
unorthodoxy it is not our concern to speak.

(iii) In his Adversus Gentes (about 303) Arnobius makes some
curious observations concerning the soul. Thus, although he
affirms creationism, as against the Platonic doctrine of pre-exis¬
tence, he makes the creating agent a being inferior to God, and he
also asserts the gratuitous character of the soul’s immortality,
denying a natural immortality. One motive was evidently that of
using the gratuitous character of immortality as an argument for
becoming a Christian and leading a moral life. Again, while
combating the Platonic theory of reminiscence, he asserts the
experiential origin of all our ideas with one exception, the idea of
God. He depicts a child brought up in solitude, silence and
ignorance throughout his youth and declares that, as a result, he
would know nothing: he would certainly not have any knowledge
by 'reminiscence’. Plato’s proof for his doctrine in the Meno is
not cogent. 4

(iv) The origin of the soul by God's direct creation, in opposition
to any form of traducianism, was clearly affirmed by Ladantius
(about 250 to about 325) in his De opificio Dei .*

5. Gnosticism, as combated by St. Irenaeus and Hippolytus,
was, so far as it can reasonably be connected with Christianity, an
heretical speculative system, or, more accurately, set of systems,
which, in addition to Oriental and Christian elements, incorporated
elements of Hellenic thought. One of its effects, therefore, was to
arouse a determined opposition to Hellenic philosophy on the part
of those Christian writers who exaggerated the connections
between Gnosticism and Greek philosophy, which they considered
to be the seed-ground of heresy; but another effect was to contri¬
bute to the effort to construct a non-heretical ‘gnosis’, a Christian

* Sermo, Ratio. 4 Apol., at. 4 2,2off. 4 icj.

1 Adv. Prax., I 2 .

26

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

theologico-philosophical system. This effort was characteristic of
the Catechetical School at Alexandria, of which the two most
famous names are Clement and Origen.

(i) Titus Flavius Clemens (Clement of Alexandria) was bom
about 150, perhaps at Athens, came to Alexandria in 202 or 203
and died there about 219. Animated by the attitude which was
later summed up in the formula, Credo, ut intelligam, he sought to
develop the systematic presentation of the Christian wisdom in a
true, as opposed to a false gnosis. In the process he followed the
spirit of Justin Martyr's treatment of the Greek philosophers,
looking on their work rather as a preparation for Christianity, an
education of the Hellenic world for the revealed religion, than as
a folly and delusion. The divine Logos has always illumined souls;
but whereas the Jews were enlightened by Moses and the Prophets,
the Greeks had their wise men, their philosophers, so that philo¬
sophy was to the Greeks what the Law was to the Hebrews. 1 It
is true that Clement thought, following Justin again, that the
Greeks borrowed from the Old Testament and distorted, from
vainglorious motives, what they borrowed; but he was also firmly
convinced that the light of the Logos enabled the Greek philoso¬
phers to attain many truths, and that philosophy is in reality
simply that body of truths which are not the prerogative of any
one Greek School but are found, in different measure and degree,
in different Schools, though Plato was indeed the greatest of all the
philosophers. 2

But not only was philosophy a preparation for Christianity: it
is also an aid in understanding Christianity. Indeed, the person
who merely believes and makes no effort to understand is like a
child in comparison with a man: blind faith, passive acceptance,
is not the ideal, though science, speculation, reasoning, cannot be
true if they do not harmonise with revelation. In other words,
Clement of Alexandria, as the first Christian man of learning,
wanted to see Christianity in its relation to philosophy and to use
the speculative reason in the systematisation and development of
theology. Incidentally it is interesting to note that he rejects any
real positive knowledge of God: we know in truth only what God
is not, for example, that He is not a genus, not a species, that He
is beyond anything of which we have had experience or which we
can conceive. We are justified in predicating perfections of God,
but at the same time we must remember that all names we apply

1 Sfrom., 1, 5. * Paedagogus. 3, 11.

27

to God are inadequate—and so, in another sense, inapplicable. In
dependence, then, on some remarks of Plato in the Republic
concerning the Good and in dependence on Philo Clement asserted
the via negaiiva, so dear to the mystics, which reached its classical
expression in the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius.

(ii) Origen, foremost member of the Catechetical School at
Alexandria, was bom in a.d. 185 or 186. He studied the works of
Greek philosophers and is said to have attended the lectures of
Ammonius Saccas, teacher of Plotinus. He had to abandon the
headship of the Alexandrian School because of a synodical process
(231 and 232) directed against certain features of his doctrine and
also against his ordination (he had, it was said, been ordained
priest in Palestine in spite of his act of self-mutilation), and
subsequently founded a school at Caesarea in Palestine, where
St. Gregory Thaumaturge was one of his pupils. He died in 254
or 255, his death being the consequence of the torture he had had
to endure in the persecution of Decius.

Origen was the most prolific and learned of all Christian writers
before the Council of Nicaea, and there is no doubt that he had
every intention of being and remaining an orthodox Christian; but
his desire to reconcile the Platonic philosophy with Christianity
and his enthusiasm for the allegorical interpretation of the Scrip¬
tures led him into some heterodox opinions. Thus, under the
influence of Platonism or rather of neo-Platonism, he held that
God, who is purely spiritual, the (iovA? or tvAi; 1 and who transcends
truth and reason, essence and being (in his book against the pagan
philosopher Celsus 2 he says, following the mind of Plato, that
God is ijrfxeiva voO xal ouatai;), created the world from eternity and
by a necessity of His Nature. God, who is goodness, could never
have been 'inactive’, since goodness always tends to self-communi¬
cation, self-diffusion. Moreover, if God had created the world in
time, if there was ever a ‘time’ when the world was not, God's
immutability would be impaired, which is an impossibility. 8 Both
these reasons are conceived in dependence on neo-Platonism. God
is indeed the creator of matter and is thus Creator in the strict
and Christian sense, 4 but there is an infinity of worlds, one
succeeding the other and all different from one another. 5 As ev'l
is privation, and not something positive, God cannot be accused
of being the author of evil.* The Logos or Word is the exemplar

1 De priucipiis, i, i, 6. ’7, 38. * D» principiis, 1, a, 10; 3, 4, 3.

* Ibid., a, l, 4 . * Ibid., 3,3,3; a.3, 4-3. • In Joann., a, 7.

28 PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

of creation, the ISia tStuv, 1 and by the Logos all things are created,
the Logos acting as mediator of God and creatures. 2 The final
procession within the Godhead is the Holy Spirit, and imme¬
diately below the Holy Spirit are the created spirits, who, through
the power of the Holy Spirit, are lifted up to become sons of God,
in union with the Son, and are finally participants in the divine
life of the Father. 3

Souls were created by God exactly like to one another in quality,
but sin in a state of pre-existence led to their being clothed with
bodies, and the qualitative difference between souls is thus due to
their behaviour before their entry into this world. They enjoy
freedom of will on earth, but their acts depend not merely on their
free choice but also on the grace of God, which is apportioned
according to their conduct in the pre-embodied state. Neverthe¬
less, all souls, and even the devil and demons, too, will at
length, through purificatory suffering, arrive at union with God.
This is the doctrine of the restoration of all things (iroxvipOomi;,
dbroxaiAcmioi? jtovtuv) whereby all things will return to their ultimate
principle and God will be all in all. 4 This involves, of course, a
denial of the orthodox doctrine of hell.

From even the little which has been said concerning Origen’s
thought it should be clear that he attempted a fusion of Christian
doctrine with Platonic and neo-Platonic philosophy. The Son and
the Holy Ghost in the Blessed Trinity, though within the Godhead,
are spoken of in a manner which indicates the influence of the
emanationism of Philonic and neo-Platonic thought. The theory
of the Logos as 'Idea of ideas’ and that of eternal and necessary
creation come from the same source, while the theory of pre¬
existence is Platonic. Of course, the philosophical ideas which
Origen adopted were incorporated by him in a Christian setting
and framework, so that he may rightly be considered the first
great synthetic thinker of Christianity, but although he attached
them to Scriptural passages freely interpreted, his enthusiasm for
Greek thought led him sometimes into heterodoxy.

6. The Greek Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries were
occupied mainly with theological questions. Thus Si. Athanasius,
who died in 373, was the great foe of Arianism; Si. Gregory Nazian-
zen, who died in 390 and was known as the Theologian, is partic¬
ularly remarkable for his work on Trinitarian and Christological

1 Contra Celsum, 6, 64. ’ De principiis, 2. 6, 1. s Ibid., 6. 1-3.

* Cf. ibid.. 3, 6, 1 ff.; 1. 6. 3.

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD 29

theology; St. John Chrysostom (died 406) is celebrated as one
of the greatest orators of the Church and for his work on the
Scriptures. In treating of dogmas like those of the Blessed Trinity
and the Hypostatic Union the Fathers naturally made use of
philosophical terms and expressions; but their application of
reasoning in theology does not make them philosophers in the
strict sense and we must pass them over here. One may point out,
however, that St. Basil (died 379) studied in the University of
Athens, together with St. Gregory Nazianzen, and that in his Ad
Adolescentes he recommends a study of the Greek poets, orators,
historians and philosophers, though a selection should be made
from their writings which would exclude immoral passages: Greek
literature and learning are a potent instrument of education, but
moral education is more important than literary and philosophic
formation. (St. Basil himself in his descriptions of animals
apparently depended almost entirely on the relevant works of
Aristotle.)

But, though we cannot consider here the theological speculations
of the Greek Fathers, something must be said of two eminent
figures of the period, the historian Eusebius and St. Gregory of
Nyssa.

(i) Eusebius of Caesarea was bom in Palestine about 265, became
Bishop of Caesarea, his birthplace, in 313, and died there in 339
or 340. Best known as a great Church historian, he is also of
importance for his Christian apologetic, and under this heading
comes his attitude towards Greek philosophy, since, in general, he
regarded Greek philosophy, especially Platonism, as a preparation
of the heathen world for Christianity, though he was fully alive to
the errors of Greek philosophers and to the contradictions between
the many philosophical Schools. Yet, though he speaks sharply on
occasion, his general attitude is sympathetic and appreciative, an
attitude which comes out most clearly in his Praeparaiio evangelica
in fifteen books. It is greatly to be regretted that we have not got
the twenty-five books of the work which Eusebius wrote in answer
to Porphyry's attack on Christianity, as his reply to the eminent
neo-Platonist and pupil of Plotinus would doubtless throw much
light on his philosophical ideas; but the Praeparaiio evangelica is
sufficient to show, not only that Eusebius shared the general
outlook of Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, but
also that he had read widely in the literature of the Greeks. He
was in fact an extremely learned man, and his work is one of the

30 PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

sources for our knowledge of the philosophy of those thinkers
whose works have perished.

One would probably only expect, given the attitude of his
predecessors, to find Eusebius especially appreciative of Plato: in
fact he devotes to Platonism three books (xi—13) of the Praeparatio.
Clement had spoken of Plato as Moses writing in Greek, and
Eusebius, agreeing with Clement, considered that Plato and Moses
were in agreement, 1 that Plato may be called a prophet of the
economy of salvation. 2 Like Clement and Origen, and like Philo
also, Eusebius thought that Plato had borrowed the truths he
exposes from the Old Testament; 3 but at the same time he is
willing to admit the possibility of Plato having discovered the
truth for himself or of his having been enlightened by God. 4 In
any case, not only does Plato agree with the sacred literature of
the Hebrews in his idea of God, but he also suggests, in his Letters,
the idea of the Blessed Trinity. On thic point Eusebius is, of
course, interpreting Plato in a neo-Platonic sense and is referring
to the three principles of the One or Good, the Nous or Mind, and
the World-Soul. 8 The Ideas are the ideas of God, of the Logos, the
exemplar patterns of creation, and the picture of creation in the
Timaeus is similar to that contained in Genesis. 9 Again, Plato
agrees with the Scriptures in his doctrine of immortality, 7 while
the moral teaching of the Phaedrus reminds Eusebius of St. Paul. 8
Even Plato's political ideal found its realisation in the Jewish
theocracy. 9

Nevertheless, it remains true that Plato did not affirm these
truths without an admixture of error. 10 His doctrine of God and of
creation is contaminated by his doctrine of emanation and by his
acceptance of the eternity of matter, his doctrine of the soul and
of immortality by his theory of pre-existence and of reincarnation,
and so on. Thus Plato, even if he was a ‘prophet’, was no more
than a prophet: he did not himself enter into the promised land of
truth, though he approached near to it: it is Christianity alone
which is the true philosophy. Moreover, Plato's philosophy was
highly intellectualist, caviar for the multitude, whereas Chris¬
tianity is for all, so that men and women, rich and poor, learned
and unlearned, can be 'philosophers'.

To discuss Eusebius’s interpretation of Plato would be out of
place here: it is sufficient to note that he, in common with most

>11,28. *13.13- ’ 10, 1; 10, 8; 10. 14. * 11 , 8 . • IT, 16; n, 20.

* 11, 23; 11. 29; 11. 31. >11,27. *12,27. *13.12:12,16. ">13.19.

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD

3i

other Christian Greek writers, gives the palm to Plato among
Hellenic thinkers, and that, in common with all the early Christian
writers, he makes no real distinction between theology in a strict
sense and philosophy in a strict sense. There is one wisdom, which
is found adequately and completely only in Christianity: Greek
thinkers attained to true philosophy or wisdom in so far as they
anticipated Christianity. Among those who anticipated the true
philosophy Plato is the most outstanding; but even he stood only
on the threshold of truth. Naturally the notion that Plato and
other Hellenic thinkers borrowed from the Old Testament,
although itself partly a consequence of their understanding of
'philosophy’, helped also to confirm Christian writers like Eusebius
in their very wide interpretation of 'philosophy', as including not
only the result of human speculation but also the data of revelation.
In fact, in spite of his very favourable judgement on Plato, the
logical conclusion from Eusebius’s and others’ conviction that the
Greek philosophers borrowed from the Old Testament would inevi¬
tably be that human speculation unaided by direct illumination
from God is not of any great avail in the attainment of truth. For
what are the errors with which even Plato contaminated the truth
but the result of human speculation? If you say that the truth
contained in Greek philosophy came from the Old Testament, that
is to say, from revelation, you can hardly avoid the conclusion
that the errors in Greek philosophy came from human speculation,
with a consequently unfavourable judgement as to the power of
that speculation. This attitude was very common among the
Fathers and, in the Middle Ages, it was to be clearly expressed by
St. Bonaventure in the thirteenth century, though it was not to be
the view that ultimately prevailed in Scholasticism, the view of
St. Thomas Aquinas and of Duns Scotus.

(ii) One of the most learned of the Greek Fathers and one of the
most interesting from the philosophic standpoint was the brother
of St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa, who was born in Caesarea (in
Cappadocia, not Palestine) about a.d. 335 and, after having been
a teacher of rhetoric, became Bishop of Nyssa, dying about the
year 395.

Gregory of Nyssa realised clearly that the data of revelation are
accepted on faith and are not the result of a logical process of
reasoning, that the mysteries of faith are not philosophical and
scientific conclusions: if they were, then supernatural faith, as
exercised by Christians, and Hellenic philosophising would be

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

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33

32

indistinguishable. On the other hand, the Faith has a rational
basis, in that, logically speaking, the acceptance of mysteries on
authority presupposes the ascertainability by natural reasoning of
certain preliminary truths, especially the existence of God, which
are capable of philosophic demonstration. Accordingly, though
the superiority of faith must be maintained, it is only right to
invoke the aid of philosophy. Ethics, natural philosophy, logic,
mathematics, are not only ornaments in the temple of truth but
may also contribute to the life of wisdom and virtue: they are,
therefore, not to be despised or rejected, 1 though divine revelation
must be accepted as a touchstone and criterion of truth since
human reasoning must be judged by the word of God, not the
word of God by human reasoning. 2 Again, it is right to employ
human speculation and human reasoning in regard to dogma; but
the conclusions will not be valid unless they agree with the
Scriptures. 3

The cosmic order proves the existence of God, and from the
necessary perfection of God we can argue to His unity, that there
is one God. Gregory went on to attempt to give reasons for the
Trinity of Persons in the one Godhead. 4 For instance, God must
have a Logos, a word, a reason. He cannot be less than man, who
also has a reason, a word. But the divine Logos cannot be some¬
thing of fleeting duration, it must be eternal, just as it must be
living. The internal word in man is a fleeting accident, but in God
there can be no such thing: the Logos is one in Nature with the
Father, for there is but one God, the distinction between the Logos
and the Father, the Word and the Speaker, being a distinction of
relation. To enter into Gregory’s Trinitarian doctrine as such is
not our concern here; but the fact that he tries, in some sense, to
‘prove’ the doctrine is of interest, since it afforded a precedent for
the later attempts of St. Anselm and Richard of St. Victor to
deduce the Trinity, to prove it rationibus necessariis.

Obviously, however, St. Gregory’s intention, like that of St.
Anselm, was to render the mystery more intelligible by the appli¬
cation of dialectic, not to ‘rationalise’ the mystery in the sense of
departing from dogmatic orthodoxy. Similarly, his theory that
the word ‘man’ is primarily applicable to the universal and only
secondarily to the individual man was an attempt to render the

1 De Vita Moysis ; P.G., 44, 336 DG, 360 BC.

1 Cf. De amnta et resurrectione; P.G., 46, 49 C.

1 Cf. Contra Eunom.; P.G., 45, 341 B. 4 Cf. Oratio Catechetica\ P.G., 45.

mystery more intelligible, the application of the illustration being
this, that the word ‘God’ refers primarily to the divine essence,
which is one, and only secondarily to the divine Persons, who are
Three, so that the Christian cannot be rightly accused of tritheism.
But, though the illustration was introduced to defeat the charge
of tritheism and make the mystery more intelligible, it was an
unfortunate illustration, since it implied a hyperrealist view of
universals.

St. Gregory’s 'Platonism' in regard to universals comes out
clearly in his De hominis opificio, where he distinguishes the
heavenly man, the ideal man, the universal, from the earthly man,
the object of experience. The former, the ideal man or rather
ideal human being, exists only in the divine idea and is without
sexual determination, being neither male nor female: the latter,
the human being of experience, is an expression of the ideal and
is sexually determined, the ideal being, as it were, ‘splintered’ or
partially expressed in many single individuals. Thus, according
to Gregory, individual creatures proceed by creation, not by
emanation, from the ideal in the divine Logos. This theory clearly
goes back to neo-Platonism and to Philonism, and it was adopted
by the first outstanding philosopher of the Middle Ages, John
Scotus Eriugena, who was much influenced by the writings of
St. Gregory of Nyssa. It must be remembered, however, that
Gregory never meant to imply that there was ever an historic
ideal man, sexually undetermined; God’s idea of man will be
realised only eschatologically, when (according to St. Paul’s words
as interpreted by Gregory) there will be neither male nor female,
since in heaven there will be no marriage

God created the world out of an abundance of goodness and
love, in order that there might be creatures who could participate
in the divine goodness; but though God is goodness and created
the world out of goodness, He did not create the world from
necessity, but freely. A share in this freedom God has given to
man, and God respects this freedom, permitting man to choose
evil if he so wills. Evil is the result of man's free choice, God is
not responsible. It is true that God foresaw evil and that He
permits it, but in spite of this foreknowledge He created man, for
He knew also that He would in the end bring all men to Himself.
Gregory thus accepted the Origenist theory of the ‘restoration of all
things’: every human being, even Satan and the fallen angels, will at
length turn to God, at least through the purifying sufferings of the

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hereafter. In a sense, then, every human being will at length
return to the Ideal and be therein contained, though Gregory
certainly accepted individual immortality. This notion of the
return of all things to God, to the Principle from whom they
sprang, and of the attainment of a state in which God is ‘all in
all', was also borrowed by John Scotus Eriugena from St. Gregory,
and in interpreting the somewhat ambiguous language of John
Scotus one should at least bear in mind the thought of St. Gregory,
even while admitting the possibility of John Scotus having
attached a different meaning to similar words.

But, though St. Gregory of Nyssa shared Origen's theory of the
restoration of all things, he did not share Origen's acceptance of
the Platonic notion of pre-existence, and in the De hominis
opificio 1 he says that the author of the De Principiis was led
astray by Hellenic theories. The soul, which is not confined to
any one portion of the body, is ‘a created essence (ou(j{a ysvvrrnf)),
a living essence, intellectual, with an organic and sensitive body,
an essence that has the power of giving life and perceiving sensible
objects, so long as the bodily instruments endure'. 2 As simple
and uncompounded (A^v xal Acnivecrov), the soul has the power of
surviving the body, 3 with which, however, it will in the end be
reunited. The soul is thus spiritual and incorporeal; but how is it
different from body, for body, i.e. a concrete material object, is
composed, according to Gregory, of qualities which in themselves
are incorporeal? In the De hominis opificio 1 he says that the
union of qualities like colour, solidity, quantity, weight, results in
body, whereas their dissolution spells the perishing of the body.
In the preceding chapter he has proposed a dilemma: either
material things proceed from God, in which case God, as their
Source, would contain matter in Himself, would be material, or,
if God is not material, then material things do not proceed from
Him and matter is eternal. Gregory, however, rejects both the
materiality of God and dualism, and the natural conclusion of this
would be that the qualities of which bodily things are composed are
not material. It is true that, while asserting creation ex nihilo,
Gregory asserts that we cannot comprehend how God creates the
qualities out of nothing; but it is reasonable to suppose that in his
eyes the qualities which form body are not themselves bodies: in
fact they could not be, since there is no concrete body at all
except in and through their union. Presumably he was influenced

1 P.G., 44. 229ft. * De animn ei res.] P.G. 46, 29. * Jhid, 44. 4 Ch. 24

35

by Plato’s doctrine of the qualities in the Timaeus. How, then,
are they not spiritual? And, if they are spiritual, how does soul
differ essentially from body? The reply would doubtless be that,
though the qualities unite to form body and cannot, considered in
abstraction, be called ‘bodies’, yet they have an essential relation
to matter, since it is their function to form matter. An analogous
difficulty recurs in regard to the Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrine
of matter and form. Prime matter is not in itself body, but it is
one of the principles of body: how, then, considered in itself, does
it differ from the immaterial and spiritual? Thomistic philoso¬
phers answer that prime matter never exists by itself alone and
that it has an exigency for quantity, an essential ordination to
concrete body, and presumably Gregory of Nyssa would have to
say something of the same sort in regard to his primary qualities.
In passing, one may note that similar difficulties might be raised
in regard to certain modem theories concerning the constitution
of matter. Plato, one might reasonably suppose, would welcome
these theories, were he alive to-day, and it is not improbable that
St. Gregory of Nyssa would follow suit.

From what has been said it is clear that Gregory of Nyssa was
much influenced by Platonism, neo-Platonism, and the writings of
Philo (he speaks, for example, of the VoUxns 0e$ as being the
purpose of man, of the 'flight of the alone to the Alone’, of justice-
in-itself, of eros and the ascent to the ideal Beauty); but it must
be emphasised that, although Gregory undeniably employed Ploti-
nian themes and expressions, as also to a less extent those of
Philo, he did not by any means always understand them in a
Plotinian or Philonic sense. On the contrary, he utilised expres¬
sions of Plotinus or Plato to expose and state Christian doctrines.
For example, the ‘likeness to God’ is the work of grace, a develop¬
ment under the activity of God, with man’s free co-operation, of
the image or eb«iv of God implanted in the soul at baptism. Again,
justice-in-itself is not an abstract virtue nor even an idea in Nous',
it is the Logos indwelling in the soul, the effect of this inhabitation
being the participated virtue. This Logos, moreover, is not the
Nous of Plotinus, nor is it the Logos of Philo: it is the Second
Person of the Blessed Trinity, and between God and creatures
there is no intermediary procession of subordinate hypostases.

Finally, it is noteworthy that St. Gregory of Nyssa was the first
real founder of systematic mystical theology. Here again he
utilised Plotinian and Philonic themes, but he employed them in

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37

36

a Christian sense and within a Christocentric framework of thought.
Naturally speaking man's mind is fitted to know sensible objects,
and contemplating these objects the mind can come to know
something of God and His attributes (symbolic theology, which
is partly equivalent to natural theology in the modem sense). On
the other hand, though man by nature has as his proper object of
knowledge sensible things, these things are not fully real, they are
mirage and illusion except as symbols or manifestations of imma¬
terial reality, that reality towards which man is spiritually drawn.
The consequent tension in the soul leads to a state of ivcXTrurrla
or ‘despair', which is the birth of mysticism, since the soul, drawn
by God, leaves its natural object of knowledge, without, however,
being able to see the God to whom it is drawn by love: it enters
into the daikness, what the mediaeval treatise calls the Cloud of
Unknowing. (To this stage corresponds the negative theology,
which so influenced the Pseudo-Dionysius.) In the soul's advance
there are, as it were, two movements, that of the indwelling of the
Triune God and that of the soul's reaching out beyond itself,
culminating in 'ecstasy'. Origen had interpreted the Philonic
ecstasy intellectually, as any other form of 'ecstasy' was then
suspect, owing to Montanist extravagances; but Gregory set
ecstasy at the summit of the soul's endeavour, interpreting it first
and foremost as ecstatic love.

The 'darkness' which envelops God is due primarily to the utter
transcendence of the divine essence, and Gregory drew the con¬
clusion that even in heaven the soul is always pressing forward,
drawn by love, to penetrate further into God. A static condition
would mean either satiety or death: spiritual life demands constant
progress and the nature of the divine transcendence involves the
same progress, since the human mind can never comprehend God.
In a sense, then, the 'divine darkness' always persists, and it is
true to say that Gregory gave to this knowledge in darkness a
priority over intellectual knowledge, not because he despised the
human intellect but because he realised the transcendence of
God.

St. Gregory's scheme of the soul's ascent certainly bears some
resemblance to that of Plotinus; but at the same time it is
thoroughly Christocentric. The advance of the soul is the work of
the Divine Logos, Christ. Moreover, his ideal is not that of a
solitary union with God, but rather of a realisation of the Pleroma
of Christ: the advance of one soul brings grace and blessing to

others and the indwelling of God in the individual affects the
whole Body. His mysticism is also thoroughly sacramental in
character: the ctxwv is restored by Baptism, union with God is
fostered by the Eucharist. In fine, the writings of St. Gregory of
Nyssa are the source from which not only the Pseudo-Dionysius
and mystics down to St. John of the Cross drew, directly or
indirectly, much of their inspiration; but they are also the
fountain-head of those Christian philosophical systems which trace
out the soul's advance through different stages of knowledge and
love up to the mystical life and the Beatific Vision. If a purely
spiritual writer like St. John of the Cross stands in the line that
goes back to Gregory, so does the mystical philosopher St.
Bona venture.

7. Of the Latin Fathers the greatest, without a shadow of
doubt, is St. Augustine of Hippo; but, because of the importance
of his thought for the Middle Ages, I shall consider his philosophy
separately and rather more at length. In this section it is sufficient
to mention very briefly St. Ambrose (about 333 to 397), Bishop
of Milan.

St. Ambrose shared the typically Roman attitude towards
philosophy, i.e. an interest in practical and ethical matters, coupled
with little facility or taste for metaphysical speculation. In his
dogmatic and Scriptural work he depended mainly on the Greek
Fathers; but in ethics he was influenced by Cicero, and in his De
officiis ministrorum, composed about 391 and addressed to the
clergy of Milan, he provided a Christian counterpart to the De
officiis of the great Roman orator. In his book the Saint follows
Cicero closely in his divisions and treatment of the virtues, but
the whole treatment is naturally infused with the Christian ethos,
and the Stoic ideal of happiness, found in the possession of virtue,
is complemented by the final ideal of eternal happiness in God. It
is not that St. Ambrose makes any particularly new contributions
to Christiati ethic: the importance of his work lies rather in its
influence on succeeding thought, in the use made of it by later
writers on ethics.

8. The Greek Fathers, as has been seen, were mainly influenced
by the Platonic tradition; but one of the factors which helped to
prepare the way for the favourable reception eventually accorded
to Aristotelianism in the Latin West was the \tfork of the last of
the Greek Fathers, St. John Damascene.

St. John Damascene, who died probably at the end of the year

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38

a.d. 749, was not only a resolute opponent of the ‘Iconoclasts’ but
also a great systematiser in the field of theology, so that he can
be looked on as the Scholastic of the Orient. He explicitly says
that he does not intend to give new and personal opinions, but to
preserve and hand on the thoughts of holy and learned men, so
that it would be useless to seek in his writings for novelty of
content; yet in his systematic and ordered presentation of the ideas
of his predecessors a certain originality may be ascribed to him.
His chief work is the Fount of Wisdom, in the first part of which he
gives a sketch of the Aristotelian logic and ontology, though he
draws on other writers besides Aristotle, e.g. Porphyry. In this
first part, the Dialectica, he makes clear his opinion that philosophy
and profane science are the instruments or handmaids of theology,
adopting the view of Clement of Alexandria and the two Gregories,
a view which goes back to Philo the Alexandrian Jew and was often
repeated in the Middle Ages. 1 In the second part of his great work
he gives a history of heresies, using material supplied by former
writers, and in the third part, the De Fide Orthodoxa, he gives, in
four books, an orderly treatment of orthodox Patristic theology.
This third part was translated into Latin by Burgundius of Pisa in
1151 and was used by, among others, Peter Lombard, St. Albert
the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas. In the East, St. John Damas¬
cene enjoys almost as much esteem as St. Thomas Aquinas in
the West.

9. From even the brief survey given above it is evident that one
would look in vain for a systematic philosophical synthesis in the
works of any of the Greek Fathers or indeed in any of the Latin
Fathers save Augustine. The Greek Fathers, making no very clear
distinction between the provinces of philosophy and theology,
regarded Christianity as the one true wisdom or ‘philosophy’.
Hellenic philosophy they tended to regard as a propaedeutic to
Christianity, so that their main interest in treating of it was to
point out the anticipation of Christian truth which they saw
therein contained and the aberrations from truth which were also
clear to them. The former they frequently attributed to borrowing
from the Old Testament, the latter to the weakness of human
speculation and to the perverse desire of originality, the vainglory,
of the philosophers themselves. When they adopted ideas from
Hellenic philosophy they generally accepted them because they
thought that they would help in the exposition and presentation

1 P.C., 94, 532 AB.

39

of the Christian wisdom, not in order to incorporate them in a
philosophic system in the strict sense.

Nevertheless, there are, as we have seen, philosophic elements in
the writings of the Fathers. For instance, they make use of rational
arguments for God’s existence, particularly the argument from
order and design; they speculate about the origin and nature of the
soul; St. Gregory of Nyssa even had some ideas which fall under the
heading of philosophy of nature or cosmology. Still, since their
arguments, the arguments for God’s existence, for example, are
not really worked out in any developed, systematic and strict
manner, it may appear out of place to have considered them at all.
I think, however, that this would be a mistake, as even a brief
treatment of Patristic thought is sufficient to bring out one point
which may tend to be forgotten by those who know little of
Christian philosophic thought. Owing to the fact that St. Thomas
Aquinas, who has in recent times been accorded a peculiar status
among Catholic philosophers, adopted a great deal of the Aristo¬
telian system, and owing to the fact that early thinkers of the
'modern era’, e.g. Descartes and Francis Bacon, fulminate against
Scholastic Aristotelianism, it is sometimes taken for granted that
Christian philosophy, or at least Catholic philosophy, means
Aristotelianism and nothing else. Yet, leaving out of account for
the present later centuries, a survey of Patristic thought is suffi¬
cient to show that Plato, and not Aristotle, was the Greek thinker
who won the greatest esteem from the Fathers of the Church. This
may have been due in great part to the fact that neo-Platonism was
the dominant and vigorous contemporary philosophy and to the
fact that the Fathers not only saw Plato more or less in the light
of neo-Platonic interpretation and development but also knew
comparatively little about Aristotle, in most cases at least; but it
also remains true that, whatever may have been the cause or
causes, the Fathers tended to see in Plato a forerunner of Chris¬
tianity and that the philosophic elements they adopted were
adopted, for'the most part, from the Platonic tradition. If one
adds to this the further consideration that Patristic thought,
especially that of Augustine, profoundly influenced, not only the
early Middle Ages, not only such eminent thinkers as St. Anselm
and St. Bonaventure, but even St. Thomas Aquinas himself, it
will be seen that, from the historical viewpoint at least, some
knowledge of Patristic thought is both desirable and valuable.

ST. AUGUSTINE

CHAPTER III
ST. AUGUSTINE—I

Life and writings — St. Augustine and Philosophy.

x. In Latin Christendom the name of Augustine stands out as
that of the greatest of the Fathers both from a literary and from
a theological standpoint, a name that dominated Western thought
until the thirteenth century and which can never lose its lustre,
notwithstanding the Aristotelianism of St. Thomas Aquinas and
his School, especially as this Aristotelianism was very far from
disregarding and still further from belittling the great African
Doctor. Indeed, in order to understand the currents of thought in
the Middle Ages, a knowledge of Augustinianism is essential. In
the present work the thought of Augustine cannot be treated with
the fullness which it merits, but treated it must be, even if
summarily.

Bom at Tagaste in the Province of Numidia on November 13th,
a.d. 354, Augustine came of a pagan father, Patricius, and a
Christian mother, St. Monica. His mother brought up her child
as a Christian, but Augustine's baptism was deferred, in accordance
with a common, if undesirable, custom of the time. 1 The child
learnt the rudiments of Latin and arithmetic from a schoolmaster
of Tagaste, but play, at which he wished always to be the winner,
was more attractive to him than study, and Greek, which he began
after a time, he hated, though he was attracted by the Homeric
poems considered as a story. That Augustine knew practically no
Greek is untrue; but he never learned to read the language with
ease.

In about a.d. 365 Augustine went to the town of Madaura,
where he laid the foundation of his knowledge of Latin literature
and grammar. Madaura was still largely a pagan place, and the
effect of the general atmosphere and of his study of the Latin
classics was evidently to detach the boy from the faith of his
mother, a detachment which his year of idleness at Tagaste (369-
70) did nothing to mitigate. In 370, the year in which his father
died after having become a Catholic, Augustine began the study of
rhetoric at Carthage, the largest city he had yet seen. The

1 Conf., I, II, 17.

40

41

licentious ways of the great port and centre of government, the
sight of the obscene rites connected with cults imported from the
East, combined with the fact that Augustine, the southerner, was
already a man, with passions alive and vehement, led to his
practical break with the moral ideals of Christianity and before
long he took a mistress, with whom he lived for over ten years
and by whom he had a son in his second year at Carthage. In
spite, however, of his irregular life Augustine was a very successful
student of rhetoric and by no means neglected his studies.

It was soon after reading the Hortensius of Cicero, which turned
the youth's mind to the search for truth, that Augustine accepted
the teaching of the Manichaeans, 1 which seemed to offer him a
rational presentation of truth, in distinction from the barbaric
ideas and illogical doctrines of Christianity. Thus Christians main¬
tained that God created the whole world and that God is good:
how, then, could they explain the existence of evil and suffering?
The Manichaeans, however, maintained a dualistic theory, accord¬
ing to which there are two ultimate principles, a good principle,
that of light, God or Ormuzd, and an evil principle, that of dark¬
ness, Ahriman. These principles are both eternal and their strife
is eternal, a strife reflected in the world which is the production of
the two principles in mutual conflict. In man the soul, composed
of light, is the work of the good principle, while the body, composed
of grosser matter, is the work of the evil principle. This system
commended itself in Augustine's eyes because it seemed to explain
the problem of evil and because of its fundamental materialism,
for he could not yet conceive how there could be an immaterial
reality, imperceptible to the senses. Conscious of his own passions
and sensual desires, he felt that he could now attribute them to an
evil cause outside himself. Moreover, although the Manichaeans
condemned sexual intercourse and the eating of flesh-meat and
prescribed ascetic practices such as fasting, these practices obliged
only the elect, not the ‘hearers’, to which level Augustine belonged.

Augustine, now detached from Christianity both morally and
intellectually, returned to Tagaste in 374 and there taught grammar
and Latin literature for a year, after which he opened a school oi
rhetoric at Carthage in the autumn of 374. He lived with his
mistress and their child, Adeodatus, and it was during this period
that he won a prize for poetry (a dramatic piece, not now extant)

1 Manichaeanism, founded by Manes or Mani in the third century, originated in
Persia and was a mixture of Persian and Christian elements.

42 PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

and published his first prose work, Depulchro et apto. The sojourn
at Carthage lasted until 383 and it was shortly before Augustine’s
departure for Rome that an event of some importance occurred.
Augustine had been troubled by difficulties and problems which
the Manichaeans could not answer; for example, the problem of the
source of certitude in human thought, the reason why the two
principles were in eternal conflict, etc. It happened that a noted
Manichaean bishop, Faustus by name, came to Carthage, and
Augustine resolved to seek from him a satisfactory solution of his
difficulties; but, though he found Faustus agreeable and friendly,
he did not find in his words the intellectual satisfaction which he
sought. It was, therefore, with his faith in Manichaeism already
somewhat shaken that he set out for Rome. He made the journey
partly because the students at Carthage were ill-mannered and
difficult to control, whereas he had heard good reports of the
students’ behaviour at Rome, partly because he hoped for greater
success in his career in the imperial metropolis. Arrived at Rome,
Augustine opened a school in rhetoric, but, though the students
were well behaved in class, they had the inconvenient habit of
changing their school just before the payment of fees was due. He
accordingly sought for and obtained a position at Milan as muni¬
cipal professor of rhetoric in 384; but he did not leave Rome
without having lost most of his belief in Manichaeanism and having
been consequently attracted towards Academic scepticism, though
he retained a nominal adherence to Manichaeanism and still accepted
some of the Manichaean positions, for example their materialism.

At Milan, Augustine came to think a little better of Christianity
owing to the sermons on the Scriptures delivered by St. Ambrose,
Bishop of Milan; but though he was ready to become a catechu¬
men again, he was not yet convinced of the truth of Christianity.
Moreover, his passions were still too strong for him. His mother
wished him to marry a certain girl, hoping that marriage would
help to reform his life; but, being unable to wait the necessary
time for the girl in question, he took another mistress in place of
the mother of Adeodatus, from whom he had parted in sorrow in
view of the proposed marriage. At this time Augustine read
certain 'Platonic treatises in the Latin translation of Victorinus,
these treatises being most probably the Enneads of Plotinus. The
effect of neo-Platonism was to free him from the shackles of
materialism and to facilitate his acceptance of the idea of imma¬
terial reality. In addition, the Plotinian conception of evil as

ST. AUGUSTINE

43

privation rather than as something positive showed him how the
problem of evil could be met without having to have recourse to
the dualism of the Manichaeans. In other words, the function of
neo-Platonism at this period was to render it possible for Augustine
to see the reasonableness of Christianity, and he began to read the
New Testament again, particularly the writings of St. Paul. If
neo-Platonism suggested to him the idea of the contemplation of
spiritual things, of wisdom in the intellectual sense, the New
Testament showed him that it was also necessary to lead a life in
accordance with wisdom.

These impressions were confirmed by his meeting with two men,
Simplicianus and Pontitianus. The former, an old priest, gave
Augustine an account of the conversion of Victorinus, the neo-
Platonist, to Christianity, with the result that the young man
'burned with the desire to do likewise’, 1 while the latter spoke of
the life of St. Anthony of Egypt, which made Augustine disgusted
with his own moral state. 2 There followed that intense moral
struggle, which culminated in the famous scene enacted in the
garden of his house, when Augustine hearing a child’s voice over
a wall crying repeatedly the refrain Tolle lege! Tolle lege! opened
the New Testament at random and lighted on the words of St. Paul
in the Epistle to the Romans, 8 which sealed his moral conversion. 4
It is perfectly clear that the conversion which then took place was
a moral conversion, a conversion of will, a conversion which
followed the intellectual conversion. His reading of neo-Platonic
works was an instrument in the intellectual conversion of Augustine,
while his moral conversion, from the human viewpoint, was pre¬
pared by the sermons of Ambrose and the words of Simplicianus
and Pontitianus, and confirmed and sealed by the New Testament.
The agony of his second or moral conversion was intensified by the
fact that he already knew what he ought to do, though on the
other hand he felt himself without the power to accomplish it: to
the words of St. Paul, however, which he read in the garden, he
gave, under the impulse of grace, a Teal assent’ and his life was
changed. This conversion occurred in the summer of 386.

A lung ailment from which he was suffering gave Augustine the
excuse he wanted to retire from his professorship and at Cassicia-
cum, through reading and reflection and discussions with friends,
he endeavoured to obtain a better understanding of the Christian
religion, using as an instrument concepts and themes taken from

1 Crmf,, 8, 5. 10. 1 Ibid.. 8 t 7, 16. ■ Rom., 13, 13-14. 4 Conf. 8, 8-12.

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

44

neo-Platonic philosophy, his idea of Christianity being still very
incomplete and tinctured, more than it was to be later, by neo¬
platonism. From this period of retirement date his works Contra
Academicos , De Beata Vita and De Or dine. Returning to Milan
Augustine wrote the De Immortalitate Animae (the Soliloquia were
also written about this time) and began the De Musica. On Holy
Saturday of 387 Augustine was baptised by St. Ambrose, soon
after which event he set out to return to Africa. His mother, who
had come over to Italy, died at Ostia, while they were waiting for
a boat. (It was at Ostia that there occurred the celebrated scene
described in the Confessions A) Augustine delayed his return to
Africa and while residing at Rome wrote the De libero arbitrio ,
the De Quantitate Animae and the De moribus ecchsiae Catholicae
et de moribus Manichaeorum . In the autumn of 388 he set sail
for Africa.

Back at Tagaste, Augustine established a small monastic com¬
munity. From this period (388-91) date his De Genesi contra
Manichaeos , De Magistro and De Vera Religione , while he com¬
pleted the De Musica. It is probable that he also polished up or
completed the De moribus , mentioned above. At Cassiciacum
Augustine had resolved never to marry, but he did not apparently
intend to seek ordination, for it was contrary to his own wishes
that the Bishop of Hippo ordained him priest in 391, when he was
on a visit to that seaport town, about a hundred and fifty miles due
west of Carthage. The bishop desired Augustine's help, and the
latter settled down at Hippo and established a monastery. Engaged
in controversy with the Manichaeans he composed the De uiilitaie
credendi , the De duabus animabus, the Disputatio contra Fortuna -
turn, the De Fide et Symbolo , a lecture on the Creed delivered
before a synod of African bishops, and, against the Donatists, the
Psalmus contra partem Donati . He started a literal commentary on
Genesis , but, as its name implies {De Genesi ad litteram liber imper -
fectus), left it unfinished. The De diver sis quaestionibus (389-96),
the Contra Adimantum Manichaeum . De sermone Domini in monte ,
the De Mendacio and De Continentia , as well as various Commen¬
taries (on Romans and Galatians) also date from the early period
of Augustine's priestly life.

In the year 395-6 Augustine was consecrated auxiliary Bishop
of Hippo, setting up another monastic establishment within his
residence very shortly after his consecration. When Valerius,

1 9, io, 23-6,

ST. AUGUSTINE

45

Bishop of Hippo, died in 396, within a year of Augustine's conse¬
cration, he became ruling Bishop of Hippo in Valerius's place, and
remained in that post until his death. This meant that he had to
face the task of governing a diocese in which the Donatist schism
was well entrenched instead of being able to devote himself to a
life of quiet prayer and study. However, whatever his personal
inclinations, Augustine threw himself into the anti-Donatist
struggle with ardour, preaching, disputing, publishing anti-Dona¬
tist controversy. Nevertheless, in spite of this activity, he found
time for composing such works as the De diversis quaestionibus ad
Simplicianum (397), part of the De Doctrina Christiana (the fourth
book being added in 426), part of the Confessions (the whole work
being published by 400), and the Annotationes in Job . Augustine
also exchanged controversial letters with the great scholar St.
Jerome, on Scriptural matters.

In the year 400 St. Augustine started on one of his greatest
treatises, the fifteen books De Trinitate , which were completed in
417, and in 401 began the twelve books of the De Genesi ad
litteram, completed in 415, In the same year (400) appeared the
De catechizandis rudibus, the De Consensu Evangelistarum , the De
Opera Monachorum , the Contra Faustum Manichaeum (thirty-
three books), the first book of the Contra litteras Petiliani (Donatist
Bishop of Cirta), the second book dating from 401-2 and the third
from 402-3. These were followed by other anti-Donatist works,
such as the Contra Cresconium grammaticum partis Donati (402),
though various publications have not been preserved, and several
writings against the Manichaeans. In addition to this controversial
activity Augustine was constantly preaching and writing letters:
thus the letter to Dioscorus, 1 in which, in answer to certain
questions about Cicero, Augustine develops his views on pagan
philosophy, still showing a strong predilection for neo-Platonism,
dates from 410.

Imperial edicts were issued in the course of time against the
Donatists, and about the year 411, after the conference that then
took place, Augustine was able to turn his attention to another
set of opponents, the Pelagians. Pelagius, who exaggerated the
role of human volition in man's salvation and minimised that of
grace, denying original sin, visited Carthage in 410 accompanied
by Coelestius. In 411, after Pelagius had left for the East,
Coelestius was excommunicated by a Council at Carthage. Pelagius

1 Epist., 118.

ST. AUGUSTINE

46 PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

had tried to use texts from Augustine's De libero arbitrio in support
of his own heresy, but the bishop made his position quite clear in
his De peccatorum mentis et remissione, et de baptismo parvulorum,
ad Marcellinum , following it up in the same year (412) by the De
spiritu et littera, and later by the De fide et operibus (413), the
De natura et gratia contra Pelagium (415) and the De per/ectione
iustitiae hominis (415). However, not content with his anti-
Pelagian polemic, Augustine began, in 413, the twenty-two books
of the De Civitate Dei (completed in 426), one of his greatest and
most famous works, written against the background of the bar¬
barian invasion of the Empire, and prepared many of his Enarra -
tiones in Psalmos . In addition he published (415) the Ad Orosium,
contra Priscillianistas et Origenistas, a book against the heresy
started by the Spanish bishop, Priscillian, and in the course of
further anti-Pelagian polemic the De Gestis Pelagii (417) and the
De Gratia Christi et peccato originali (418). As if all this were not
enough, Augustine finished the De Trinitate, and wrote his In
Joannis Evangelium (416-17) and In Epistolas Joannis ad Parihos
(416), not to speak of numerous letters and sermons.

In 418 Pelagianism was condemned, first by a Council of African
bishops, then by the Emperor Honorius, and finally by Pope
Zosimus, but the controversy was not yet over, and when Augustine
was accused by Julian, heretical Bishop of Eclanum, of having
invented the concept of original sin, the Saint replied in the work
De nuptiis et concupiscentia (419-20), while in 420 he addressed
two books, Contra duas epistolas Pelagianorum ad Bonifatium
Papam, to the Pope, and followed them up by his Contra Iulianum
haeresis Pelagianae defensorem (six books) in 421. The De anima
et eius origine (419), the Contra mendacium ad Consentium (420),
the Contra adversarium Legis et Prophetarum (420), the Enchiridion
ad Laurentium, De fide, spe, caritate (421), the De cura pro mortuis
gerenda, ad Paulinum Nolanum (420-1), also date from this period.

In 426 Augustine, feeling that he would not live very much
longer, provided for the future of his diocese by nominating his
successor, the priest Eraclius, the nomination being acclaimed by
the people; but the Saint’s literary activity wa$ by no means over,
and in 426-7 he published the De gratia et libero arbitrio ad
Valentinum , the De correptione et gratia and the two books of
Retradiones, which contain a critical survey of his works and are
of great value for establishing their chronology. All this time the
situation of the Empire was going from bad to worse, and in 429

47

Genseric led the Vandals from Spain into Africa; but Augustine
continued writing. In 427 he published the Speculum de Scriptura
Sacra, a selection of texts from the Bible, and in 428 his De
haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum , followed by the De praedestinaiione
sanctorum ad Prosperum and the De dono perseverantiae ad Pros-
perum in 428-9. In addition, Augustine began the Opus imperfec-
turn contra Julianum in 429, a refutation of an anti-Augustinian
treatise by the Pelagian Julian which had been written some time
previously but had come into the Saint's hands only in 428; but
he did not live to finish the work (hence its name). Augustine also
came into contact with Arianism, and in 428 appeared his Collatio
cum Maximino Arianorum episcopo and his Contra Maximinum
haereticum.

In the late spring or early summer of 430 the Vandals laid siege
to Hippo, and it was during the siege that Augustine died on
August 28th, 430, as he was reciting the Penitential Psalms.
Possidius remarks that he left no will, since, as one of God's
paupers, he had nothing to leave. The Vandals subsequently burnt
the city, though the cathedral and the library of Augustine were
left intact. Possidius wrote the Life of Augustine, which is to be
found in the Latin Patrology. Those who read what he (Augustine)
has written on divine things can profit much; but I think that they
would profit more were they able to hear and see him preaching in
the church, and especially those who were privileged to enjoy
intimate conversation with him.' 1

2. It may perhaps seem strange that I have spoken of St.
Augustine's theological controversies and listed a large number of
theological treatises; but a sketch of his life and activity will
suffice to make it plain that, with a few exceptions, Augustine
did not compose purely philosophical works in our sense. In a
book like this, one does not, of course, intend to treat of Augustine’s
purely theological doctrine, but, in order to elicit his philosophical
teaching one has to have frequent recourse to what are primarily
theological treatises. Thus, in order to obtain light on Augustine's
theory of knowledge, it is necessary to consult the relevant texts of
the De Trinitate, while the De Genesi ad litter am expounds the
theory of rationes seminales and the Confessions contain a treat
ment of time. This mingling of theological and philosophical
themes may appear odd and unmethodical to us to-day, used as
we are to a clear distinction between the provinces of dogmatic

1 Vita S. Aug., 31.

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

48

theology and philosophy; but one must remember that Augustine,
in common with other Fathers and early Christian writers, made
no such clear distinction. It is not that Augustine failed to recog¬
nise, still less that he denied, the intellect's power of attaining
truth without revelation; it is rather that he regarded the Christian
wisdom as one whole, that he tried to penetrate by his understand¬
ing the Christian faith and to see the world and human life in the
light of the Christian wisdom. He knew quite well that rational
arguments can be adduced for God's existence, for example, but it
was not so much the mere intellectual assent to God’s existence
that interested him as the real assent, the positive adhesion of the
will to God, and he knew that in the concrete such an adhesion to
God requires divine grace. In short, Augustine did not play two
parts, the part of the theologian and the part of the philosopher
who considers the 'natural man’; he thought rather of man as he
is in the concrete, fallen and redeemed mankind, man who is able
indeed to attain truth but who is constantly solicited by God's
grace and who requires grace in order to appropriate the truth that
saves. If there was question of convincing someone that God
exists, Augustine would see the proof as a stage or as an instru¬
ment in the total process of the man's conversion and salvation:
he would recognise the proof as in itself rational, but he would be
acutely conscious, not only of the moral preparation necessary to
give a real and living assent to the proof, but also of the fact that,
according to God's intention for man in the concrete, recognition
of God's existence is not enough, but should lead on, under the
impulse of grace, to supernatural faith in God's revelation and to
a life in accordance with Christ's teaching. Reason has its part to
play in bringing a man to faith, and, once a man has the faith,
reason has its part to play in penetrating the data of faith; but it
is the total relation of the soul to God which primarily interests
Augustine. Reason, as we have seen, had its part to play in the
intellectual stage of his own conversion and reason had its part to
play after his conversion: generalising his own experience, then, he
would consider the fullness of wisdom to consist in a penetration
of what is believed, though in the approach to wisdom reason
helps to prepare a man for faith, ‘The medicine for the soul, which
is effected by the divine providence and ineffable beneficence, is
perfectly beautiful in degree and distinction. For it is divided
between Authority and Reason. Authority demands of us faith,
and prepares man for reason. Reason leads to perception and

ST. AUGUSTINE

49

cognition, although authority also does not leave reason wholly
out of sight, when the question of who may be believed is being
considered.’ 1

This attitude was characteristic of the Augustinian tradition.
St. Anselm’s aim is expressed in his words Credo ut intelligam,
while St. Bonaventure, in the thirteenth century, explicitly
rejected the sharp delimitation of the spheres of theology and
philosophy. The Thomist distinction between the sciences of
dogmatic theology and philosophy, with the accompanying dis¬
tinction of the modes of procedure to be employed in the two
sciences, no doubt evolved inevitably out of the earlier attitude,
though, quite apart from that consideration, it obviously enjoys
this very great advantage that it corresponds to an actual and
real distinction between revelation and the data of the 'unaided'
reason, between the supernatural and natural spheres. It is at
once a safeguard of the doctrine of the supernatural and also of
the powers of man in the natural order. Yet the Augustinian
attitude on the other hand enjoys this advantage, that it contem¬
plates always man as he is, man in the concrete, for de facto man
has only one final end, a supernatural end, and, as far as actual
existence is concerned, there is but man fallen and redeemed: there
never has been, is not, and never will be a purely 'natural man'
without a supernatural vocation and end. If Thomism, without
of course neglecting the fact that man in the concrete has but a
supernatural end, places emphasis on the distinction between the
supernatural and the natural, between faith and reason, Augus-
tinianism, without in the least neglecting the gratuitous character
of supernatural faith and grace, always envisages man in the
concrete and is primarily interested in his actual relation to God.

This being so, it is only natural that we should have to unravel
Augustine's 'purely philosophical' ideas from the total fabric of his
thought. To do this is, of course, to survey Augustinianism more
or less from a Thomist viewpoint, but that does not mean that it
is an illegitimate approach: it means that one is asking what ideas
of Augustine are philosophical in the academic understanding of
the term. It does indeed mean tearing his ideas from their full
context, but in a history of philosophy, which presupposes a
certain idea of what philosophy is, one can do nothing else. It
must, however, be admitted that a concentration of this sort on
Augustine’s philosophical ideas, using the word in the Thomist

1 De vera relig., 24, 45.

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

50

sense, tends to give a rather poor idea of the Saint's intellectual
achievement, at least to one who is trained in the academic and
objective atmosphere of Thomism, since he never elaborated a
philosophical system as such, nor did he develop, define and
substantiate his philosophical ideas in the manner to which a
Thomist is accustomed. The result is that it is not infrequently
difficult to say precisely what Augustine meant by this or that
idea or statement, how precisely he understood it: there is often
an aura of vagueness, allusion, lack of definition about his ideas
which leaves one dissatisfied, perplexed and curious. The rigid
type of Thomist would, I suppose, maintain that Augustine's
philosophy contains nothing of value which was not much better
said by St. Thomas, more clearly delineated and defined; but the
fact remains that the Augustinian tradition is not dead even
to-day, and it may be that the very incompleteness and lack of
systematisation in Augustine's thought, its very 'suggestiveness',
is a positive help towards the longevity of his tradition, for the
'Augustinian' is not faced by a complete system to be accepted,
rejected or mutilated: he is faced by an approach, an inspiration,
certain basic ideas which are capable of considerable development,
so that he can remain perfectly faithful to the Augustinian spirit
even though he departs from what the historic Augustine actually
said.

CHAPTER IV

ST. AUGUSTINE—II: KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge with a view to beatitude—Against scepticism —
Experiential knowledge—Nature of sensation—Divine ideas
—Illumination and Abstraction.

1. To start with the ‘epistemology’ of St. Augustine is perhaps to
give the impression that Augustine was concerned with elaborating
a theory of knowledge for its own sake or as a methodological
propaedeutic to metaphysics. This would be a wrong impression,
however, since Augustine never sat down, as it were, to develop
a theory of knowledge and then, on the basis of a realist theory of
knowledge, to construct a systematic metaphysic. If Spinoza,
according to his own words, 1 aimed at developing the philosophy
of God or Substance because it is only contemplation of an infinite
and eternal Object which can fully satisfy mind and heart and
bring happiness to the soul, far more could an analogous statement
be made of Augustine, who emphasised the fact that knowledge of
the truth is to be sought, not for purely academic purposes, but as
bringing true happiness, true beatitude. Man feels his insufficiency,
he reaches out to an object greater than himself, an object which
can bring peace and happiness, and knowledge of that object is an
essential condition of its attainment; but he sees knowledge in
function of an end, beatitude. Only the wise man can be happy
and wisdom postulates knowledge of the truth; but there is no
question in Augustine's thought of speculation as an end in itself.
When the young man Licentius, in the Contra Academicos, main¬
tains that wisdom consists in seeking for the truth and declares,
like Lessing, that happiness is to be found rather in the pursuit of
truth than in the actual attainment and possession of truth,
Augustine retorts that it is absurd to predicate wisdom of a man
who has no knowledge of truth. In the De Beata Vita 2 he says
that no one is happy who does not possess what he strives to
possess, so that the man who is seeking for truth but has not yet
found it, cannot be said to be truly happy. Augustine himself
sought for truth because he felt a need for it, and looking back on
his development in the light of attainment, he interpreted this as

1 De InUllectvs Ermndatione. 1 2, 10 and 14; 4, 27 Q.

5i

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ST. AUGUSTINE: KNOWLEDGE

52

a search for Christ and Christian wisdom, as the attraction of the
divine beauty, and this experience he universalised. This univer-
salisation of his own experience, however, does not mean that his
ideas were purely subjective: his psychological introspection
enabled him to lay bare the dynamism of the human soul.

Yet to say that Augustine was not an 'intellectualist' in an
academic sense and that his philosophy is eudaemonistic is not to
say that he was not acutely conscious of the problem of certitude.
It would, however, be a mistake to think that Augustine was
preoccupied with the question, ‘Can we attain certainty? 1 As we
shall see shortly, he did answer this question, but the question
that occupied his attention in the mature period of his thought
was rather this, 'How is it that we can attain certainty? 1 That we
do attain certainty being assumed as a datum, the problem
remains: 'How does the finite, changing human mind attain certain
knowledge of eternal truths, truths which rule and govern the
mind and so transcend it?' After the breakdown of his faith in
Manichaeism, Augustine was tempted to relapse into Academic
scepticism: his victory over this temptation he expressed in the
Contra Academicos, where he shows that we indubitably do attain
certainty of some facts at least. This granted, his reading of
‘Platonic works’ suggested to him the problem, how it is that we
are able not only to know with certainty eternal and necessary
truths, but also to know them as eternal and necessary truths.
Plato explained this fact by the theory of reminiscence; how was
Augustine to explain it? The discussion of the problem no doubt
interested him in itself, for its own sake; but he also saw in what
he considered to be the right answer a clear proof of God’s exis¬
tence and operation. The knowledge of eternal truth should thus
bring the soul, by reflection on that knowledge, to knowledge of
God Himself and God's activity.

2, As I have already said, in the Contra Academicos Augustine
is primarily concerned to show that wisdom pertains to happiness,
and knowledge of truth to wisdom; but he also makes it clear that
even the Sceptics are certain of some truths, for example, that of
two disjunctive propositions one is true and the other false. ‘I am
certain that there is either one world or more than one world, and,
if more than one, then that there is either a finite or an infinite
number of worlds.’ Similarly I know that the world either has no
beginning or end or has a beginning but no end or had no beginning
but will have an end or has both a beginning and an end. In other

53

words, I am at least certain of the principle of contradiction. 1
Again, even if I am sometimes deceived in thinking that appear¬
ance and reality always correspond, I am at least certain of my
subjective impression. 'I have no complaint to make of the senses,
for it is unjust to demand of them more than they can give:
whatever the eyes can see they see truly. Then is that true which
they see in the case of the oar in the water? Quite true. For,
granted the cause why it appears in that way (i.e. bent), if the oar,
when plunged into the water, appeared straight, I should rather
accuse my eyes of playing me false. For they would not see what,
granted the circumstances, they ought to see. . . . But I am
deceived, if I give my assent, someone will say. Then don’t give
assent to more than the fact of appearance, and you won’t be
deceived. For I do not see how the sceptic can refute the man
who says, “I know that this object seems white to me, I know
that this sound gives me pleasure, I know this smell is pleasant to
me, I know that this tastes sweet to me, I know that this
feels cold to my touch." ’ a St. Augustine refers in the above
passage to the Epicureans and it is clear that what he means is
that the senses as such never lie or deceive us, even if we may
deceive ourselves in judging that things exist objectively in the
same way that they appear. The mere appearance of the bent oar
is not deception, for there would be something wrong with my
eyes were it to appear straight. If I go on to judge that the oar is
really bent in itself, I am wrong, but as long as I simply say, ‘It
appears to me bent’, I am speaking the truth and I know that I am
speaking the truth. Similarly, if I come out of a hot room and
put my hand in tepid water, it may seem to me cold, but as long
as I merely say, ‘This water seems cold to me', I am saying some¬
thing the truth of which I am certain of, and no sceptic can
refute me.

Again, everyone who doubts knows that he is doubting, so that
he is certain of this truth at least, namely the fact that he doubts.
Thus every one who doubts whether there is such a thing as truth,
knows at least one truth, so that his very capacity to doubt should
convince him that there is such a thing as truth. 3 We are certain,
too, of mathematical truths. When anyone says that seven and
three make ten, he does not say that they ought to make ten, but
knows that they do make ten. 4

1 C. Acad., 3, 10, 23. s Ibid,, 3, 11, 26.

3 De vfita relig., 39, 73. 4 Da lib. arbii., 12, 34.

54

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ST. AUGUSTINE: KNOWLEDGE

55

3. But what of real existences? Are we certain of the existence
of any real object or are we confined to certain knowledge of
abstract principles and mathematical truths? Augustine answers
that a man is at least certain of his existence. Even supposing
that he doubts of the existence of other created objects or of God,
the very fact of his doubt shows that he exists, for he could not
doubt, did he not exist. Nor is it of any use to suggest that one
might be deceived into thinking that one exists, for 'if you did not
exist, you could not be deceived in anything.’ 1 In this way St.
Augustine anticipates Descartes: Si fallor, sum.

With existence Augustine couples life and understanding. In
the De liber0 arbitrio 2 he points out that it is clear to a man that
he exists, and that this fact would not and could not be clear,
unless he were alive. Moreover, it is clear to him that he under¬
stands both the fact of his existence and the fact that he is living.
Accordingly he is certain of three things, that he exists, that he
lives and that he understands. Similarly, in the De Trinitate , 3 he
observes that it is useless for the sceptic to insinuate that the man
is asleep and sees these things in his dreams, for the man is
affirming not that he is awake but that he lives: ‘whether he be
asleep or awake he fives.’ Even if he were mad, he would still be
alive. Again, a man is certainly conscious of what he wills. If
someone says that he wills to be happy, it is mere impudence to
suggest to him that he is deceived. Sceptical philosophers may
babble about the bodily senses and the way in which they deceive
us, but they cannot invalidate that certain knowledge which the
mind has by itself, without the intervention of the sense. 4 ’We
exist and we know that we exist and we love that fact and our
knowledge of it; in these three things which I have enumerated
no fear of deception disturbs us; for we do not attain them by any
bodily sense, as we do external objects.’ 6

Augustine thus claims certainty for what we know by inner
experience, by self-consciousness: what does he think of our know¬
ledge of external objects, the things we know by the senses? Have
we certainty in their regard? That we can deceive ourselves in
our judgements concerning the objects of the senses Augustine
was well aware, and some of his remarks show that he was con¬
scious of the relativity of sense-impressions, in the sense that a
judgement as to hot or cold, for example, depends to a certain
extent on the condition of the sense-organs: moreover, he did not

1 De lib. arbit., 2, 3, 7. *2,3,7. *15,12,21. 4 Ibid. * De Civil. Dei, 11,26.

consider that the objects apprehensible by the senses constitute
the proper object of the human intellect. Being chiefly interested
in the soul’s orientation to God, corporeal objects appeared to him
as a starting-point in the mind’s ascent to God, though even in this
respect the soul itself is a more adequate starting-point: we should
return within ourselves, where truth abides, and use the soul, the
image of God, as a stepping-stone to Him. 1 Nevertheless, even if
corporeal things, the objects of the senses, are essentially mutable
and are far less adequate manifestations of God than is the soul,
even if it is through concentration on the things of sense that the
most harmful errors arise, we are dependent on the senses for a
great deal of our knowledge and Augustine had no intention of
maintaining a purely sceptical attitude in regard to the objects of
the senses, (it is one thing to admit the possibility of error in
sense-knowledge and quite another to refuse any credence at all
to the senses". ■ Thus, after saying that philosophers may speak
against the senses but cannot refute the consciousness of self¬
existence, Augustine goes on at once to say, 'far be it from us to
doubt the truth of what we have learned by the bodily senses;
since by them we have learned to know the heaven and the earth.’
\We learn much on the testimony of others, and the fact that we
are sometimes deceived is no warrant for disbelieving all testi¬
mony: so the fact that we are sometimes deceived in regard to the
objects of our senses is no warrant for complete scepticism. ‘We
must acknowledge that not only our own senses, but those of other
persons too, have added very much to our knowledge.’ 2 For
practical fife it is necessary to give credence to the senses, 3 and
the man who thinks that we should never believe the senses falls
into a worse error than any error he may fall into through believing
them. Augustine thus says that we ‘believe’ the senses, that we
give credence to them, as we give credence to the testimony of
others, but he often uses the word 'believe' in opposition to direct
inner knowledge, without meaning to imply that such ‘belief is
void of adequate motive. Thus when someone tells me a fact
about his own mental state, for example, that he understands or
wishes this or that, I ‘believe’: when he says something that is
true of the human mind itself, not simply of his own mind in
particular, 'I recognise and give my assent, for I know by self-
consciousness and introspection that what he says is true.’ 4 In

1 Cf. De vera relig. t 39* 72; Serm, t 330, 3; Retract 1, 8, 3; etc.

* De Trinit 13, 12, 21. 1 Con/,, 6, 3, 7. 4 De Trinit , 9, 6, 9.

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ST. AUGUSTINE: KNOWLEDGE

56

fine, Augustine may have anticipated Descartes by his *Si jailor ,
sum , but he was not occupied with the question whether the
external world really exists or not. That it exists, he felt no doubt,
though he saw clearly enough that we sometimes make erroneous
judgements about it and that testimony is not always reliable,
whether it be testimony of our own senses or of other people. As
he was especially interested in the knowledge of eternal truths and
in the relation of that knowledge to God, it would hardly occur to
him to devote very much time to a consideration of our knowledge
of the mutable things of sense. The fact of the matter is that his
'Platonism’, coupled with his spiritual interest and outlook, led
him to look on corporeal objects as not being the proper object of
knowledge, owing to their mutability and to the fact that our
knowledge of them is dependent on bodily organs of sense which
are no more always in the same state than the objects themselves.
If we have not got ‘true knowledge' of sense-objects, that is due,
not merely to any deficiency in the subject but also to a radical
deficiency in the object. In other words, Augustine's attitude to
sense-knowledge is much more Platonic than Cartesian. 1

4. The lowest level of knowledge is, therefore, that of sense-
knowledge, dependent on sensation, sensation being regarded by
Augustine, in accordance with his Platonic psychology, as an act
of the soul using the organs of sense as its instruments. Sentire
non est corporis sed animat per corpus . The soul animates the
whole body, but when it increases or intensifies its activity in a
particular part, i.e. in a particular sense-organ, it exercises the
power of sensation. 2 From this theory it would seem to follow
that any deficiency in sense-knowledge must proceed from the
mutability both of the instrument of sensation, the sense-organ,
and of the object of sensation, and this is indeed what Augustine
thought. The rational soul of man exercises true knowledge and
attains true certainty when it contemplates eternal truths in and
through itself: when it turns towards the material world and uses
corporeal instruments it cannot attain true knowledge. Augustine
assumed, with Plato, that the objects of true knowledge are
unchanging, from which it necessarily follows that knowledge of
changing objects is not true knowledge. It is a type of knowledge
or grade of knowledge which is indispensable for practical life; but

1 Scotus repeated St. Augustine’s suggestion that the status of sense-knowledge
may be connected with original sin.

1 Cf. De Musica, 6-5, 9, 10; De Trinit., ix, 2, 2-5.

57

the man who concentrates on the sphere of the mutable thereby
neglects the sphere of the immutable, which is the correlative
object of the human soul in regard to knowledge in the full sense.

Sensation in the strict sense is common, of course, to men and
brutes; but men can have and do have a rational knowledge of
corporeal things. In the De Trinitate 1 St. Augustine points out
that the beasts are able to sense corporeal things and remember
them and to seek after what is helpful, avoiding what is harmful,
but that they cannot commit things to memory deliberately nor
recall them at will nor perform any other operation which involves
the use of reason; so that, in regard to knowledge of sense-objects,
human knowledge is essentially superior to that of the brute.
Moreover, man is able to make rational judgements concerning
corporeal things and to perceive them as approximations to eternal
standards. For instance, if a man judges that one object is more
beautiful than another, his comparative judgement (granted the
objective character of the beautiful) implies a reference to an
eternal standard of beauty, while a judgement that this or that
line is more or less straight, that this figure is a well-drawn circle,
implies a reference to ideal straightness and the perfect geometrical
circle. In other words, such comparative judgements involve a
reference to ‘ideas’ (not to be understood as purely subjective). ‘It
is the part of the higher reason to judge of these corporeal things
according to incorporeal and eternal considerations, which, if they
were not above the human mind, would certainly not be immut¬
able. And yet, unless something of our own were subjoined to
them, we should not be able to employ them as standards by
which to judge of corporeal things. . . . But that faculty of our
own which is thus concerned with the treatment of corporeal and
temporal things, is indeed rational, in that it is not common to us
and the beasts, but is drawn, as it were, out of the rational
substance of our mind, by which we depend upon and adhere to
the intelligible and immutable truth and which is deputed to
handle and direct the inferior things.’ 2

What St. Augustine means is this. The lowest level of know¬
ledge, so far as it can be called knowledge, is sensation, which is
common to men and brutes; and the highest level of knowledge,
peculiar to man, is the contemplation of eternal things (wisdom)
by the mind alone, without the intervention of sensation; but
between these two levels is a kind of half-way house, in which

1 12, 2, 2. * Ibid.

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mind judges of corporeal objects according to eternal and incor¬
poreal standards. This level of knowledge is a rational level, so
that it is peculiar to man and is not shared by brutes; but it
involves the use of the senses and concerns sensible objects, so that
it is a lower level than that of direct contemplation of eternal and
incorporeal objects. Moreover, this lower use of reason is directed
towards action, whereas wisdom is contemplative not practical.
The action by which we make good use of temporal things differs
from the contemplation of eternal things, and the former is classed
as knowledge, the latter as wisdom. ... In this distinction it must
be understood that wisdom pertains to contemplation, knowledge
to action/ 1 The ideal is that contemplative wisdom should in¬
crease, but at the same time our reason has to be partly directed to
the good use of mutable and corporeal things, 'without which this
life does not go on’, provided that in our attention to temporal
things we make it subserve the attainment of eternal things,
'passing lightly over the former, but cleaving to the latter ’. 2

This outlook is markedly Platonic in character. There is the
same depreciation of sense-objects in comparison with eternal and
immaterial realities, the same almost grudging admission of
practical knowledge as a necessity of life, the same insistence on
'theoretic’ contemplation, the same insistence on increasing puri¬
fication of soul and liberation from the slavery of the senses to
accompany the epistemological ascent. Yet it would be a mistake
to see in Augustine’s attitude a mere adoption of Platonism and
nothing more. Platonic and neo-Platonic themes are certainly
utilised, but Augustine’s interest is always first and foremost that
of the attainment of man's supernatural end, beatitude, in the
possession and vision of God, and in spite of the intellectualist way
of speaking which he sometimes uses and which he adopted from
the Platonic tradition, in the total scheme of his thought the
primacy is always given to love: Pondus tneutn, amor metis . 2 It is
true that even this has its analogy in Platonism, but it must be
remembered that for Augustine the goal is the attainment, not of
an impersonal Good but of a personal God, The truth of the
matter is that he found in Platonism doctrines which he considered
admirably adapted for the exposition of a fundamentally Christian
philosophy of life.

5. The objects of sense, corporeal things, are inferior to the
human intellect, which judges of them in relation to a standard in

1 De Trinit., 12, 14, 22. 1 Ibid., 12, 13, 21. * Con/., 13, 9, 10.

ST. AUGUSTINE: KNOWLEDGE 59

reference to which they fall short; but there are other objects of
knowledge which are above the human mind, in the sense that they
are discovered by the mind, which necessarily assents to them and
does not think of amending them or judging that they should be
otherwise than they are. For example, I see some work of art and
I judge it to be more or less beautiful, a judgement which implies
not only the existence of a standard of beauty, an objective
standard, but also my knowledge of the standard, for how could
I judge that this arch or that picture is imperfect, deficient in
beauty, unless I had some knowledge of the standard of beauty, of
beauty itself, the idea of beauty? How could my supposedly
objective judgement be justified unless there were an objective
standard, not mutable and imperfect, like beautiful things, but
immutable, constant, perfect and eternal? 1 Again, the geometer
considers perfect circles and lines, and judges of the approximate
circles and lines according to that perfect standard. Circular
things are temporal and pass away, but the nature of circularity
in itself, the idea of the circle, its essence, does not change. Again,
we may add seven apples and three apples and make ten apples,
and the apples which we count are sensible and mutable objects,
are temporal and pass away; but the numbers seven and three
considered in themselves and apart from things are discerned by
the arithmetician to make ten by addition, a truth which he
discovers to be necessary and eternal, not dependent on the
sensible world or on the human mind. 2 These eternal truths are
common to all. Whereas sensations are private, in the sense that,
e.g., what seems cold to one man does not necessarily seem cold to
another, mathematical truths are common to all and the individual
mind has to accept them and recognise their possession of an
absolute truth and validity which is independent of its own
reactions.

Augustine's attitude in this matter is obviously Platonic. The
standards of goodness and beauty, for example, correspond to
Plato’s first principles or 4 px<xt the exemplary ideas, while the ideal
geometrical figures correspond to Plato’s mathematical objects,
•ris tjux(b]tjuxnxd the objects of 8tivoia. The same question which
could be raised in regard to the Platonic theory recurs again,
therefore, in regard to the Augustinian theory, namely, ‘Where
are these ideas?’ (Of course, one must remember, in regard to

1 Cf. De Trinit 9, 6, 9-1 x.

•Cf. ibid., 12, 14, 22-3; 12, 15, 24; De lib . arbit., 2, 13, 35; 2, 8, 20-4.

6 o

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61

both thinkers, that the 'ideas' in question are not subjective ideas
but objective essences, and that the query 'where?* does not refer
to locality, since the 'ideas* are ex hypothesi immaterial, but rather
to what one might call ontological situation or status.) Neo-
Platonists, seeing the difficulty in accepting a sphere of impersonal
immaterial essences, i.e. the condition apparently at least assigned
to the essences in Plato's published works, interpreted the Platonic
ideas as thoughts of God and 'placed' them in Nous, the divine
mind, which emanates from the One as the first proceeding hypo¬
stasis. (Compare Philo's theory of the ideas as contained within
the Logos.) We may say that Augustine accepted this position, if
we allow for the fact that he did not accept the emanation theory
of neo-Platonism. The exemplar ideas and eternal truths are in
God. 'The ideas are certain archetypal forms or stable and immut¬
able essences of things, which have not themselves been formed
but, existing eternally and without change, are contained in the
divine intelligence.' 1 This theory must be accepted if one wishes to
avoid having to say that God created the world unintelligently. 2

6 . A difficulty, however, immediately arises. If the human
mind beholds the exemplar ideas and eternal truths, and if these
ideas and truths are in the mind of God, does it not follow that the
human mind beholds the essence of God, since the divine mind,
with all that it contains, is ontologically identical with the divine
essence? Some writers have believed that Augustine actually
meant this. Among philosophers, Malebranche claimed the support
of Augustine for his theory that the mind beholds the eternal ideas
in God, and he tried to escape from the seemingly logical conclusion
that in this case the human mind beholds the essence of God, by
saying that the mind sees, not the divine essence as it is in itself
(the supernatural vision of the blessed) but the divine essence as
participable ad extra, as exemplar of creation. The ontologists too
claim the support of Augustine for their theory of the soul's
immediate intuition of God.

Now, it is impossible to deny that some texts of Augustine taken
by themselves favour such an interpretation. But, granting that
Augustine seems on occasion to teach ontologism, it seems clear
to me that, if one takes into account the totality of his thought,
such an interpretation is inadmissible. I should certainly not be
so bold as to suggest that Augustine was never inconsistent, but
what I do believe is that the ontologistic interpretation of

1 De Ideis, 2. * Cf. Retract., 1 , 3, 2.

Augustine fits in so badly with his spiritual doctrine that, if there
are other texts which favour a non-ontologistic interpretation (and
there are such texts), one should attribute a secondary position
and a subordinate value to the apparently ontologistic texts.
Augustine was perfectly well aware that a man may discern
eternal and necessary truths, mathematical principles, for example,
without being a good man at all: such a man may not see these
truths in their ultimate Ground, but he undoubtedly discerns the
truths. Now, how can Augustine possibly have supposed that such
a man beholds the essence of God, when in his spiritual doctrine he
insists so much on the need of moral purification in order to draw
near to God and is well aware that the vision of God is reserved to
the saved in the next life? Again, a man who is spiritually and
morally far from God can quite well appreciate the fact that
Canterbury Cathedral is more beautiful than a Nissen hut, just as
St. Augustine himself could discern degrees of sensible beauty
before his conversion. In a famous passage of the Confessions he
exclaims: ‘Too late am I come to love Thee, 0 thou Beauty, so
ancient and withal so new; too late am I come to love Thee ... in
a deformed manner I cast myself upon the things of Thy creation,
which yet Thou hadst made fair.’ 1 Similarly, in the De quantitate
anitnae 2 he clearly affirms that the contemplation of Beauty comes
at the end of the soul’s ascent. In view of this teaching, then, it
seems to me inconceivable that Augustine thought that the soul,
in apprehending eternal and necessary truths, actually apprehends
the very content of the divine mind. The passages which appear
to show that he did so think can be explained as due to his adoption
of Platonic or neo-Platonic expressions which do not, literally
taken, fit in with the general direction of his thought. It does not
seem possible to state exactly how Augustine conceived of the
status of the eternal truths as apprehended by the human mind
(the ontological side of the question he probably never worked
out); but, rather than accept a purely neo-Platonic or an onto¬
logistic interpretation, it seems to me preferable to suppose that
the eternal truths and ideas, as they are in God, perform an
ideogenetic function; that it is rather that the ‘light’ which comes
from God to the human mind enables the mind to see the charac¬
teristics of changelessness and necessity in the eternal truths.

One may add, however, a further consideration against an
ontologistic interpretation of Augustine. The Saint utilised the

1 Conf., io, *7, 38. • 33, 79.

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apprehension of eternal and necessary truths as a proof for the
existence of God, arguing that these truths require an immutable
and eternal Ground. Without going any further into this argu¬
ment at the moment it is worth pointing out that, if the argument
is to have any sense, it clearly presupposes the possibility of the
mind’s perceiving these truths without at the same time perceiving
God, perhaps while doubting or even denying God’s existence. If
Augustine is prepared to say to a man, ‘You doubt or deny God’s
existence, but you must admit that you recognise absolute truths,
and I shall prove to you that the recognition of such truths implies
God’s existence,’ he can scarcely have supposed that the doubter
or atheist had any vision of God or of the actual contents of the
divine mind. This consideration seems to me to rule out the
ontologistic interpretation. But before pursuing this subject any
further it is necessary to say something of Augustine’s theory of
illumination, as this may make it easier to understand his position,
though it must be admitted that the interpretation of this theory
is itself somewhat uncertain.

7. We cannot, says Augustine, perceive the immutable truth of
things unless they are illuminated as by a sun. 1 This divine light,
which illumines the mind, comes from God, who is the ‘intelligible
light', in whom and by whom and through whom all those things
which are luminous to the intellect become luminous. 2 In this
doctrine of light, common to the Augustinian School, Augustine
makes use of a neo-Platonic theme which goes back to Plato’s
comparison of the Idea of the Good with the sun, 3 the Idea of the
Good irradiating the subordinate intelligible objects or Ideas. For
Plotinus the One or God is the sun, the transcendent light. The
use of the light-metaphor, however, does not by itself tell us very
clearly what Augustine meant. Happily we have to help us such
texts as the passage of the De Trinitate 4 where the Saint says that
the nature of the mind is such that, ‘when directed to intelligible
things in the natural order, according to the disposition of the
Creator, it sees them in a certain incorporeal light which is sui
generis, just as the corporeal eye sees adjacent objects in the
corporeal light’. These words seem to show that the illumination
in question is a spiritual illumination which performs the same
function for the objects of the mind as the sun’s light performs
for the objects of the eye: in other words, as the sunlight makes
corporeal things visible to the eye, so the divine illumination makes

1 Solil.. 1, 8, 15. * Ibid., i. I, 3. •Rep., 514-18. ‘12, 15, 24.

63

the eternal truths visible to the mind. From this it would appear
to follow that it is not the illumination itself which is seen by the
mind, nor the intelligible Sun, God, but that the characteristics of
necessity and eternity in the necessary and eternal truths are made
visible to the mind by the activity of God. This is certainly not an
ontologistic theory.

But why did St. Augustine postulate such an illumination; why
did he think it necessary? Because the human mind is changeable
and temporal, so that what is unchangeable and eternal transcends
it and seems to be beyond its capacity. ‘When the human mind
knows and loves itself, it does not know and love anything immut¬
able,' 1 and if truth ‘were equal to our minds, it also would be
mutable’, for our minds see the truth, now more now less, and by
this very fact show themselves to be mutable. In fact, truth is
neither inferior nor equal to our minds, but ‘superior and more
excellent’. 2 We need, therefore, a divine illumination, in order to
enable us to apprehend what transcends our minds, ‘for no
creature, howsoever rational and intellectual, is lighted of itself,
but is lighted by participation of eternal Truth’. 3 ‘God hath
created man’s mind rational and intellectual, whereby he may take
in His light... and He so enlighteneth it of Himself, that not only
those things which are displayed by the truth, but even truth
itself may be perceived by the mind’s eye.’ 4 This light shines upon
the truths and renders visible to the mutable and temporal human
mind their characteristics of changelessness and eternity.

That the divine illumination is something imparted and sui
generis is explicitly stated by St. Augustine, as we have seen. It
hardly seems possible, therefore, to reduce the illumination-theory
to nothing more than a statement of the truth that God conserves
and creates the human intellect and that the natural light of the
intellect is a participated light. Thomists, who wish to show St.
Augustine the same reverence that St. Thomas showed him, are
naturally reluctant to admit a radical difference of opinion between
the two great theologians and philosophers and are inclined to
interpret St. Augustine in a way that would attenuate the dif¬
ference between his thought and that of St. Thomas; but St.
Augustine most emphatically did not mean by Tight’ the intellect
itself or its activity, even with the ordinary concurrence of God,
since it is precisely because of the deficiencies of the human

1 De Trinit., 9, 6, 9. * De lib. arbit., 1, 13, 35.

• In. Ps. 119; Serin., 23, 1. 4 In Ps. 118; Serm., 18, 4.

ST. AUGUSTINE: KNOWLEDGE

64 PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

intellect that he postulated the existence and activity of the divine
illumination. To say that St. Augustine was wrong in postulating
a special divine illumination and that St. Thomas was right in
denying the necessity of such an illumination is an understandable
attitude; but it seems to be carrying conciliation too far, if one
attempts to maintain that both thinkers were saying the same
thing, even if one affirms that St. Thomas was saying clearly and
unambiguously what St. Augustine had said obscurely and with
the aid of metaphor.

I have already indicated that I accept the interpretation of
Augustine’s thought, according to which the function of the divine
illumination is to render visible to the mind the element of necessity
in the eternal truths, and that I reject the ontologistic interpreta¬
tion in any form. This rejection obviously involves the rejection
of the view that according to Augustine the mind beholds directly
the idea of beauty, for example, as it is in God; but I am also
unwilling to accept the view that according to Augustine God
actually infuses the idea of beauty or any other normative idea
(i.e. in reference to which we make comparative judgements of
degree, such as that this object is more beautiful than that, this
action juster than that, etc.) ready-made into the mind. This
extreme ideogenetic view would make the function of divine
illumination that of a kind of separate active intellect: in fact,
God would Himself be an ontologically separate active intellect
which infuses ideas into the human mind without any part being
played by the human sensibility or intellect other than the mind’s
purely passive role. (This reference to an active intellect is not, of
course, meant to imply that Augustine thought or spoke in terms
of the Aristotelian psychology.) It does not seem to me that such
an interpretation, although doubtless much can be said for it, 1 is
altogether satisfactory. According to St. Augustine, the activity
of the divine illumination in regard to the mind is analogous to
the function of the sun’s light in regard to vision, and though the
sunlight renders corporeal objects visible, Augustine certainly did
not think of it as creating images of the objects in the human
subject. Again, although the divine illumination takes the place
in Augustine’s thought of reminiscence in the Platonic philosophy,
so that the illumination would seem to fulfil some ideogenetic
function, it must be remembered that Augustine’s problem is one

1 See, for example, the article on Augustine by Portali6 in the Dictionnaire de
tfUologie caiholique .

65

concerning certitude f not one concerning the content of our concepts
or ideas: it concerns far more the form of the certain judgement
and the form of the normative idea than the actual content of the
judgement or the idea. In the De Trinitate 1 Augustine remarks that
the mind "gathers the knowledge of corporeal things through the
senses of the body', and, so far as he deals at all with the formation
of the concept, he would seem to consider that the human mind
discerns the intelligible in the sensible, performing what is in some
way at least equivalent to abstraction. But when it comes to
discerning that a corporeal thing is, for example, more or less
beautiful, to judging the object according to a changeless standard,
the mind judges under the light of the regulative action of the
eternal Idea, which is not itself visible to the mind. Beauty itself
illuminates the mind's activity in such a way that it can discern
the greater or less approximation of the object to the standard,
though the mind does not behold Beauty itself directly. It is in
this sense that the illumination of Augustine supplies the function
of Plato's reminiscence. Again, though Augustine does not clearly
indicate how we obtain the notions of seven and three and ten, the
function of illumination is not to infuse the notions of these
numbers but so to illuminate the judgement that seven and three
make ten that we discern the necessity and eternity of the judge¬
ment. From a passage already referred to, 3 as from other passages, 3
it seems to follow that, while we obtain the concept of corporeal
objects, a horse, for example, in dependence on the senses, and of
an immaterial object like the soul through self-consciousness and
interpretation, our certain judgements concerning these objects
are made in the light of "illumination' under the regulative action
of the eternal Ideas. If the illumination has an ideogenetic function,
as I believe it to have in Augustine's view, then this function has
reference not to the content of the concept, as if it infused that
content, but to the quality of our judgement concerning the concept
or to our discernment of a character in the object, its relation to
the norm or standard, which is not contained in the bare notion of
the thing. If this is so, then the difference between St. Augustine
and St. Thomas does not so much consist in their respective atti¬
tudes towards abstraction (since, whether Augustine explicitly
says so or not, his view, as interpreted above, would at least
demand abstraction in some form) as in the fact that Augustine

1 9. 3. 3. * Ibid.

* 1. 8, 15; In Joann . Evang ., 35, 8, 3; De Trinit 9, 13. 24; etc.

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thought it necessary to postulate a special illuminative action of
God, beyond His creative and conserving activity, in the mind's
realisation of eternal and necessary truths, whereas St. Thomas
did not.

On this view of illumination one can understand how it was that
St. Augustine regarded the qualities of necessity and unchange¬
ability in the eternal truths as constituting a proof of God's
existence, whereas it would be inexplicable on the ontologistic
interpretation, since, if the mind perceives God or the divine ideas
directly, it can need no proof of God's existence. That Augustine
did not explain in detail how the content of the concept is formed,
may be regrettable, but it is none the less understandable, since,
though interested in psychological observation, he was interested
therein, not from an academic motive, but rather from spiritual
and religious motives: it was the soul's relation to God which
concerned him primarily and, while the necessity and unchange¬
ability of the eternal truths (as contrasted with the contingency
and changeability of the human mind) and the doctrine of illu¬
mination helped to set this relation in a clear light and to stimulate
the soul in its Godward direction, an investigation concerning the
formation of the concept as such would not have had such a clear
relation to the Noverim me, noverim Te.

To sum up. St. Augustine asks himself the question, How is it
that we attain knowledge of truths which are necessary, immutable
and eternal? That we do attain such knowledge is clear to him
from experience. We cannot gain such knowledge simply from
sense-experience, since corporeal objects are contingent, change¬
able and temporal. Nor can we produce the truths from our
minds, which are also contingent and changeable. Moreover, such
truths rule and dominate our minds, impose themselves upon our
minds, and they would not do this if they depended on us. It
follows that we are enabled to perceive such truths under the
action of the Being who alone is necessary, changeless and eternal,
God. God is like a sun which illumines our minds or a master
who teaches us. At this point the difficulty in interpretation
begins. The present writer inclines to the interpretation that,
while the content of our concepts of corporeal objects is derived
from sense-experience and reflection thereon, the regulative in¬
fluence of the divine ideas (which means the influence of God)
enables man to see the relation of created things to eternal super¬
sensible realities, of which there is no direct vision in this life, and

67

that God's light enables the mind to discern the elements of
necessity, immutability and eternity in that relation between
concepts which is expressed in the necessary judgement. Owing,
however, to St. Augustine’s use of metaphor and to the fact that
he was not primarily interested in giving a systematic and carefully
defined 'scholastic' account of the process of knowledge, it does not
seem possible to obtain a definitive interpretation of his thought
which would adequately explain all the statements he made.

ST. AUGUSTINE: GOD

CHAPTER V

ST. AUGUSTINE—III: GOD

Proof of God from eternal truths—Proofs from creatures and
from universal consent—The various proofs as stages in one
process—Attributes of God — Exemplarism .

i. It is probably true to say that the central and favourite proof
of God's existence given by St. Augustine is that from thought,
i.e. a proof from within. The starting-point of this proof is the
mind’s apprehension of necessary and changeless truths, of a truth
’which thou canst not call thine, or mine, or any man’s, but which
is present to all and gives itself to all alike.* 1 This truth is superior
to the mind, inasmuch as the mind has to bow before it and
accept it: the mind did not constitute it, nor can it amend it: the
mind recognises that this truth transcends it and rules its thought
rather than the other way round. If it were inferior to the mind,
the mind could change it or amend it, while if it were equal to the
mind, of the same character, it would itself be changeable, as the
mind is changeable. The mind varies in its apprehension of truth,
apprehending it now more clearly now less clearly, whereas truth
remains ever the same. ’Hence if truth is neither inferior nor
equal to our minds, nothing remains but that it should be superior
and more excellent.' 2

But the eternal truths must be founded on being, reflecting the
Ground of all truth. Just as human imaginations reflect the
imperfection and changeable character of the human mind in
which they are grounded, and as the impressions of sense reflect
the corporeal objects in which they are grounded, so the eternal
truths reveal their Ground, Truth itself, reflecting the necessity
and immutability of God. This refers to all essential standards.
If we judge of an action that it is more or less just, for example,
we judge of it according to an essential and invariable standard,
essence or ’idea': human actions in the concrete may vary, but the
standard remains the same. It is in the light of the eternal and
perfect standard that we judge of concrete acts, and this standard
must be grounded in the eternal and all-perfect Being. If there is
an intelligible sphere of absolute truths, this cannot be conceived

1 De lib, arbit., 2, 12, 33. * Ibid L

68

69

without a Ground of truth, 'the Truth, in whom, and by whom,
and through whom those things are true which are true in every
respect’. 1

This argument to God as the Ground of eternal and necessary
truth was not only accepted by the ‘Augustinian School’, but
reappears in the thought of several eminent philosophers, like
Leibniz.

2. St. Augustine does indeed prove the existence of God from
the external, corporeal world; but his words on the subject are
rather of the nature of hints or reminders or summary statements
than developed proofs in the academic sense: he was not so much
concerned to prove to the atheist that God exists as to show how
all creation proclaims the God whom the soul can experience in
itself, the living God. It was the dynamic attitude of the soul
towards God which interested him, not the construction of dialecti¬
cal arguments with a purely theoretical conclusion. To acknow¬
ledge with a purely intellectual assent that a supreme Being exists
is one thing; to bring that truth home to oneself is something more.
The soul seeks happiness and many are inclined to seek it outside
themselves: St. Augustine tries to show that creation cannot give
the soul the perfect happiness it seeks, but points upwards to the
living God who must be sought within. This basically religious
and spiritual attitude must be borne in mind, if one is to avoid first
looking on Augustine's proofs as dialectical proofs in a theoretic
sense and then belittling them as inadequate and trifling state¬
ments of what St. Thomas was to express much better. The
purposes of the two men were not precisely the same.

Thus when Augustine, commenting on Psalm 73, remarks, ‘How
do I know that thou art alive, whose soul I see not? How do I
know? Thou wilt answer, Because I speak, because I walk,
because I work. Fool! by the operations of the body I know thee
to be living, canst thou not by the works of creation know the
Creator?’ he is indeed stating the proof of God’s existence from
His effects; but he is not setting out to develop the proof for its
own sake, as it were: he brings it in by way of commentary in the
course of his Scriptural exegesis. Similarly, when he asserts in the
De Civitate Dei * that ‘the very order, disposition, beauty, change
and motion of the world and of all visible things silently proclaim
that it could only have been made by God, the ineffably and
invisibly great and the ineffably and invisibly beautiful’, he is

1 Soft/., i, 1, 3. * ix, 4, 2.

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rather reminding Christians of a fact than attempting to give a
systematic proof of God's existence. Again, when Augustine,
commenting on Genesis, 1 states that "the power of the Creator and
His omnipotent and all-swaying strength is for each and every
creature the cause of its continued existence, and if this strength
were at any time to cease from directing the things which have
been created, at one and the same time both their species would
cease to be and their whole nature would perish . . . he is stating
the fact and necessity of divine conservation, reminding his
readers of an acknowledged fact, rather than proving it philoso¬
phically.

Augustine gives, again in very brief form, what is known as the
argument from universal consent. ‘Such', he says, ‘is the power of
true Godhead that it cannot be altogether and utterly hidden
from the rational creature, once it makes use of its reason. For,
with the exception of a few in whom nature is excessively depraved,
the whole human race confesses God to be the author of the
world.' 2 Even if a man thinks that a plurality of gods exists, he
still attempts to conceive ‘the one God of gods' as ‘something than
which nothing more excellent or more sublime exists. . . . All
concur in believing God to be that which excels in dignity all
other objects.' 3 No doubt St. Anselm was influenced by these
words of Augustine when he took as the universal idea of God in
the ‘ontological argument' ‘that than which no greater can be
conceived'.

3. Professor Gilson, in his Introduction a Vetude de Saint
Augustin , 4 remarks that in the thought of St. Augustine there is
really one long proof of God’s existence, a proof which consists of
various stages. 5 Thus from the stage of initial doubt and its
refutation through the Si fallor, sum, which is a kind of methodical
preliminary to the search for truth, assuring the mind of the
attainability of truth, the soul proceeds to consider the world of
sense. In this world, however, it does not discover the truth which
it seeks and so it turns inwards, where, after considering its own
fallibility and changeableness, it discovers immutable truth which
transcends the soul and does not depend on tht soul. It is thus led
to the apprehension of God as the Ground of all truth.

The picture of Augustine’s total proof of the existence of God

1 De Gen. ad Hit., 4, 22, 22. 1 In Joann. Evang., 106, 4.

J De doct. Christ., 1, 7, 7. 4 Ch. 2.

s Cf. also G. Grunwald: Geschickte der Gottesbeweise itn Mittelalter , in Beitrdge,

6 . 3. P* 6 .

71

given by M. Gilson is doubtless representative of the Saint's
mind and it has the great advantage not only of bringing into
prominence the proof from thought, from the eternal truths, but
also of linking up the 'proof' with the soul's search for God as the
source of happiness, as objective beatitude, in such a way that the
proof does not remain a mere academic and theoretic string or
chain of syllogisms. This picture is confirmed by a passage such
as that contained in Augustine’s two hundred and forty-first
sermon, 1 where the Saint depicts the human soul questioning the
things of sense and hearing them confess that the beauty of the
visible world, of mutable things, is the creation and reflection of
immutable Beauty, after which the soul proceeds inwards, dis¬
covers itself and realises the superiority of soul to body. 'Men
saw these two things, pondered them, investigated both of them,
and found that each is mutable in man.' The mind, therefore,
finding both body and soul to be mutable goes in search of what is
immutable. 'And thus they arrived at a knowledge of God the
Creator by means of the things which He created.' St. Augustine,
then, in no way denies what we call a ‘natural’ or 'rational'
knowledge of God ; but this rational knowledge of God is viewed
in close connection with the soul’s search for beatifying Truth and
is seen as itself a kind of self-revelation of God to the soul, a
revelation which is completed in the full revelation through Christ
and confirmed in the Christian life of prayer. Augustine would
thus make no sharp dichotomy between the spheres of natural and
revealed theology, not because he failed to see the distinction
between reason and faith, but rather because he viewed the soul's
cognition of God in close connection with its spiritual search for
God as the one Object and Source of beatitude. When Hamack
reproaches Augustine with not having made clear the relation of
faith to science, 2 he fails to realise that the Saint is primarily
concerned with the spiritual experience of God and that in his
eyes faith and reason each have their part to play in an experience
which is an organic unity.

4. Augustine insists that the world of creatures reflects and
manifests God, even if it does so in a very inadequate manner, and
that 'if any thing worthy of praise is noticed in the nature of
things, whether it be judged worthy of slight praise or of great,
it must be applied to the most excellent and ineffable praise of

1 Serm., 241, 2, 2 and 3, 3.

* Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3rd edit., t. 3, p. 119.

72 PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

the Creator.' Creatures tend indeed to not-being, but as long as
they are, they possess some form, and this is a reflection of the
Form which can neither decline nor pass away. 1 Thus the order
and unity of Nature proclaims the unity of the Creator,* just as
the goodness of creatures, their positive reality, reveals the good¬
ness of God 3 and the order and stability of the universe manifest
the wisdom of God. 4 On the other hand, God, as the self-existent,
eternal and immutable Being, is infinite, and, as infinite, incom¬
prehensible. God is His own Perfection, is 'simple', so that His
wisdom and knowledge, His goodness and power, are His own
essence, which is without accidents. 6 God, therefore, transcends
spate in virtue of His spirituality and infinity and simplicity, as
He transcends time in virtue of His eternity: 'God is Himself in
no interval nor extension of place, but in His immutable and
pre-eminent might is both interior to everything because all things
are in Him and exterior to everything because He is above all
things. So too He is in no interval nor extension of time, but in
His immutable eternity is older than all things because He is
before all things and younger than all things because the same
He is after all things.' 6

5. From all eternity God knew all things which He was to make:
He does not know them because He has made them, but rather
the other way round: God first knew the things of creation though
they came into being only in time. The species of created things
have their ideas or rationes in God, and God from all eternity saw
in Himself, as possible reflections of Himself, the things which He
could create and would create. He knew them before creation as
they are in Him, as Exemplar, but He made them as they exist,
i.e. as external and finite reflections of His divine essence. 7 God
did nothing without knowledge, He foresaw all that He would
make, but His knowledge is not distinct acts of knowledge, but
'one eternal, immutable and ineffable vision'. 8 It is in virtue of
this eternal act of knowledge, of vision, to which nothing is past
or future, that God sees, 'foresees', even the free acts of men,
knowing 'beforehand 1 , for example, 'what we should ask of Him
and when, and to whom He would listen or not listen, and on what
subjects'.® An adequate discussion of this last point, which would

1 De lib. arbit., 2, 17, 46, * Ibid., 3, 23, 70. * De Trinit xx, 5, 8.

4 De Civit. Dei, 1 x, 28.

1 De Trinit., 5, 2, 3; 5, II, 12; 6, 4, 6; 6, 10, 11; 15, 43, 22; In Joann. Evang., 99,
4; etc.

4 De Gen. ad litt., 8, 26, 48. F Cf. ibid., 5, 15, 33; Ad Orosium, 8, 9.

1 De Trinii 15. 7, 13. 1 Ibid., 15, 13. 22.

ST. AUGUSTINE: GOD

73

necessitate consideration of the Augustinian theory of grace,
cannot be attempted here.

Contemplating His own essence from eternity God sees in Him¬
self all possible limited essences, the finite reflections of His infinite
perfection, so that the essences or rationes of things are present in
the divine mind from all eternity as the divine ideas, though, in
view of Augustine's teaching on the divine simplicity previously
mentioned, this should not be taken to mean that there are
'accidents' in God, ideas which are ontologically distinct from His
essence. In the Confessions 1 the Saint exclaims that the eternal
'reasons' of created things remain unchangeably in God, and in
the De Ideis 2 he explains that the divine ideas are ‘certain arche¬
typal forms or stable and unchangeable reasons of things, which
were not themselves formed but are contained in the divine mind
eternally and are always the same. They neither arise nor pass
away, but whatever arises and passes away is formed according
to them.' The corollary of this is that creatures have ontological
truth in so far as they embody or exemplify the model in the
divine mind, and that God Himself is the standard of truth. This
exemplarist doctrine was, of course, influenced by neo-Platonic
theory, according to which the Platonic exemplary ideas are con¬
tained in Nous, though for Augustine the ideas are contained in
the Word, who is not a subordinate hypostasis, like the neo-
Platonic Nous, but the second Person of the Blessed Trinity,
consubstantial with the Father. 3 From Augustine the doctrine of
exemplarism passed to the Middle Ages. It may be thought of as
characteristic of the Augustinian School; but it must be remem¬
bered that St. Thomas Aquinas did not deny it, though he was
careful to state it in such a way as not to imply that there are
ontologically separate ideas in God, a doctrine which would impair
the divine simplicity, for in God there is no real distinction save
that between the three divine Persons. 4 Still, though Aquinas
was in this respect a follower of Augustine, it was St. Bonaventure
who most insisted in the thirteenth century on the doctrine of
exemplarism and on the presence of the divine Ideas in the Word
of God, an insistence which contributed to his hostile attitude
to Aristotle the metaphysician, who threw overboard the ideas
of Plato.

1 I. 6, 9. *2. * De Trinit., 4, 1, 3.

4 Cf. e.g. Summa Theol., Ia, 15, 2 and 3.

ST. AUGUSTINE: THE WORLD

CHAPTER VI

ST. AUGUSTINE—IV: THE WORLD

Free creation out of nothing—Matter —Rationcs seminales—
Numbers—Soul and body — Immortality—Origin of soul.

One would hardly expect, once given the general attitude and
complexion of Augustine’s thought, to find the Saint showing very
much interest in the material world for its own sake: his thought
centred round the soul’s relation to God; but his general philo¬
sophy involved a theory of the corporeal world, a theory consisting
of elements taken from former thinkers and set in a Christian
framework. It would be a mistake, however, to think that
Augustine drew purely mechanically on previous thinkers for his
theories: he emphasised those lines which seemed to him best
calculated to underline nature’s relation to and dependence on God.

1. A doctrine which was not developed by pagan thinkers, but
which was held by Augustine in common with other Christian
writers, was that of the creation of the world out of nothing by
God’s free act. In the Plotinian emanation-theory the world is
depicted as proceeding in some way from God without God becom¬
ing in any way diminished or altered thereby, but for Plotinus
God does not act freely (since such activity would, he thought,
postulate change in God) but rather necessitate naturae, the Good
necessarily diffusing itself. The doctrine of free creation out of
nothing is not to be found in neo-Platonism, if we except one or
two pagan thinkers who had most probably been influenced by
Christian teaching. Augustine may have thought that Plato had
taught creation out of nothing in time, but it is improbable, in
spite of Aristotle’s interpretation of the Timaeus, that Plato really
meant to imply this. However, whatever Augustine may have
thought about Plato’s views on the matter, he himself clearly
states the doctrine of free creation out of nothing and it is essential
to his insistence on the utter supremacy of God and the world’s
entire dependence on Him. All things owe their being to God. 1

2. But suppose that things were made out of some formless
matter? Would not this formless matter be independent of God?
First of all, says Augustine, are you speaking of a matter which is

1 De lib. arbit 3, 15, 42.

74

75

absolutely formless or of a matter which is formless only in
comparison with completely formed? If the former, then you are
speaking of what is equivalent to nothingness. That out of which
God has created all things is what possesses neither species nor
form; and this is nothing other than nothing.’ If, however, you
are speaking of the latter, cf matter which has no completed form,
but which has inchoate form, in the sense of possessing the capacity
to receive form, then such matter is not altogether nothing indeed,
but, as something, it has what being it has only from God. 'Where¬
fore, even if the universe was created out of some formless matter,
this very matter was created from something which was wholly
nothing.’ 1 In the Confessions a Augustine identifies this matter
with the mutability of bodies (which is equivalent to saying that
it is the potential element) and observes that if he could call it
'nothing’ or assert that it does not exist, he would do so; but if
it is the capacity of receiving forms, it cannot be called absolutely
nothing. Again, he remarks in the De vera religione 3 that not only
the possession of form but even the capacity to receive form is a
good, and what is a good cannot be absolute nothing. Yet this
matter, which is not absolutely nothing, is itself the creation of
God, not preceding formed things in time but concreated with
form, 4 and he identified the ‘unformed matter which God made
out of nothing’ with the heaven and earth mentioned in the first
verse of the first chapter of Genesis as the primary creation of
God. 8 In other words, St. Augustine is stating in rudimentary
form the Scholastic doctrine that God created out of nothing not
absolutely formless ‘prime matter', apart from all form, but form
and matter together, though, if we choose to think of Augustine’s
statements as a rudimentary expression of the more elaborate
Scholastic doctrine, we should also remember that the Saint is
not so concerned with developing a philosophical doctrine for its
own sake as with emphasising the essential dependence of all
creatures on God and the perishable nature of all corporeal
creatures, even when once constituted in existence. They have
their being from God, but their being is bound up with their
mutability.

3. A theory which was dear to Augustine himself and to his
followers, though it was rejected by St. Thomas, and which was
calculated to exalt the divine agency at the expense of the causal

1 Cf. De vera relig 18, 35-6. *12, 6, 6. * Loc. cit.

4 De Gen. ad htt 1, 15, 29. 6 De Gen . contra Manich., 1, 17, 11.

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

ST. AUGUSTINE: THE WORLD

76

activity of creatures, was that of the rationes seminales or 'seminal
reasons', the germs of those things which were to develop in the
course of time. Thus even man, as regards his body at least, to
leave the origin of the soul out of account for the moment, was
created in the rationes seminales, 'invisibly, potentially, causally,
in the way that things are made which are to be but have not yet
been made'. 1 The rationes seminales are germs of things or invisible
powers or potentialities, created by God in the beginning in the
humid element and developing into the objects of various species
by their temporal unfolding. The idea of these germinal poten¬
tialities was to be found, and doubtless was found by Augustine,
in the philosophy of Plotinus and ultimately it goes back to the
rationes seminales or X6yot <yKcpjxaTixoC of Stoicism, but it is an idea
of rather vague content. Indeed, St. Augustine never supposed
that they were the object of experience, that they could be seen
or touched: they are invisible, having inchoate form or a poten¬
tiality to the development of form according to the divine plan.
The seminal reasons are not purely passive, but tend to self¬
development, though the absence of the requisite conditions and
circumstances and of other external agencies may hinder or
prevent their development. 2 St. Bonaventure, who maintained
the theory of St. Augustine on this point, compared the ratio
seminalis to the rosebud, which is not yet actually the rose but
will develop into the rose, given the presence of the necessary
positive agencies and the absence of negative or preventive
agencies.

That St. Augustine asserted a rather vague theory regarding
objects which are not the term of direct experience will appear
less surprising if one considers why he asserted it. The assertion
was the result of an exegetic, not a scientific problem, and the
problem arose in this way. According to the book of Ecclesiasticus 8
'He that liveth for ever created all things together', while on the
other hand according to the book of Genesis the fishes and birds,
for instance, appeared only on the fifth ‘day’ of creation, while
the cattle and beasts of the earth appeared only on the sixth ‘day’.
(Augustine did not interpret ‘day’ as our day of twenty-four hours,
since the sun was made only on the fourth ‘day’.) How then can
these two statements be reconciled, that God created all things
together and that some things were made after others, that is to
say, that not all things were created together? St. Augustine's

1 De Gen. ad 6, 5, S. * De Trinit., 3, 8, 13. * 18, 1.

77

way of solving the problem was to say that God did indeed create
all things together in the beginning, but that He did not create
them all in the same condition: many things, all plants, fishes,
birds, animals, and man himself, He created invisibly, latently,
potentially, in germ, in their rationes seminales . In this way God
created in the beginning all the vegetation of the earth before it
was actually growing on the earth, 1 and even man himself. He
would thus solve the apparent contradiction between Ecclesiasticus
and Genesis by making a distinction. If you are speaking of actual
formal completion, then Ecclesiasticus is not referring to this,
whereas Genesis is: if you are including germinal or seminal
creation, then this is what Ecclesiasticus refers to.

Why did not Augustine content himself with ‘seeds’ in the
ordinary sense, the visible seeds of plants, the grain and so on?
Because in the book of Genesis it is implied that the earth brought
forth the green herb before its seed,* and the same thing is implied
in regard to the other living things which reproduce their kind.
He found himself compelled, therefore, to have recourse to a
different kind of seed. For example, God created in the beginning
the ratio seminalis of wheat, which, according to God’s plan and
activity, unfolded itself at the appointed time as actual wheat,
which then contained seed in the ordinary sense. 3 Moreover, God
did not create all seeds or all eggs in act at the beginning, so that
they too require a ratio seminalis . Each species, then, with all its
future developments and particular members, was created at the
beginning in the appropriate seminal reason.

From what has been said it should be clear that the Saint was
not considering primarily a scientific problem but rather an
exegetic problem, so that it is really beside the point to adduce
him either as a protagonist or as an opponent of evolution in the
Lamarckian or Darwinian sense.

4. St. Augustine made use of the Platonic number-theme, which
goes back to Pythagoreanism. Naturally his treatment of number
sometimes appears to us as fanciful and even fantastic, as when he
speaks of perfect and imperfect numbers or interprets references to
numbers in the Scriptures; but, speaking generally, he looks on
number as the principle of order and form, of beauty and perfection,
of proportion and law. Thus the Ideas are the eternal numbers,
while bodies are temporal numbers, which unfold themselves in

1 De Gen. ad Utt 5, 4, 7-9. * Gen. 1. 11.

1 De Gen. ad litt. t 5, 4, 9.

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

ST. AUGUSTINE: THE WORLD

78

time. Bodies indeed can be considered as numbers in various ways,
as being wholes consisting of a number of ordered and related
parts, as unfolding themselves in successive stages (the plant, for
example, germinates, breaks into leaf, produces flower and fruit,
seminates), or as consisting of a number of parts well disposed in
space; in other words, as exemplifying intrinsic number, local or
spatial number, and temporal number. The 'seminal reasons' are
hidden numbers, whereas bodies are manifest numbers. Again,
just as mathematical number begins from one and ends in a
number which is itself an integer, so the hierarchy of beings begins
with the supreme One, God, which brings into existence and is
reflected in more or less perfect unities. This comparison or
parallel between mathematical number and metaphysical number
was derived, of course, from Plotinus, and in general Augustine's
treatment of number adds nothing of substance to the treatment
already accorded it in the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition.

5. The peak of the material creation is man, who consists of
body and immortal soul. Augustine is quite clear about the fact
that man does consist of soul and body, as when he says that 'a
soul in possession of a body does not constitute two persons but
one man'. 1 Why is it necessary to mention such an obvious point?
Because Augustine speaks of the soul as a substance in its own
right ( substantia quaedam rationis particeps , regendo corpori acco-
modata ) 2 and even defines man as 'a rational soul using a mortal
and earthly body'. 3 This Platonic attitude towards the soul has
its repercussions, as we have already seen, in Augustine’s doctrine
of sensation, which he represents as an activity of the soul
using the body as an instrument, rather than as an activity
of the total psycho-physical organism: it is, in fact, a temporary
increase of intensity in the action by which the soul animates a
certain part of the body. The soul, being superior to the body,
cannot be acted on by the body, but it perceives the changes in
the body due to an external stimulus.

6. The human soul is an immaterial principle, though, like the
souls of brutes, it animates the body. A man may say or even
think that his soul is composed of air, for example, but he can
never know that it is composed of air. On the other hand he
knows very well that he is intelligent, that he thinks, and he has
no reason to suppose that air can think. 4 Moreover, the soul's

1 In Joann. Evang 19, 5, 15. 1 De quant, animat , 13. 21.

* De moribus eccl., 1. 27, 52; In Joann. Evang., 19, 5, 15.

4 De Gen. ad litt., 7. 21, 28; De Trinit., 10, 10, 14.

79

immateriality and its substantiality assure it of immortality. On
this point Augustine uses arguments which go back to Plato. 1 For
example, Augustine utilises the argument of the Phaedo that, as
the soul is the principle of life and as two contraries are incom¬
patible, the soul cannot die. Apart from the fact that this argu¬
ment is not very convincing in any case, it could not be acceptable
to Augustine without modification, since it would seem to imply
that the soul exists of itself or is a part of God. He adapted the
argument, therefore, by saying that the soul participates in Life,
holding its being and essence from a Principle which admits of no
contrary, and by arguing that, as the being which the soul receives
from this Principle (which admits no contrary) is precisely life, it
cannot die. The argument, however, might clearly be taken to
imply that the animal soul is immortal also, since it too is a
principle of life, and so would prove too much. It must, then, be
taken in conjunction with another argument, also derived from
Plato, to the effect that the soul apprehends indestructible truth,
which shows that it is itself indestructible. In the De quantitate
animae 2 Augustine distinguishes the souls of beasts, which possess
the power of sensation but not that of reasoning and knowing,
from human souls, which possess both, so that this argument
applies only to human souls. Plato had argued that the human
soul, as capable of apprehending the Ideas, which are eternal and
indestructible, shows itself to be akin to them, to be 'divine', that
is to say, indestructible and eternal, and Augustine, without
affirming pre-existence, proves the immortality of the soul in an
analogous manner. In addition, he argues from the desire of
beatitude, the desire for perfect happiness, and this became a
favourite argument among Augustinians, with St. Bonaventure,
for example.

7. Augustine clearly held that the soul is created by God, 3 but
does not seem to have made up his mind as to the precise time and
mode of its origin. He seems to have toyed with some form of the
Platonic pre-existence theory while refusing to allow that the soul
was put into the body as a punishment for faults committed in a
pre-earthly condition, but the chief question for him was whether
God creates each individual soul separately or created all other
souls in Adam’s, so that the soul is 'handed on' by the parents
(Traducianism). This second opinion would appear logically to

1 Cf. Solil., 2, 19, 33; Ep. t 3, 4; De Immortal An., ch. i-O. 1 28, 34ft.

8 De anima ei cuts originc, 1, 4, 4.

8 o

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

involve a materialistic view of the soul, whereas in fact Augustine
certainly did not hold any such view and insisted that the soul is
not present in the body by local diffusion; 1 but it was for theologi¬
cal, not philosophical, reasons that he inclined towards tradu-
cianism, as he thought that in this way original sin could be
explained as a transmitted stain on the soul. If original sin is
looked on as something positive and not as in itself a privation,
there is indeed a difficulty, even if not an insuperable difficulty,
in affirming individual creation by God of each single human soul,
but even apart from that it does not alter the fact that tradu-
cianism is inconsistent with a clear affirmation of the soul's
spiritual and immaterial character.

1 Ep., 156.

CHAPTER VII

ST. AUGUSTINE—V: MORAL THEORY

Happiness and God—Freedom and Obligation—Need of grace —

Evil—the two Cities .

1. St. Augustine's ethic has this in common with what one
might call the typical Greek ethic, that it is eudaemonistic in
character, that it proposes an end for human conduct, namely
happiness; but this happiness is to be found only in God. The
Epicurean who places man's supreme good in the body, places his
hope in himself,' 1 but ‘the rational creature . . . has been so made
that it cannot itself be the good by which it is made happy’: 2 the
human being is mutable and insufficient to itself, it can find its
happiness only in the possession of what is more than itself, in the
possession of an immutable object. Not even virtue itself can be
the end: ‘it is not the virtue of thy soul that maketh thee happy,
but He who hath given thee the virtue, who hath inspired thee to
will, and hath given thee the power to do.' 3 It is not the ideal
of the Epicurean that can bring happiness to man, nor even that
of the Stoic, but God Himself: ‘the striving after God is, therefore,
the desire of beatitude, the attainment of God is beatitude itself/ 4
That the human being strives after beatitude or happiness, and
that beatitude means the attainment of an object, Augustine knew
well from his own experience, even if he found confirmation of this
fact in philosophy; that this object is God, he learnt also from his
personal experience, even if he had been helped to realise the fact
by the philosophy of Plotinus. But when he said that happiness
is to be found in the attainment and possession of the eternal and
immutable Object, God, he was thinking, not of a purely philo¬
sophic and’ theoretic contemplation of God, but of a loving union
with and possession of God, and indeed of the supernatural union
with God held up to the Christian as the term of his grace-aided
endeavour: one cannot well separate out in Augustine's thought a
natural and a supernatural ethic, since he deals with man in the
concrete, and man in the concrete has a supernatural vocation: he
regarded the neo-Platonists as disteming something of that which

1 Serm 150, 7, 8.
s Serm., 150, 8, 9.

1 Ep., 140, 23, 56.

4 De moribus eccX 1, II, 18,

82

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

was revealed by Christ, neo-Platonism as an inadequate and
partial realisation of the truth.

The ethic of Augustine is, then, primarily an ethic of love: it is
by the will that man reaches out towards God and finally takes
possession of and enjoys Him. 'When therefore the will, which is
the intermediate good, cleaves to the immutable good . . . , man
finds therein the blessed life’; 1 'for if God is man's supreme good
. . . it clearly follows, since to seek the supreme good is to live
well, that to live well is nothing else but to love God with all the
heart, with all the soul, with all the mind.' 2 Indeed, after quoting
the words of Christ, as recorded by St. Matthew, 3 Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole
soul, and with thy whole mind' and ‘thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself', Augustine asserts that ‘Natural philosophy is here,
since all the causes of all natural things are in God the Creator’,
and that, ‘Ethics are here, since a good and honest life is not
formed otherwise than by loving as they should be loved those
things which we ought to love, namely, God and our neighbour.' 4
Augustine's ethic thus centres round the dynamism of the will,
which is a dynamism of love ( pondus tneum , amor meus), b though
the attainment of beatitude, ‘participation in the immutable
good’, is not possible for man unless he be aided by grace, unless
he receives ‘the gratuitous mercy of the Creator'. 6

2. The will, however, is free, and the free will is subject to
moral obligation. The Greek philosophers had a conception of
happiness as the end of conduct, and one cannot say that they
had no idea of obligation; but owing to his clearer notion of God
and of divine creation Augustine was able to give to moral obliga¬
tion a firmer metaphysical basis than the Greeks had been able to
give it.

The necessary basis of obligation is freedom. The will is free to
turn awp.y from the immutable Good and to attach itself to mutable
goods, taking as its object either the goods of the soul, without
reference to God, or the goods of the body. The will necessarily
seeks happiness, satisfaction, and de facto this happiness can be
found only in God, the immutable Good, but man has not the
vision of God in this life, he can turn his attention to and cling to
mutable goods in place of God, and 'this turning away and this
turning to are not forced but voluntary actions’. 7

1 De lib . arbit., a, 19, 52. 1 De moribus eccl 1, 25, 46. 1 22. 37-9*

4 Ep, t 137, 5, 17. * Conf., 13. 9, 10. * Bp., 140, 21, 14.

7 De lib, arbit ., 2, 19, 35.

ST. AUGUSTINE: MORAL THEORY 83

The human will is, then, free to turn to God or away from God,
but at the same time the human mind must recognise the truth,
not only that what it seeks, happiness, can be found only in the
possession of the immutable Good, God, but also that the direction
of the will to that good is implanted by God and willed by God,
who is the Creator. By turning away from God the will runs
counter to the divine law, which is expressed in human nature,
made by God for Himself. All men are conscious to some extent
of moral standards and laws: 'even the ungodly . . . rightly blame
and rightly praise many things in the conduct of men.' How are
they enabled to do so, save by seeing the rules according to which
men ought to live, even if they do not personally obey these laws
in their own conduct? Where do they see these rules? Not in their
own minds, since their minds are mutable, whereas the ‘rules of
justice' are immutable; not in their characters, since they are ex
hypothesi unjust. They see the moral rules, says Augustine, using
his customary, if obscure, manner of speaking, ‘in the book of
that light which is called Truth'. The eternal laws of morality are
impressed in the heart of man, 'as the impression of a ring passes
into the wax, yet does not leave the ring'. There are indeed some
men who are more or less blind to the law, but even they are
‘sometimes touched by the splendour of the omnipresent truth'. 1
Thus, just as the human mind perceives eternal theoretic truths
in the light of God, so it perceives, in the same light, practical
truths or principles which should direct the free will. Man is by
his nature, his nature considered in the concrete, set towards God;
but he can fulfil the dynamism of that nature only by observing
the moral laws which reflect the eternal law of God, and which
are not arbitrary rules but follow from the Nature of God and the
relationship of man to God. The laws are not arbitrary caprices
of God, but their observance is willed by God, for He would not
have created man without willing that man should be what He
meant him to be. The will is free, but it is at the same time subject
to moral obligations, and to love God is a duty.

3. The relationship of man to God, however, is the relationship
of a finite creature to the infinite Being, and the result is that the
gulf cannot be bridged without the divine aid, without grace: grace
is necessary even to begin to will to love God. ‘When man tries
to live justly by his own strength without the help of the liberating
grace of God, he is then conquered by sins; but in free will he has

1 De Trinit., 14, 15, 21.

84 PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

it in his power to believe in the Liberator and to receive grace.’ 1
'The law was therefore given that grace might be sought; grace
was given that the law might be fulfilled.’* ’Our will is by the law
shown to be weak, that grace may heal its infirmity.’* 'The law of
teaching and commanding that which cannot be fulfilled without
grace demonstrates to man his weakness, in order that the weak¬
ness thus proved may resort to the Saviour, by whose healing the
will may be able to do what in its feebleness it found impossible.’*

It would be out of place here to enter on the question of
Augustine’s doctrine of grace and its relation to the free will,
which is in any case a difficult question; but it is necessary to
grasp the fact that when Augustine makes the love of God the
essence of the moral law, he is referring to that union of the will
with God which requires the elevation effected by grace. This is
only natural, once given the fact that he is considering and
treating man in the concrete, man endowed with a supernatural
vocation, and it means that he supplements and completes the
wisdom of philosophy with the wisdom of the Scriptures. One
can, for purposes of schematism, try to separate Augustine the
philosopher and Augustine the theologian; but in his own eyes the
true philosopher is a man who surveys reality in the concrete, as
it is, and it cannot be seen as it is without taking into account the
economy of redemption and of grace.

4. If moral perfection consists in loving God, in directing the
will to God and bringing all other powers, e.g. the senses, into
harmony with this direction, evil will consist in turning the will
away from God. But what is evil in itself, moral evil? Is it some¬
thing positive? It cannot, first of all, be something positive in the
sense of something created by God: the cause of moral evil is not
the Creator but the created will. The cause of good things is the
divine goodness, whereas the cause of evil is the created will
which turns away from the immutable Good: 8 evil is a turning-
away of the created will from the immutable and infinite Good.*
But evil cannot strictly be termed a ‘thing’, since this word
implies a positive reality, and if moral evil were a positive reality,
it would have to be ascribed to the Creator, unless one were willing
to attribute to the creature the power of positive creation out of
nothing. Evil, then, is 'that which falls away from essence and
tends to non-being_It tends to make that which is cease to be.’ T

1 Expos, quarumdam prop, ex epist. ad Rom., 44. 1 De spir. et lift., 19, 34.

• Ibid., 9, 1 j. 4 Ep., 145, 3. 4. * Enchirid., 13.

• De lib. orbit., 1, 16, 33. * De moribus eccl., 2, 2, 2.

ST. AUGUSTINE: MORAL THEORY

85

Everything in which there is order and measure is to be ascribed
to God, but in the will which turns away from God there is
disorder. The will itself is good, but the absence of right order,
or rather the privation of right order, for which the human agent
is responsible, is evil. Moral evil is thus a privation of right order
in the created will.

This doctrine of evil as a privation was the doctrine of Plotinus,
and in it Augustine found the answer to the Manichees. For if
evil is a privation and not a positive thing, one is no longer faced
with the choice of either ascribing moral evil to the good Creator
or of inventing an ultimate evil principle responsible for evil. This
doctrine was adopted by the Scholastics generally from Augustine
and finds adherents among several modem philosophers of note,
Leibniz, for example.

5. If the principle of morality is love of God and the essence of
evil is a falling-away from God, it follows that the human race can
be divided into two great camps, that of those who love God and
prefer God to self and that of those who prefer self to God: it is
by the character of their wills, by the character of their dominant
love, that men are ultimately marked. Augustine sees the history
of the human race as the history of the dialectic of these two
principles, the one in forming the City of Jerusalem, the other the
City of Babylon. ‘Let each one question himself as to what he
loveth; and he shall find of which (city) he is a citizen.’ 1 'There
are two kinds of love; . . . These two kinds of love distinguish the
two cities established in the human race ... in the so to speak
commingling of which the ages are passed.’ 2 ‘You have heard and
know that there are two cities, for the present mingled together
in body, but in heart separated.’ 3

To the Christian history is necessarily of profound importance.
It was in history that man fell, in history that he was redeemed:
it is in history, progressively, that the Body of Christ on earth
grows and develops and that God’s plan is unfolded. To the
Christian, history apart from the data of revelation is shorn of its
significance: it is small wonder, then, that Augustine looked on
history from the Christian standpoint and that his outlook was
primarily spiritual and moral. If we speak of a philosophy of
history in Augustine’s thought, the word ‘philosophy’ must be
understood in a wide sense as Christian wisdom. The knowledge
of the facts of history may be mainly a natural knowledge, for

1 In Ps., 64, 2. 8 De Gen , ad Hit., n, 15, 20. 8 In Ps.. 136, 1.

86

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example, knowledge of the existence and development of the
Assyrian and Babylonian empires; but the principles by which the
facts are interpreted and given meaning and judged are not taken
from the facts themselves. The temporal and passing is judged in
the light of the eternal. That Augustine’s tendency to concentrate
on the aspect of Assyria under which it appeared to him as an
embodiment of the City of Babylon (in the moral sense) would
not commend itself to the modern historian is understandable
enough; but Augustine was not concerned to play the part of an
historian in the ordinary sense, but rather to give the 'philosophy'
of history as he envisaged it, and the ‘philosophy’ of history, as
he understood it, is the discernment of the spiritual and moral
significance of historical phenomena and events. Indeed, so far as
there can be a philosophy of history at all, the Christian at least
will agree with Augustine that only a Christian philosophy of
history can ever approach adequacy: to the non-Christian the
position of the Jewish people, for example, is radically different
from the position it occupies in the eyes of the Christian. If it
were objected, as it obviously could be, that this involves a
theological interpretation of history, a reading of history in the
light of dogma, the objection would not cause Augustine any
difficulty, since he never pretended to make that radical dichotomy
between theology and philosophy which is implied in the objection.

CHAPTER VIII

ST. AUGUSTINE—VI: THE STATE

The State and the City of Babylon not identical—The pagan
State does not embody true justice—Church superior to State.

i. As I have already remarked, Augustine saw in history, as he
saw in the individual, the struggle between two principles of
conduct, two loves, on the one hand the love of God and submis¬
sion to His law, on the other hand love of self, of pleasure, of the
world. It was only natural, then, that as he saw the embodiment
of the heavenly city, Jerusalem, in the Catholic Church, so he
should see in the State, particularly in the pagan State, the
embodiment of the City of Babylon, and the result of Augustine’s
attitude in this matter is that one is tempted to assume that for
him the City of God can be identified with the Church as a visible
society and the City of Babylon with the State as such. Does he
not ask, 'Without justice what are kingdoms but great bands of
robbers? What is a band of robbers but a little kingdom?’ And
does he not approve the pirate’s reply to Alexander the Great,
'Because I do it with a little ship, I am called a robber, and you,
because you do it with a great fleet, are called an emperor'? 1
Assyria and pagan Rome were founded, increased and maintained
by injustice, violence, rapine, oppression: is not this to affirm that
the State and the City of Babylon are one and the same thing?

Undeniably Augustine thought that the most adequate historical
embodiments of the City of Babylon are to be found in the pagan
empires of Assyria and Rome, just as he certainly thought that the
City of Jerusalem, the City of God, is manifested in the Church.
None the less, the ideas of the heavenly and earthly cities are moral
and spiritual ideas, the contents of which are not exactly coter¬
minous with any actual organisation. For instance, a man may be
a Christian and belong to the Church; but if the principle of his
conduct is self-love and not the love of God, he belongs spiritually
and morally to the City of Babylon. Again, if an official of the
State is governed in his conduct by the love of God, if he pursues
justice and charity, he belongs spiritually and morally to the City
of Jerusalem. ‘We see now a citizen of Jerusalem, a citizen of the

1 De Civit. Dei, 4, 4.

87

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PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

kingdom of heaven, holding some office upon earth; as, for
example, wearing the purple, serving as magistrate, as aedile, as
proconsul, as emperor, directing the earthly republic, but he hath
his heart above if he is a Christian, if he is of the faithful. . . . Let
us not therefore despair of the citizens of the kingdom of heaven,
when we see them engaged in the affairs of Babylon, doing some¬
thing terrestrial in a terrestrial republic; nor again let us forthwith
congratulate all men whom we see engaged in celestial matters,
for even the sons of the pestilence sit sometimes in the seat of
Moses. . . . But there will come a time of winnowing when they
will be separated, the one from the other, with the greatest
care. . . Even if, then, the City of Babylon in the moral and
spiritual sense tends to be identified with the State, particularly
the pagan State, and the City of Jerusalem tends to be identified
with the Church as a visible organisation, the identification is not
complete: one cannot legitimately conclude that because a man is,
for example, a Church official, he is necessarily a citizen of the
spiritual City of Jerusalem, for as far as his spiritual and moral
condition is concerned he may belong to the City of Babylon.
Moreover, if the State were necessarily coincident with the City of
Babylon, no Christian could legitimately hold office in the State,
or even be a citizen, if he could help it, and St. Augustine certainly
did not subscribe to any such opinion.

2. But if the State and the City of Babylon cannot simply be
identified, St. Augustine certainly did not think that the State as
such is founded on justice or that true justice is realised in any
actual State, not at any rate in any pagan State. That there is
some justice even in a pagan State is sufficiently obvious, but true
justice demands that that worship should be paid to God which
He requires, and pagan Rome did not pay that worship, indeed
in Christian times she did her best to prevent its being paid. On
the other hand pagan Rome was obviously a State. How, then, is
the conclusion to be avoided that true justice must not be
included within the definition of the State? For, if it is, one would
be reduced to the impossible position of denying that pagan Rome
was a State. Augustine accordingly defines a society as a ‘multitude
of rational creatures associated in a common agreement as to the
things which it loves'. 2 If the things which it loves are good, it
will be a good society, while, if the things which it loves are bad,
it will be a bad society; but nothing is said in the definition of a
1 In Pi., 51, 6. 1 De Civil. Dei, 19 , 24.

ST. AUGUSTINE: THE STATE

89

people as to whether the objects of its love are good or bad, with
the result that the definition will apply even to the pagan State.

This does not mean, of course, that in Augustine's eyes the State
exists in a non-moral sphere: on the contrary, the same moral law
holds good for States as for individuals. The point he wants to
make is that the State will not embody true justice, will not be
a really moral State, unless it is a Christian State: it is Christianity
which makes men good citizens. The State itself, as an instrument
of force, has its roots in the consequences of original sin and, given
the fact of original sin and its consequences, is a necessary institu¬
tion; but a just State is out of the question unless it is a Christian
State. ‘No State is more perfectly established and preserved than
on the foundations, and by the bond, of faith and of firm concord,
when the highest and truest good, namely God, is loved by all and
men love each other in Him without dissimulation because they
love one another for His sake.' 1 The State, in other words, is
informed by love of this world, when it is left to itself; but it can
be informed by higher principles, principles which it must derive
from Christianity.

3. From this there follow two consequences of importance.
(1) The Christian Church will try to inform civil society with its
own celestial principles of conduct: it has a mission to act as the
leaven of the earth. Augustine's conception of the Christian Church
and her mission was essentially a dynamic and a social conception:
the Church must permeate the State by her principles. (2) The
Church is thus the only really perfect society and is definitely
superior to the State, for, if the State must take her principles from
the Church, the State cannot be above the Church nor even on a
level with the Church. In maintaining this view St. Augustine
stands at the head of the mediaeval exaltation of the Church
vis-d-vis the State, and he was only consistent in invoking the
help of the State against the Donatists, since, on his view, the
Church is a superior society to which Christ has subjected the
kingdoms of the world, and which has the right to make use of
the powers of the world. 2 But if Augustine's view of the relation
of Church to State was the one which became characteristic of
western Christendom and not of Byzantium, it does not follow
that his view necessarily tended to undermine the significance of
civic and social life. As Christopher Dawson has pointed out, 3

1 Ep. t 137, 5, 18. 1 Cf. ibid., 105. 5, 6; 35, 3.

• A Monument to St. Augustine, pp. 76-7.

9 0 P RE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

although Augustine deprived the State of its aura of divinity, he
at the same time insisted on the value of the free human personality
and of moral responsibility, even against the State, so that in this
way he ‘made possible the ideal of a social order resting upon the
free personality and a common effort towards moral ends’.

CHAPTER IX

THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS

Writings and author—Affirmative way—Negative way — Neo-
Platonic interpretation of Trinity—Ambiguous teaching on
creation—Problem of evil—Orthodoxy or unorthodoxy?

I. During the Middle Ages the writings which were then ascribed
to St. Paul’s Athenian convert, Dionysius the Areopagite, enjoyed
high esteem, not only among mystics and authors of works on
mystical theology, but also among professional theologians and
philosophers, such as St. Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas.
The reverence and respect paid to these writings were, of course,
in great part due to the mistaken notion as to their authorship, a
mistake which originated in the author’s use of a pseudonym.
‘Dionysius the Presbyter, to his fellow-presbyter Timothy.’ 1 In
533 the Patriarch of Antioch, Severus, appealed to the writings of
Dionysius, in support of his Monophysite doctrine, a fact which
can be safely taken to mean that the writings were already regarded
as possessed of authority. But, even if Severus appealed to the
works in question in support of heretical doctrine, their ascription
to St. Dionysius would free them from any suspicion as to their
orthodoxy. In the Eastern Church they were widely circulated,
being commented on by Maximus the Confessor in the seventh
century and appealed to by the great Eastern Doctor, St. John
Damascene, in the eighth century, though Hypatius of Ephesus
attacked their authenticity.

In the West, Pope Martin I appealed to the writings as authentic
at the first Lateran Council in 649, and about the year 858 John
Scotus Eriugena, at the request of Charles the Bald, made a
translation from the Greek text which had been presented to
Louis the Fair in 827 by the Emperor Michael Balbus. John
Scotus, besides translating the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius,
also commented on them, thus furnishing the first of a series of
commentaries in Western Christendom. For example, Hugh of St.
Victor (d. 1141) commented on the Celestial Hierarchy , using
Eriugena's translation, while Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253) and
Albert the Great (d. 1280) also commented on the writings.

1 Exordium to the Divine Names.

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS

92

St. Thomas Aquinas composed a commentary on the Divine Names
about 1261. All these authors, as also, for example, Denis the
Carthusian, accepted the authenticity of the writings; but in time
it was bound to become clear that they embodied important
elements taken from developed neo-Platonism and that they con¬
stituted in fact an attempt to reconcile neo-Platonism and
Christianity, so that they would have to be attributed to an
author of a much later date than the historic Dionysius the
Areopagite. However, the question of the authenticity of the
writings is not the same as the question of their orthodoxy from
the Christian standpoint, and though in the seventeenth century,
when critics began to attack the authenticity of the writings, their
orthodoxy was also assailed, a recognition of their unauthentic
character did not necessarily involve an admission of their incom¬
patibility with Christian doctrine, though it was obviously no
longer possible to maintain their orthodoxy on the a priori ground
that they were composed by a personal disciple of St. Paul.
Personally I consider that the writings are orthodox in regard to
the rejection of monism; but that on the question of the Blessed
Trinity it is highly questionable at least if they can be reconciled
with orthodox Christian dogma. Whatever the intentions of the
author may have been, his words, besides being obscure, as
Aquinas admitted, are scarcely compatible, as they stand, with
the Trinitarian teaching of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. It
may be objected that insufficient attention is paid to the dogma
of the Incarnation, which is essential to Christianity, but the
author clearly maintains this doctrine, and in any case to say little
about one particular doctrine, even a central one, is not the same
as to deny it. Taking the relevant passages of the Pseudo-
Dionysius in the large, it does not seem possible to reject them as
definitely unorthodox on this point, unless one is prepared also to
reject as unorthodox, for example, the mystical doctrine of St. John
of the Cross, who is a Doctor of the Church.

But though no one now supposes that the writings are actually
the work of Dionysius the Areopagite, it has not proved possible to
discover the real author. Most probably they were composed at
the end of the fifth century, as they apparently embody ideas of
the neo-Platonist Proclus (418-85), and it has been conjectured
that the Hierotheus who figures therein was the Syrian mystic
Stephen Bar Sadaili. If the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius
actually depend to any degree on the philosophy of Proclus, they

93

cannot well have been composed before the closing decades of the
fifth century, while as they were appealed to at the Council of 533,
they can hardly have been composed much after 500. The ascrip¬
tion of about 500 as the date of their composition is, therefore,
doubtless correct, while the supposition that they originated in
Syria is reasonable. The author was a theologian, without doubt
an ecclesiastic also; but he cannot have been Severus himself, as
one or two writers have rashly supposed. In any case, though it
would be interesting to know with certainty who the author was,
it is probably unlikely that anything more than conjecture will
ever be possible, and the chief interest of the writings is due, not
to the personality of the author, but to the content and influence
of the writings, these writings being the Divine Names (De divinis
Nominibus ), the Mystical Theology ( De mystica Theologia), the
Celestial Hierarchy [De coelesti Hierarchia) and the Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy (De ecclesiastica Hierarchia ), as well as ten letters. The
works are printed in Migne's Patrologia Graeca , volumes 3-4; but
a critical edition of the text has been begun.

2. There are two ways of approaching God, who is the centre of
all speculation, a positive way (xorraipaTixT)) and a negative way
(dtTKxpomx^). In the former way or method the mind begins "with
the most universal statements, and then through intermediate
terms (proceeds) to particular titles', 1 thus beginning with ‘the
highest category'. 2 In the Divine Names the Pseudo-Dionysius
pursues this affirmative method, showing how names such as
Goodness, Life, Wisdom, Power, are applicable to God in a
transcendental manner and how they apply to creatures only in
virtue of their derivation from God and their varying degrees of
participation in those qualities which are found in God not as
inhering qualities but in substantial unity. Thus he begins with
the idea or name of goodness, which is the most universal name,
inasmuch as all things, existent or possible, share in goodness to
some degree, but which at the same time expresses the Nature of
God: ‘None is good save one, that is, God.' 3 God, as the Good, is
the overflowing source of creation and its final goal, and ‘from the
Good comes the light which is an image of Goodness, so that the
Good is described by the name of “Light", being the archetype of
that which is revealed in the image'. 4 Here the neo-Platonic
light-motive is brought in, and the Pseudo-Dionysius's dependence

1 Myst. ThtoX., 2. ‘ Ibid., 3.

3 Div . Nanus, 2, 1; St. Matt. 19. 17. 4 Div. Nanus, 4. 4.

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS

94

on neo-Platonism is particularly manifest in his language when he
goes on to speak of the Good as Beauty, as the 'super-essential
beautiful’, and uses the phrases of Plato’s Symposium, which
reappear in the Enneads of Plotinus. Again, when in chapter 13
of the Divine Names 1 the Pseudo-Dionysius speaks of 'One' as 'the
most important title of all’, he is clearly writing in dependence on
the Plotinian doctrine of the ultimate Principle as the One.

In brief, then, the affirmative method means ascribing to God
the perfections found in creatures, that is, the perfections which
are compatible with the spiritual Nature of God, though not
existing in Him in the same manner as they exist in creatures,
since in God they exist without imperfection and, in the case of
the names which are ascribed to the Divine Nature, without real
differentiation. That we start, in the affirmative way, with the
highest categories, is, says the author, 2 due to the fact that we
should start with what is most akin to God, and it is truer to
affirm that He is life and goodness than that He is air or stone.
The names 'Life' and 'Goodness’ refer to something which is
actually in God, but He is air or stone only in a metaphorical
sense or in the sense that He is the cause of these things. Yet the
Pseudo-Dionysius is careful to insist that, even if certain names
describe God better than others, they are very far from represent¬
ing an adequate knowledge and conception of God on our part, and
he expresses this conviction by speaking of God as the super¬
essential Essence, the super-essential Beautiful, and so on. He is
not simply repeating phrases from the Platonic tradition, but he is
expressing the truth that the objective reference or content of
these names as actually found in God infinitely transcends the
content of the names as experienced by us. For example, if we
ascribe intelligence to God, we do not mean to ascribe to Him
human intelligence, the only intelligence of which we have imme¬
diate experience and from which we draw the name: we mean that
God is more, infinitely more, than what we experience as intelli¬
gence, and this fact is best expressed by speaking of God as
super-intelligence or as the super-essential Intelligence.

3. The affirmative way was mainly pursued by the Pseudo-
Dionysius in the Divine Names and in his (lost) Symbolical
Theology and Outlines of Divinity, whereas the negative way, that
of the exclusion from God of the imperfections of creatures, is
characteristic of the Mystical Theology. The distinction of the two

1 13, 1. 1 Myst. Tkecl ,, 3.

95

ways was dependent on Proclus, and as developed by the Pseudo-
Dionysius it passed into Christian philosophy and theology, being
accepted by St. Thomas Aquinas, for example; but the palm is
given by the Pseudo-Dionysius to the negative way in preference
to the affirmative way. In this way the mind begins by denying
of God those things which are farthest removed from Him, e.g.
"drunkenness or fury/ 1 and proceeds upwards progressively denying
of God the attributes and qualities of creatures, until it reaches
"the super-essential Darkness'. 2 As God is utterly transcendent,
we praise Him best "by denying or removing all things that are—
just as men who, carving a statue out of marble, remove all the
impediments that hinder the clear perception of the latent image
and by this mere removal display the hidden statue itself in its
hidden beauty'. 3 The human being is inclined to form anthropo¬
morphic conceptions of the Deity, and it is necessary to strip away
these human, all-too-human conceptions by the via remotionis ; but
the Pseudo-Dionysius does not mean that from this process there
results a clear view of what God is in Himself: the comparison of
the statue must not mislead us. When the mind has stripped away
from its idea of God the human modes of thought and inadequate
conceptions of the Deity, it enters upon the "Darkness of Unknow¬
ing', 4 wherein it "renouncesall the apprehension of the understand¬
ing and is wrapped in that which is wholly intangible and invisible
. . . united ... to Him that is wholly unknowable'; 5 this is the
province of mysticism. The "Darkness of Unknowing' is not due,
however, to the unintelligibility of the Object considered in itself,
but to the finiteness of the human mind, which is blinded by excess
of light. This doctrine is doubtless partly influenced by neo-
Platonism, but it is also to be found in the writings of Christian
mystical theologians, notably St. Gregory of Nyssa, whose writings
in turn, though influenced, as far as language and presentation are
concerned, by neo-Platonic treatises, were also the expression of
personal experience.

4. The neo-Platonic influence on the Pseudo-Dionysius comes
out very strongly in his doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, for he
seems to be animated by the desire to find a One behind the
differentiation of Persons. He certainly allows that the differen¬
tiation of Persons is an eternal differentiation and that the Father,

1 Myst. Theol, 3. 1 Ibid., 2. » Ibid.

4 The author of the mediaeval mystical treatise, The Cloud of Unknowing,
doubtless wrote in immediate or mediate dependence on the writings of the
P&eudo-Dionysius. 1 Myst. Theol., 1.

THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS

96 PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

for example, is not the Son, and the Son not the Father, but so far
as one can achieve an accurate interpretation of what he says, it
appears that, in his opinion, the differentiation of Persons exists
on the plane of manifestation. The manifestation in question is an
eternal manifestation, and the differentiation an eternal differen¬
tiation within God, to be distinguished from the external mani¬
festation of God in differentiated creatures; but God in Himself,
beyond the plane of manifestation, is undifferentiated Unity. One
can, of course, attempt to justify the language of the Pseudo-
Dionysius by reference to the Nature of God which, according to
orthodox Trinitarianism, is one and undivided and with which
each of the divine Persons is substantially identical; but it would
seem most probable, not to say certain, that the author was
influenced, not only by Plotinus’s doctrine of the One, but also by
Proclus’s doctrine of the primary Principle which transcends the
attributes of Unity, Goodness, Being. The super-essential Unity
would seem to represent Proclus’s first Principle, and the distinc¬
tion of three Persons in unity of Nature would seem to represent
the neo-Platonic conception of emanation, being a stage, if an
eternal stage, in the self-manifestation or revelation of the ultimate
Godhead or Absolute. When we speak of the all-transcendent
Godhead as a Unity and a Trinity, it is not a Unity or a Trinity
such as can be known by us . . . (though) ‘we apply the titles of
"Trinity” and “Unity” to that which is beyond all titles, express¬
ing under the form of Being that which is beyond being. . . . (The
transcendent Godhead) hath no name, nor can it be grasped by
the reason. . . . Even the title of "Goodness” we do not ascribe
to it because we think such a name suitable. .. Z 1 (The Godhead)
‘is not unity or goodness, nor a Spirit, not Sonship nor Fatherhood,
. . . nor does it belong to the category of non-existence or to that
of existence.’*

It is true that such phrases could be defended, as regards the
intention of the author if not as regards his actual words, by
pointing out that it is correct to say that the term 'Father', for
instance, belongs to the first Person as Person and not to the Son,
though the divine substance exists in numerical identity and
without intrinsic real differentiation in each of the three divine
Persons, and also by allowing that the term ’Father’, as applied
to the first Person, though the best term available in human
language for the purpose, is borrowed from a human relationship,

* Div. S' amis, 13, 3. a Myst. Theol., 3.

97

and applied to God in an analogical sense, so that the content of
the idea of ‘Father' in our minds is not adequate to the reality in
God. Moreover, the Pseudo-Dionysius certainly speaks of ‘a
differentiation in the super-essential doctrine of God', referring to
the Trinity of Persons and the names applicable to each Person in
particular, 1 and explicitly denies that he is 'introducing a confu¬
sion of all distinctions in the Deity', 2 affirming that, while names
such as 'Super-vital' or 'Super-wise' belong to 'the entire Godhead',
the 'differentiated names', the names of 'Father', 'Son' and
'Spirit', ‘cannot be interchanged, nor are they held in common'. 3
Again, though there is a 'mutual abiding and indwelling' of the
divine Persons ‘in an utterly undifferentiated and transcendent
Unity', this is 'without any confusion'. 4 Nevertheless, though
much of what the Pseudo-Dionysius has to say on the subject of
the Blessed Trinity can be interpreted and defended from the
standpoint of theological orthodoxy, it is hardly possible not to
discern a strong tendency to go behind, as it were, the distinction
of Persons to a super-transcendent undifferentiated Unity. Prob¬
ably the truth of the matter is that the Pseudo-Dionysius, though
an orthodox Trinitarian in intention, was so much influenced by
the neo-Platonic philosophy that a tension between the two
elements underlies his attempt to reconcile them and makes itself
apparent in his statements.

5. In regard to the relation of the world to God, the Pseudo-
Dionysius speaks of the 'emanation' (ttp6oSo<;) of God into the
universe of things; 6 but he tries to combine the neo-Platonic
emanation theory with the Christian doctrine of creation and is
no pantheist. For example, since God bestows existence on all
things that are, He is said to become manifold through bringing
forth existent things from Himself; yet at the same time God
remains One even in the act of 'self-multiplication' and without
differentiation even in the process of emanation. 8 Proclus had
insisted that the prior Principle does not become less through the
process of emanation and the Pseudo-Dion3'sius repeats his teach¬
ing on this matter; but the influence of neo-Platonism does seem
to have meant that he did not clearly realise the relation of
creation to the divine will or the freedom of the act of creation,
for he is inclined to speak as though creation were a natural and
even a spontaneous effect of the divine goodness, even though

1 Div . Names , a, 5. * Ibid., 2. • Ibid., 3. 4 Ibid„ 4.

6 Ibid., 5, 1. • Ibid., 2, 11.

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS

98

God is distinct from the world. God exists indivisibly and without
multiplication of Himself in all individual, separate and multiple
things, and, though they participate in the goodness which springs
from Him and though they may in a certain sense be thought of
as an ‘extension’ of God, God Himself is not involved in their
multiplication: the world, in short, is an outflowing of the divine
goodness, but it is not God Himself. On this point of God’s
transcendence as well as on that of His immanence the Pseudo-
Dionysius is clear; but his fondness for depicting the world as the
outflowing of the over-brimming Goodness of God, as well as for
drawing a kind of parallel between the internal divine Processions
and the external procession in creation, lead him to speak as
though creation were a spontaneous activity of God, as if God
created by a necessity of nature.

That God is the transcendent Cause of all things, the Pseudo-
Dionysius affirms several times, explaining in addition that God
created the world through the exemplary or archetypal Ideas, the
‘preordinations’ (Ttpoopiofxoi) which exist in Him: 1 in addition, God
is the final Cause of all things, drawing all things to Himself as
the Good. 2 He is, therefore, ‘the Beginning and the End of all
things’, 8 ‘the Beginning as their Cause, the End as their Final
Purpose’. 4 There is, then, an outgoing from God and a return to
God, a process of multiplication and a process of intercommunion
and return. This idea became basic in the philosophy of the
‘Areopagite’s* translator, John Scotus EriUgena.

6. As the Pseudo-Dionysius insisted so much on the divine
goodness, it was incumbent on him to give some attention to the
existence and the consequent problem of evil, and this he gave in
the Divine Names* relying, partly at least, on Proclus's De
subsistentia mali . In the first place he insists that, although evil
would have to be referred to God as its Cause, were it something
positive, it is in fact not something positive at all: precisely as
evil it has no being. If it is objected that evil must be positive,
since it is productive, sometimes even of good, and since debau¬
chery, for example, which is the opposite of temperance, is
something evil and positive, he answers that nothing is productive
precisely as evil, but only in so far as it is good, or through the
action of good: evil as such tends only to destroy and debase.
That evil has no positive being of itself is clear from the fact that

1 Div. Names, 5, 8. * Ibid,, 4, 48. * Ibid,, 4, 35.

4 Ibid,, 5, 10. 1 4, 18 ff.

99

good and being are synonymous: everything which has being
proceeds from the Good and, as being, is good. Does this mean,
then, that evil and non-existence are precisely the same? The
Pseudo-Dionysius certainly tends to speak as if that were the
case, but his real meaning is given in his statement that ‘all
creatures in so far as they have being are good and come from the
Good, and in so far as they are deprived of the Good, neither are
they good nor have they being’. 1 In other words, evil is a depriva¬
tion or privation: it consists, not simply in non-being or in the
absence of being, but rather in the absence of a good that ought
to be present. The sinner, for instance, is good in so far as he has
being, life, existence, will; the evil consists in the deprivation of
a good that ought to be there and actually is not, in the wrong
relation of his will to the rule of morality, in the absence of this
or that virtue, etc.

It follows that no creature, considered as an existent being, can
be evil. Even the devils are good in so far as they exist, for they
hold their existence from the Good, and that existence continues
to be good: they are evil, not in virtue of their existence, their
natural constitution, but ‘only through a lack of angelic virtues’:*
‘they are called evil through the deprivation and the loss whereby
they have lapsed from their proper virtues.’ The same is true of
bad human beings, who are called evil in virtue of ‘the deficiency
of good qualities and activities and in virtue of the failure and fall
therefrom due to their own weakness’. ‘Hence evil inheres not in
the devils or in us as evil, but only as a deficiency and lack of the
perfection of our proper virtues.' 8

Physical, non-moral evil is treated in a similar manner. ‘No
natural force is evil: the evil of nature lies in a thing’s inability
to fulfil its natural functions.’ 4 Again, ‘ugliness and disease are a
deficiency in form and a want of order’, and this is not wholly
evil, ‘being rather a lesser good'. 5 Nor can matter as such be evil,
since ‘matter too has a share in order, beauty and form’: 6 matter
cannot be evil in itself, since it is produced by the Good and since
it is necessary to Nature. There is no need to have recourse to two
ultimate Principles, good and evil respectively. ‘In fine, good
comes from the one universal Cause; evil from many partial
deficiencies.’ 7

If it be said that some people desire evil, so that evil, as the

1 Div. Names, 4, 20. * Ibid., 23. * Ibid., 24. 4 Ibid., 26.

* Ibid., 27. • Ibid., 28. 7 Ibid., 30.

100

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

object of desire, must be something positive, the Pseudo-Dionysius
answers that all acts have the good as their object, but that they
may be mistaken, since the agent may err as to what is the proper
good or object of desire. In the case of sin the sinner has the
power to know the true good and the right, so that his 'mistake*
is morally attributable to him. 1 Moreover, the objection that
Providence should lead men into virtue even against their will is
foolish, for 'it is not worthy of Providence to violate nature 1 :
Providence provides for free choice and respects it.®

7. In conclusion one may remark that, although Ferdinand
Christian Baur 3 would seem to have gone too far in saying that
the Pseudo-Dionysius reduced the Christian doctrine of the
Trinity to a mere formal use of the Christian terms void of the
Christian content and that his system will not allow of a special
Incarnation, it must be admitted that there was a tension in his
thought between the neo-Platonic philosophy which he adopted
and the Christian dogmas, in which, we have no real reason to deny,
he believed. The Pseudo-Dionysius meant to harmonise the two
elements, to express Christian theology and Christian mysticism
in a neo-Platonic philosophical framework and scheme; but it can
scarcely be gainsaid that, when a clash occurred, the neo-Platonic
elements tended to prevail. A specific and peculiar Incarnation
was one of the major points in Christianity that pagan neo-
Platonists, such as Porphyry, objected to, and though, as I have
said, we cannot be justified in asserting that the Pseudo-Dionysius
denied the Incarnation, his acceptance of it does not well adapt
itself to his philosophical system, nor does it play much part in
his extant writings. One may well doubt whether his writings
would have exercised the influence they did on Christian mediaeval
thinkers, had the latter not taken the author's pseudonym at its
face value.

1 Div. Names, 4, 35. * Ibid,, 33.

■In his Christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes, Vol. 2,
p. 42.

CHAPTER X

BOETHIUS, CASSIODORUS, ISIDORE

Boethius's transmission of Aristotelian ideas—Natural theology
—Influence on Middle Ages—Cassiodorus on the seven liberal
arts and the spirituality of the soul — Isidore's Etymologies and
Sentences.

1. If one of the channels whereby the philosophy of the ancient
world was passed on to the Middle Ages was the writings of the
Pseudo-Dionysius, another channel, and in some respects a com¬
plementary one, was constituted by the writings of Boethius
(c. a.d. 480-524/5), a Christian who, after studying at Athens and
subsequently holding high magisterial office under the king of the
Ostrogoths, Theodoric, was finally executed on a charge of high
treason. I use the word 'complementary* since, while the Pseudo-
Dionysius helped to impregnate early mediaeval philosophy,
especially that of John Scotus Eriugena, with elements drawn
from neo-Platonic speculation, Boethius transmitted to the early
mediaevals a knowledge of at least the logic of Aristotle. His
works I have listed in my volume on Greek and Roman philo¬
sophy, 1 and I shall not repeat them here; suffice it to recall that
he translated into Latin the Organon of Aristotle and commented
thereon, besides commenting on the Isagoge of Porphyry and
composing original treatises on logic. In addition he wrote several
theological opuscula and while in prison his celebrated De
Consolatione Philosophiae.

It is uncertain whether or not Boethius translated, in accordance
with his original plan, other works of Aristotle besides the Organon;
but in his extant works mention is made of several salient Aristo¬
telian doctrines. The earlier mediaeval thinkers were predomi¬
nantly concerned with the discussion of the problem of universals,
taking as their starting-point certain texts of Porphyry and
Boethius, and they took little notice of the Aristotelian meta¬
physical doctrines to be found in Boethius's writings. The first
great speculative thinker of the Middle Ages, John Scotus Eriugena,
was more indebted to the Pseudo-Dionysius and other writers
dependent on neo-Platonism than to any Aristotelian influence,

1 p* 485.

IOI

102

PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

BOETHIUS

103

and it was not until the Aristotelian corpus had become available
to the West at the close of the twelfth and the beginning of the
thirteenth centuries that a synthesis on Aristotelian lines was
attempted. But that does not alter the fact that Aristotelian
doctrines of importance were incorporated in the writings of
Boethius. For instance, in his theological work against Eutyches 1
Boethius speaks clearly of 'matter', the common substrate of
bodies, which is the basis for, and renders possible, substantial
change in bodies, corporeal substances, while its absence in incor¬
poreal substances renders impossible the change of one immaterial
substance into another or the change of a corporeal substance into
an incorporeal substance or vice versa. The discussion is carried
on in a theological setting and with a theological purpose, for
Boethius wishes to show that in Christ the divine Nature and the
human Nature are distinct and both real, against Eutyches who
held that 'the union with Godhead involved the disappearance of
the human nature'; 2 but within that theological setting a philo¬
sophical discussion is included and the categories employed are
Aristotelian in character. Similarly, in the De Trinitate , 3 Boethius
speaks of the correlative principle to matter, namely form. For
instance, earth is not earth by reason of unqualified matter, but
because it is a distinctive form. (For ‘unqualified matter' Boethius
uses the Greek phrase (S^ota QXyj, taking it doubtless from Alexander
of Aphrodisias. 4 On the other hand, God, the Divine Substance, is
Form without matter and cannot be a substrate. As pure Form,
He is one.

Again, in the De Trinitate , 6 Boethius gives the ten Categories or
Praedicaynenta and goes on to explain that when we call God
'substance', we do not mean that He is substance in the same
sense in which a created thing is substance: He is 'a substance
that is super-substantial'. Similarly, if we predicate a quality of
God, such as 'just' or 'great', we do not mean that He has an
inhering quality, for 'with Him to be just and to be God are one
and the same', and while 'man is merely great, God is greatness'.
In the Contra Eutychen 6 occurs Boethius's famous definition of
person, naturae rationalis individua substantia, which was accepted
by St. Thomas and became classical in the Schools.

2. In his doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, Boethius relied largely
on St. Augustine; but in the De Consolatione Philosophiae he

1 Contra Eutychen, 6. 1 Ibid .. y * 2.'

4 Cf. the latter's De Anima, 17, 17, and his De anima ibri mantissa , 124, 7.

4 4 * ‘ 3 .

developed in outline a natural theology on Aristotelian lines, thus
implicitly distinguishing between natural theology, the highest
part of philosophy, and dogmatic theology which, in distinction
from the former, accepts its premisses from revelation. In the
third book 1 he at least mentions the rational argument for the
existence of God as unmoved Mover, while in the fifth book 2 he
treats of the apparent difficulty in reconciling human freedom with
the divine foreknowledge. 'If God beholdeth all things and cannot
be deceived, that must of necessity follow which His providence
foreseeth to be to come. Wherefore, if from eternity He doth
foreknow not only the deeds of men, but also their counsels and
wills, there can be no free-will.' 3 To answer that it is not that
future events will take place because God knows them, but rather
that God knows them because they will take place is not a very
satisfactory answer, since it implies that temporal events and the
temporal acts of creatures are the cause of the eternal foreknow¬
ledge of God. Rather should we say that God does not, strictly
speaking, 'foresee' anything: God is eternal, eternity being defined
in a famous phrase as interminabilis vitae tota simul et perjecta
possession and His knowledge is the knowledge of what is eternally
present to Him, of a never-fading instant, not a foreknowledge of
things which are future to God. Now, knowledge of a present
event does not impose necessity on the event, so that God's
knowledge of man's free acts, which from the human viewpoint
are future, though from the divine viewpoint they are present,
does not make those acts determined and necessary (in the sense
of not-free). The eternity of God's vision, ‘which is always present,
concurs with the future quality of an action'.

Boethius drew not merety on Aristotle, but also on Porphyry
and other neo-Platonic writers, as well as on Cicero, for example,
and it may be that the division of philosophy or speculative science
into Physics, Mathematics and Theology was taken directly from
the Isagoge of Porphyry; but it must be remembered that Porphyry
himself was indebted to Aristotle. In any case, in view of the
predominantly neo-Platonic character of foregoing Christian philo¬
sophy, the Aristotelian element in the thought of Boethius is more
remarkable and significant than the specifically neo-Platonic
elements. It is true that he speaks of the divine Goodness and its
overflowing in a manner reminiscent of neo-Platonism (in the De
Consol. Phil. 5 he says that 'the substance of God consisteth in

1 12. 2 2ff. 8 5, 3. *5.6. 5 3, 9 -

104 PRE-MEDIAEVAL INFLUENCES

nothing else but in goodness’) and that he sometimes uses such
terms as defluere in connection with the procession of creatures
from God; 1 but he is quite clear about the distinction between
God and the world and about the Christian doctrine of creation.
Thus he expressly affirms that God, ‘without any change, by the
exercise of a will known only to Himself, determined of Himself
to form the world and brought it into being when it was absolutely
nothing, not producing it from His own substance’, 2 denying that
the divine substance in externa dilabatur 3 or that ‘all things which
are, are God’. 4

3. Boethius, then, was of very considerable importance, for he
transmitted to the earlier Middle Ages a great part of the know¬
ledge of Aristotle then available. In addition, his application of
philosophical categories to theology helped towards the develop¬
ment of theological science, while his use of and definition of
philosophical terms was of service to both theology and philosophy.
Lastly we may mention the influence exercised by his composition
of commentaries, for this type of writing became a favourite
method of composition among the mediaevals. Even if not parti¬
cularly remarkable as an original and independent philosopher,
Boethius is yet of major significance as a transmitter and as a
philosopher who attempted to express Christian doctrine in terms
drawn, not simply from the neo-Platonists, but also from the
philosopher whose thought was to become a predominant influence
in the greatest philosophical synthesis of the Middle Ages.

4. Cassiodorus ( c. 477-c. 565/70) was a pupil of Boethius and,
like his master, worked for a time in the service of Theodoric,
King of the Ostrogoths. In his De artibus ac disciplinis liberalium
litterarum (which is the second book of his Institutiones) he treated
of the seven liberal arts, i.e. the three scientiae sermocinales
(Grammar, Dialectic and Rhetoric) and the four scientiae reales
(Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy). He did not aim
at novelty or originality of thought, but rather at giving a synopsis
of the learning he had culled from other writers, 5 and his book on
the arts, like that of Martianus Capella, was much used as a
text-book in the early Middle Ages. In his De anitna Cassiodorus
drew on St. Augustine and on Claudianus Mamertus (died c. 474)
in proving the spirituality of the human soul. While the soul
cannot be a part of God, since it is changeable and capable of

1 Cf. Lib . de hebdotn., 173. 1 De Fide Catholicu . * De Consol. Phil., 3, 12.

4 Quomodo Substantiae. I do not, of course mean to imply that there is any
doctrine of creation in Aristotle, 5 Deavima. 12.

CASSIODORUS AND ISIDORE

105

evil, it is not material and cannot be material, since it can have
what is spiritual as the object of its knowledge, and only that
which is itself spiritual can know the spiritual. As spiritual, the
soul is wholly in the whole body and wholly in each part, being
indivisible and unextended; but it operates in a given part of the
body, e.g. a sense-organ, now with greater, now with less intensity. 1

5. Cassiodorus, then, was much more a 'transmitter' than an
original thinker, and the same can be said of Isidore (died c. 636),
who became Archbishop of Seville in the Visigothic kingdom and
whose encyclopaedia, the Originunt seu Etymologiarum libri XX,
was very popular in the early Middle Ages, being included in every
monastic library of note. In this work Isidore deals with the seven
liberal arts, as also with a great number of scientific or quasi-
scientific facts and theories on subjects from Scripture and
jurisprudence and medicine to architecture, agriculture, war,
navigation, and so on. He shows his conviction about the divine
origin of sovereignty and the paramount authority of morality,
law and justice in civil society, even in regard to the conduct and
acts of the monarch. In addition to his Etymologies Isidore's Libri
tres sententiarum, a collection of theological and moral theses taken
from St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great, was also widely
used. His treatise on numbers, Liber Numerorum, which treats of
the numbers occurring in the Sacred Scriptures, is often fanciful
in the extreme in the mystical meanings which it attaches to
numbers.

1 De anima, 4.

THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

PART II

THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

CHAPTER XI

THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

Charlemagne—Alcuin and the Palatine School—Other schools,
curriculum, libraries—Rhabanus Maurus.

i. In a.d. 771 the death of Carloman left Charles (Charlemagne)
sole ruler of the Frankish dominions, and his subsequent destruc¬
tion of the Lombard kingdom and his general policy made him, by
the close of the century, the paramount sovereign in Western
Christendom. His coronation as emperor by the Pope on December
25th, 800, symbolised the success of his imperial policy and the
culmination of Frankish power. The Frankish Empire was later to
break up and the imperial crown was to pass to Germany, but for
the moment Charlemagne was undisputed master in Western
Christendom and was enabled to set on foot the work of reorganisa¬
tion and reform which had become a crying need under the
Merovingian dynasty. The emperor was by no means simply a
soldier nor even simply soldier and political organiser combined:
he had also at heart the work of raising the cultural level of his
subjects by the extension and improvement of education. For
this purpose he needed scholars and educational leaders, and since
these were not easily obtainable in the Frankish kingdom itself,
he had to introduce them from abroad. Already in the fifth
century the old culture of Romanised Gaul was fast on the wane
and in the sixth and seventh centuries it was at a very low point
indeed; what schools there were, were teaching only reading, writing
and some rudimentary knowledge of Latin, besides, of course, giving
religious instruction. It was to remedy this lamentable state of
learning and education that Charlemagne made use of foreign
scholars like Peter of Pisa and Paul the Deacon, who were both
Italians. The former appears to have been already advanced in
age when he taught Latin at the Palace School of Charlemagne,
while the latter (Paul Wamefrid, the Deacon), who had come to
France in 782, in an attempt to obtain the freedom of his brother,

I 06

107

a prisoner of war, taught Greek from 782 to 786, when he retired
to Monte Cassino, where he composed his History of the Lombards ,
Another Italian teacher at the Palatine School was Paulinus of
Aquileia, who taught from about 777 to 787.

In addition to the group of Italian grammarians one may men¬
tion two Spaniards who came to France as refugees: Agobard, who
became Archbishop of Lyons ir 816, and Theodulf, who became
Bishop of Orleans and died in 821. The latter was familiar with
the Latin classics and was himself a Latin poet. Incidentally the
oldest known mediaeval manuscript of Quintilian comes from
Theodulf s private library. From the point of view of practical
importance in the educational work of Charlemagne, however, the
Italians and the Spaniards are overshadowed by the celebrated
English scholar, Alcuin of York.

2. Alcuin (c. 730-804) received his early education at York.
Learning had been making progress in England since the year 669,
when Theodore of Tarsus, a Greek monk, arrived in the country as
Archbishop of Canterbury and, together with Abbot Hadrian,
developed the school of Canterbury and enriched its library. This
work was carried on by men like Benedict Biscop, who founded
the monasteries of Wearmouth (674) and Jarrow (682), and
Aldhelm, who, after studying under Theodore and Hadrian,
organised the monastery of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, of which he
became abbot. A more important figure in Anglo-Saxon scholar¬
ship was, however, that of the great exegete and historian Bede
{674-735), a priest and monk of Jarrow. It was due to the labours
of Bede's friend and pupil Egbert, who became Archbishop of
York shortly before Bede's death, that the school of York became
the leading cultural and educational centre of England and noted
for the richness of its library.

At York Alcuin was more particularly under the care of
Aelbert, in company with whom he travelled to Rome, meeting
Charles on the way, and when Aelbert succeeded Egbert as
Archbishop of York in 767, the chief work in the school devolved
on Alcuin. However, in 781, Alcuin was sent by Aelbert to Rome,
and in Parma he met Charles for the second time, the king
utilising the meeting to urge the English scholar to enter his
service. After receiving the permission of his own king and his
archbishop, Alcuin accepted the invitation and in 782 took over
the direction of the Palatine School, which he maintained (save
for a short visit to England in 786 and a longer one from 790 to

io8 THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

793) until 796, when he accepted the abbacy of St. Martin at
Tours, where he spent the last years of his life.

Probably about the year 777 Charlemagne wrote a letter to
Baugulf, Abbot of Fulda, 1 in which he exhorts the abbot and
community to zeal for learning, and this is merely one of the
examples of his constant solicitude in the cause of education. The
school which is, however, particularly associated with the name of
Charlemagne is the so-called Palace or Palatine School, which
though not a new creation of the emperor, owed its development
to him. Before its development under Charlemagne the school
would seem to have existed for the purpose of training the royal
princes and children of the higher nobility in the knightly way of
life; but the emperor laid emphasis on intellectual training and, as
a result of his reform, the pupils appear to have been drawn from a
wider circle than the court. French writers have commonly
claimed that the Palatine School was the origin of the University
of Paris; but it must be remembered that the emperor’s court
was at Aachen or Aix-la-Chapelle, and not at Paris, though it
would seem to have been later removed to Paris by Charles the
Bald (d. 877). However, as the University of Paris eventually
grew up out of an amalgamation of the Parisian schools, it may
be said that the Palatine School was in some sense a remote
ancestor of the University, even if the connection was somewhat
loose.

Charlemagne's main instrument in the organisation of the
Palatine School was Alcuin, from whose writings we can form some
idea of the curriculum. Alcuin was certainly not an original
thinker, and his educational works, written in dialogue form, rely
for the most part on former authors. For example, the De Rhetorica
makes use of Cicero, with additions from other authors, while in
other treatises Alcuin draws on Donatus, Priscian, Cassiodorus,
Boethius, Isidore, Bede. But, though Alcuin was unoriginal and
mediocre as a writer and can hardly be held to merit the title of
philosopher, he seems to have been eminent and successful as a
teacher, and some of the best-known figures of the Carolingian
renaissance, e.g. Rhabanus Maurus, were his pupils. When he
retired to the abbey of St. Martin at Tours, he continued this
work of teaching, as is clear from a celebrated letter to the
emperor, in which Alcuin describes how he serves to some youths

y If, however, Baugulf became abbot only in 788, the letter cannot be dated
before that year.

THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

109

the honey of the Holy Scriptures, while others he tries to intoxi¬
cate with the wine of ancient literature: some are nourished on
the apples of grammatical studies, while to others he displays the
order of the shining orbs which adorn the azure heavens. (Charle¬
magne had a considerable personal interest in astronomy and the
two men corresponded on this subject.)

At Tours Alcuin enriched the library with copies of manuscripts
which he brought from York, the best library in western Europe.
He also devoted his attention to improving the method of copying
manuscripts. In a letter of 799 1 he speaks of his daily battle with
the 'rusticity' of Tours, from which one may conclude that the
path of reform was not always an easy one. It is certain that
Alcuin also gave attention to the accurate copying and amending
of the manuscripts of the Scriptures, since he speaks explicitly of
this in letters to Charlemagne in 800 2 and 801; 3 but it is not
certain exactly what part he took in producing the revision of the
Vulgate which was ordered by the emperor, known as the ' Alcuinian
revision'. However, in view of the important position occupied by
the scholar in the implementation of the emperor's reforms, it
would seem only reasonable to suppose that he took a leading part
in this important work, which helped to arrest the progress of
manuscript corruption.

3. As regards the development of other schools (i.e. other than
the Palatine School and that of Tours), one may mention the
schools attached to the monasteries of St. Gall, Corbie and Fulda.
In the monasteries education was provided not only for those
pupils who were destined to become members of the religious order,
but also for other pupils, though it appears that two separate
schools were maintained, the schola claustri for the former class of
pupil, the schola exterior for the latter. Thus at St. Gall the schola
claustri was within the precincts of the monastery, while the schola
exterior was among the outer buildings. A capitulary of Louis the
Pious (817) ordained that the monasteries should only possess
schools for the 'oblates'; but it seems that not much notice was
taken of this ordinance.

If one sets the Palatine School in a class by itself, the other
schools fall, then, into two main classes, the episcopal or capitular
schools and the monastic schools. As for the curriculum this
consisted, apart from the study of theology and exegesis, especially
in the case of those pupils who were preparing for the priesthood
1 Ep., 4, 172. 9 Ibid., 195. * Ibid., 205.

IIO THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

or the religious life, in the study of the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric
and dialectic) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astro¬
nomy and music), comprising the seven liberal arts. There was,
however, little fresh or original work done on these subjects. Thus
grammar, which included literature, would be studied in the
writings of Priscian and Donatus, and in the text-books of Alcuin,
for example, though some commentaries were composed on the
works of the ancient grammarians, by Smaragdus, for instance,
on Donatus, and a few undistinguished grammatical works were
written, such as the Ars grammaiicae of Clemens Scotus, who began
teaching at the Palatine School in the later years of Charlemagne.
Logic too was studied in the handbooks of Alcuin or, if something
more was required, in the works of the authors on whom Alcuin
relied, e.g. Boethius. In geometry and astronomy little work was
done in the ninth century, though the theory of music was
advanced by the Musica enchtriadis, attributed to Hoger the
Abbot of Werden (d. 902). Libraries, e.g. the library of St. Gall,
received a considerable increase in the ninth century and they
included, besides the theological and religious works which com¬
posed the bulk of the items listed, legal and grammatical works,
as well as a certain number of classical authors; but it is clear that,
as far as philosophy is concerned, logic or dialectic (which, accord¬
ing to Aristotle, is a propaedeutic to philosophy, not a branch of
philosophy itself) was the only subject studied. There was only
one real speculative philosopher in the ninth century, and that
was John Scotus Eriugena. Charlemagne's renaissance aimed at
a dissemination of existing learning and what it accomplished
was indeed remarkable enough; but it did not lead to original
thought and speculation, except in the one instance of John
Scotus's system. If the Carolingian empire and civilisation had
survived and continued to flourish, a period of original work would
doubtless have eventuated at length; but actually it was destined
to be submerged in the new Dark Ages and there would be need
of another renaissance before the mediaeval period of positive,
constructive and original work could be realised.

4. Because of his importance for education in Germany one
must mention, in connection with the Carolingian renaissance,
the name of Rhabanus Maurus, who was bom about 776 and who,
after having been a pupil of Alcuin, taught at the monastery of
Fulda, where he became abbot in 822. In 847 he was appointed
Archbishop of Mainz and continued in that post until his death

THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE 111

in 856. Rhabanus concerned himself with the education of the
clergy, and for this purpose he composed his work De Institutione
Clericorunt in three books. In addition to a treatment of the
ecclesiastical grades, the liturgy, the training of the preacher and
so on, this work also deals with the seven liberal arts, but Rhabanus
showed no more originality in this work than in his De rerum
naturis , an encyclopaedia which was derived very largely from that
of Isidore. In general the author depended almost entirely on
former writers like Isidore, Bede and Augustine. In regard to
exegesis he favoured mystical and allegorical interpretations. In
other words, the Praeceptor Germaniae was a faithful product of
the Carolingian renaissance, a scholar with a real enthusiasm for
learning and a lively zeal for the intellectual formation of the
clergy, but markedly unoriginal in thought.

CHAPTER XII

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA—I
Life and works

One of the most remarkable phenomena of the ninth century is
the philosophical system of John Scotus Eriugena, which stands
out like a lofty rock in the midst of a plain. We have seen that
there was a lively educational activity in the course of the century
and, considering the standard, materials and opportunities of the
time, a growing interest in learning and scholarship; but there was
little original speculation. This is a fact which need cause no
surprise in regard to a period of conservation and dissemination;
but it is all the more remarkable that an isolated case of original
speculation on the grand scale should suddenly occur, without
warning and indeed without any immediate continuation. If John
Scotus had confined himself to speculation on one or two parti¬
cular points, we might not have been so surprised, but in point of
fact he produced a system, the first great system of the Middle
Ages. It may, of course, be said that he relied largely on the
former speculations of St. Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, and
particularly on the work of the Pseudo-Dionysius, and this is quite
true; but one can scarcely avoid the impression, when reading his
De Divisione Naturae, that one is watching a vigorous, profound
and original mind struggling with the categories and modes of
thought and ideas which former writers had bequeathed to him
as the material on which and with which he had to work, moulding
them into a system and impregnating the whole with an atmo¬
sphere, a colour and a tone peculiar to himself. It is indeed
interesting, if not altogether profitable, to wonder on what lines
the thought of John Scotus would have evolved, had he lived at
a later and richer period of philosophical development: as it is,
one is confronted with a mind of great power, hampered by the
limitations of his time and by the poverty of the material at his
disposal. Moreover, while it is, of course, a mistake to interpret
the system of John Scotus in terms of a much later philosophy,
itself conditioned by the previous development of thought and the
historical circumstances of the time, for example, the Hegelian
system, one is not thereby debarred from endeavouring to discern

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA 113

the peculiar characteristics of John's thought, which, to a certain
extent, altered the meaning of the ideas and categories he
borrowed from previous writers.

Of the life of John Scotus we do not know very much. He was
bom in Ireland about 810 and studied in an Irish monastery.
‘Eriugena' means 'belonging to the people of Erin', while the
term 'Scotus' need not be taken as indicating any near connection
with Scotland, since in the ninth century Ireland was known as
Scotia Maior and the Irish as Scoti . It was doubtless in an Irish
monastery that he acquired his knowledge of the Greek language.
In the ninth century the study of Greek was, speaking generally,
peculiar to the Irish monasteries. Bede, it is true, attained to a
working knowledge of the language, but neither Alcuin nor
Rhabanus Maurus knew any Greek worth speaking of. The former
used Greek phrases in his commentaries but, though he must have
known at least the Greek alphabet, these Graeca were taken over
from the writings of other authors, and, in general, it has been
shown that the occurrence of Greek phrases in a manuscript points
to Irish authorship or to some association with or influence from
an Irish writer. The attention given to Greek at St. Gall, for
instance, was due originally to Irish monks. However, even if the
presence of Graeca in a manuscript indicates an Irish influence,
direct or indirect, and even if the study of Greek in the ninth
century was characteristic of the Irish monasteries, it would be
extremely rash to conclude that all Irish writers who used Greek
phrases, still less that all Irish monks, studied and knew Greek in
any real sense. The use of a Greek phrase is, by itself, no more a
proof of a real knowledge of the Greek language than the use of
a phrase like fait accompli is, by itself, a proof of a real knowledge
of French, and the number of even Irish monks who knew much
more than the rudiments of Greek was doubtless small. John
Scotus Eriugena at any rate was among their number, as is shown
clearly by the fact that he was able, when in France, to translate
from the Greek writings of St. Gregory of Nyssa and the works of
the Pseudo-Dionysius, and even attempted the composition of
Greek verse. It would be absurd to take John’s knowledge of the
language as typical of the century or even as typical of Irish
monasteries: the truth of the matter is that he was, for the ninth
century, an outstanding Greek scholar.

Sometime in the forties John Scotus crossed over to France. In
any case he was at the court of Charles the Bald by 850 and

112

ii 4 THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

occupied a prominent position in the Palatine School. There is
no sure evidence that he was ever ordained priest; but, whether
layman or not, he was induced by Hincmar, Bishop of Rheims, to
intervene in a theological dispute concerning predestination and
the result was his work De praedestinatione which pleased neither
side and brought its author under suspicion of heresy. John
thereupon turned his attention to philosophy and in 858 he under¬
took, at the request of Charles the Bald, the translation of the
works of the Pseudo-Dionysius from Greek into Latin. These
works had been presented to Louis the Fair in 827 by the Emperor
Michael Balbus, but they had never been adequately translated.
John, then, undertook not only to translate them, but also to
comment on them, and in fact he published commentaries on the
Pseudo-Dionysius’s writings, except on the Mystical Theology,
though Pope Nicholas I made it a subject of complaint that the
publication had taken place without any reference to him. John
Scotus also published translations of the Ambigua of Maximus the
Confessor and the De Hominis Opificio of St. Gregory of Nyssa,
and it appears that later he commented on St. John’s Gospel and
on Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae and theological
opuscula.

The work for which John Scotus is celebrated, however, is the
De Divisione Naturae, which he composed probably between 862
and 866. This work consists of five books and is written in dialogue
form, a form of composition which was popular at the time and
which was much used by Alcuin and others. It is not a very easy
work to interpret, since the author’s attempt to express Christian
teaching and the philosophical doctrine of Augustine on lines
suggested by the Pseudo-Dionysius and the neo-Platonic philo¬
sophy leaves room for dispute whether John Scotus was an
orthodox Christian or very nearly, if not quite, a pantheist. Those
scholars who maintain his orthodox intentions can point to such
statements as that ‘the authority of the Sacred Scriptures must
be followed in all things’, 1 while those who maintain that he
regarded philosophy as superior to theology and anticipated the
Hegelian rationalism can point, for example, to the statement*
that 'every authority’ (e.g. that of the Fathers) 'which is not
confirmed by true reason seems to be weak, whereas true reason
does not need to be supported by any authority’. However, one
cannot profitably discuss the question of interpretation until the
* De Div. Nat., l, 64. * Ibid., 1, 69.

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA n 5

doctrine of the De Divisione Naturae has first been exposed, though
it is as well to indicate beforehand the fact that there is a dispute
about its correct interpretation,

John Scotus seems not to have outlived Charles the Bald, who
died in 877. There are indeed various stories about his later life
which are given by chroniclers, e.g. that he became Abbot of
Athelney and was murdered by the monks, but there seems to be
little evidence for the truth of such stories, and probably they are
either legends or are due to a confusion with some other John.

CHAPTER XIII

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA—II

Nature—God and creation—Knowledge of God by affirmativt
and negative ways ; inapplicability of categories to God — How,
then , can God be said to have made the world?—Divine Ideas in
the Word—Creatures as participations and theophanies; creatures
are in God—Maris nature—Return of ail things to God —
Eternal punishment in light of cosmic return—Interpretation of
John Scotus* s system .

I. At the beginning of the first book of the De Divisione Naturae
John Scotus explains through the lips of the Master, in a dialogue
which takes place between a Magister and a Discipulus , what he
means by 'Nature 1 , namely the totality of the things that are and
the things that are not, and he gives various ways of making this
general division. For example, things which are perceived by
the senses or are penetrable by the intellect are the things that are,
while the objects that transcend the power of the intellect are the
things that are not. Again, things which lie hid in their scmina,
which are not actualised, 'are not', while the things which have
developed out of their seeds 'are*. Or again, the objects which are
objects of reason alone may be said to be the things which are,
while the objects which are material, subject to space and time
and to dissolution, may be called the things which are not.
Human nature, too, considered as alienated from God by sin may
be said 'not to be', whereas when it is reconciled with God by
grace, it begins to be.

The term 'Nature', then, means for John Scotus Eriugena, not
only the natural world, but also God and the supernatural sphere:
it denotes all Reality. 1 When, therefore, he asserts* that nature
is divided into four species, namely Nature which creates and is
not created, Nature which is created and creates, Nature which is
created and does not create, and Nature which neither creates nor
is created, thus apparently making God and creatures species of
Nature, it might well seem that he is asserting a monistic doctrine,
and indeed, if these words be taken in their literal significance, we
should have to conclude that he was. Nevertheless at the begin¬
ning of Book 2, in a long and somewhat complicated period, he

*Cf. 3. i. *i,i.

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA 117

makes it clear that it is not his intention to assert that creatures
are actually a part of God or that God is a genus of which creatures
are a species, although he retains the fourfold division of 'Nature'
and says that God and creatures may be looked at as forming
together a universitas, a 'universe' or totality. The conclusion is
warranted that John Scotus did not intend to assert a doctrine
of pantheistic monism or to deny the distinction between God and
creatures, though his philosophic explanation or rationalisation
of the egress of creatures from God and their return to God
may, taken by itself, imply pantheism and a denial of the
distinction.

2. 'Nature which creates and is not created' is, of course, God
Himself, who is the cause of all things but is Himself without cause.
He is the beginning or first principle, since all creatures proceed
from Him, the 'middle' {medium)] since it is in Him and through
Him that creatures subsist and move; and the end or final cause,
since He is the term of the creature's movement of self-develop¬
ment and perfection. 1 He is the first cause, which brought
creatures into existence from a state of non-existence, out of
nothing [de nihilo ) 2 This doctrine of God is in accordance with
Christian theology and contains a clear enunciation of the divine
transcendence and self-existence; but John Scotus goes on to say
that God may be said to be created in creatures, to be made in
the things which He makes, to begin to be in the things which
begin to be. It would, however, be an anachronism to suppose
that he is asserting an evolutionary pantheism, and maintaining
that nature, in the ordinary sense, is God-in-His-otherness, for he
proceeds to explain 3 that when he says that God is made in
creatures, he means that God 'appears' or manifests Himself in
creatures, that creatures are a theophany. Some of the illustra¬
tions he uses are indeed somewhat unfortunate from the orthodox
standpoint, as when he says that, just as the human intellect,
when it proceeds into actuality in the sense of actually thinking,
may be said to be made in its thoughts, so God may be said to be
made in the creatures which proceed from Him, an illustration
which would seem to imply that creatures are an actualisation of
God; but, whatever illustrations John Scotus may use and however
much he is influenced by the philosophical tradition which derived
from neo-Platonism, it seems clear that his intention at least was
to conserve the real distinction between God and creatures and

ii6

1 1. 11.

1 1. 12.

» Ibid .

n8 THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

that God, in relation to creation, is Natura quae creat et non
creaiur. On the truth of this formula be is emphatic.

3. In attaining to some knowledge of the Natura quae creat et
non creatur one can use the affirmative (xaraipaTixifj) and negative
(inoipixTod)) ways. When using the negative method one denies
that the divine essence or substance is any of those things, ‘which
are’, i.e. which can be understood by us: when using the affirmative
method one predicates of God those things 'which are’, in the
sense that the cause is manifested in the effect. 1 This twofold
method of theology was borrowed by John Scot us from the
Pseudo-Dionysius, as he himself plainly affirms, 2 and it was from
the same writer that he took the idea that God should not be
called, e.g. Truth or Wisdom or Essence, but rather super-Truth,
super-Wisdom and super-Essence, since no names borrowed from
creatures can be applied to God in their strict and proper sense:
they are applied to God metaphorice or translative. Moreover, in a
succeeding passage 3 John Scotus indulges in a most ingenious
piece of dialectic in order to show that the use of the affirmative
method does not contradict the doctrine of the ineffable and
incomprehensible character of the Godhead and that the negative
method is the fundamental one. For example, by the affirmative
method we say that God is Wisdom, while by the negative way
we say that God is not wisdom, and this appears at first sight to
be a contradiction; but in reality, when we say that God is
Wisdom, we are using the word ‘wisdom’ in a ‘metaphorical’ sense
(an 'analogical' sense, the Scholastic would say), while when we say
that God is not wisdom, we are using the word in its proper and
primary sense (i.e. in the sense of human wisdom, the only wisdom
of which we have direct experience). The contradiction is, there¬
fore, not real, but only verbal, and it is reconciled by calling God
super-Wisdom. Now, as far as words go, to predicate super-
Wisdom of God would seem to be an act of mind pursuing the
affirmative way, but if we examine the matter more closely we
shall see that, although the phrase belongs formally and verbally
to the via affirmativa, the mind has no content, no idea, corre¬
sponding to the word ‘super’, so that in reality the phrase belongs
to the via negativa, and the addition of the word ‘super’ to the
word ‘wisdom’ is equivalent to a negation. Verbally there is no
negation in the predicate ‘super-Wisdom’, but in regard to the
mind’s content there is a negation. The via negativa is thus
1, 13. * 1, 14. * Ibid.

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA 119

fundamental, and as we do not pretend to define what the ‘super’
is in itself, the ineffability and incomprehensibility of the Godhead
is unimpaired. Of course, if we say that the use of the word ‘super’
is simply and solely equivalent to a negation, the obvious objection
arises (and would be raised by a Logical Positivist) that there is
no meaning in our minds when we use the phrase, that the phrase
is non-significant. John Scotus, however, though he does not
discuss this real difficulty, provides one answer when he indicates
that when we say that God is, for example, super-Wisdom, we
mean that He is more than wisdom. If this is so, then the addition
of ‘super’ cannot be simply equivalent to a negation, since we can
say that ‘a stone is not wise’ and we certainly mean something
different when we say ‘God is not wise' and ‘a stone is not wise’:
we mean that if ‘wise’ be taken to refer to human wisdom, then
God is not wise, in the sense that He is more than human wisdom,
whereas a stone is not wise, in the sense that the stone is less than
wise. This thought would seem to be indicated by John Scotus’s
concluding example. ‘(God) is essence’, an affirmation; ‘He is not
essence’, a negation; 'He is super-essential’, an affirmation and
negation at the same time. 1 The thesis and the antithesis are thus
reconciled dialectically in the synthesis.

If, then, God cannot be properly termed wise, for this term is
not predicated of purely material things, much less can we predi¬
cate of Him- any of the ten categories of Aristotle, which are found
in purely material objects. For example, quantity can certainly
not be predicated of God, as quantity implies dimensions, and God
has no dimensions and does not occupy space. 2 Properly speaking,
God is not even substance or oucta, for He is infinitely more than
substance, though He can be called substance translative, inasmuch
as He is the creator of all substances. The categories are founded
on and apply to created things and are strictly inapplicable to
God: nor is the predicate ‘God’ a genus or a species or an accident.
Thus God transcends the praedicamenta and the praedicabilia, and
on this matter John Scotus is clearly no monist but he emphasises
the divine transcendence in the way that the Pseudo-Dionysius
had done. The theology of the Blessed Trinity certainly teaches
us that relation is found in God, but it does not follow that the
relations in God fall under the category of relation. The word is
used metaphorice or translative and, as applied to the divine
Persons, it is not used in its proper and intelligible sense: the
* 1, 14. *15.

1

120

THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

121

divine Telations’ are more than relations. In fine, though we can
learn from creatures that God is, we cannot learn what He is. We
learn that He is more than substance, more than wisdom and so
on; but what that more is, what substance or wisdom mean as
applied to God, we cannot know, for He transcends every intellect,
whether of angels or of men.

4. But though the doctrine of the inapplicability of the cate¬
gories to God would seem to place the transcendence of God and
the clear distinction between Him and creatures beyond all doubt,
consideration of the categories of facere and pati seems to lead
John Scotus to a very different conclusion. In a most ingenious
discussion 1 he shows, what is obvious enough, that pati cannot be
predicated of God and at the same time argues that both facere
and pati involve motion. Is it possible to attribute motion to
God? No, it is not. Then neither can making be attributed to God.
But, how in this case, are we to explain the Scriptural doctrine
that God made all things? In the first place, we cannot suppose
that God existed before He made the world, for, if that were so,
God would not only be in time but also His making would be an
accident accruing to Him, and both suppositions are impossible.
God’s making, therefore, must be co-eternal with Himself. In the
second place, even if the making is eternal and identical with God,
and not an accident of God, we cannot attribute motion to God,
and motion is involved in the category of making. What does it
mean, then, to say that God made all things? ’When we hear that
God makes all things, we should understand nothing else but that
God is in all things, i.e. is the essence of all things. For He alone
truly is, and everything which is truly said to be in those things
which are, is God alone.' 2 Such a statement would seem to come
very near, to put it mildly, to pantheism, to the doctrine of
Spinoza, and it is small wonder that John Scotus prefaces his
discussion with some remarks on the relation of reason to authority 3
in which he says that reason is prior to authority and that true
authority is simply ’the truth found by the power of reason and
handed on in writing by the Fathers for the use of posterity'. The
conclusion is that the words, expressions and statements of
Scripture, however suited for the uneducated, have to be rationally
interpreted by those capable of doing so. In other words, John
Scotus does not think of himself as unorthodox or intend to be
unorthodox, but his philosophic interpretation of Scripture

1 1, 70-2. 1 1. 72. * 1,69.

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA

sometimes seems equivalent to its rationalisation and to the setting
of reason above authority and faith. However, this point of view
should not be overstressed. For example, in spite of the pantheistic
passage quoted he goes on to reaffirm creation out of nothing, and
it is clear that when he refuses to say that God makes or made the
world, he is not intending to deny creation but rather to deny of
God making in the only sense in which we understand making,
namely as an accident, as falling under a particular category.
God's existence and essence and His act of making are ontologi-
cally one and the same, 1 and all the predicates we apply to God
really signify the one incomprehensible super-Essence. 2

The truth of the matter seems to be that John Scotus, while
maintaining the distinction between God and creatures, wishes at
the same time to maintain the conception of God as the one all-
comprehensive Reality, at least when God is regarded altiori
theoria . Thus he points out 3 that the first and fourth divisions of
Nature (Natura quae creat et non crcatur and Natura quae nec creat
nec creatur) are verified only in God, as first efficient cause and
final cause, while the second and third divisions (Natura quae et
creatur et creat and Natura quae creatur et non creat) are verified in
creatures alone; but he goes on to say 4 that inasmuch as every
creature is a participation of Him who alone exists of Himself, all
Nature may be reduced to the one Principle, and Creator and
creature may be regarded as one.

5. The second main division of Nature (Natura quae et creatur
et creat) refers to the ’primordial causes’, called by the Greeks
7rpo)T6-nj7Ta t I8£au, etc. 5 These primordial causes or praedestina -
Hones are the exemplary causes of created species and exist in the
Word of God: they are in fact the divine ideas, the prototypes of
all created essences. How, then, can they be said to be ’created?
John Scotus means that the eternal generation of the Word or
Son involves the eternal constitution of the archetypal ideas or
exemplary causes in the Word. The generation of the Word is not
a temporal but an eternal process, and so is the constitution of the
praedestinationes : the priority of the Word, considered abstractly,
to the archetypes is a logical and not a temporal priority. The
emergence of these archetypes is thus part of the eternal procession
of the Word by ’generation’, and it is in this sense only that they
are said to be created. 6 However, the logical priority of the Word
to the archetypes and the dependence of the archetypes on the

1 1 , 77 . 1 1 , 75 . 8 2 , 2 . 9 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 9 2, 20 .

122 THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

Word mean that, although there never was a time when the Word
was without the archetypes, they are not omnino coaeternat
[causae) with the Word. 1

In what sense, then, can the primordial causes be said to create?
If one were to press statements such as this, that the tcputAtutcov
is diffused ( diffunditur) through all things giving them essence, or
again that it penetrates all the things which it has made, 2 one
would naturally incline to a pantheistic interpretation; yet John
Scotus repeats 3 that the Holy Trinity ‘made out of nothing all
things that it made’, which would imply that the prototypes are
causes only in the sense of exemplary causes. Nothing is created
except that which was eternally pre-ordained, and these eternal
praeordinationes or 0cta are the prototypes. All creatures

‘participate’ in the archetypes, e.g. human wisdom in the Wisdom-
in-itself. 4 He drew copiously on the Pseudo-Dionysius and
Maximus for his doctrine and it would seem that he intended to
reconcile his philosophic speculation with orthodox Christian
theology; but his language rather gives the impression that he is
straining at the leash and that his thought, in spite of his orthodox
intentions, tends towards a form of philosophic pantheism. That
his intentions were orthodox seems clear enough from the frequent
cauielae he gives.

Is there actually and ontologically a plurality of praedestina-
tiones in the Word? John Scotus answers in the negative. 5 Num¬
bers proceed from the monas or unit, and in their procession they
are multiplied and receive an order; but, considered in their origin,
in the monad, they do not form a plurality but are undivided from
one another. So the primordial causes, as existing in the Word,
are one and not really distinct, though in their effects, which are
an ordered plurality, they are multiple. The monad does not
become less or undergo change through the derivation of numbers,
nor does the primordial cause undergo change or diminution
through the derivation of its effects, even though, from another
point of view, they are contained within it. On this point John
Scotus adheres to the neo-Platonic standpoint, according to which
the principle undergoes no change or diminution through the
emanation of the effect, and it seems that his philosophy suffers
from the same tension that is observable in neo-Platonism, i.e.
between a theory of emanation and a refusal to allow that emana¬
tion or procession impairs the integrity of the principle.

1 2, 21. * 2, 2J. J 2, 24, COl. 580. 4 2, 36. * Cf. 3, I.

JOHN SCOTUS ER 1 UGENA 123

6 . Naiura quae creatur et non creat consists of creatures, exterior
to God, forming the world of nature in the narrow sense, which
was made by God out of nothing. John Scotus calls these creatures
'participations’, and asserts that they participate in the primordial
causes, as the latter participate immediately in God. 1 The primor¬
dial causes, therefore, look upwards towards the ultimate Principle
and downwards towards their multiple effects, a doctrine which
obviously smacks of the neo-Platonic emanation theory. ‘Partici¬
pation’ means, however, derivation from, and, interpreting the
Greek utroxh or imtwoIb as meaning (iCTa£x 0U<Ja or
(■ post-essentia or secunda essentia), he says that participation is
nothing else than the derivation of a second essence from a higher
essence. 2 Just as the water rises in a fountain and is poured out
into the river-bed, so the divine goodness, essence, life, etc., which
are in the Fount of all things, flow out first of all into the primordial
causes and cause them to be, and then proceed through the primor¬
dial causes into their effects. 3 This is clearly an emanation
metaphor, and John Scotus concludes that God is everything
which truly is, since He makes all things and is made in all things,
‘as Saint Dionysius the Areopagite says’. 4 The divine goodness is
progressively diffused through the universe of creation, in such a
way that it ‘makes all things, and is made in all things, and is all
things’. 8 This sounds as if it were a purely pantheistic doctrine of
the emanation type; but John Scotus equally maintains that the
divine goodness created all things out of nothing, and he explains
that ex nihilo does not imply the pre-existence of any material,
whether formed or unformed, which could be called nihil : rather
does nihil mean the negation and absence of all essence or sub¬
stance, and indeed of all things which have been created. The
Creator did not make the world ex aliquo, but rather de omnino
nihilo .* Here again, then, John Scotus tries to combine the
Christian doctrine of creation and of the relation of creatures to
God with the neo-Platonic philosophy of emanation, and it is this
attempt at combination which is the reason for diversity of inter¬
pretation, according as one regards the one or other element in his
« thought as the more fundamental.

This tension became even clearer from the following considera¬
tion. Creatures constitute, not only a ‘participation’ of the divine
goodness, but also the divine self-manifestation or theophany. All
objects of intellection or sensation are ‘the appearance of the

1 3, 3. * Ibid. a 3, 4 4 Ibid, 1 Ibid, * 3. 5 -

THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

124

non-appearing, the manifestation of the hidden, the affirmation
of the negated (a reference to the via negativa), the comprehension
of the incomprehensible, the speaking of the ineffable, the approach
of the unapproachable, the understanding of the unintelligible,
the body of the incorporeal, the essence of the super-essential, the
form of the formless’, etc. 1 Just as the human mind, itself invisible,
becomes visible or manifest in words and writing and gestures, so
the invisible and incomprehensible God reveals Himself in nature,
which is, therefore, a true theophany. Now, if creation is a
theophany, a revelation of the divine goodness, which is itself
incomprehensible, invisible and hidden, does not this suggest a
new interpretation of the nihilum from which creation proceeds?
Accordingly John Scotus explains in a later passage 2 that nihilum
means 'the ineffable and incomprehensible and inaccessible bright¬
ness of the divine goodness’, for what is incomprehensible may,
per excellentiam, be called 'nothing', so that when God begins to
appear in His theophanies, He may be said to proceed ex nihilo in
aliquid. The divine goodness considered in itself may be said to
be omnino nihil , though in creation it comes to be, ‘since it is the
essence of the whole universe’. It would indeed be an anachronism
to ascribe to John Scotus a doctrine of Absolutism and to conclude
that he meant that God, considered in Himself apart from the
‘theophanies’, is a logical abstraction; but it does seem that two
distinct lines of thought are present in his teaching about creation,
namely the Christian doctrine of free creation ‘in time' and the
neo-Platonic doctrine of a necessary diffusion of the divine good¬
ness by way of 'emanation'. Probably he intended to maintain
the Christian doctrine, but at the same time considered that he
was giving a legitimate philosophic explanation of it. Such an
attitude would, of course, be facilitated by the fact that there was
at the time no clear distinction between theology and philosophy
and their respective spheres, with the result that a thinker could,
without being what we would nowadays call a rationalist, accept
a revealed dogma like the Trinity, and then proceed in all good
faith to 'explain' or deduce it in such a way that the explanation
practically changed the dogma into something else. If we want to
call John Scotus an Hegelian before Hegel, we must remember
that it is extremely unlikely that he realised what he was doing.

The precise relation of the created nature to God in the philo¬
sophy of John Scotus is not an easy matter to determine. That
1 3 * 4 - * 3 . 19 .

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA 125

the world is eternal in one sense, namely in its rationes, in the
primordial causes, in God’s will to create, occasions no difficulty,
and if the author, when he maintains that the world is both eternal
and created, meant simply that as foreseen and willed by God it
is eternal, while as made it is temporal and outside God, there
would be no cause for surprise; but he maintains that the world is
not outside God and that it is both eternal and created within
God. 1 As regards the first point, that the world is not extra Deum t
one must understand it in terms of the theory of participation and
‘assumption’ ( est igitur participate divinae essentiae assumptio ). a
As creatures are derived from God and owe all the reality they
possess to God, apart from God they are nothing, so that in this
sense it can be said that there is nothing outside God: if the divine
activity were withdrawn, creatures would cease to be. But we
must go further. 3 God saw from eternity all that He willed to
create. Now, if He saw creatures from all eternity, He also made
them from all eternity, since vision and operation are one in God.
Moreover, as He saw creatures in Himself, He made them in
Himself. We must conclude, therefore, that God and creatures
are not distinct, but one and the same ( unum et id ipsum), the
creature subsisting in God and God being created in the creature
‘in a wonderful and ineffable manner’. God, then, ‘contains and
comprehends the nature of all sensible things in Himself, not in
the sense that He contains within Himself anything beside Him¬
self, but in the sense that He is substantially all that He contains,
the substance of all visible things being created in Him’. 4 It is at
this point that John Scotus gives his interpretation of the ‘nothing’
out of which creatures proceed as the divine goodness, 6 and he
concludes that God is everything, that from the super-essentiality
of His nature (in qua dicitur non esse) He is created by Himself in
the primordial causes and then in the effects of the primordial
causes, in the theophanies. 8 Finally, at the term of the natural
order, God draws all things back into Himself, into the divine
Nature from which they proceeded, thus being first and final
Cause, omnia in omnibus .

The objection may be raised that first of all John Scotus says
that God is Natura quae creat et non creatur and then goes on to
identify with God the Natura quae creatur et non creat : how can
the two positions be reconciled? If we regard the divine Nature as

1 See the long discussion in 3, 5 ft.
4 3. 18 * 3 , 19.

* 3 . 9 -
* 3 .

* 3 . l 7 -

THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

ij6

it is in itself, we see that it is without cause, fivapxoc and dbal-noc, 1
but at the same time it is the cause of all creatures: it is, then,
rightly to be called ‘Nature which creates and is not created’.
From another point of view, looking on God as final Cause, as
term of the rhythm of the cosmic process, He may be called ‘Nature
which neither creates nor is created’. On the other hand, considered
as issuing out from the hidden depths of His nature and beginning
‘to appear’, He appears first of all in the primordial causes or
rationes aeternae. These are identical with the Word, which con¬
tains them, so that, in ‘creating’ the primordial causes or principles
of essences, God appears to Himself, becomes self-conscious, and
creates Himself, i.e. as generating the Word and the rationes
contained in the Word. God is thus ‘Nature which both creates
and is created'. In the second stage of the divine procession or
theophany God comes to be in the effects of the primordial causes,
and so is ‘Nature which is created’, while, since these effects
have a term and include together all created effects, so that
there are no further effects, He is also ‘Nature which does not
create’. 2

7. John Scotus’s allegorical explanation of the Biblical account
of the six days of creation, 3 which he explains in terms of his own
philosophy, brings him, in the fourth book, to his doctrine of man.
We can say of man that he is an animal, while we can also say that
he is not an animal, 4 since while he shares with the animals the
functions of nutrition, sensation, etc., he has also the faculty of
reason, which is peculiar to him and which elevates him above all
the animals. Yet there are not two souls in man, an animal soul
and a rational soul: there is a rational soul which is simple and is
wholly present in every part of the body, performing its various
functions. John Scotus is therefore willing to accept the definition
of man as animal rationale , understanding by animal the genus
and by rationale the specific difference. On the other hand the
human soul is made in the image of God, is like to God, and this
likeness to God expresses the true substance and essence of man.
As it exists in any actual man it is an effect: as it exists in God it is
a primordial cause, though these are but two ways of looking at
the same thing. 5 From this point of view man can be defined as
Notio quaedam intellectualis in mente divina aeternaliter facta * Thai
this substance of man, the likeness to God or participation in God,
exists, can be known by the human mind, just as the human mind

1 3 . 2 3 2 Ibid. 3 3. 24 fif. * A, 5- i 4. 7. * Ibid,

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA 127

can know that God exists, but what its substance is the human
mind cannot know, just as it cannot know what God is. While,
then, from one point of view man is definable, from another point
of view he is undefinable, since the mind or reason of man is made
in the image of God and the image, like God Himself, exceeds our
power of understanding. In this discussion of the definition of
man we can discern Aristotelian elements and also neo-Platonic
and Christian elements, which give rise to different attitudes and
views on the matter.

John Scotus emphasises the fact that man is the microcosm of
creation, since he sums up in himself the material world and the
spiritual world, sharing with the plants the powers of growth and
nutrition, with the animals the powers of sensation and emotional
reaction, with the angels the power of understanding: he is in fact
what Poseidonius called the bond or teapot, the link between the
material and spiritual, the visible and invisible creation. From
this point of view one can say that every genus of animal is in man
rather than that man is in the genus animal. 1

8. The fourth stage of the process of Nature is that of Natura
quae nec creat nec creatur , namely of God as the term and end of
all things, God all in all. This stage is that of the return to God,
the corresponding movement to the procession from God, for there
is a rhythm in the life of Nature and, as the world of creatures
proceeded forth from the primordial causes, so will it return into
those causes. ‘For the end of the whole movement is its beginning,
since it is terminated by no other end than by its principle, from
which its movement begins and to which it constantly desires to
return, that it may attain rest therein. And this is to be under¬
stood not only of the parts of the sensible world, but also of the
whole world. Its end is its beginning, which it desires, and on
finding which it will cease to be, not by the perishing of its
substance, but by its return to the ideas (rationes), from which it
proceeds.’ 2 The process is thus a cosmic process and affects all
creation, though mutable and unspiritualised matter which John
Scotus, following St. Gregory of Nyssa, represented as a complex
of accidents and as appearance, 3 will perish.

Besides the cosmical process of creation as a whole, there is the
specifically Christian theme (though John Scotus not infrequently
does a little ‘rationalising’) of the return of man to God. Fallen
man is led back to God by the incarnate Logos, who has assumed

1 4 . 8 - 2 5 . 3 - 3 I* 34 -

128 THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

human nature and redeemed all men in that human nature, and
John Scotus emphasises the solidarity of mankind both in Adam's
fall and in Christ’s resurrection. Christ brings mankind back to
God, though not all are united to God in the same degree, for,
though He redeemed all human nature, 'some He restores to the
former state of human nature, while others He deifies beyond
human nature’, yet in no one except Himself is human nature
substantially united with the Godhead. 1 John Scotus thus affirms
the unique character of the Incarnation and of the relation of
Christ’s human nature to the Deity, though, when he gives the
stages of the return of human nature to God, another—and less
orthodox—point of view seems to show itself. The^e stages are: 2
(i) the dissolution of the human body into the four elements of the
sensible world; (2) the resurrection of the body; (3) the change of
body into spirit; (4) the return of human nature in its totality into
the eternal and unchangeable primordial causes; and (5) the return
of nature and the primordial causes to God. ‘For God will be all
in all, where nothing will exist but God alone.’ Yet if at first sight
this latter viewpoint seems quite inconsistent with orthodox
theology and especially with the unique position of Christ, John
Scotus clearly did not mean to assert a real pantheistic absorption
in God, since he goes on to state that he does not mean to imply
a perishing of individual substance but its elevation. He uses the
illustration of the iron made white-hot in the fire and observes
that, though the iron may be said to be transmuted into fire, the
substance of the iron remains. Thus when, for example, he says
that the human body is changed into spirit, what he refers to is
the glorification or 'spiritualisation’ of the human body, not to a
kind of transubstantiation. Moreover, it must be remembered that
John Scotus expressly states that he is basing his teaching on the
doctrine of St. Gregory of Nyssa and his commentator Maximus,
and his teaching must accordingly be understood in the light of
that statement. Lest it be thought, he says, that he is entirely
neglecting the Latins in favour of the Greeks, he adds the testi¬
mony of St. Ambrose. Though the heavens and the earth will
perish and pass away (their perishing being interpreted as a
reditus in causas, which means the cessation of the generated
material world), that does not mean that the individual souls of
men, in their reditus in causas, will cease to exist: their deificatio
no more means their substantial absorption in God than the

5. 25- 1 5. 8.

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA 129

permeation of the air by light means its destruction or transub¬
stantiation. John Scotus is quite clear on that point.

The fact is that in the case of the cosmic 'return’, as elsewhere,
John Scotus tries to combine the teaching of the Scriptures and
the Fathers with philosophical speculation of the neo-Platonic
tradition or rather to express the Christian Weltanschauung in
terms of such speculation. As the Christian wisdom is looked at
as a totality, no clear distinction being made between revealed
theology and philosophy, the application of John’s speculative
method necessarily means a de facto rationalisation on occasion,
however orthodox his intentions may have been. For instance,
though he insists on the fact that the return to God does not spell
the annihilation or the complete absorption of the individual
human being and though he expresses himself perfectly clearly on
this point, yet his attitude towards matter as the term of the
descending divine procession leads him to say 1 that before the
Fall human beings were not sexually differentiated and that after
the resurrection they will return to this state (in support of which
views he appeals to St. Paul, St. Gregory and Maximus). Man,
had he not fallen, would have been sexually undifferentiated and
in the primordial cause human nature is sexually undifferentiated:
the reditus in causam involves, therefore, a return to the state of
human nature in causa and a liberation from the state consequent
on the Fall. The reditus in causam, however, is a stage in the
cosmic process of Nature, so that John Scotus has to maintain
that the resurrection of the body takes place by nature, natura et
non per gratiam , 2 though he appeals for support in this to St.
Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus and St. Epiphanius. On the other
hand, it is certain, theologically at least, that something is attri¬
butable to grace, and John Scotus accordingly attributes the
deificatio, which is not attained by all human beings, to the free
gift and disposition of God, to grace. This is an example of his
attempt to combine revelation with the exigencies of his specula¬
tive system, an attempt for which, of course, he undoubtedly
received support from the writings of earlier Christian authors.
On the one hand John Scotus, owing to his Christian intentions,
must attribute the resurrection in at least one aspect to God's free
grace operating through Christ, while on the other hand, his
philosophical doctrine of the return of all things to God means
that he must make the resurrection in some degree a natural and
1 5* 20 - * 5» 23.

1

i 3 o THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

necessary process, not only because human nature itself has to
return into its cause, but because all creation has to return into
its cause and endure eternally, and this it does effectively as being
contained in man, the microcosm. 1

9. But if there is to take place a cosmic return to God in and
through human nature, so that God, as St. Paul says, will be 'all
in all', how is it possible to maintain the theologically orthodox
doctrine of the eternal punishment of the damned? The Scriptures
teach that the fallen angels and human beings who are finally
impenitent will be eternally punished, while on the other hand
reason teaches that evil cannot be without end, since God will be
all in all and evil is diametrically opposed to God, who is good¬
ness. 2 How can one reconcile these two positions without rejecting
either authority or reason? John Scotus's answer 3 is ingenious and
affords a good example of his ‘rationalisation'. Nothing that God
has made can be evil: the substances or natures, therefore, of the
devils and evil men must be good. On this point he quotes the
Pseudo-Dionysius. The demons and evil men will never, then,
suffer annihilation. All that God has made will return to God and
all 'nature' will be contained in God, human nature included, so
that it is impossible that human nature should undergo eternal
punishment. What, then, of the punishments described in the
Scriptures? In the first place they cannot be corporeal or material
in character, while in the second place they can only affect what
God has not made and what, in this sense, is outside 'nature'. Now,
God did not make the perverse will of demons or evil men, and it
is this which will be punished. But, if all things are to return to
God and God will be all in all, how can punishment be contained
in God? Moreover, if the malice has disappeared and all impiety,
what is there left to punish? The punishment must consist in the
eternal prevention by God of the will's tendency to fix itself on
the images, conserved in the memory, of the objects desired on
earth. God, then, will be all in all, and all evil will have perished,
but the wicked will be eternally punished. 11 is obvious, however, that
from the viewpoint of orthodox theology ‘wicked' and 'punished'
must be placed in inverted commas, since John Scot us has ration¬
alised the Scriptural teaching in order to satisfy the exigencies of
his philosophical system. 4 All human nature, all men without
exception, will rise with spiritualised bodies and the full possession
of natural goods, though only the elect will enjoy 'deification'. 5

1 5 » 25. *5.26-7. *5,27-8. * 5 , 29 - 3 ^. 1 5 - 36.

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA 131

The conclusion is, then, that the divine nature is the end and
term of all things, which will return into their raiiones aeternae and
there abide, 'ceasing to be called by the name of creature', for
God will be all in all, 'and every creature will be cast into the
shade, i.e. changed into God, as the stars at the rising of the sun'. 1

10. Although the De Divisione Naturae did not have the effect
that its outstanding quality as a systematic metaphysic deserved,
it was utilised by a succession of mediaeval writers from Remigius
of Auxerre to Amalric of Bene, including Berengarius, Anselm of
Laon, William of Malmesbury, who praised the work, though he
disapproved of John Scotus's predilection for Greek authors, and
Honorius of Autun, while the Pseudo-Avicenna borrowed from
the work in his De Intelligentiis, written in the middle or later part
of the twelfth century. However, the fact that the Albigensians
appealed to the book, while Amalric of Bene (end of twelfth
century) used the doctrine of John Scotus in a pantheistic sense,
led to its condemnation in 1225 by Pope Honorius III, who
ordered that the work should be burnt, though the order was by
no means always fulfilled. This condemnation of the De Divisione
Naturae and the interpretation which led to the condemnation
naturally raises the question, whether John Scotus was or was not
a pantheist.

That John Scotus was in intention orthodox has already been
given as my opinion; but there are several points that might be
mentioned by way of summary argument in support of this state¬
ment. First of all, he draws copiously on the writings and ideas
of authors whom he certainly regarded as orthodox and with
whose ideas he felt his own thought to be in harmony. For example,
he makes extensive use of St. Gregory of Nyssa, of the Pseudo-
Dionysius (whom he regarded as St. Dionysius the Areopagite),
and, not to appear to neglect the Latins, quotes St. Augustine and
St. Ambrose in favour of his.views. Moreover, John Scotus con¬
sidered his speculation to be founded on the Scriptures themselves.
For instance, the theory of the fourth stage of Nature, Deus omnia
in omnibus , has its foundation in the words of St. Paul: 2 ‘And
when all things shall be subdued unto him, then the Son also
himself shall be subject unto him that put all things under him,
that God may be all in all,' while the doctrine of the body 'becom¬
ing spirit' at the resurrection is based on the Pauline statement
that the body is sown in corruption and raised in incorruption,
1 3, 23. 1 x Cor., xj. 28.

THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

*33

132

that the risen body is a ‘spiritual* body. Again, John Scotus draws
from the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel the conception of the
Logos by whom all things were made, in his account of creation,
while the theme of deificatio was common in the writings of the
Fathers.

But, even if John Scotus wrote as though his system had a
foundation in Scripture and Tradition, might it not be that he
was consciously rationalising the text of Scripture, that he had,
to put it crudely, ‘his tongue in his cheek*? Does he not say 1 that
authority proceeds from true reason and reason in no way from
authority; that every authority which is not approved by true
reason seems to be weak; that true reason does not need the
confirmation of any authority and that authority is nothing else
but the truth found by the power of reason and handed on by the
Fathers in their writings for the use of posterity; and does not this
indicate that he set no store by authority? It seems to me that,
to judge by the context, when John Scotus speaks about 'authority*
here, he is not referring to the words of Scripture but to the
teaching of the Fathers and to the interpretation they had put on
the words of the Scriptures. Of course, although it is true that
authority must rest on reason, in the sense that the authority
must have good credentials, the statement of John Scotus to the
effect that authority is nothing else than the truth found by
reason and handed on by the Fathers is, as it stands, unacceptable
from the theological standpoint (I mean, if compared with the
orthodox doctrine of Tradition); but what John Scotus apparently
means is, not that the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, is
simply a truth found by reason and not revealed, but that the
attempted 'explanation' or development of the dogma by this or
that Father is simply the result of the Father’s rational effort and
is not final. He does not mean to suggest that the bare dogma, as
found in Scripture and preserved by, for example, St. Augustine,
can legitimately be questioned, but rather that the intellectual
development of the dogma given by St. Augustine, though worthy
of respect, is the work of reason and cannot be placed on the same
level as the dogma itself. His position is, therefore, this. If St.
Paul says that God will be omnia in omnibus, this is a revealed
truth, but when it comes to deciding what St. Paul meant by this
statement and how precisely it is to be understood, reason is the
final court of appeal. I am not trying to suggest that this attitude

1 x, 69.

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA

is theologically acceptable: my point is rather that, whether his
actual view is acceptable or not, John Scotus is not questioning
a dogma as such or claiming a right to deny it, but is claiming the
right to interpret it, and that his ‘rationalisation’ consists in this.
He has not got his tongue in his cheek when he appeals to Scripture,
for he sincerely believed that the data of revelation have to be
interpreted rationally and, as we would say, philosophically. This
is partly due to the fact that he makes no clear-cut distinction
between theology and philosophy. His system presupposes the
'Christian wisdom' (including truths discoverable by reason alone,
e.g. God's existence, and truths which are revealed, but not dis¬
coverable by reason alone, e.g. the Trinity of Persons in the
Godhead) and is a speculative attempt to exhibit the Christian
wisdom as an organic and interconnected whole, without making
any clear distinction between the spheres of philosophy and reve¬
lation, and this attempt inevitably involves some rationalisation.
I repeat that I am not trying to defend John Scotus’s rationalisa¬
tion, but to explain his attitude, and my thesis is that it is a
mistake to interpret his 'rationalisation' as if it post-dated the
clear division of philosophy and theology: his attitude is not
essentially different from that of later mediaeval theologians who
attempted to prove the Trinity rationibus necessariis . If John
Scotus had consciously been a 'philosopher’ in the narrow sense
and nothing more, we would have had to call him a rationalist in
the modern sense; but he was both theologian and philosopher in
combination (in confusion, if one prefers), and his rationalisation
was, psychologically , quite compatible with a belief in revelation.
Therefore, when he says 1 that he does not want to seem to resist
the Apostle or the testimony summae ac sanctae aucloritatis , he is
quite sincere. Indeed his true attitude is admirably indicated by
his statement 2 that 'it is not for us to judge the opinions of the
holy Fathers, but to accept them with piety and reverence, though
we are not prohibited from choosing (among their opinions) that
which appears to reason to agree better with the divine words'.
John Scotus accepts, for instance, the doctrine of eternal punish¬
ment, because it is revealed, and he accepts it sincerely; but he
does not consider that this prevents him from attempting to
explain the doctrine in such a way that it will fit in with the rest
of his system, a system which he regards as fundamentally based
on revelation.

1 x. 7.

1 2, 16.

134 THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

The discussion may seem to have strayed from the point at
issue; but this is not so in reality. For instance, revelation,
Christian dogma, teaches clearly that the world was made by God
from nothing and that creatures are not God. Now John Scotus’
general system demands that creatures should return to God and
that God should be all in all. Regarding both truths as founded on
divine teaching, John Scotus has to reconcile them rationally, in
such a way that the reditus in Deum does not lead to the conclusion
to which it might seem to lead, namely pantheistic absorption,
and that the presentation of the distinction between God and
creatures does not contradict the Pauline statement that God will
be all in all. The process of reconciliation may involve him in
what the Thomist theologians would call ‘rationalisation’, but his
cautelae, e.g. that creatures return to God and ‘become’ God, not
ita ut non sint but 'ut melius sint’ , are not sops thrown to the
theologians with the writer’s tongue in his cheek, but they are
sincere expressions of John Scotus’ desire to preserve Christian
teaching or what he regards, rightly or wrongly, as Christian
teaching.

That a tension develops between the Christian and neo-Platonic
elements in John Scotus’ thought has already been pointed out,
but it is as well to emphasise it again, as it has a bearing on the
question of his ‘rationalism’. In accordance with the neo-Platonic
tradition inherited through the Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scotus
maintained 1 that God in Himself, Natura quae creat et non creatur,
is impenetrable to Himself, unknown to Himself, as being infinite
and super-essential, and that He becomes luminous to Himself
only in His theophanies. This is, of course, an echo of the neo-
Platonic doctrine that the One, the ultimate Godhead, is beyond
thought, beyond self-consciousness, since thought andself-conscious-
ness involve a duality of subject and object. Now, that God in
Himself is incomprehensible to the created mind is certainly a
Christian tenet, but that He is not self-luminous is not the teaching
of Christianity. John Scotus, therefore, has to reconcile the two
positions somehow, if he wishes to retain them both, and he
attempts to do so by making the first ‘theophany’ the emergence
of the Logos containing the primordial causes, so that in and
through the Logos God becomes (though not temporally) self-
conscious, appearing to Himself. The Logos thus corresponds to
the neo-Platonic Nous, and a rationalisation arises out of the

* E.g. 3. *3-

JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA 135

desire to preserve both the Christian doctrine and the principles
of what John Scotus regards as true philosophy. The desire to
preserve Christian doctrine is sincere enough, but a tension be¬
tween the two elements is inevitable. If one takes a particular set
of isolated statements of John Scotus one would have to say that
he was either a pantheist or a theist. For example, the statement
that the distinction between the second and third stages of Nature
is due only to the forms of human reasoning 1 is in itself clearly
pantheistic, while the statement that the substantial distinction
between God and creatures is always preserved is clearly theistic.
It might seem that we should opt for one or the other set in an
unqualified manner, and it is this attitude which has given rise to
the notion that John Scotus was a conscious pantheist who made
verbal concessions to orthodoxy with his tongue in his cheek. But
if one realises that he was a sincere Christian, who yet attempted
to reconcile Christian teaching with a predominantly neo-Platonic
philosophy or rather to express the Christian wisdom in the only
framework of thought which was then at hand, which happened to
be predominantly neo-Platonic, one should also be able to realise
that, in spite of the tension involved and the tendency to rationa¬
lise Christian dogma, as far as the subjective standpoint of the
philosopher was concerned a satisfactory reconciliation was
effected. This does not, of course, alter the fact that not a few
statements, if taken in isolation, affirm a pantheistic doctrine and
that other statements are irreconcilable with orthodox theological
teaching on such points as eternal punishment, and it was in view
of such statements that the De Divisione Naturae was subsequently
condemned by ecclesiastical authority. However, whether ortho¬
dox or not, the work bears testimony to a powerful and acute
mind, the mind of a speculative philosopher who stands head and
shoulders above any other thinker of his day.

1 2 . 2 .

THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS

PART III

THE TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

CHAPTER XIV

THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS

Situation following death of Charlemagne—Origin of discussion
in texts of Porphyry and Boethius—Importance of the problem —
Exaggerated realism—Roscelins ' nominalism '— St. Peter Da¬
mian's altitude to dialectic—William of Champeaux — Abelard —
Gilbert de la Porrie and John of Salisbury—Hugh of St. Victor
—SL Thomas Aquinas.

i. One might have expected that the revival of letters and
learning under Charlemagne would lead to a gradual and progres¬
sive development of philosophy and (the retention of what was
already possessed having been provided for) that thinkers would
be able to extend knowledge and pursue a more speculative path,
especially as western Europe had been already supplied with an
example of philosophical speculation and systematising by John
Scotus Eriugena. In point of fact, however, this was not the case,
since historical factors outside the sphere of philosophy plunged
the empire of Charlemagne into a new Dark Age, the Dark Ages
of the tenth century, and belied the promise of the Carolingian
renaissance.

Cultural progress depended to some extent on the maintenance
of the tendency to centralisation which had been apparent during
the reign of Charlemagne; but after his death the empire was
divided and the division of the empire among the descendants of
Charlemagne was accompanied by the growth of feudalism, that
is, by decentralisation. As nobles could be rewarded practically
only through gifts of land, they tended, through the acquisition
of land, to become more and more independent of the monarchy:
their interests diverged or conflicted. Churchmen of the higher
grades became feudal lords, monastic life was degraded (for
example, through the common practice of the appointment of lay-
abbots), bishoprics were used as means of honouring or rewarding
servants of the king. The Papacy, which might have attempted
to check and to remedy the worsening conditions in France, was

136

137

itself at a very low ebb of spiritual and moral prestige, and, since
education and learning were mainly in the hands of monks and
ecclesiastics, the inevitable result of the break-up of the empire of
Charlemagne was the decay of scholarship and educational activity.
Reform did not begin until the establishment of Cluny in 910, and
the influence of the Cluniac reform made itself felt only gradually,
of course. St. Dunstan, who had been in the Cluniac monastery
of Ghent, introduced the ideals of Cluny into England.

In addition to the internal factors which prevented the fruit of
the Carolingian renaissance coming to maturity (such as the
political disintegration which led in the tenth century to the
transference of the imperial crown from France to Germany, the
decay of monastic and ecclesiastical life, and the degradation of
the Papacy), there were also operative such external factors as
the attacks of the Norsemen in the ninth and tenth centuries, who
destroyed centres of wealth and culture and checked the develop¬
ment of civilisation, as also the attacks of the Saracens and the
Mongols. Internal decay, combined with external dangers and
attacks, rendered cultural progress impossible. To conserve, or
to attempt to do so, was the only practicable course: progress in
scholarship and philosophy lay again in the future. Such interest
in philosophy as existed, centred largely round dialectical ques¬
tions, and particularly round the problem of universals, the
starting-point for the discussion being supplied by certain texts of
Porphyry and Boethius.

2. Boethius, in his commentary on the Isagoge of Porphyry, 1
quotes Porphyry as remarking that at present he refuses to state
whether genera and species are subsistent entities or whether they
consist in concepts alone; if subsisting, whether they are material
or immaterial and, further, whether they are separate from
sensible objects or not, on the ground that such exalted matters
cannot be treated in an introduction. Boethius himself, however,
goes on to treat of the matter, first of all remarking on the
difficulty of the question and the need of care in considering it
and then pointing out that there are two ways in which an idea
may be so formed that its content is not found in extramental
objects precisely as it exists in the idea. For example, one may
join together arbitrarily man and horse, to form the idea of a
centaur, joining together objects which nature does not suffer to
be joined together, and such arbitrarily constructed ideas are

1 P.L., 64, col. 82-6.

i 3 8 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

'false'. On the other hand, if we form the idea of a line, i.e. a
mere line as considered by the geometer, then, although it is true
that no mere line exists by itself in extramental reality, the idea
is not 'false', since bodies involve lines and all we have done is to
isolate the line and consider it in abstraction. Composition (as in
the composition of horse and man to form the centaur) produces
a false idea, whereas abstraction produces an idea which is true,
even though the thing conceived does not exist extramentally in
a state of abstraction or separation.

Now, the ideas of genera and species are ideas of the latter type,
formed by abstraction. The likeness of humanity is abstracted
from individual men, and this likeness, considered by the mind,
is the idea of the species, while the idea of the genus is formed by
considering the likeness of diverse species. Consequently, ‘genera
and species are in individuals, but, as thought, are universals’.
They 'subsist in sensible things, but are understood without
bodies'. Extramentally there is only one subject for both genus
and species, i.e. the individual, but that no more prevents their
being considered separately than the fact that it is the same line
which is both convex and concave prevents our having different
ideas of the convex and concave and defining them differently.

Boethius thus afforded the material for an Aristotelian solution
of the problem, though he goes on to say that he has not thought
it proper to decide between Plato and Aristotle, but that he has
been following out the opinions of Aristotle since his book is
concerned with the Categories of which Aristotle was the author.
But, though Boethius afforded material for a solution of the
problem of universals on the lines of moderate realism and though
his quotations from Porphyry and his comments on them started
the discussion of the problem in the early Middle Ages, the first
solution of the mediaevals was not on the lines suggested by
Boethius but was a rather simpliste form of extreme realism.

3. The thoughtless might suppose that in occupying themselves
with this problem the early mediaevals were canvassing a useless
topic or indulging in a profitless dialectic juggling; but a short
reflection should be sufficient to show the importance of the
problem, at least if its implications are considered.

Although what we see and touch are particular things, when we
think these things we cannot help using general ideas and words,
as when we say, 'This particular object which I see is a tree, an
elm to be precise.' Such a judgement affirms of a particular object

THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS

139

that it is of a certain kind, that it belongs to the genus tree and
the species elm; but it is clear that there may be many other
objects besides the actual one perceived to which the same terms
may be applied, which may be covered by the same ideas. In
other words, objects outside the mind are individual, whereas
concepts are general, universal in character, in the sense that they
apply indifferently to a multitude of individuals. But, if extra¬
mental objects are particular and human concepts universal, it is
clearly of importance to discover the relation holding between
them. If the fact that subsistent objects are individual and
concepts general means that universal concepts have no founda¬
tion in extramental reality, if the universality of concepts means
that they are mere ideas, then a rift between thought and objects
is created and our knowledge, so far as it is expressed in universal
concepts and judgements, is of doubtful validity at the very least.
The scientist expresses his knowledge in abstract and universal
terms (for example, he does not make a statement about this
particular electron, but about electrons in general), and if these
terms have no foundation in extramental reality, his science is an
arbitrary construction, which has no relation to reality. In so far
indeed as human judgements are of a universal character or
involve universal concepts, as in the statement that this rose is
red, the problem would extend to human knowledge in general,
and if the question as to the existence of an extramental founda¬
tion of a universal concept is answered in the negative, scepticism
would result.

The problem may be raised in various ways, and, historically
speaking, it has taken various forms at various times. It may be
raised in this form, for instance. 'What, if anything, in extra¬
mental reality corresponds to the universal concepts in the mind?'
This may be called the ontological approach, and it was under this
form that the early mediaevals discussed the matter. Or one may
ask how our universal concepts are formed. This is the psycho¬
logical approach and the emphasis is different from that in the
first approach, though the two lines of approach are closely
connected and one can scarcely treat the ontological question
without answering in some way the psychological question as well.
Then again, if one supposes a conceptualist solution, that universal
concepts are simply conceptual constructions, one may ask how it
is that scientific knowledge, which for all practical purposes is a
fact, is possible. But, however the problem be raised and whatever

I 4 0 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

form it takes, it is of fundamental importance. Perhaps one of the
factors which may give the impression that the mediaevals were
discussing a comparatively unimportant question is this, that they
practically confined their attention to genera and species in the
category of substance. Not that the problem, even in this
restricted form, is unimportant, but if the problem is raised in
regard to the other categories as well, its implications in regard to
at least the greater part of human knowledge becomes more
evident. It becomes clear that the problem is ultimately the
epistemological problem of the relation of thought to reality.

4. The first solution to the problem given by the mediaevals
was that known as ‘Exaggerated Realism*. That it was chrono¬
logically the first solution is borne out by the fact that the
opponents of this view were for some time known as the moderni,
while Abelard, for instance, refers to it as the antiqua doctrina.
According to this view, our generic and specific concepts correspond
to a reality existing extramentally in objects, a subsistent reality
in which individuals share. Thus the concept Man or Humanity
reflects a reality, humanity or the substance of human nature,
which exists extramentally in the same way as it is thought, that
is, as a unitary substance in which all men share. If for Plato the
concept Man reflects the ideal of human nature subsisting apart
from and ‘outside* individual men, an ideal which individual men
embody or ‘imitate* to a greater or less extent, the mediaeval
realist believed that the concept reflects a unitary substance
existing extramentally, in which men participate or of which they
are accidental modifications. Such a view is, of course, extremely
naive, and indicates a complete misunderstanding of Boethius*s
treatment of the question, since it supposes that unless the object
reflected by the concept exists extramentally in exactly the same
way that it exists intramentally, the concept is purely subjective.
In other words, it supposes that the only way of saving the
objectivity of our knowledge is to maintain a naive and exact
correspondence between thought and things.

Realism is already implied in the teaching of e.g. Fredegisius
who succeeded Alcuin as Abbot of St. Martin's Abbey at Tours
and maintained that every name or term supposes a corresponding
positive reality (e.g. Darkness or Nothing). It is also implied in
the teaching of John Scotus Eriugena. We find a statement of the
doctrine in the teaching of Remigius of Auxerre (c. 841-908), who
held that the species is a partitio substantialis of the genus and

THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS 141

that the species, e.g. Man, is the substantial unity of many indi¬
viduals {Homo est multorum hominum substantialis unitas), A
statement of this kind, if understood as meaning that the plurality
of individual men have a common substance which is numerically
one, has as its natural consequence the conclusion that individual
men differ only accidentally from one another, and Odo ofTournai
(d. 1113) of the Cathedral School of Tournai (who is also called
Odo of Cambrai, from the fact that he became Bishop of Cambrai)
did not hesitate to draw this conclusion, maintaining that when a
child comes into being God produces a new property of an already
existing substance, not a new substance. Logically this ultra-
realism should result in sheer monism. For example, we have the
concepts of substance and of being, and, on the principles of
ultra-realism, it would follow that all objects to which we apply
the term substance are modifications of one substance and, more
comprehensively, that all beings are modifications of one Being.
It is probable that this attitude weighed with John Scotus
Eriugena, in so far as the latter can justly be called a monist.

As Professor Gilson and others have pointed out, those who
maintained ultra-realism in the early Middle Ages were philo¬
sophising as logicians, in the sense that they assumed that the
logical and real orders are exactly parallel and that because the
meaning of, for example, ‘man* in the statements ‘Plato is a man'
and ‘Aristotle is a man* is the same, there is a substantial identity
in the real order between Plato and Aristotle. But it would, I
think, be a mistake to suppose that the ultra-realists were in¬
fluenced simply by logical considerations: they were influenced
also by theological considerations. This is clear in the case of Odo
of Tournai, who used ultra-realism in order to explain the trans¬
mission of original sin. If one understands by original sin a
positive infection of the human soul, one is at once faced by an
apparent dilemma: either one has to say that God creates out of
nothing a new human substance each time a child comes into being,
with the consequence that God is responsible for the infection, or
one has to deny that God creates the individual soul. What Odo
of Tournai maintained was a form of traducianism, i.e. that the
human nature or substance of Adam, infected by original sin, is
handed on at generation and that what God creates is simply a
new property of an already existing substance.

It is not always easy to assess the precise significance to be
attached to the words of the early mediaevals, as we cannot always

142 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

tell with certainty if a writer fully recognised the implications of
his words or if he was making an emphatic point in controversy,
perhaps as an argumentum ad hominem, without consciously wish¬
ing his statement to be understood according to its literal meaning.
Thus when Roscelin said that the three Persons of the Blessed
Trinity might well be called three gods, if usage permitted, on the
ground that every existing being is an individual, St. Anselm
(1033-1109) asked how he who does not understand how a
multitude of men are specifically one man, can understand how
several Persons, each of whom is perfect God, are one God. 1 On
the strength of this statement St. Anselm has been called an
ultra- or exaggerated realist, and indeed the natural interpretation
of the statement, in the light of the theological dogma involved, is
that, just as there is but one Substance or Nature in the Godhead,
so there is but one substance or nature (i.e. numerically one) in all
men. Yet it might be that St. Anselm was arguing ad hominem
and that his question, as intended, amounts to asking how a man
who does not realise the specific unity of men (supposing, rightly
or wrongly, that Roscelin denied all reality to the universal) can
possibly grasp the far greater union of the divine Persons in the
one Nature, a Nature which is numerically one. St, Anselm may
have been an ultra-realist, but the second interpretation of his
question is supported by the fact that he obviously understood
Roscelin to hold that universal have no reality but are mere
flatus vocis and by the fact that in the Dialogus de Grammatico 2 he
distinguished between primary and secondary substances, men¬
tioning Aristotle by name.

5. If the implied principle of the ultra-realists was the exact
correspondence of thought and extramental reality, the principle
of the adversaries of ultra-realism was that only individuals exist.
Thus Eric (Heiricus) of Auxerre (841-76) observed that if anyone
tries to maintain that white or black exist absolutely and without
a substance in which they adhere, he will be unable to point to any
corresponding reality but will have to refer to a white man or a
black horse. General names have no general or universal objects
corresponding to them; their only objects are individuals. How,
then, do universal concepts arise and what is their function and
their relation to reality? Neither the understanding nor the
memory can grasp all individuals, and so the mind gathers
together ( coarctat ) the multitude of individuals and forms the idea

1 De fide Trin., 2. 1 10.

THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS 143

of the species, e.g. man, horse, lion. But the species of animals or
plants are themselves too many to be comprehended by the mind
at once, and it gathers the species together to form the genus.
There are, however, many genera and the mind takes a further
step in the process of coarctatio, forming the still wider and more
extensive concept of usia (ouota). Now, at first sight this seems
to be a nominalist position and to remind one of the shorthand
note theory of J. S. Mill; but, in the absence of more extensive
evidence, it would be rash to affirm that this actually was Eric’s
consciously held view. Probably he merely meant to affirm
emphatically that only individuals exist, that is, to deny ultra¬
realism, and at the same time to give attention to the psycholo¬
gical explanation of our universal concepts. We have not sufficient
evidence to warrant an affirmation that he denied any real
foundation to the universal concept.

A similar difficulty of interpretation arises in regard to the
teaching of Roscelin (c. 1050-1120), who, after studying at
Soissons and Rheims, taught at Compiegne, his birthplace, Loches,
Besan^on and Tours. His writings have been lost, except for a
letter to Abelard, and we have to rely on the testimony of other
writers like St. Anselm, Abelard and John of Salisbury. These
writers make it perfectly clear indeed that Roscelin was an oppo¬
nent of ultra-realism and that he maintained that only individuals
exist, but his positive teaching is not so clear. According to St.
Anselm, 1 Roscelin held that the universal is a mere word (flatus
vocis) and accordingly he is numbered by St. Anselm among the
contemporary heretics in dialectic. Anselm goes on to remark that
these people think that colour is nothing else but body and the
wisdom of man nothing else but the soul, and the chief fault of the
'dialectical heretics’ he finds in the fact that their reason is so
bound up with their imagination that they cannot free themselves
from images and contemplate abstract and purely intelligible
objects. 2 Now, that Roscelin said that universals are words,
general words, we cannot call in question, since St. Anselm’s
testimony is quite clear; but it is difficult to assess precisely what
he meant by this. If we interpret St. Anselm as more or less an
Aristotelian, i.e. as no ultra-realist, then we should have to say
that he understood Roscelin’s teaching as involving a denial of
any kind of objectivity to the universal; whereas if we interpret
Anselm as an ultra-realist we can then suppose that Roscelin was

1 De fide Trin., 2; P.L. 158, 265A. 2 De fide Trin., 2; P.L. 158, 265B.

144 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

merely denying ultra-realism in a very emphatic way. It is, of
course, undeniable that the statement that the universal is a mere
flatus vocis is, taken literally, a denial not only of ultra-realism
and moderate realism but even of conceptualism and the presence
of universal concepts in the mind; but we have not sufficient
evidence to say what Roscelin held about the concept as such, if
indeed he gave any attention to the matter: it might be that, in
his determination to deny ultra-realism, the formal subsistence of
universals, he simply opposed the universale in voce to the subsis¬
ted universal, meaning that only individuals exist and that the
universal does not, as such, exist extramentally, but without
meaning to say anything about the universale in mente, which he
may have taken for granted or never have thought about. Thus
it is clear from some remarks of Abelard in his letter on Roscelin
to the Bishop of Paris 1 and in his De divisione et definitione that,
according to Roscelin, a part is a mere word, in the sense that
when we say that a whole substance consists of parts, the idea of
a whole consisting of parts is a 'mere word’, since the objective
reality is a plurality of individual things or substances; but it
would be rash to conclude from this that Roscelin, if called upon
to define his position, would have been prepared to maintain that
we have no idea of a whole consisting of parts. May he not have
meant simply that our idea of a whole consisting of parts is purely
subjective and that the only objective reality is a multiplicity of
individual substances? (Similarly he appears to have denied the
logical unity of the syllogism and to have dissolved it into separate
propositions.) According to Abelard, Roscelin’s assertion that the
ideas of whole and part are mere words is on a par with his
assertion that species are mere words; and if the above interpreca¬
tion is tenable in regard to the whole-part relation, we could apply
it also to his doctrine of genera and species and say that his
identification of them with words is an affirmation of their sub¬
jectivity rather than a denial that there is such a thing as a
general idea.

One has, of course, no axe to grind in interpreting Roscelin. He
may indeed have been a nominalist in a naive and complete sense,
and I am certainly not prepared to say that he was not a nominalist
pure and simple. John of Salisbury seems to have understood him
in this sense, for he says that ‘some have the idea that the words
themselves are the genera and species, although this view was long

1 P.L., 178, 358B.

THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS 145

ago rejected and has disappeared with its author’, 1 an observation
which must refer to Roscelin, since the same author says in his
Metalogicus 2 that the view which identifies species and genera
with words practically disappeared with Roscelin. But though
Roscelin may have been a pure nominalist and though the frag¬
mentary testimony as to his teaching, if taken literally, certainly
supports this interpretation, still it does not seem possible to assert
without doubt that he paid any attention to the question whether
we have ideas of genera or species or not, still less that he denied it,
even if his actual words imply this. All we are entitled to say with
certainty is that, whether nominalist or conceptualist, Roscelin
was an avowed anti-realist.

6. It has been remarked earlier that Roscelin proposed a form
of ‘Tritheism’ which excited the enmity of St. Anselm and which
led to his being condemned and having to retract his theory at a
Council at Soissoiis in 1092. It was the fact of such incursions into
theology on the part of the dialecticians which was largely respon¬
sible for the hostility shown towards them by men like St. Peter
Damian, The peripatetic dialecticians or sophists, laymen who
came from Italy and travelled from one centre of study to another,
men like Anselmus Peripateticus of Parma, who attempted to
ridicule the principle of contradiction, naturally put dialectic in a
rather poor light through their verbal sophistry and jugglery; but
as long as they restricted themselves to verbal disputes, they were
probably little more than an irritating nuisance: it was when they
applied their dialectic to theology and fell into heresy, that they
aroused the enmity of theologians. Thus Berengarius of Tours
(c. 1000-88), maintaining that accidents cannot exist without
their supporting substance, denied the doctrine of Transubstantia-
tion. Berengarius was a monk and not a Peripateticus, but his
spirit of disregard of authority seems to have been characteristic
of a group of dialecticians in the eleventh century, and it was mainly
this sort of attitude which led St. Peter Damian to pronounce
dialectics a superfluity or Otloh of St. Emmeran ( c . 1010-70) to
say that certain dialecticians put more faith in Boethius than in the
Scriptures.

St. Peter Damian (1007-72) had little sympathy with the
liberal arts (they are useless, he said) or with dialectics, since they
are not concerned with God or the salvation of the soul, though, as
theologian and writer, the Saint had naturally to make use of
1 Polycraticus, 7, 12; P.L., 199, 665A. 8 2, 17; P.L., 199, 874C.

i 4 6 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

dialectic himself. He was, however, convinced that dialectic is a
very inferior pursuit and that its use in theology is purely sub¬
sidiary and subordinate, not merely because dogmas are revealed
truths but also in the sense that even the ultimate principles of
reason may fail to apply in theology. For instance, God, according
to St. Peter Damian, is not only arbiter of moral values and the
moral law (he would have had some sympathy with Kierkegaard's
reflections on Abraham), but can also bring it about that an
historical event should be 'undone', should not have occurred, and
if this seems to go counter to the principle of contradiction, then
so much the worse for the principle of contradiction: it merely
shows the inferiority of logic in comparison with theology. In
short, the place of dialectic is that of a handmaid, velut ancilla
dominae. 1

The ‘handmaid’ idea was also employed by Gerard of Czanad
(d. 1046), a Venetian who became Bishop of Czanad in Hungary.
Gerard emphasised the superiority of the wisdom of the Apostles
over that of Aristotle and Plato and declared that dialectic should
be the ancilla theologiae. It is indeed often supposed that this is
the Thomist view of the province of philosophy, but, given St.
Thomas’s delineation of the separate provinces of theology and
philosophy, the handmaid idea does not fit in with his professed
doctrine on the nature of philosophy: it was rather (as M. De Wulf
remarks) the idea of a 'restricted group of theologians’, men who
had no use for the newfangled science. However, they could not
avoid using dialectic themselves, and Archbishop Lanfranc (who
was born about the year 1010 and died as Archbishop of Canterbury
in 1089) was only talking common sense when he observed that it
is not dialectic itself, but the abuse of it, which should be con¬
demned.

7. The opposition of a saint and a rigorist theologian to dialectic
is also one of the motifs in the life of Abelard, whose controversy
with William of Champeaux forms the next stage in the story of
the discussion on universal, though it affected only Abelard’s life,
not the ultimate triumph of his fight against ultra-realism.

William of Champeaux (1070-1120), after studying at Paris and
Laon, studied under Roscelin at Compiegne. He adopted, however,
the very opposite theory to that of Roscelin, and the doctrine he
taught at the Cathedral School of Paris was that of ultra-realism.
According to Abelard, who attended William’s lectures at Paris

1 De div. omnipP.L., 145, 63.

THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS

M7

and from whom we have to derive our knowledge of William's
teaching, the latter maintained the theory that the same essential
nature is wholly present at the same time in each of the individual
members of the species in question, with the inevitable logical
consequence that the individual members of a species differ from
one another, not substantially but only accidentally. 1 If this is so,
says Abelard, 2 there is the same substance in Plato in one place
and in Socrates in another place, being made Plato through one
set of accidents and Socrates through another set of accidents.
Such a doctrine is, of course, the form of ultra-realism current in
the early Middle Ages, and Abelard had no difficulty in showing
the absurd consequences it involved. For example, if the human
species is substantially, and therefore wholly, present in both
Socrates and Plato at the same time, then Socrates must be Plato
and he must be present in two places at once. 3 Furthermore, such
a doctrine leads ultimately to pantheism, since God is substance
and all substances will be identical with the divine substance.

Under pressure of criticism of this kind William of Champeaux
changed his theory, abandoning the identity-theory for the
indifference-theory and saying that two members of the same
species are the same thing, not essentially (essentialiter) , but indif¬
ferently [indiffer enter). We have this information from Abelard, 4
who evidently treated the new theory as a mere subterfuge, as
though William were now saying that Socrates and Plato are not
the same, but yet are not different. However, fragments from
William's Sententiae 5 makes his position clear. He there says that
the two words ‘One' and ‘same' can be understood in two ways,
secundum indifferentiam et secundum identitatem eiusdem prorsus
essentiae, and goes on to explain that Peter and Paul are ‘indif¬
ferently* men or possess humanity secundum indifferentiam in that,
as Peter is rational, so is Paul, and as Peter is mortal, so is Paul,
etc., whereas their humanity is not the same (he means that their
essence or nature is not numerically the same) but like ( similis ),
since they are two men. He adds that this mode of unity does not
apply to the divine Nature, referring, of course, to the fact that
the divine Nature is identical in each of the three divine Persons.
This fragment, then, in spite of somewhat obscure language, is
clearly opposed to ultra-realism. When William says that Peter and
Paul are one and the same in humanity secundum indifferentiam

1 Hist, calam 2; P.L., 178, 119AB. * Dialedica, edit. Geyer. p. 10.

* De generibus el speciebus; Cousin, Ouvrages inidits d'Abtlard, p. 153.

4 Hist, calam., 2; P.L., 178, 119B. 4 Edit. Lefftvre, p. 24.

148 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

he means that their essences are alike and that this likeness
is the foundation of the universal concept of man, which applies
‘indifferently' to Peter or Paul or any other man. Whatever
Abelard may have thought about this modified theory or under
whatever interpretation he may have attacked it, it would seem
to be in reality a denial of ultra-realism and not much different
from Abelard's own view.

It should be mentioned that the above is somewhat of a simpli¬
fication, in that the exact course of events in the dispute between
Abelard and William is not clear. For instance, although it is
certain that William, after being defeated by Abelard, retired to
the Abbey of St. Victor and taught there, becoming subsequently
Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne, it is not certain at what point in the
controversy he retired. It would seem probable that he changed
his theory while teaching at Paris and then, under fresh criticism
from Abelard, whether justified or not, retired from the fray to
St. Victor, where he continued teaching and may have laid the
foundation for the mystical tradition of the abbey; but, according
to M. De Wulf, he retired to St. Victor and there taught the new
form of his theory, the indifference-theory. It has also been held
that William held three theories: (i) the identity-theory of ultra-
realism; (ii) the indifference-theory, which was attacked by Abelard
as indistinguishable from the first theory; and (iii) an anti-realist
theory, in which case he would presumably have retired to St.
Victor after teaching the first and second theories. This may be
correct, and possibly it is supported by Abelard's interpretation
and criticism of the indifference-theory; but it is questionable if
Abelard’s interpretation was anything more than polemical and I
am inclined to agree with De Wulf that the indifference-theory
involved a denial of the identity-theory, i.e. that it was not a
mere verbal subterfuge. In any case the question is not one of
much importance, since all are agreed that William of Champeaux
eventually abandoned the ultra-realism with which he had begun.

8. The man who worsted William of Champeaux in debate,
Abelard (i079-1142), was born at Le Pallet, Palet or Palais near
Nantes, deriving thence his name of Peripateticus Palatinus , and
studied dialectic under Roscelin and William, after which he
opened a school of his own, first at Melun, then at Corbeil and
subsequently at Paris, where he conducted the dispute with his
former master. Later he turned his attention to theology, studied
under Anselm of Laon and started teaching theology himself at

THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS

149

Paris in 1113. As a result of the episode with H 61 oise Abelard
had to withdraw to the abbey of St. Denis. In 1121 his book De
Unitate et Trinitate divina was condemned at Soissons and he
then founded the school of Le Paraclet near Nogent-sur-Seine,
only to abandon the school in 1125, in order to become Abbot of
St. Gildas in Brittany, though he left the monastery in 1129.
From 1136 to 1149 at any rate, he was teaching at Ste. Genevieve
at Paris, where John of Salisbury was one of his pupils. However,
St. Bernard accused him of heresy and in 1141 he was condemned
at the Council of Sens. His appeal to Pope Innocent II led to his
further condemnation and an injunction against lecturing, after
which he retired to Cluny and remained there until his death.

Abelard was, it is clear, a man of combative disposition and
unsparing of his adversaries: he ridiculed his masters in philosophy
and theology, William of Champeaux and Anselm of Laon. He
was also, though somewhat sentimental, egoistic and difficult to
get on with: it is significant that he left both the abbey of St. Denis
and that of St. Gildas because he was unable to live in peace with
the other monks. He was, however, a man of great ability, an
outstanding dialectician, far superior in this respect to William of
Champeaux; he was no mediocrity who could be ignored, and we
know that his brilliance and dialectical dexterity, also no doubt
his attacks on other teachers, won him great audiences. His
incursions into theology, however, especially in the case of a
brilliant man of great reputation, made him seem a dangerous
thinker in the eyes of those who had little natural sympathy for
dialectic and intellectual cleverness, and Abelard was pursued by
the unremitting hostility of St. Bernard in particular, who appears
to have looked on the philosopher as an agent of Satan; he
certainly did everything he could to secure Abelard's condemna¬
tion. Among other charges he accused Abelard of holding an
heretical doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, a charge the truth of
which Abelard stoutly denied. Probably the philosopher was no
rationalist in the usual sense, so far as intentions were concerned
(he did not mean to deny revelation or explain away mystery);
but at the same time, in his application of dialectic to theology he
does seem to have offended against theological orthodoxy, in fact
if not in intention. On the other hand it was the very appli¬
cation of dialectic to theology which made theological progress
possible and facilitated the Scholastic systematisation of theology
in the thirteenth century.

150 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

Abelard had no difficulty, as we have seen, in showing the
absurdities to which William of Champeaux’s ultra-realism logi¬
cally led; but it was incumbent on him to produce a more satis¬
factory theory himself. Accepting Aristotle’s definition of the
universal, as given by Boethius ( quod in pluribus natum est
praedicari, singulare vero quod non), he went on to state that it
is not a thing which is predicated but a name, and he concludes
that 'it remains to ascribe universality of this sort to words alone’. 1
This sounds like the purely nominalistic view traditionally ascribed
to Roscelin (under whom Abelard had studied), but the fact that
he was willing to speak of universal and particular words shows
that we cannot immediately conclude that Abelard denied any
reality corresponding to the universal word, for he certainly did
not deny that there is reality corresponding to the particular
words, the reality in this case being the individual. Moreover,
Abelard proceeded (in the Logica nostrorum petitioni sociorum) to
distinguish vox and sermo and to say, not that Universale est vox,
but that Universale est sermo. Why did he make this distinction?
Because vox signifies the word as a physical entity {flatus vocis),
a thing, and no thing can be predicated of another thing, whereas
sermo signifies the word according to its relation to the logical
content and it is this which is predicated.

What then is the logical content, what is the intellectus univer¬
salis or universal idea, which is expressed by the nomen universale ?
By universal ideas the mind ‘conceives a common and confused
image of many things . . . When I hear man a certain figure arises
in my mind which is so related to individual men that it is common
to all and proper to none.’ Such language suggests indeed that,
according to Abelard, there are really no universal concepts at all,
but only confused images, generic or specific according to the
degree of confusion and indistinctness; but he goes on to say that
universal concepts are formed by abstraction and that through
these concepts we conceive what is in the object, though we do
not conceive it as it is in the object. ‘For, when I consider this
man only in the nature of substance or of body, and not also of
animal or of man or of grammarian, obviously I understand
nothing except what is in that nature, but I do not consider all
that it has.’ He then explains that when he said that our idea of
man is ‘confused’, he meant that by means of abstraction the
nature is set free, as it were, from all individuality and is

1 Ingredientibus, edit. Geyer, 16.

THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS 151

considered in such a way that it bears no special relation to any
particular individual but can be predicated of all individual men.
In fine, that which is conceived in specific and generic ideas is in
things (the idea is not void of objective reference), but it is not
in them, i.e. in individual things, as it is conceived. Ultra-realism,
in other words, is false; but that does not mean that universals
are purely subjective constructions, still less that they are mere
words. When Abelard says that the universal is a nomen or sermo ,
what he means is that the logical unity of the universal concept
affects only the predicate, that it is a nomen and not a res or
individual thing. If we wish, with John of Salisbury, to call
Abelard a ‘nominalist’, we must recognise at the same time that
his ‘nominalism’ is simply a denial of ultra-realism and an assertion
of the distinction between the logical and real orders, without
involving any denial of the objective foundation of the universal
concept. The Abelardian doctrine is an adumbration, in spite of
some ambiguous language, of the developed theory of 'moderate
realism’.

In his Theologia Christiana and Theologia Abelard follows St.
Augustine, Macrobius and Priscian in placing in the mind of God
formae exemplares or divine ideas, generic and specific, which are
identical with God Himself, and he commends Plato on this point,
understanding him in a neo-Platonic sense, as having placed the
Ideas in the divine mind, quam Graeci Noyn appellant .

9. Abelard’s treatment of the problem of universals was really
decisive, in the sense that it gave a death-blow to ultra-realism by
showing how one could deny the latter doctrine without at the
same time being obliged to deny all objectivity to genera and
species, and, though the School of Chartres in the twelfth century
(in contradistinction to the School of St. Victor) inclined to ultra¬
realism, two of the most notable figures connected with Chartres,
namely Gilbert de la Porr6e and John of Salisbury, broke with the
old tradition.

(i) Gilbert de la Porrie or Gilbertus Porretanus was bom at
Poitiers in 1076, became a pupil of Bernard of Chartres and himself
taught at Chartres for more than twelve years. Later he taught at
Paris, though he became Bishop of Poitiers in 1142. He died
in 1x54.

On the subject of each man having his own humanity or human
nature Gilbert de la Porr6e was firm; 1 but he had a peculiar view

1 In Boeth. de dual. nat.\ P.L., 64, 1378.

152 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

as to the inner constitution of the individual. In the individual we
must distinguish the individualised essence or substance, in which
the accidents of the thing inhere, and the formae substantiales or
fortnae nativae . 1 These native forms are common in the sense that
they are alike in objects of the same species or genus, as the case
may be, and they have their exemplars in God. When the mind
contemplates the native forms in things, it can abstract them from
the matter in which they are embodied or rendered concrete and
consider them alone in abstraction: it is then attending to genus
or species, which are subsistentiae , but not substantially existing
objects. 2 For example, the genus is simply the collection [collectio)
of subsistentiae obtained by comparing things which, though
differing in species, are alike. 3 He means that the idea of the
species is obtained by comparing the similar essential determina¬
tions or forms of similar individual objects and gathering them
together into one idea, while the idea of the genus is obtained by
comparing objects which differ specifically but which yet have
some essential determinations or forms in common, as horse and
dog have animality in common. The form, as John of Salisbury
remarks apropos of Gilbert's doctrine, 4 is sensible in the sensible
objects, but is conceived by the mind apart from sense, that is,
immaterially, and while individual in each individual, it is yet
common, or alike, in all the members of a species or genus.

His doctrines of abstraction and of comparison make it clear
that Gilbert was a moderate realist and not an ultra-realist, but
his curious idea of the distinction between the individual essence
or substance and the common essence ('common' meaning alike in
a plurality of individuals) landed him in difficulties when he came
to apply it to the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity and distinguished
as different things Deus and Divinitas , Pater and Paternitas, just
as he would distinguish Socrates from humanity, that is, from the
humanity of Socrates. He was accused of impairing the unity of
God and teaching heresy, St. Bernard being one of his attackers.
Condemned at the Council of Rheims in 1148, he retracted the
offending' propositions.

(ii) John of Salisbury (c. 1115-80) went to Paris in 1136 and
there attended the lectures of, among others, Abelard, Gilbert de
la Porr£e. Adam Parvipontanus (Smallbridge) and Robert Pulleyn.
He became secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury, first to

1 In Bocih. de Trinit.\ P.L., 64, 1393. Cf. John of Salisbury, Metalog., 2, 17;
P.L., 64, 875-6.

8 P.L., 64, 1267. 3 Ibid., 64, 1389. 4 Ibid., 64, 875-6.

THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS

153

Archbishop Theobald and then to St. Thomas k Becket, being
subsequently appointed Bishop of Chartres in 1176.

In discussing the problem of universals, says John, the world
has grown old: more time has been taken up in this pursuit than
was required by the Caesars for conquering and governing the
world. 1 But anyone who looks for genera and species outside the
things of sense is wasting his time: 2 ultra-realism is untrue and
contradicts the teaching of Aristotle, 3 for whom John had a predi¬
lection in dialectical matters, remarking, apropos of the Topics ,
that it is of more use than almost all the books of dialectic which
the modems are accustomed to expound in the schools. 4 Genera
and species are not things, but are rather the forms of things which
the mind, comparing the likeness of things, abstracts and unifies
in the universal concepts. 6 Universal concepts or genera and
species abstractly considered are mental constructions {figurata
rationis), since they do not exist as universals in extramental
reality; but the construction in question is one of comparison of
things and abstraction from things, so that universal concepts are
not void of objective foundation and reference. 6

xo. It has been already mentioned that the School of St. Victor
inclined to moderate realism. Thus Hugh of St . Victor (1096-1141)
adopted more or less the position of Abelard and maintained a
clear doctrine of abstraction, which he applied to mathematics and
to physics. It is the province of mathematics to attend to actus
confusos inconfusej abstracting, in the sense of attending to in
isolation, the line or the plane surface, for example, although
neither lines nor surfaces exist apart from bodies. In physics, too,
the physicist considers in abstraction the properties of the four
elements, although in concrete reality they are found only in
varying combinations. Similarly the dialectician considers the
forms of things in isolation or abstraction, in a unified concept,
though in actual reality the forms of sensible things exist neither
in isolation from matter nor as universals.

11. The foundations of the Thomist doctrine of moderate
realism had thus been laid before the thirteenth century, and
indeed we may say that it was Abelard who really killed ultra¬
realism. When St. Thomas declares that universals are not sub¬
sisted things but exist only in singular things, 8 he is re-echoing
what Abelard and John of Salisbury had said before him. Humanity,

1 Polycrat., 7, 12. * Metal., 2 , 20. * Ibid. 4 Ibid., 3, 10.

1 Ibid., 2, 20. 1 Ibid., 3, 3. 7 Didasc., 2, 18; P.L., 176, 785.

• Contra Gent., 1, 65.

154 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

for instance, human nature, has existence only in this or that man,
and the universality which attaches to humanity in the concept is
a result of abstraction, and so is in a sense a subjective contribu¬
tion. 1 But this does not involve the falsity of the universal
concept. If we were to abstract the specific form of a thing and
at the same time think that it actually existed in a state of
abstraction, our idea would indeed be false, for a false judgement
concerning the thing itself would be involved; but, though in the
universal concept the mind conceives something in a manner
different to its mode of concrete existence, our judgement about
the thing itself is not erroneous; it is simply that the form, which
exists in the thing in an individualised state, is abstracted, i.e. is
made the object of the exclusive attention of the mind by an
immaterial activity. The objective foundation of the universal
specific concept is thus the objective and individual essence of the
thing, which essence is by the activity of the mind set free from
individualising factors, that is, according to St. Thomas, matter,
and considered in abstraction. For example, the mind abstracts
from the individual man the essence of humanity which is alike,
but not numerically the same in the members of the human species,
while the foundation of the universal generic concept is an essential
determination which several species have in common, as the
species of man, horse, dog, etc., have 'animality' in common.

St. Thomas thus denied both forms of ultra-realism, that of
Plato and that of the early mediaevals; but, no more than Abelard
was he willing to reject Platonism lock, stock and barrel, that is to
say. Platonism as developed by St. Augustine. The ideas, exem¬
plar ideas, exist in the divine mind, though not ontologically
distinct from God nor really a plurality, and, as far as this truth
is concerned, the Platonic theory is justified. 2 St. Thomas thus
admits (i) the universale ante rem , while insisting that it is not a
subsistent thing, cither apart from things (Plato) or in things
(early mediaeval ultra-realists), for it is God considered as perceiv¬
ing His Essence as imitable ad extra in a certain type of creature;
(ii) the universale in re t which is the concrete individual essence
alike in the members of the species; and (iii) the universale post
rem , which is the abstract universal concept. 3 Needless to say, the
term universale in re , used in the Commentary on the Sentences , is
to be interpreted in the light of St. Thomas's general doctrine.

1 S.T ., la. 85, 1, ad 1; la, 85, 2, ad 2. 1 Contra Gent., 3, 24.

9 In Sent., 2; Dist . 3, 2 ad 1.

THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS 155

i.e. as the foundation of the universal concept, the foundation
being the concrete essence or quiiditas ret . 1

In the later Middle Ages the problem of universal was to be
taken up afresh and a different solution was to be given by William
of Ockham and his followers; but the principle that only indivi¬
duals exist as subsistent things had come to stay: the new current
in the fourteenth century was set not towards realism but away
from it. The history of this movement I shall consider in the
next volume.

1 The distinction between universal* ante rem, in re and post rem had been
made by Avicenna.

ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY

CHAPTER XV

ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY

St. Anselm as philosopher—Proofs of God's existence in the
Monologium— The proof of God's existence in the Proslogium—

Idea of truth and other Augustinian elements in St. Anselm's
thought.

i. St. Anselm was bom at Aosta in Piedmont in 1033. After
preliminary studies in Burgundy, at Avranches and afterwards at
Bee he entered the Benedictine Order and later became Prior of
Bee (1063), and subsequently abbot (1078). In 1093 he became
Archbishop of Canterbury in succession to his former teacher,
friend and religious superior Lanfranc, and in that post he died
(1109).

In general the thought of St. Anselm is rightly said to belong to
the Augustinian tradition. Like the great African Doctor, he devoted
his chief intellectual effort to the understanding of the doctrine of
the Christian faith and the statement of his attitude which is
contained in the Proslogium 1 bears the unmistakable stamp of the
Augustinian spirit. 'I do not attempt, 0 Lord, to penetrate Thy
profundity, for I deem my intellect in no way sufficient thereunto,
but I desire to understand in some degree Thy truth, which my
heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand, in order
that I may believe; but I believe, that I may understand. For
I believe this too, that unless I believed, I should not understand.’
This Credo, ut intelligam attitude is common to both Augustine
and Anselm, and Anselm is in full accord with Augustine when he
remarks in the Cur Deus Homo * that it is negligence if we make
no attempt to understand what we believe. In practice, of course,
this means for Anselm an application of dialectic or reasoning to
the dogmas of faith, not in order to strip them of mystery but in
order to penetrate them, develop them and discern their implica¬
tions, so far as this is possible to the human mind, and the results
of this process, for instance his book on the Incarnation and
Redemption (Cur Deus Homo), make Anselm of importance in the
history of theological development and speculation.

Now, the application of dialectic to the data of theology remains

1 P.L., 158, 227. * Ibid., 158, 362.

136

r 57

theology, and St. Anselm would scarcely earn a place in the history
of philosophy through his theological speculation and develop¬
ments, except indeed as the application of philosophical categories
to revealed dogmas necessarily involves some treatment and
development of those philosophical categories. In point of fact,
however, the use of the Credo, ut intelligam motto was not confined
by Anselm, any more than by Augustine, to the understanding of
those truths exclusively which have been revealed and not dis¬
covered dialectically, but was extended to truths like the existence
of God, which are indeed believed but which can be reached by
human reasoning. Besides, then, his work as dogmatic theologian
there is also his work as natural theologian or metaphysician to be
considered, and on this count alone St. Anselm deserves a place
in the history of philosophy, since he contributed to the develop¬
ment of that branch of philosophy which is known as natural
theology. Whether his arguments for the existence of God are
considered valid or invalid, the fact that he elaborated these
arguments systematically is of importance and gives his work a
title to serious consideration by the historian of philosophy.

St. Anselm, like St. Augustine, made no clear distinction be¬
tween the provinces of theology and philosophy, and his implied
attitude of mind may be illustrated as follows. The Christian
should try to understand and to apprehend rationally all that he
believes, so far as this is possible to the human mind. Now, we
believe in God’s existence and in the doctrine of the Blessed
Trinity. We should, therefore, apply our understanding to the
understanding of both truths. From the point of view of one who,
like the Thomist, makes a clear distinction between philosophy and
dogmatic theology the application of reasoning to the first truth,
God’s existence, will fall within the province of philosophy, while
the application of reasoning to the second truth, the Trinity, will
fall within the province of theology, and the Thomist will hold
that the first truth is demonstrable by human reasoning, while the
second truth is not demonstrable by human reasoning, even though
the human mind is able to make true statements about the
mystery, once revealed, and to refute the objections against it
which human reasoning may raise. But, if one puts oneself in the
position of St. Anselm, that is, in a state of mind anterior to the
clear distinction between philosophy and theology, it is easy to
see how the fact that the first truth is demonstrable, coupled with
the desire to understand all that we believe, the attempt to satisfy

158 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

this desire being regarded as a duty, naturally leads to an attempt
to demonstrate the second truth as well, and in point of fact St.
Anselm speaks of demonstrating the Trinity of Persons by 'neces¬
sary reasons' 1 and of showing in the same way that it is impossible
for a man to be saved without Christ. 2 If one wishes to call this
'rationalism', as has been done, one should first of all be quite
clear as to what one means by rationalism. If by rationalism one
means an attitude of mind which denies revelation and faith, St.
Anselm was certainly no rationalist, since he accepted the primacy
of faith and the fact of authority and only then went on to attempt
to understand the data of faith. If, however, one is going to extend
the term 'rationalism' to cover the attitude of mind which leads to
the attempt to prove mysteries, not because the mysteries are not
accepted by faith or would be rejected if one could not prove them,
but because one desires to understand all that one believes, without
having first clearly defined the ways in which different truths are
accessible to us, then one might, of course, call the thought of
St. Anselm 'rationalism' or an approximation to rationalism. But
it would show an entire misunderstanding of Anselm's attitude,
were one to suppose that he was prepared to reject the doctrine
of the Trinity, for example, if he was unable to find rationcs
necessariae for it: he believed the doctrine first of all, and only
then did he attempt to understand it. The dispute about Anselm's
rationalism or non-rationalism is quite beside the point, unless one
first grasps quite clearly the fact that he had no intention of
impairing the integrity of the Christian faith: if we insist on inter¬
preting St. Anselm as though he lived after St. Thomas and had
clearly distinguished the separate provinces of theology and
philosophy, we shall only be guilty of an anachronism and of a
misinterpretation.

2. In the Monologium 3 St. Anselm develops the proof of God's
existence from the degrees of perfection which are found in
creatures. In the first chapter he applies the argument to good¬
ness, and in the second chapter to 'greatness', meaning, as he tells
us, not quantitative greatness, but a quality like wisdom, the more
of which a subject possesses, the better, for greater quantitative
size does not prove qualitative superiority. Such qualities are
found in varying degrees in the objects of experience, so that the
argument proceeds from the empirical observation of degrees of,

1 D» fide Trin., 4; P.L., 158, 274 * Cur Deus Homo ; P.L., i>8, 361

s PL., 158

ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY J59

for example, goodness, and is therefore an a posteriori argument.
But judgement about different degrees of perfection (St. Anselm
assumes, of course, that the judgement is objectively grounded)
implies a reference to a standard of perfection, while the fact that
things participate objectively in goodness in different degrees
shows that the standard is itself objective, that there is, for
example, an absolute goodness in which all good things participate,
to which they approximate more or less nearly, as the case may be.

This type of argument is Platonic in character (though Aristotle
also argued, in his Platonic phase, that where there is a better,
there must be a best) and it reappears in the Via quarta of St.
Thomas Aquinas. It is, as I have said, an a posteriori argument: it
does not proceed from the idea of absolute goodness to the exis¬
tence of absolute goodness but from observed degrees of goodness
to the existence of absolute goodness and from degrees of wisdom
to the existence of absolute wisdom, the absolute goodness and
wisdom being then identified as God. The developed form of the
argument would necessitate, of course, a demonstration both of
the objectivity of the judgement concerning the differing degrees
of goodness and also of the principle on which St. Anselm rests the
argument, the principle, namely that if objects possess goodness
in a limited degree, they must have their goodness from absolute
goodness itself, which is good per se and not per aliud. It is also
to be noted that the argument can be applied only to those
perfections which do not of themselves involve limitation and
finiteness: it could not be applied to quantitative size, for instance.
(Whether the argument is valid and demonstrative or not, it is
scarcely the province of the historian to decide.)

In the third chapter of the Monologium St. Anselm applies the
same sort of argument to being. Whatever exists, exists either
through something or through nothing. The latter supposition is
absurd; so whatever exists, must exist through something. This
means that all existing things exist either through one another or
through themselves or through one cause of existence. But that
X should exist through Y, and Y through X, is unthinkable: the
choice lies between a plurality of uncaused causes or one such
cause. So far indeed the argument is a simple argument from
causality, but St. Anselm goes on to introduce a Platonic element
when he argues that if there is a plurality of existent things
which have being of themselves, i.e. are self-dependent and un¬
caused, there is a form of being-of-itself in which all participate.

160 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

and at this point the argument becomes similar to the argument
already outlined, the implication being that, when several beings
possess the same form, there must be a unitary being external to
them which is that form. There can, therefore, be but one self*
existent or ultimate Being, and this must be the best and highest
and greatest of all that is.

In chapters seven and eight St. Anselm considers the relation
between the caused and the Cause and argues that all finite objects
are made out of nothing, ex nihilo, not out of a preceding matter
nor out of the Cause as matter. He explains carefully that to say
that a thing is made ex nihilo is not to say that it is made out of
nothing as its material: it means that something is created non ex
aliquo , that, whereas before it had no existence outside the divine
mind, it now has existence. This may seem obvious enough, but
it has sometimes been maintained that to say that a creature is
made ex nihilo is either to make nothing something or to lay oneself
open to the observation that ex nihilo nihil fit , whereas St. Anselm
makes it clear that ex nihilo does not mean ex nihilo tamquam
materia but simply non ex aliquo.

As to the attributes of the Ens a Se, we can predicate of it only
those qualities, to possess which is absolutely better than not to
possess them. 1 For example, to be gold is better for gold than to
be lead, but it would not be better for a man to be made of gold.
To be corporeal is better than to be nothing at all, but it would
not be better for a spirit to be corporeal rather than incorporeal.
To be gold is better than not to be gold only relatively , and to be
corporeal rather than non-corporeal is better only relatively. But
it is absolutely better to be wise than not to be wise, living than
non-living, just than not-just. We must, then, predicate wisdom,
life, justice, of the supreme Being, but we cannot predicate
corporeity or gold of the supreme Being. Moreover, as the
supreme Being does not possess His attributes through participa¬
tion, but through His own essence, He is Wisdom, Justice, Life,
etc., 2 and furthermore, since the supreme Being cannot be com¬
posed of elements (which would then be logically anterior, so that
He would not be the supreme Being), these attributes are identical
with the divine essence, which is simple. 3 Again, God must
necessarily transcend space in virtue of His simplicity and
spirituality, and time, in virtue of His eternity. 4 He is wholly
present in everything but not locally or determinate , and all things
1 Ch, 15. * Ch. 16. 1 Ch. 17. 4 Ch. 20-4.

ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY

i6t

are present to His eternity, which is not to be conceived as endless
time but as interminabilis vita simul perfecte tota existens . 1 We may
call Him substance, if we refer to the divine essence, but not if we
refer to the category of substance, since He is incapable of change
or of sustaining accidents. 2 In fine, if we apply to Him any name
that we also apply to creatures, valde procul dubio intelligenda est
diversa significatio .

St. Anselm proceeds, in the Monologium, to give reasons for the
Trinity of Persons in one Nature, without giving any clear indica¬
tion that he is conscious of leaving the province of one science to
enter that of another, and into this subject, interesting as it may
be to the theologian, we cannot follow him. Enough has been said,
however, to show that St. Anselm made a real contribution to
natural theology. The Platonic element is conspicuous and, apart
from remarks here and there, there is no considered treatment of
analogy; but he gives a posteriori arguments for God's existence
which are of a much more systematic character than those of
St. Augustine and he also deals carefully with the divine attributes,
God's immutability, eternity, etc. It is clear, then, how erroneous
it is to associate his name with the 'Ontological Argument' in such
a way as to imply that St. Anselm's only contribution to the
development of philosophy was an argument the validity of which
is at least questionable. His work may have not exercised any
very considerable influence on contemporary thinkers and those
who immediately followed him, because of their preoccupation
with other matters (dialectical problems, reconciling the opinions
of the Fathers, and so on), but looked at in the light of the general
development of philosophy in the Middle Ages he must be acknow¬
ledged as one of the main contributors to Scholastic philosophy
and theology, on account both of his natural theology and of his
application of dialectic to dogma.

3. In the Proslogium St. Anselm develops the so-called 'onto¬
logical argument', which proceeds from the idea of God to God as
a reality, as existent. He tells us that the requests of his brethren
and consideration of the complex and various arguments of the
Monologium led him to inquire whether he could not find an
argument which would be sufficient, by itself alone, to prove all
that we believe concerning the Divine Substance, so that one
argument would fulfil the function of the many complementary
arguments of his former opusculum. At length he thought that he
1 Ch. a 4 . * Ch. 26.

162 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

had discovered such an argument, which for convenience sake
may be put into syllogistic form, though St. Anselm himself
develops it under the form of an address to God.

God is that than which no greater can be thought:

But that than which no greater can be thought must exist, not only
mentally, in idea, but also extramentally:

Therefore God exists, not only in idea, mentally, but also extra¬
mentally.

The Major Premiss simply gives the idea of God, the idea which
a man has of God, even if he denies His existence.

The Minor Premiss is clear, since if that than which no greater can
be thought existed only in the mind, it would not be that than
which no greater can be thought. A greater could be thought,
i.e. a being that existed in extramental reality as well as in idea.

This proof starts from the idea of God as that than which no
greater can be conceived, i.e. as absolutely perfect: that is what
is meant by God.

Now, if such a being had only ideal reality, existed only in our
subjective idea, we could still conceive a greater being, namely a
being which did not exist simply in our idea but in objective
reality. It follows, then, that the idea of God as absolute perfection
is necessarily the idea of an existent Being, and St. Anselm argues
that in this case no one can at the same time have the idea of God
and yet deny His existence. If a man thought of God as, for
instance, a superman, he would be quite right to deny ‘God's'
existence in that sense, but he would not really be denying the
objectivity of the idea of God. If, however, a man had the right
idea of God, conceived the meaning of the term ‘God 1 , he could
indeed deny His existence with his lips, but if he realises what the
denial involves (i.e. saying that the Being which must exist of its
essence, the necessary Being, does not exist) and yet asserts the
denial, he is guilty of a plain contradiction: it is only the fool, the
insipiens t who has said in his heart, ‘there is no God/ The abso¬
lutely perfect Being is a Being the essence of which is to exist or
which necessarily involves existence, since otherwise a more perfect
being could be conceived; it is the necessary Being; and a necessary
being which did not exist would be a contradiction in terms.

St. Anselm wanted his argument to be a demonstration of all
that we believe concerning the divine Nature, and, since the argu¬
ment concerns the absolutely perfect Being, the attributes of God
are contained implicitly in the conclusion of the argument. We

ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY

163

have only to ask ourselves what is implied by the idea of a Being
than which no greater can be thought, in order to see that God
must be omnipotent, omniscient, supremely just and so on.
Moreover, when deducing these attributes in the Proslogium , St.
Anselm gives some attention to the clarification of the notions in
question. For example, God cannot lie: is not this a sign of lack
of omnipotence? No, he answers, to be able to lie should be called
impotence rather than power, imperfection rather than perfection.
If God could act in a manner inconsistent with His essence, that
would be a lack of power on His part. Of course, it might be
objected that this presupposes that we already know what God's
essence is or involves, whereas what God's essence is, is precisely
the point to be shown; but St. Anselm would presumably reply
that he has already established that God is all-perfect and so that
He is both omnipotent and truthful: it is merely a question of
showing what the omnipotence of perfection really means and of
exposing the falsity of a wrong idea of omnipotence.

The argument given by St. Anselm in the Proslogium was
attacked by the monk Gaunilo in his Liber pro Insipiente adversus
Anselmi in Proslogio ratiocinationem, wherein he observed that the
idea we have of a thing is no guarantee of its extramental existence
and that St. Anselm was guilty of an illicit transition from the
logical to the real order. We might as well say that the most
beautiful islands which are possible must exist somewhere, because
we can conceive them. The Saint, in his Liber Apologeticus contra
Gaunilonem respondentem pro Insipiente, denied the parity, and
denied it with justice, since, if the idea of God is the idea of an
all-perfect Being and if absolute perfection involves existence, this
idea is the idea of an existent, and necessarily existent Being,
whereas the idea of even the most beautiful islands is not the idea
of something which must exist: even in the purely logical order
the two ideas are not on a par. If God is possible, i.e. if the idea
of the all-perfect and necessary Being contains no contradiction,
God must exist, since it would be absurd to speak of a merely
possible necessary Being (it is a contradiction in terms), whereas
there is no contradiction in speaking of merely possible beautiful
islands. The main objection to St. Anselm's proof, which was
raised against Descartes and which Leibniz tried to answer, is
that we do not know a priori that the idea of God, the idea of
infinite and absolute Perfection, is the idea of a possible Being.
We may not see any contradiction in the idea, but, say the

164 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

objectors, this 'negative' possibility is not the same as 'positive'
possibility; it does not show that there really is no contradiction
in the idea. That there is no contradiction in the idea is clear only
when we have shown a posteriori that God exists.

The argument of the Proslogium aroused little immediate in¬
terest; but in the thirteenth century it was employed by St.
Bonaventure, with a less logical and more psychological emphasis,
while it was rejected by St. Thomas. Duns Scotus used it as an
incidental aid. In the ‘modem' era it has had a distinguished, if
chequered career. Descartes adopted and adapted it, Leibniz
defended it in a careful and ingenious manner, Kant attacked it.
In the Schools it is generally rejected, though some individual
thinkers have maintained its validity.

4. Among the Augustinian characteristics of St. Anselm's philo¬
sophy one may mention his theory of truth. When he is treating
of truth in the judgement, 1 he follows the Aristotelian view in
making it consist in this, that the judgement or proposition states
what actually exists or denies what does not exist, the thing
signified being the cause of the truth, the truth itself residing in
the judgement (correspondence-theory); but when, after treating
of truth (rectitude) in the will, 2 he goes on to speak of the truth of
being or essence 3 and makes the truth of things to consist in being
what they 'ought' to be, that is, in their embodiment of or corre¬
spondence to their idea in God, the supreme Truth and standard
of truth, and when he concludes from the eternal truth of the
judgement to the eternityof the causeof truth, God, 4 he is treading
in the footsteps of Augustine. God, therefore, is the eternal and
subsistent Truth, which is cause of the ontological truth of all
creatures. The eternal truth is only cause and the truth of the
judgement is only effect, while the ontological truth of things is
at once effect (of eternal Truth) and cause (of truth in the judge¬
ment). This Augustinian conception of ontological truth, with the
exemplarism it presupposes, was retained by St. Thomas in the
thirteenth century, though he laid far more emphasis, of course, on
the truth of the judgement. Thus, whereas St. Thomas’s charac¬
teristic definition of truth is adaequatio rei et intellectus, that of
St. Anselm is reditudo sola mente perceptibilis. 5

In his general way of speaking of the relation of soul to body
and in the absence of a theory of hylomorphic composition of the

1 Dialogus de Veritate, 2 ; P.L., 158. 1 Dial., 4, * Ibid., 7 ff.

* Ibid.. 10. * Ibid.. 11.

ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY

165

two, Anselm follows the Platonic-Augustinian tradition, though,
like Augustine himself, he was perfectly well aware that soul and
body form one man, and he affirms the fact. Again, his words in
the Proslogium 1 on the divine light recall the illumination-theory
of Augustine: Quanta natnque est lux ilia , de qua micat omne verum,
quod rationali menti lucet.

In general perhaps one might say that though the philosophy of
Anselm stands in the line of the Augustinian tradition, it is more
systematically elaborated than the corresponding elements of
Augustine's thought, his natural theology, that is, and that in the
methodic application of dialectic it shows the mark of a later age.

1 Ch. 14.

THE SCHOOL OF CHARTRES

CHAPTER XVI

THE SCHOOL OF CHARTRES

Universalism of Paris, and systematisation of sciences in twelfth
century — Regionalism, humanism—Platonism of Chartres —
Hylomorphism at Chartres —Prima facie pantheism—John of
Salisbury's political theory.

i. One of the greatest contributions made by the Middle Ages to
the development of European civilisation was the university
system, and the greatest of all mediaeval universities was unques¬
tionably that of Paris. This great centre of theological and
philosophical studies did not receive its definitive charter as a
University in the formal sense until early in the thirteenth century;
but one may speak, in an untechnical sense, of the Parisian schools
as already forming a ‘university’ in the twelfth century. Indeed
in some respects the twelfth century was more dominated by
French learning than was the thirteenth century, since it was in
the thirteenth century that other universities, such as Oxford,
came into prominence and began to display a spirit of their own.
This is true of northern Europe at least: as to the South, the
University of Bologna, for instance, received its first charter in
1158, from Frederick I. But, though France was the great centre
of intellectual activity in the twelfth century, a fact which led to
the oft-quoted saying that 'Italy has the Papacy, Germany the
Empire, and France has Knowledge’, this does not mean, of course,
that intellectual activity was pursued simply by Frenchmen:
European culture was international, and the intellectual supre¬
macy of France meant that students, scholars and professors came
in large numbers to the French schools. From England came men
like Adam Smallbridge and Alexander Neckham, twelfth-century
dialecticians, Adelard of Bath and Robert Pulleyn, Richard of St.
Victor (d. 1173) and John of Salisbury; from Germany, Hugh of
St. Victor (d. 1141), theologian, philosopher and mystic; from
Italy, Peter Lombard (c. 1100-60), author of the celebrated
Sentences, which were made the subject of so many commentaries
during the Middle Ages, by St. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus,
for example. Thus the University of Paris may be said to have
represented the international character of mediaeval European

166

167

culture, ac the Papacy represented the international, or rather
supra-national, character of mediaeval religion, though the two
were, of course, closely bound together, as the one religion gave
a common intellectual outlook and the language of learning, the
Latin tongue, was the language of the Church. These two unities,
the religious and the cultural, so closely bound together, were what
one might call effective and real unities, whereas the political unity
of the Holy Roman Empire was rather theoretical than effective,
for, though the absolute monarchies were a development of the
future, nationalism was already beginning to increase, even if its
growth was checked by feudalism, by the local character of
mediaeval political and economic institutions and by the common
language and intellectual outlook.

This growing and expanding university life naturally found an
intellectual and academic expression in the attempt to classify and
systematise the science, knowledge and speculation of the time,
an attempt which shows itself already in the twelfth century. We
may give two examples, the systematisations of Hugh of St. Victor
and of Peter Lombard. The former, in his Didascalion} more or
less follows the Aristotelian classification. Thus Logic is a propae¬
deutic or preamble to science proper and deals with concepts, not
with things. It is divided into Grammar and into the Ratio
Disserendi, which in turn subdivides into Demonstratio, Pars
Probabilis and Pars Sophistica (Dialectic, Rhetoric and Sophistic).
Science, to which Logic is a preamble and for which it is a necessary
instrument, is divided under the main headings of Theoretical
Science, Practical Science and 'Mechanics'. Theoretical Science
comprises Theology, Mathematics (Arithmetic, dealing with the
numerical aspect of things; Music, dealing with proportion;
Geometry, concerned with the extension of things; Astronomy,
concerned with the movement of things), and Physics (which has
as its subject-matter the inner nature or inner qualities of things,
and thus penetrates farther than Mathematics). Practical Science
is subdivided into Ethics, 'Economics' and Politics, while Mecha¬
nics comprises the seven 'illiberal arts' or scientiae adullerinae,
since the craftsman borrows his form from nature. These ‘illiberal
arts' are Wool-making, etc., Armoury and Carpentry, Navigation
or Commerce, which, according to Hugh, 'reconciles peoples,
quiets wars, strengthens peace, and makes private goods to be for
the common use of all', Agriculture, Hunting (including cookery),

1 P.L .. 176

168 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

Medicine and Theatricals. It is clear that Hugh’s classification
depended, not only on Aristotle, through Boethius, but also on the
encyclopaedic work of writers like Isidore of Seville.

Peter Lombard, who was educated at the School of St. Victor,
taught at the Cathedral School of Paris, and ultimately became
bishop of that city between 1150 and 1152, composed his Libri
Quattuor Sententiarum, a work which, although unoriginal in respect
of content, exercised a tremendous influence, in that it stimulated
other writers to the work of systematic and comprehensive exposi¬
tion of dogma and became itself the subject of compendia and
many commentaries, up to the end of the sixteenth century. The
Sentences of the Lombard are admittedly a text-book 1 and were
designed to gather the opinions or sententiae of the Fathers on
theological doctrines, the first book being devoted to God, the
second to creatures, the third to the Incarnation and Redemption
and to the virtues, the fourth to the seven Sacraments and to the
last things. The greatest number of quotations and the bulk of
the doctrine are taken from St. Augustine, though other Latin
Fathers are quoted, and even St. John Damascene makes an
appearance, though it has been shown that the Lombard had seen
only a small part of Burgundius of Pisa’s Latin translation of the
Fons Scientiae. Obviously enough the Sentences are predominantly
a theological work, but the Lombard speaks of those things which
are understood by the natural reason and can be so understood
before they are believed, i.e. by faith: 2 such are the existence of
God, the creation of the world by God and the immortality of
the soul.

2. We have seen that the developing and expanding intellectual
life of the twelfth century showed itself in the growing predomi¬
nance of the ‘university’ of Paris and in the first attempts at
classification and systematisation of knowledge; but the position
of Paris did not mean that regional schools were not flourishing.
Indeed, vigour of local life and interests was a complementary
feature in the mediaeval period to the international character of
religious and intellectual life. For example, though some of the
scholars who came to Paris to study remained there to teach,
others returned to their own lands or provinces or became attached
to local educational institutions. Indeed there was a tendency to
specialisation, Bologna, for instance, being noted for its school
of law and Montpellier for medicine, while mystical theology

1 Cf. the Prologue. 2 3, 24, 3.

THE SCHOOL OF CHARTRES 169

was a prominent feature of the School of St. Victor, outside
Paris.

One of the most flourishing and interesting of the local schools
of the twelfth century was that of Chartres, in which certain
Aristotelian doctrines, to be noted presently, began to come into
prominence, associated, however, with a very strong admixture of
Platonism. This school was also associated with humanistic
studies. Thus Theodoric of Chartres (Thierry), who, after being in
charge of the school in 1121, taught at Paris, only to return to
Chartres in 1141, where he became chancellor in succession to
Gilbert de la Porr6e, was described by John of Salisbury, himself
a humanist, as artium studiosissimus investigator . His Heptateuchon
was concerned with the seven liberal arts and he vigorously com*
bated the anti-humanists, the 'Comificians', who decried study
and literary form. Similarly William of Conches (c. 1080-1154),
who studied under Bernard of Chartres, taught at Paris and
became tutor to Henry Plantagenet, attacked the Comificians and
himself paid attention to grammatical studies, thereby drawing
from John of Salisbury the assertion that he was the most gifted
grammarian after Bernard of Chartres. 1 But it was John of
Salisbury (1115/20-1180) who was the most gifted of the humanist
philosophers associated with Chartres. Though not educated at
Chartres, he became, as we have seen earlier, Bishop of Chartres in
1176. A champion of the liberal arts and acquainted with the
Latin classics, with Cicero in particular, he had a detestation for
barbarity in style, dubbing those persons who opposed style and
rhetoric on principle 'Comificians'. Careful of his own literary
style, he represents what was best in twelfth-century philosophic
humanism, as St. Bernard, though not perhaps with full intention,
represents humanism by his hymns and spiritual writings. In the
next century, the thirteenth, one would certainly not go to the
works of the philosophers as such for Latinity, most of them being
far more concerned with content than with form.

3. The School of Chartres, though its floreat fell in the twelfth
century, had a long history, having been founded in 990 by
Fulbert , a pupil of Gerbert of Aurillac. (The latter was a very
distinguished figure of the tenth century, humanist and scholar,
who taught at Rheims and Paris, paid several visits to the court
of the German Emperor, became in turn Abbot of Bobbio, Arch¬
bishop of Rheims and Archbishop of Ravenna, and ascended the

1 Metal., 1, 5.

i 7 o TENTH. ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

papal throne as Sylvester II, dying in 1003.) Founded in the
tenth century, the School of Chartres preserved, even in the
twelfth century, a certain conservative spirit and flavour, which
shewed itself in its Platonist tradition, especially in its devotion
to the Timaeus of Plato and also to the more Platonically inclined
writings of Boethius. Thus Bernard of Chartres , who was head of
the school from 1114 to 1119 and chancellor from 1119 to 1124,
maintained that matter existed in a chaotic state before its infor¬
mation, before order was brought out of disorder. Called by John
of Salisbury the 'most perfect among the Platonists of our time’, 1
Bernard also represented Nature as an organism and maintained
the Platonic theory of the World-Soul. In this he was followed by
Bernard of Tours (Silvestris ), who was chancellor at Chartres about
1156 and composed a poem De mtttwftMwtvemfaie.usingChalcidius's
commentary on the Timaeus and depicting the World-Soul as
animating Nature and forming natural beings out of the chaos of
prime matter according to the Ideas existing in God or Nous.
William of Conches went even further by identifying the World-
Soul with the Holy Spirit, a doctrine which led to his being
attacked by William of St. Theodoric. Retracting, he explained
that he was a Christian and not a member of the Academy.

In conjunction with these speculations in the spirit of the
Timaeus one may mention the inclination of the School of Chartres
to ultra-realism, though, as we have seen, two of the most out¬
standing figures associated with Chartres, Gilbert de la Porr6e and
John of Salisbury, were not ultra-realists. Thus Clarembald of
Arras, a pupil of Theodoric of Chartres, who became Provost of
Arras in 1152 and Archdeacon of Arras in 1160, maintained, in his
Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, as against Gilbert de
la Porr6e, that there is but one and the same humanity in all men
and that individual men differ only propter accidentium varietatem}

4. In spite, however, of their fondness for the Timaeus of Plato,
the members of the School of Chartres showed also an esteem for
Aristotle. Not only did they follow Aristotle in logic, but they also
introduced his hylomorphic theory: indeed it was at Chartres that
this theory made its first appearance in the twelfth century. Thus,
according to Bernard of Chartres, natuial objects are constituted
by form and matter. These forms he called formae nativae and he
represented them as copies of the Ideas in God. This information
we have from John of Salisbury, who tells us that Bernard and his

1 Metal., 4. 35. 1 Ed. W. Janssen, p. 42.

THE SCHOOL OF CHARTRES 171

disciples tried to mediate between or reconcile Plato and Aristotle. 1
For Bernard of Tours too the forms of things are copies of the
Ideas in God, as we have already seen, while Clarembald of Arras
represented matter as being always in a state of flux and as being
the mutability or vertihilitas of things, the form being the perfec¬
tion and integrity of the thing. 2 He thus interpreted the matter of
Aristotle in the light of Plato’s teaching about the mutability and
evanescent character of material things. William of Conches
indeed struck out on a line of his own by maintaining the atomic
theory of Democritus;* but in general we may say that the
members of the School of Chartres adopted the hylomorphic theory
of Aristotle, though they interpreted it in the light of the Timaeus . 4

5. The doctrine that natural objects are composed of matter and
form, the form being a copy of the exemplar, the Idea in God,
clearly makes a distinction between God and creatures and is non-
pantheistic in character; but certain members of this School used
terminology which, if taken literally and without qualification,
would naturally be understood to imply pantheism. Thus Theo¬
doric of Chartres, who was the younger brother of Bernard,
maintained that ‘all forms are one form; the divine form is all
forms’ and that the divinity is the forma essendi of each thing,
while creation is depicted as the production of the many out of the
one. 5 Again, Clarembald of Arras argued that God is the forma
essendi of things and that, since the forma essendi must be present
wherever a thing is, God is always and everywhere essentially
present.® But, though these texts, taken literally and in isolation,
are pantheistic or monistic in character, it does not appear that
either Theodoric of Chartres or Clarembald of Arras meant to
teach a monistic doctrine. For instance, immediately after saying
that the divine form is all forms Theodoric observes that, though
the divine form is all forms by the fact that it is the perfection and
integrity of all things, one may not conclude that the divine form
is humanity. It would seem that Theodoric’s doctrine must be
understood in the light of exemplarism, since he says expressly
that the divine form cannot be embodied, and cannot, therefore,
be the actual concrete form of man or horse or stone. Similarly,
Clarembald of Arras's general doctrine of exemplarism and his

1 A fetal., 2, 17. 1 Ed. W. Janssen, pp. 44 and 63. • P.L., 90, 1132.

4 Gilbert de La Porrte draws attention to the hylomorphic theory when com¬
menting on Boethius's Contra Eutychen or Liber de duabus Naturis et una Persona
Ckristi ; P.L. , 64, 1367.

• De sex dierum operibus, ed. W. Janssen, pp. 16, ax, 108, 109^

• Ed. W. Janssen, p. 39.

i 7 2 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

insistence that the forms of material things are copies, imagines ,
is incompatible with full pantheism. The phrases which seem to
teach a doctrine of emanation are borrowed from Boethius, and it
is probable that they no more express a literal understanding of
emanation in Theodoric or Clarembald than they do in Boethius:
in a sense they are stock phrases, canonised, as it were, by their
antiquity, and they should not be pressed unduly.

6 . Although John of Salisbury was not educated at Chartres, it
is convenient to say something here of his philosophy of the State,
as given in his Polycraticus. The quarrels between the Holy See
and the Empire and the investiture controversies had naturally
led to those writers who took part in the disputes having to express
some view, even if only by the way, on the function of the State
and its ruler. One or two writers went beyond mere asides, as it
were, and gave a rude sketch of political theory. Thus Manegold
of Lautenbach (eleventh century) even referred the power of the
ruler to a pact with the people 1 and declared 2 that if the king
forsakes rule by law and becomes a tyrant, he is to be considered
to have broken the pact to which he owes his power and may be
deposed by the people. Such ideas concerning the reign of law and
justice as essential to the State and concerning the natural law, of
which the civil law should be an expression, were based on texts
of Cicero, the Stoics and the Roman jurists, and they reappear in
the thought of John of Salisbury, who also made use of St.
Augustine's De Civitate Dei and the De Officiis of St. Ambrose.

Although John of Salisbury did not put forward any compact
theory after the fashion of Manegold of Lautenbach, he was
insistent that the prince is not above law and declared that
whatever the whitewashers of rulers might trumpet abroad to the
contrary, he would never allow that the prince is free from all
restrictions and all law. But what did he mean when he said that
the prince is subject to law? Partly at least he had in mind (and
this was indeed his main consideration) the natural law, in
accordance with the Stoic doctrine that there is a natural law, to
which all positive law does, or ought to, approximate. The prince,
then, is not free to enact positive laws which go counter to, or are
irreconcilable with, both the natural law and that aequitas which
is rerum convenientia , tribuens unicuique quod suum est. The posi¬
tive law defines and applies natural law and natural justice, and
the attitude of the ruler on this matter shows whether he is prince

1 Liber ad Gebehardum, 30 and 47. 1 Ibid., 47.

THE SCHOOL OF CHARTRES 173

or tyrant. If his enactments define, apply or supplement natural
law and natural justice, he is a prince; if they infringe natural law
and natural justice, he is a tyrant, acting according to caprice and
not fulfilling the function of his office.

Did John of Salisbury understand anything else by law, when
he m ain tained that the prince is subject to the law? Did he main¬
tain that the prince is in any way subject to defined law? It was
certainly the common opinion that the prince was subject in some
way to the customs of the land and the enactments of his ancestors,
to the local systems of law or tradition which had grown up in the
course of time, and, although John of Salisbury’s political writing
shows little concern with feudalism, since he relied so largely on
writers of the Roman period, it is only reasonable to suppose that
he shared the common outlook on this matter. His actual judge¬
ments on the power and office of the prince express the common
outlook, though his formal approach to the subject is through the
medium of Roman law, and he would certainly not have envisaged
the application in an absolutist sense to the feudal monarch
of the Roman Jurist’s maxim, Quod principi placuit legis habet
vigorem.

Now, since John of Salisbury praised Roman law and regarded
it as one of the great civilising factors of Europe, he was faced
with the necessity of interpreting the maxim quoted above, with¬
out at the same time sacrificing his convictions about the restricted
power of the prince. First of all, how did Ulpian himself under¬
stand his maxim? He was a lawyer and it was his aim to justify,
to explain the legality of the Emperor’s enactments and constitu-
tiones. According to Republican lawyers the law governed the
magistrate, but it was obvious that in the time of the Empire
the Emperor was himself one of the sources of positive law, and
the lawyers had to explain the legality of this position. Ulpian
accordingly said that, though the Emperor's legislative authority
is derived from the Roman people, the people, by the lex regia,
transfers to him and vests in him all its own power and authority,
so that, once invested with his authority, the will of the Emperor
has the force of law. In other words, Ulpian was simply explaining
the legality of the Roman Emperor's enactments: he was not
concerned to establish a political theory by maintaining that the
Emperor was entitled to disregard all natural justice and the
principles of morality. When John of Salisbury observed, with
express reference to Ulpian’s dictum, that when the prince is said

i 7 4 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

to be free from the law, this is not to be understood in the sense
that he may do what is unjust, but in the sense that he ought to
follow equity or natural justice out of a real love of justice and
not from fear of punishment, which does not apply to him, he was
expressing the general tradition of feudal lawyers and at the same
time was not contradicting Ulpian's maxim. When in the late
Middle Ages some political theorists detached Ulpian's maxim
from the person of the Emperor, and transferring it to the national
monarch interpreted it in an absolutist sense, they were forsaking
the general mediaeval outlook and were at the same time changing
the legal maxim of Ulpian into an abstract statement of absolutist
political theory.

In conclusion it may be remarked that John of Salisbury
accepted the supremacy of the ecclesiastical power ( Hunc ergo
gladium de manu Ecclesiae accipit princeps)} while he carried, his
distinction between prince and tyrant to its logical conclusion by
admitting tyrannicide as legitimate. Indeed, since the tyrant is
opposed to the common good, tyrannicide may sometimes be
obligatory, 2 though he made the curious stipulation that poison
should not be employed for this purpose.

1 Polycrat., 4, 3. * Ibid., 8, 10.

CHAPTER XVII

THE SCHOOL OF ST. VICTOR

Hugh of St. Victor; proofs of God's existence, faith, mysticism—
Richard of St. Victor; proofs of God’s existence—Godfrey of St,
Victor and Walter of St. Victor.

The Abbey of St. Victor outside the walls of Paris belonged to the
Augustinian Canons. We have seen that William of Champeaux
was associated with the abbey, retiring there after being worsted
by Abelard, but the school is of note principally owing to the work
of two men, one a German, Hugh of St. Victor, the other a
Scotsman, Richard of St. Victor.

1. Hugh of St. Victor was born in Saxony in 1096 of noble
parentage, and made his early studies in the monastery of Hamers-
leben near Halberstadt. After taking the habit he went to Paris
in 1115 to continue his studies in the Abbey of St. Victor. In
1125 he started lecturing and from 1133 until his death in 1141
he was* in charge of the school. One of the foremost theologians,
dogmatic and mystical, of his time, he was yet no enemy to the
cultivation of the arts, considering not only that the study of the
arts, if rightly pursued, conduces to progress in theology, but also
that all knowledge is of utility. ‘Learn everything; you will see
afterwards that nothing is superfluous.’ 1 His chief work, from the
philosophical viewpoint, is the Didascalion in seven books, in which
he treats of the liberal arts (three books), theology (three books)
and religious meditation (one book), but his writings on the
theology of the Sacraments are also important to the theologian.
He also compared exegetic and mystical works and a commentary
on the Celestial Hierarchy of the Pseudo-Dionysius, using the Latin
translation of John Scotus Eriugena.

Of Hugh's classification and systematisation of the sciences
mention has already been made, in connection with the systema¬
tising tendency already discernible in the twelfth century and due
partly to the application of dialectic in theology, as also of his
theory of abstraction, in connection with the discussion on uni¬
versal. 2 These two points bring out the Aristotelian aspects of
his thought, whereas his psychology is distinctly Augustinian in
1 P.L., 176, 800C. 1 See p. 153.

J 75

176 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

character. 'No one is really wise who does not see that he exists;
and yet, if a man begins truly to consider what he is, he sees that
he is none of all those things which are either seen in him or can be
seen. For that in us which is capable of reasoning, although it is,
so to speak, infused into and mingled with the flesh, is yet distin¬
guishable by reason from the substance of the flesh and is seen to
be different therefrom/ 1 In other words, consciousness and intro¬
spection bear witness, not only to the existence of the soul, but
also to its spirituality and immateriality. Moreover, the soul is of
itself a person, having, as a rational spirit, personality of itself and
through itself, the body forming an element in human personality
only in virtue of its union with the rational spirit. 2 The mode of
union is one of 'apposition' rather than of composition. 3

Hugh contributed to the systematic advance of natural theology
by giving a posteriori arguments both from internal and external
experience. As regards the first line of proof, it rests upon the
experiential fact of self-consciousness, the consciousness of a self
which is 'seen' in a purely rational way and cannot be material.
Regarding self-consciousness as necessary to the existence of a
rational being, Hugh maintains that, as the soul has not always
been conscious of its existence, there was a time when it did not
exist. But it could not have given itself existence: it must, then,
owe its existence to another being, and this being must be a
necessary and self-existent being, God. 4 This proof is somewhat
compressed, involving the premisses that the cause of a rational
principle must itself be rational and that an infinite regress is
impossible. Its 'interiority' certainly reminds one of Augustine,
but it is not Augustine’s proof from the soul’s knowledge of eternal
truths, nor does it presuppose religious, still less mystical,
experience since it rests on the natural experience of the soul’s self-
consciousness, and it is this reliance on experience which
characterises Hugh’s proofs of God’s existence.

The second proof, that from external experience, 5 rests on the
experienced fact of change. Things are constantly coming into
being and passing away, and the totality, which is composed of
such changing things, must itself have had a beginning. It requires,
therefore, a Cause. Nothing which lacks stability, which ceases to
be, can have come into being without a Cause external to itself.
The idea of such a proof is contained in the De Fide Orthodoxa of

1 P.L., 176, 825A. * Ibid., 176, 409. 8 Ibid,

* De Sacramentis, 3, 7; P.L., 176, 219.

* De Sacramentis, 3, 10; P.L., 176. 219, and Sent. 1, 3; P.L., 176, 43.

THE SCHOOL OF ST. VICTOR 177

St. John Damascene; 1 but Hugh of St. Victor attempts to supply
the deficiencies in St. John Damascene's procedure.

In addition to the proof from change Hugh gives a teleological
proof in several parts.* In the world of animals we see that the
senses and appetites find their satisfaction in objects: in the world
in general we see a great variety of movements (the reference is to
local motion), which, however, are ordered in harmony. Again,
growth is a fact of experience, and growth, since it means the
addition of something new, cannot be accomplished solely by the
thing which grows. Hugh concludes that these three considera¬
tions exclude chance and postulate a Providence which is respon¬
sible for growth and guides all things according to law. 3 The proof
is clearly somewhat unconvincing in the form given, but it is based
onfacts of experience, as the starting-point, and this is characteristic
of Hugh’s proofs in general. Hugh adopted the theory of William
of Conches concerning the atomic structure of matter. These atoms
are simple bodies, which are capable of increase and growth. 4

Hugh was thus quite clear about the possibility of a natural
knowledge of God’s existence, but he was equally insistent on the
necessity of faith. This faith is necessary, not only because the
ocidus contemplations, whereby the soul apprehends God within
herself et ea quae in Deo erant, has been completely darkened by
sin, but also because mysteries which exceed the power of the
human reason are proposed to man’s beliefs. These mysteries are
supra rationem, in that revelation and faith are required to appre¬
hend them, but they are secundum rationem, not contra rationem:
in themselves they are reasonable and can be the object of know¬
ledge, but they cannot be the object of knowledge in the strict
sense in this life, as man’s mind is too weak, especially in its
sin-darkened state. Knowledge, then, considered in itself, stands
higher than faith, which is a certitude of the mind concerning
absent things, superior to opinion but inferior to science or
knowledge, since those who comprehend the object as immediately
present (the scientes) are superiorto those who believe on authority.
We may say, therefore, that Hugh of St. Victor made a clear
distinction between faith and knowledge and that, though he
recognised the superiority of the latter, he did not thereby impugn
the necessity of the former. His doctrine of the superiority of
knowledge to faith is by no means equivalent to the Hegelian

1 1, 3; P.G., 94, 796A. * P.L., 176. 826.

3 Cf. De Fide Orthodoxa, i, 3; P.G., 94, 795B.

4 De Sacramentis, 1, 6, 37; P.L., 176, 286.

178 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

doctrine, since Hugh certainly did not consider that knowledge
can, naturally at least, be substituted for faith in this life.

But, though the oculus contemplationis has been darkened by
sin, the mind, under the supernatural influence of grace, can ascend
by degrees to contemplation of God in Himself. Thus supernatural
mysticism crowns the ascent of knowledge in this life as the
beatific vision of God crowns it in heaven. To enter upon a
discussion of Hugh's mystical teaching would scarcely be in place
here; but it is worth pointing out that the mystical tradition of
St. Victor was not simply a spiritual luxury; their mystical
theology formed an integral part of their theologico-philosophical
synthesis. In philosophy God’s existence is proved by the natural
use of reason, while in theology the mind learns about the Nature
of God and applies dialectic to the data of revelation accepted on
faith. But philosophical knowledge and theological (dialectical)
knowledge are knowledge about God: higher still is the experience
of God, the direct knowledge of God, which is attained in mystical
experience, a loving knowledge or a knowing love of God. On the
other hand, mystical knowledge is not full vision, and God's
presence to the soul in mystical experience blinds by excess of
light, so that above both knowledge about God by faith and direct
mystical knowledge of God there stands the beatific vision of
heaven.

2. Richard of St. Victor was born in Scotland but went to Paris
early in life and entered the Abbey of St. Victor, where he became
sub-prior about 1157 and prior in 1162. He died in 1173. The
abbey passed through a difficult period during these years, as the
abbot, an Englishman named Ervisius, wasted its goods and ruined
its discipline, behaving in such an independent manner that Pope
Alexander III called him ‘another Caesar’. With some difficulty
he was induced to resign in 1172, a year before the death of
Richard. However, even if his abbot was a somewhat independent
and high-handed individual, the prior, we are told by the abbey
necrology, left behind him the memory of a good example, a holy
life and beautiful writings.

Richard is an important figure in mediaeval theology, his chief
work being the De Trinitate in six books, but he was also a
philosopher, as well as being a mystical theologian who published
two works on contemplation, the Beniamin minor , on the prepara¬
tion of the soul for contemplation, and the Beniamin mator, on
the grace of contemplation. In other words, he was a worthy

THE SCHOOL OF ST. VICTOR

179

successor of Hugh of St. Victor, and like him he insisted on the
necessity of using the reason in the pursuit and investigation of
truth. 'I have frequently read that there is only one God, that He
is eternal, uncreated, immense, omnipotent and Lord of all: . . .

I have read concerning my God that He is one and three, one in
Substance, three in Persons: all this I have read; but I do not
remember that I have read how all these things are proved.' 1
Again, Tn all these matters authorities abound, but not argu¬
ments; in all these matters experimenta desunt , proofs are becoming
rare; so I think that I shall have done something, if I am able to
help the minds of the studious a little, even if I cannot satisfy
them.’

The general attitude of St. Anselm is evident in the above
quotations: Credo , ut intelligam . The data of the Christian religion
presupposed, Richard of St. Victor sets out to understand them
and to prove them. Just as St. Anselm had declared his intention
of trying to prove the Blessed Trinity by 'necessary reasons', so
Richard declares at the beginning of his Be Trinitate 2 that it will
be his intention in that work, so far as God grants, to adduce not
only probable, but also necessary reasons for the things which we
believe. He points out that there must be necessary reasons for
what necessarily exists; so that, as God is necessarily Three in One,
there must be a necessary reason for this fact. Of course, it by no
means follows from the fact that God is necessarily Triune (God is
the necessary Being) that we can discern this necessity, and
Richard admits indeed that we cannot fully comprehend the
mysteries of Faith, particularly that of the Blessed Trinity, 3 but
that does not prevent his attempting to show that a plurality of
Persons in the Godhead necessarily follows from the fact that God
is Love and to demonstrate the trinity of Persons in one Nature.

Richard's speculation on the Trinity had a considerable in¬
fluence on later Scholastic theology; but from the philosophical
viewpoint his proofs for the existence of God are of greater import.
Such proofs, he insists, must rest on experience: 'We ought to
begin from that class of things, of which we can have no manner
of doubt, and by means of those things which we know by expe¬
rience to conclude rationally what we must think concerning the
objects which transcend experience.' 4 These objects of experience
are contingent objects, things which begin to be and can cease to

1 De Trinit i, 5; P.L., 196, 893BC. * P.L., 196, 892C. * Ibid., 196, 72A.

4 Ibid. t 196, 894.

180 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

be. Such things we can come to know only through experience,
since what comes into being and can perish cannot be necessary,
so that its existence cannot be demonstrated a priori, but can be
known only by experience. 1

The starting-point of the argument is thus provided by the
contingent objects of experience; but, in order that our reasoning
on this basis may be successful, it is necessary to start from a
clearly solid and, as it were, immovable foundation of truth; 2 that
is, the argument needs a sure and certain principle on which it
may rest. This principle is that every thing which exists or can
exist has being either of itself or from another than itself, and
that every thing which exists or can exist either has being from
eternity or begins to be in time. This application of the principle
of contradiction allows us to form a division of being. Any
existent thing must be either (i) from eternity and from itself,
and so self-existent, or (ii) neither from eternity nor from itself,
or (iii) from eternity, but not from itself, or (iv) not from eternity
but yet from itself. This logical division into four admits imme¬
diately of a reduction to a threefold division, since a thing which
is not from eternity but is a se, is impossible, for a thing which
began to be obviously cannot either have given itself being or be
a necessary existent. 8 A beginning in time and aseity are thus
incompatible, and it remains to refer back to the things of
experience and apply the general principle. The things of expe¬
rience, as we observe them in the human, animal and vegetable
kingdoms, and in nature in general, are perishable and contingent:
they begin to be. If, then, they begin to be, they are not from
eternity. But what is not from eternity cannot be from itself, as
already said. Therefore it must be from another. But ultimately
there must exist a being which exists of itself, i.e. necessarily,
since, if there is no such being, there would be no sufficient reason
for the existence of anything: nothing would exist, whereas in
point of fact something does exist, as we know by experience. If
it be objected that there must indeed be an ens a se but that this
may very well be the world itself, Richard would retort that he
has already excluded this possibility by pointing out that we
experience the contingent character of the things of which the
world is composed.

If in this first proof Richard’s procedure shows a marked change
from that of St. Anselm, in his next proof he adopts a familiar

1 P.L., 196, 892. 1 Ibid., 196, 893. 3 Cf. ibid., 196, 893.

THE SCHOOL OF ST. VICTOR 181

Anselmian position. 1 It is a fact of experience that there are
different and varying degrees of goodness or perfection, the
rational, for example, being higher than the irrational. From this
experiential fact Richard proceeds to argue that there must be a
highest, than which there is no greater or better. As the rational
is superior to the irrational, this supreme substance must be intel¬
lectual, and as the higher cannot receive what it possesses from
the lower, from the subordinate, it must have its being and
existence from itself. This necessarily means that it is eternal.
Something must be eternal and a se, as has been already
shown, since otherwise nothing would exist, and experience
teaches us that something does exist, and, if the higher cannot
receive what it possesses from the lower, it must be the highest,
the supreme Substance, which is the eternal and necessary
Being.

In the third place Richard attempts to prove the existence of
God from the idea of possibility. 2 In the whole universe nothing
can exist, unless it has the possibility of being (the potentiality or
power to be) from itself or receives it from another. A thing which
lacks the possibility of being, which is completely impossible, is
nothing at all, and in order that anything should exist, it must
receive the ability to exist [posse esse) from the ground of possi¬
bility. (That the objects in the universe cannot receive their
possibility from themselves, cannot be self-grounded, Richard here
takes for granted: in his first proof he has already shown the
incompatibility of aseity and temporality or beginning to be.)
This ground of possibility, then, which is the source of the possi¬
bility and the existence of all things, must be self-dependent,
ultimate. Every essence, every power, every wisdom, must depend
on this Ground, so that the latter must itself be the supreme
Essence as the ground of all essences, the supreme Power as source
of all power, arid supreme Wisdom as source of all wisdom, since
it is impossible that a source should confer a gift greater than
itself. But there can be no wisdom apart from a rational substance
in which it is immanent: so there must be a rational and supreme
Substance, in which supreme wisdom is immanent. The Ground
of all possibility is, therefore, the supreme Substance.

These arguments are, of course, exercises of the rational, discur¬
sive intelligence, of the oculus rationis , superior to the oculus
imaginationis , which views the corporeal world, but inferior to the

1 De Trinit., i, n; P.L., 196, 895-6. * De Trinit., 1, 12; P.L., 196, 896.

182 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

oculus inteUigentiae , by which God is contemplated in Himself. 1
On the inferior level the objects of sense are viewed immediately
as present; on the middle level the mind thinks discursively about
things not immediately visible, arguing, for example, from effect
to cause or vice versa ; on the superior level the mind views an
invisible object, God, as immediately present. 2 The level of
contemplation is thus, as it were, the spiritual analogue of sense-
perception, being like to it in immediacy and concreteness in
contrast with discursive thought, though it differs in that it is a
purely spiritual activity, directed to a purely spiritual object.
Richard's division of the six stages of knowledge, from the percep¬
tion of God's beauty in the beauty of creation to the mentis
alienatio , under the action of grace, influenced St. Bonaventure in
the composition of his Itinerarium mentis in Deum .

3. Godfrey of St. Victor (d. 1194) wrote a Fons Philosophiae, in
which he classifies the sciences and treats of such philosophers and
transmitters as Plato, Aristotle, Boethius and Macrobius, devoting
a special chapter to the problem of universals and the professed
solutions of the problem. Walter of St. Victor (died after 1180) was
the author of the celebrated diatribe Contra Quattuor Labyrinthos
Franciae , Abelard, Peter Lombard, Peter of Poitiers and Gilbert
de la Porr6e, the representatives of dialectical theology, who,
according to Walter, were puffed up with the spirit of Aristotle,
treated with Scholastic levity of the ineffable things of the Blessed
Trinity and the Incarnation, vomited out many heresies and
bristled with errors. In other words, Walter of St. Victor was a
reactionary who does not represent the genuine spirit of St. Victor,
of Hugh the German and Richard the Scotsman, with its reasoned
combination of philosophy, dialectical theology and mysticism.
In any case the hands of the clock could not be put back, for
dialectical theology had come to stay and in the following century
it attained its triumph in the great systematic syntheses.

1 De gratia coniemplationis , 1, 3, 7; P.L., 196, 66CD, 72C.

1 De gratia coniemplationis, i, 3, 9; P.L., 196, xioD.

CHAPTER XVIII

DUALISTS AND PANTHEISTS
Albigensians and Cathari—Amalric of Bene—David of Dinant.

1. In the thirteenth century St. Dominic preached against the
Albigensians. This sect, as well as that of the Cathari, was already
widespread in southern France and in Italy during the twelfth
century. The principal tenet of these sects was a dualism
of the Manichaean type, which came into western Europe
by way of Byzantium. There exist two ultimate Principles,
the one good and the other bad, of which the former caused the
soul, the latter the body and matter in general. From this hypo¬
thesis they drew the conclusion that the body is evil and has to be
overcome by asceticism and also that it is wrong to marry and
propagate the human race. It may seem strange that a sect whose
members held such doctrines should flourish; but it must be
remembered that it was considered sufficient if the comparatively
few perfecti led this ascetic existence, while their less exalted
followers could safely lead a more ordinary life, if they received
the blessing of one of the 'perfect' before death. It must also be
remembered, when one is considering the attention which the
Albigensians and Cathari received from the ecclesiastical and civil
powers, that the condemnation of procreation and of marriage as
evil leads naturally to the conclusion that concubinage and
marriage are on much the same footing. Moreover, the Cathari
denied the legitimacy of oaths and of all war. It was, then, only
natural that the sects were looked on as constituting a danger to
Christian civilisation. The sect of the Waldenses, which still exists,
goes back to the Catharist movement and was originally a sect of
dualists, though it was absorbed by the Reformation and adopted
anti-Romanism and anti-sacerdotalism as its chief tenets. 1

2. Amalric of Bene was bom near Chartres and died as a
professor of theology at Paris about 1206/7. St. Thomas Aquinas 2
observes that 'others said that God is the formal principle of all
things, and this is said to have been the opinion of the Amalricians',
while Martin of Poland says of Amalric that he held God to be the

1 The sources for our knowledge of the doctrine of the Albigensians are not rich,
and the history of th^ movement is somewhat obscure.

* S.T., la, 3, 8, in corpore.

184 TENTH, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

essence of all creatures and the existence of all creatures. Appar¬
ently he interpreted in a pantheistic sense the teaching of John
Scotus Eriugena, as well as the phrases used by Theodoric of
Chartres and Clarembald of Arras, even going so far as to say
that the Persons of the Trinity are creatures, that all three became
incarnate and that every single man is as much God as was Christ.
From this doctrine some of his followers seem to have drawn the
conclusion that sin is an unreal concept, on the ground that, if
every man is divine, there can be no question of his sinning.
Whether Amalric consciously upheld real pantheism or not, he
was in any case accused of heresy and had to retract, his doctrines
being condemned in 1210, after his death, along with those of
John Scotus Eriugena.

3. If for Amalric of Bene God is the form of all things, for
David of Dinant He was identified with prime matter, in the sense
of the potentiality of all things. Very little is known of the life of
David of Dinant, or of the sources from which he derived his
doctrines, or of the doctrines themselves, since his writings,
condemned in 1210 and forbidden at Paris in 1215, have perished.
St. Albert the Great 1 ascribes to him a De tomis, hoc est de divisioni-
bus, while the documents of the Council of Paris (1210) ascribe to
him a Quaterni or Quaternuli, though Geyer, for example, supposes
that these two titles refer to the same work, which consisted of a
number of sections or paragraphs (quaterni). In any case we have
to rely for our knowledge of his doctrine on quotations and reports
by St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas and Nicholas of Cusa.

In the Summa Theological St. Thomas states that David of
Dinant 'very foolishly affirmed that God is prime matter’. Else¬
where 3 he says that David divided things into three classes: bodies,
souls and eternal substances, bodies being constituted of Hyle ,
souls of Nous or mind, and the eternal substances of God. These
three constituent sources are the three indivisibles, and the three
indivisibles are one and the same. Thus all bodies would be modes
of one indivisible being, Hyle , and all souls would be modes of one
indivisible being, Nous; but these two indivisible beings are one,
and were identified by David with God, who is the one Substance.
Tt is manifest (according to David) that there is only one substance
not only of all bodies, but also of all souls, and that this substance
is nothing else but God himself. ... It is clear, then, that God is

1 S.T., la, 4, 20, 2, quaest . incidetts. 1 la, 3, 8, incorpore.

* 2 Sent., 17, 1, 1.

DUALISTS AND PANTHEISTS 185

the substance of all bodies and all souls, and that God and Hyle
and Mens are one substance,’ 1

David of Dinant tried to prove this position dialectically. For
two kinds of substances to differ from one another they must
differ in virtue of a difference, and the presence of a difference
implies the presence of a common element. Now, if matter
differed from mind, there would have to be a differentia in prime
matter, i.e. a form and a matter, and in this case we should go on
to infinity.* St. Thomas puts the argument this way.® When
things in no way differ from one another, they are the same. Now,
whatever things differ from one another, differ in virtue of differen¬
tiae, and in this case they must be composite. But God and prime
matter are altogether simple, not composite things. Therefore they
cannot differ in any way from one another, and must consequently
be the same. To this argument St. Thomas replies that composite
things such as, for example, man and horse, do indeed differ from
one another in virtue of differentiae, but that simple things do not:
simple things should be said, strictly speaking, to be diverse
[diver sa esse), not to be different [differre). In other words he
accuses David of playing with terms, of choosing, to express the
diversity of God and matter, a term which implies composition in
God and matter.

Why did St. Albert and St. Thomas think it worth while giving
such attention to a pantheistic system, the theoretical support of
which was more or less a dialectical quibble? Probably the reason
was not so much that David of Dinant exercised an extensive
influence as that they feared that the heresy of David might
compromise Aristotle. The sources from which David drew his
theories constitute a disputed point, but it is generally agreed that
he drew on the exposition of ancient materialism given in the
Physics and Metaphysics, and it is clear that he utilises the
Aristotelian ideas of prime matter and form. In 1210 the same
Council of Paris which condemned David’s writings forbad also
the public and private teaching of the natural philosophy of
Aristotle in the University. Most probably, then, St. Thomas
wished to show that David of Dinant’s monism by no means
followed from the teaching of Aristotle; and in his reply to the
objection already cited he expressly refers to the Metaphysics.

1 S. Alb. M., S.T., Ila, t. 12, q. 72, membr. 4, a. 2, n. 4.

‘ Ibid., Ia, t. 4, q. 20, membr. 2; In Melaph., t. 4. c. 7.

• S.T., Ia, 3, 8. ob. 3.

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY

PART IV

ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY: TRANSLATIONS

CHAPTER XIX

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY

Reasons for discussing Islamic philosophy—Origins of Islamic
philosophy—A Ifarabi—A vicenna—A verroes—Dante and the
Arabian philosophers.

i. To come upon a chapter on the philosophy of the Arabs in a
work devoted to mediaeval thought, in the sense of the thought of
mediaeval Christendom, might astonish a reader who was making
his first acquaintance with the philosophy of the Middle Ages; but
the influence, positive and negative, of Islamic philosophy on that
of Christendom is now a matter of common knowledge among
historians, and one can scarcely avoid saying something on the
subject. The Arabian philosophy was one of the principal channels
whereby the complete Aristotle was introduced to the West; but
the great philosophers of mediaeval Islam, men like Avicenna and
Averroes, were more than mere transmitters or even commenta¬
tors; they changed and developed the philosophy of Aristotle,
more or less according to the spirit of neo-Platonism, and several
of them interpreted Aristotle on important points in a sense which,
whether exegetically correct or not, was incompatible with the
Christian theology and faith. 1 Aristotle, therefore, when he
appeared to mediaeval Christian thinkers in the shape given him
by Averroes, for example, naturally appeared as an enemy of
Christian wisdom, Christian philosophy in the wide sense. This
fact explains to a large extent the opposition offered to Aristote-
lianism in the thirteenth century by many upholders of the
Christian tradition who looked on the pagan philosopher as the foe
of Augustine, Anselm and the great philosophers of Christianity.
The opposition varied in degree, from a rather crude dislike and
fear of novelty, to the reasoned opposition of a thinker like St.
Bonaventure; but it becomes easier to understand the opposition

1 It is true, however, that some Islamic philosophers, like Avicenna, facilitated
through their writings a Christian interpretation of Aristotle.

186

187

if one remembers that a Moslem philosopher such as Averroes
claimed to give the right interpretation of Aristotle and that this
interpretation was, on important questions, at variance with
Christian belief. It explains too the attention paid to the Islamic
philosophers by those (particularly, of course, St. Thomas Aquinas)
who saw in the Aristotelian system not only a valuable instrument
for the dialectical expression of Christian theology but also the
true philosophy, for such thinkers had to show that Aristotelianism
did not necessarily involve the interpretation given to it by the
Moslems: they had to dissociate themselves from Averroes and to
distinguish their Aristotelianism from his.

In order, then, fully to understand the polemics of St. Thomas
Aquinas and others, it is necessary to know something of mediaeval
Islamic philosophy; but it is also necessary for a connected reason,
namely that there arose in Paris a School of philosophers who
claimed to represent integral Aristotelianism, the chief figure of
this School being the celebrated opponent of St. Thomas, Siger of
Brabant. These 'integral 1 Aristotelians, the genuine Aristotelians
as they thought themselves to be, meant by genuine Aristote¬
lianism the system of Aristotle as interpreted by Averroes, the
Commentator par excellence . In order, therefore, to understand
this school and an important phase of the controversies at Paris,
it is obviously necessary to be acquainted with the place of
Averroes in the history of philosophy and with his doctrine.

But, though some treatment of mediaeval Islamic philosophy
must be given, it does not come within the scope of this book to
discuss the Islamic philosophy for its own sake. It has indeed its
own peculiar interest (for example, its relations to Islamic theology,
their attempted reconciliation and the tension between them, as
well as the relation of Islamic thought to mysticism in the Islamic
world, and of Islamic philosophy to Islamic culture in general,
have their own intrinsic interest), but the reader must expect here
no more than a brief sketch of Islamic philosophy in the mediaeval
period, a treatment of it less for its own sake than in function of
its influence on the thought of mediaeval Christendom. This
perhaps rather one-sided treatment is not designed to belittle the
achievements of Moslem philosophers, nor does it involve a denial
of the intrinsic interest of Islamic philosophy for its own sake: it is
simply dictated by the general purpose and scope of this book, as
well as, of course, by considerations of space.

2. If Islamic philosophy was connected with the philosophy of

188 ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

Christendom in the way just mentioned, it was also connected with
Christianity in its origins, owing to the fact that it was Christian
Syrians who first translated Aristotle and other ancient philo¬
sophers into Arabic. The first stage consisted of the translation of
Greek works into Syriac at the school of Edessa in Mesopotamia,
which was founded by St. Ephrem of Nisibis in 363 and was closed
by the Emperor Zeno in 489 because of the Nestorianism which
prevailed there. At Edessa some of the works of Aristotle, princi¬
pally the logical works, as well as Porphyry’s Isagoge , were
translated into Syriac, and this work was continued in Persia, at
Nisibis and Gandisapora, whither the scholars betook themselves
on the closure of the school. Thus works of Aristotle and Plato
were translated into Persian. In the sixth century works of
Aristotle and Porphyry and the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius
were translated into Syriac at the Monophysite schools of Syria.

The second stage consisted in the translation of the Syriac
translations into Arabic. Even before the time of Mohammed
(569-632) there had been a number of Nestorian Christians who
worked among the Arabs, mainly as physicians, and when the
'AbbSsid dynasty replaced that of the Ommaiades in 750, Syrian
scholars were invited to the Arab court at Baghdad. Medical
works were translated first of all; but after a time philosophical
works were also translated, and in 832 a school of translators was
established at Baghdad, an institution which produced Arabic
versions of Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Por¬
phyry and Ammonius* Plato's Republic and Laws were also
translated, as well as (in the first half of the ninth century) the
so-called Theology of Aristotle, which consisted of a compilation of
the Enneads (4-6) of Plotinus, erroneously attributed to Aristotle.
To this must be added the fact that the Liber de Causis, really the
Institutio Theologica of Proclus, was also attributed to Aristotle.
These false attributions, as well as the translation into Arabic of
neo-Platonic commentators on Aristotle, helped to popularise
among the Arabs a neo-Platonic interpretation of the Aristotelian
system, though other influences, as well as Aristotle and the neo-
Platonists, contributed to the formation of Islamic philosophy,
e.g. the Islamic religion itself and the influence of Oriental religious
thought, such as that of Persia.

3. The Moslem philosophers may be divided into two groups,
the eastern group and the western group. In this section I shall
treat briefly of three thinkers belonging to the eastern group.

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY

189

(i) Alfarabi , who belonged to the school of Baghdad and died
about 950, is a good example of a thinker upon whom the influences
mentioned above made themselves felt. Thus he helped to intro¬
duce the Islamic cultured world to the logic of Aristotle, while by
his classification of the departments of philosophy and theology
he made philosophy self-conscious, as it were, marking it off from
theology. Logic is a propaedeutic and preparation for philosophy
proper, which Alfarabi divided into physics, comprising the parti¬
cular sciences (psychology being included and the theory of know
ledge being treated of in psychology) and metaphysics (physics
and metaphysics being the two branches of theoretical philosophy)
and ethics or practical philosophy. His scheme for theology
included as sections (1) omnipotence and justice of God; (2) the
unity and other attributes of God; (3) the doctrine of sanctions in
the next life; (4) and (5) the individual’s rights and the social
relations of the Moslem. By making philosophy a separate
province, then, Alfarabi did not mean to supplant or undermine
the Islamic theology: rather did he place schematisation and
logical form at the service of theology.

In addition, Alfarabi utilised Aristotelian arguments in proving
the existence of God. Thus, on the supposition that the things of
the world are passively moved, an idea which fit f ed in well with
Islamic theology, he argued that they must receive their move¬
ment from a first Mover, God. Again, the things of this world are
contingent, they do not exist of necessity: their essence does not
involve their existence, as is shown by the fact that they come
into being and pass away. From this it follows that they have
received their existence, and ultimately one must admit a Being
which exists essentially, necessarily, and is the Cause of the
existence of all contingent beings.

On the other hand, when it comes to the general system of
Alfarabi, the neo-Platonic influence is manifest. Thus the theme
of emanation is employed to show how from the ultimate Deity or
One there proceed the Intelligence and the World-Soul, from the
thoughts or ideas of which proceeds the Cosmos, from the higher
or outer spheres to the lower or inner spheres. Bodies are composed
of matter and form. The intelligence of man is illuminated by the
cosmic intelligence, which is the active intellect of man (the voO;
$7 tIxt7}to< of Alexander of Aphrodisias). Moreover, the illumina¬
tion of the human intellect is the explanation of the fact that our
concepts ‘fit* things, since the Ideas in God are at once the

I go ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

exemplar and source of the concepts in the human mind and of
the forms in things.

This doctrine of illumination is connected, not only with neo¬
platonism, but also with Oriental mysticism. Alfarabi himself
became attached to the mystical school or sect of the Sufis, and
his philosophy had a religious orientation. The highest task of
man is to know God, and, just as the general process of the
universe is a flowing out from God and a return to God, so should
man, who proceeds from God in the einanative process and who is
enlightened by God, strive after the return to and likeness with
God.

(ii) The greatest Moslem philosopher of the eastern group is
without a doubt Avicenna or Ibn Sind (980-1037), the real creator
of a Scholastic system in the Islamic world. 1 A Persian by birth,
born near Bokhara, he received his education in the Arab tongue,
and most of his works, which were extremely numerous, were
written in Arabic. A precocious boy, he learnt in succession the
Koran, Arabic literature, geometry, jurisprudence, logic. Out¬
stripping his instructors, he studied by himself theology, physics,
mathematics and medicine, and at sixteen years of age he was
already practising as a doctor. He then devoted a year and a half
to the study of philosophy and logic, but it was only when he
chanced upon a commentary by Alfarabi that he was able to
understand to his satisfaction the Metaphysics of Aristotle, which
he had read, he tells us, forty times without being able to under¬
stand it. The rest of his life was a busy and adventurous one, as
he acted as Vizir to several Sultans and practised medicine, expe¬
riencing in his travels the ups and downs of life and the favour and
disfavour of princes, but being always the philosopher, pursuing
his studies and writings wherever he was, even in prison and on
horseback. He died at Hamadan at the age of fifty-seven, after
performing his ablutions, repenting of his sins, distributing abun¬
dant alms and freeing his slaves. His principal philosophical work
is the As-Sifa, known in the Middle Ages as the Sufficientiae, which
comprised logic, physics (including the natural sciences), mathe¬
matics, psychology and metaphysics. The Najdt was a collection
of texts, taken from the first work and arranged in a different
order.

Avicenna's division of philosophy in the wide sense into logic,

1 The name Avicenna, by which Ibn SIna was known to the mediaeval world,
comes from the Hebrew version, Aven Sina.

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY

191

the propaedeutic to philosophy, speculative philosophy (physics,
mathematics and theology) and practical philosophy (ethics, eco¬
nomics and politics) offers no remarkable features, save that
theology is divided into first theology (equivalent to ontology and
natural theology) and second theology (involving Islamic themes),
and this marks off Islamic theology from the Greek. But his
metaphysic, in spite of its borrowing both from Aristotle and from
neo-Platonism, shows features of its own, which make it plain
that, however much he borrowed from former philosophers,
Avicenna had thought out his system carefully and independently
and had welded it into a system of a peculiar stamp. For instance,
although he is at one with Aristotle in assigning the study of
being as being to metaphysics, Avicenna employs an un-Aristote-
lian illustration to show that the mind necessarily apprehends the
idea of being, though it is acquired normally through experience.
Imagine a man suddenly created, who cannot see or hear, who is
floating in space and whose members are so disposed that they
cannot touch one another. On the supposition that he cannot
exercise the senses and acquire the notion of being through sight
or touch, will he thereby be unable to form the notion? No,
because he will be conscious of and affirm his own existence, so
that, even if he cannot acquire the notion of being through external
experience, he will at least acquire it through self-consciousness. 1

In Avicenna's eyes the notion of necessity is also a primary
notion, for to him all beings are necessary. It is necessary, how¬
ever, to distinguish two kinds of necessity. A particular object in
the world is not necessary of itself: its essence does not involve
existence necessarily, as is shown by the fact that it comes into
being and passes away; but it is necessary in the sense that its
existence is determined by the necessary action of an external
cause. Accordingly a contingent being means, for Avicenna, a
being the existence of which is due, not to the essence of the being
itself, but to the necessary action of an external cause. Such
beings are indeed caused and so ‘contingent’, but none the less the
action of the cause is determined.

This leads him on to argue that the chain of causes cannot be
infinite, since then there would be no reason for the existence of
anything, but that there must be a first cause which is itself
uncaused. This uncaused Being, the necessary Being, cannot
receive its essence from another, nor can its existence form part
1 1, 281 and 363.

jgz ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

of its essence, since composition of parts would involve an anterior
uniting cause: essence and existence must therefore be identical
in the necessary Being. This ultimate Being is necessary of itself,
whereas 'contingent 1 beings are not necessary of themselves but
necessary through another, so that the concept 'being', as applied
to necessary and contingent being, has not the same sense. They
are not, then, species of one genus; but rather does Being belong
par excellence , properly and primarily, to the necessary Being
and is predicated of contingent being only secondarily and
analogically.

Closely allied with the distinction between the possible and the
necessary is the distinction between potentiality and act. Poten¬
tiality, as Aristotle said, is the principle of change into another as
other, and this principle may exist either in the agent (active
potency) or in the patient (passive potency). Moreover, there are
degrees of potency and act, ranging between the lower limit, pure
potentiality, prime matter, and the upper limit, pure act, the
necessary Being, though Avicenna does not use the phrase 'Pure
Act' quoad verbum . From this position Avicenna proceeds to show
that God is Truth, Goodness, Love and Life. For example, the
Being which is always in act, without potentiality or privation,
must be absolute Goodness, and since the divine attributes are
ontologically indistinguishable, the divine Goodness must be
identical with absolute Love.

As God is absolute Goodness, He necessarily tends to diffuse His
goodness, to radiate it, and this means that He creates necessarily.
As God is the necessary Being, all His attributes must be necessary:
He is, therefore, necessarily Creator. This in turn involves the
conclusion that creation is from eternity, for, if God is necessarily
Creator and God is eternal, creation must be eternal. Moreover, if
God creates by the necessity of His Nature, it follows also that
there is no free choice in creation, that God could not create
otherwise or create other things than He actually creates. But
God can produce immediately only by a being like Himself: it is
impossible for God to create material things directly. The logically
first being to proceed from God is, therefore, the first Intelligence.
This Intelligence is created, in the sense that it proceeds from God:
it receives, then, its existence, and in this way duality begins.
Whereas in the One there is no duality, in the primary Intelligence
there is a duality of essence and existence, in that existence is
received, while there is also a duality of knowledge, in that the

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY 193

primary Intelligence knows the One or God as necessary and itself
as 'possible*. In this way Avicenna deduces the ten Intelligences
which exhibit a growing multiplicity and so bridges the gap
between the unity of God and the multiplicity of creation. The
tenth Intelligence is the 'giver of forms', which are received in
prime matter, pure potentiality (or rather potentiality 'deprived
of' form, and so, in a sense, 'evil'), and so rendered capable of
multiplication within the species. The separate Intelligences can
differ from one another only specifically, in virtue of their greater
or less proximity to the One and the decreasing simplicity in the
process of emanation; but, as matter is the principle of individua¬
tion, the same specific form can be multiplied in a plurality of
individual concrete objects, though prime matter has first to be
taken out of its state of indetermination and disposed for the
reception of specific form, first through the forma corporeitatis and
then through the action of external causes which predispose matter
for the reception of one particular specific form.

The tenth Intelligence has another function to perform besides
that of Daior formarum , for it also exercises the function of the
active intellect in man. In his analysis of abstraction Avicenna
will not credit the human intellect as such with the final act of
abstraction, the apprehension of the universal in a state of pure
intelligibility, as this would mean that the intellect passes from a
state of potentiality to act entirely by its own power, whereas no
agent can proceed from passive potency to act except under the
influence of an agent external to itself but like itself. He distin¬
guished, therefore, the active and passive intellects, but made the
active intellect a separate and unitary intelligence which illumines
the human intellect or confers on it its intellectual and abstract
grasp of essences (the essence or universal post rent, to be distin¬
guished from the essence ante rent and in re).

Avicenna's idea of necessary creation and his denial that the
One has direct knowledge of the multiplicity of concrete objects
set him at variance with the theology of the Koran; but he tried,
so far as he could, to reconcile his Aristotelian-neo-Platonist system
with orthodox Islam. For example, he did not deny the immor¬
tality of the human soul, in spite of his doctrine concerning the
separateness of the active intellect, and he maintained a doctrine
of sanctions in the after life, though he interpreted this in an
intellectualist manner, reward consisting in the knowledge of
purely intelligible objects, punishment in the deprivation of such

194 ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

knowledge. 1 Again, though his analysis and explanation of
creation and the relation of the world to God necessarily involved
a theory of emanation and, in this respect, tended towards
pantheism, he tried to safeguard himself from pantheism by
affirming the distinction between essence and existence in all
beings which proceed, immediately or mediately, from God. Pos¬
sibly the Islamic doctrine of the divine omnipotence, when inter¬
preted 'speculatively*, tends to pantheism, and it may well be that
some fundamental principles of Avicenna's system would favour
pantheism; but he was certainly no pantheist by intention.

When portions of the writings of Avicenna were translated into
Latin in the twelfth century, the Christian world found itself faced
for the first time with a closely knit system which was bound to
exercise a strong attraction on certain minds. Thus Gundissalinus
(d. 1151) translated into Latin the Spanish translation made
by Joannes Hispanus (Avendeath) and utilised the thought of
Avicenna in his De Anima , following the Avicennian psychology
(and citing the latter's allegory of the 'flying man’), though he left
Avicenna for Augustine by making the active intellect, as source
of illumination, identical with God. Moreover, in his De Proces -
stone Mundi he attempted to reconcile the cosmogony of Avicenna
with Christian doctrine, though his example in this matter was not
followed. Before the entire Metaphysics of Aristotle became avail¬
able, uncertainty reigned as to which doctrines were to be attri¬
buted to Avicenna and which to Aristotle. Thus Roger Bacon
thought that Avicenna must have followed Aristotle throughout,
though he (Bacon) had not got books M and N of the Metaphysics
and so could not check the truth or untruth of this supposition.
The result was that William of Auvergne (died c. 1249), the first
vigorous opponent of Avicenna, attributed the cosmogony of
Avicenna to Aristotle himself. This cosmogony, said William, was
erroneous, in that it admitted intermediaries in the process of
creation, thus allowing to creatures a divine power, denied the
divine freedom, asserted the eternity of the world, made matter
the principle of individuation and regarded the separate active

1 It should be noted that it was the Averroistic doctrine of the unicity of the
passive or possible intellect which necessarily involved the denial of personal
immortality. The doctrine of the unicity of the active intellect does not necessarily
involve such a denial, whether the active intellect is identified with a subordinate
Intelligence or with God in His function as illuminator. As for Aristotle, he may
not have believed in personal immortality himself, but the rejection of personal
immortality does not necessarily follow from his doctrine of the active intellect,
whereas it does follow from the doctrine of Averroes. On this point the positions
of Avicenna and Averroes must be clearly distinguished.

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY 195

intellect as the efficient cause of human souls. None the less
William himself followed Avicenna by introducing into Latin
Scholasticism the distinction between essence and existence.
Moreover, denying Avicenna's doctrine of the active intellect, he
pretty well identified it with God. Other thinkers, such as
Alexander of Hales, John of la Rochelle and St. Albert, while
denying the doctrine of a separate active intellect, made use of
Avicenna's theory of abstraction and of the necessity of illumina¬
tion, whereas Roger Bacon and Roger Marston found Avicenna's
error to consist only in not identifying the separate and illuminat¬
ing active intellect with God. Without going any further into the
question of Avicenna's influence, which would require a distinct
monograph, one can say that he influenced Latin Scholasticism in
regard to at least three themes, that of knowledge and illumination,
that of the relation of essence and existence, and that of matter as
the principle of individuation. 1 Criticism of Avicenna by a Latin
Scholastic does not mean, of course, that the Scholastic learnt
nothing from Avicenna. For instance, St. Thomas found it
necessary to criticise the Moslem philosopher's treatment of possi¬
bility, 2 but that does not mean that St. Thomas did not develop
his own position partly through a consideration of Avicenna's
doctrine, even if it is difficult to assess the precise degree of
influence exercised by the latter's writings on the greatest of the
Scholastics. Scotus, however, was much more influenced by
Avicenna than was St. Thomas, though he certainly could not be
called with propriety a disciple of Avicenna.

(iii) Algazel (1058-1111), who lectured for a time at Baghdad,
opposed the views of Alfarabi and Avicenna from the viewpoint
of Mohammedan orthodoxy. In his Maqdsid or Intentiones Philo-
sophorutn he summed up the views of these two philosophers, and
this exposition, translated into Latin by Gundissahnus, gave the
impression, when taken by itself, that Algazel agreed with the
opinions expressed. Thus William of Auvergne coupled together
as objects of attack the 'followers of Aristotle', Alfarabi, Algazel
and Avicenna, being unaware of the fact that Algazel had pro¬
ceeded to criticise the systems of the philosophers in his Destrudio
philosophorum , 8 which tried to show how the philosophers contra¬
dicted themselves. This book elicited later from Averroes a

1 On Avicenna's influence, cf. Roland-Gosselin, commentary on the De enle et
essentia, pp. 59 and 150.

1 Cf. De Pot., 5, 3; Contra Gent., 2, 30.

* More properly Incoherentia philosoyhorum.

196 ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

Destructio desiructionis philosophorum . In his Revivification of the
Religious Sciences he gave his positive views, defending the
orthodox doctrine of the creation of the world in time and out of
nothing against Avicenna's ideas of emanation and of the eternity
of the world. He defended also the doctrine of God’s universal
causality, making the connection between cause and effect to
depend on the divine power, not on any causal activity on the
part of creatures. The philosopher sees consequence or constant
conjunction and concludes to the relation of cause and effect,
whereas in truth the following of one event on another is simply
due to the power and action of God. In other words he maintained
an occasionalistic doctrine.

Algazel was very far from being simply a philosopher who wished
to counteract the unorthodox tendencies of his Hellcnising prede¬
cessors: he was also an eminent Sufi, a mystic and spiritual writer.
Leaving his work at Baghdad he retired into Syria, where he lived
a life of asceticism and contemplation. Sometimes indeed he
emerged from his retirement and in any case he had disciples: he
even founded a kind of theological college and a school of Sufism
at his place of retirement, Tus; but the major interest of his life
was the revival of religion, in the sense of mysticism. Drawing not
only on previous Islamic sources, but utilising neo-Platonic ideas,
and even ideas from Judaism and Christianity, he built up a
system of spirituality which was personalist, i.e. non-pantheistic,
in character. Some of Algazel’s expressions would seem at first
sight to imply or involve pantheism, but his neo-Platonism was
put at the service of religious mysticism rather than of speculation.
It is not that he tends to identify the world with God, but rather
that his fusion of the Islamic doctrines of predestination and
divine omni-causality with strongly emphasised religious mysticism
leads him into a kind of panentheism. The Semitic monotheism,
when seen in the light of neo-Platonism and fused with mysticism,
could lead him probably in no other direction. In the field of
purely philosophical speculation he shows a somewhat sceptical
attitude and he represents the protest of religious mysticism
against rationalism as well as that of Islamic theology against
Aristotelian philosophy.

4. The background of the Moslem philosophers of the West was
provided by the brilliant Islamic civilisation which grew up in
Spain in the tenth century and which, at that period, was so
greatly superior to what western Christendom had to offer. The

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY 197

first philosopher of the western group was Ibn Masarrah (d. 931),
who adopted ideas from the Pseudo-Empedocles, while Avempace
or Ibn Bajja (d. 1138) and Abubacer or Ibn Tufail (d. 1185)
represented mystical tendencies; but the greatest figure of this
group is undoubtedly Averroes, who occupies that prominent
position in the western group which Avicenna represents in the
eastern group.

Averroes or Ibn RuSd (the Commentator of the Latin Scholastics)
was bom at C6rdoba in 1126, the son of a judge. After studying
theology, jurisprudence, medicine, mathematics and philosophy,
he occupied judicial posts, first at Seville and afterwards at
C6rdoba, becoming physician to the Caliph in 1182. Subsequently
he fell into disfavour with the Caliph al-Mansur and was banished
from court. He later crossed to Morocco, dying there in 1198.

Being convinced that the genius of Aristotle was the final
culmination of the human intellect, Averroes naturally devoted a
great deal of energy to the composition of commentaries. These
fall into three classes: (i) the lesser or ‘middle’ commentaries, in
which Averroes gives the content of Aristotle’s doctrine, adding
his own explanations and developments in such a way that it is
not always easy to distinguish what comes from Aristotle and what
from Averroes; (ii) the greater commentaries, in which Averroes
gives first a portion of the actual text of Aristotle and then adds
his own commentary; and (iii) the little commentaries (para¬
phrases or compendia), in which he gives the conclusions arrived
at by Aristotle, omitting proofs and historical references, and which
were designed for students unable to go to the sources or larger
commentaries. (Apparently he composed the middle commen¬
taries and the compendia before the greater commentaries.) The
entire Organon of Aristotle, in the lesser commentary and in the
compendium, is extant, as also Latin translations of all three
classes of commentary for the Posterior Analytics , the Physics , the
De Caelo t the De Anima and the Metaphysics . In addition to these
and other commentaries in Latin translations the Christian
Scholastics possessed Averroes’s answer to Algazel (i.e. the Destructio
desiructionis philosophorum)] several logical works, a letter on the
connection between the abstract intelligence and man, a work on
the beatitude of the soul, etc.

The metaphysical scale reaches from pure matter as the lowest
limit to pure Act, God, as the highest limit, between these limits
being the objects composed of potency and act, which form Natura

198 ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

naturata. (The phrases of the Latin translation, Naiura naturans
and Naiura naturata , reappear eventually in the system of
Spinoza.) Prime matter, as equivalent to non-being, as pure
potentiality and the absence of all determination, cannot be the
term of the creative act: it is, therefore, co-eternal with God. God,
however, draws or educes the forms of material things from the
potency of pure matter, and creates the Intelligences, ten in
number, connected extrinsically with the spheres, so that the
Avicennian emanation-theory is avoided and real pantheism is
excluded. The order of the creation or generation of things is,
however, determined.

Nevertheless, even if Averroes's rejection of emanation makes
him in a sense more orthodox than Avicenna, he did not follow
Avicenna in accepting personal immortality. Averroes did indeed
follow Themistius and other commentators in holding that the
intellectus materialis is the same substance as the intellectus agens
and that both survive death, but he followed Alexander of
Aphrodisias in holding that this substance is a separate and
unitary Intelligence. (It is the Intelligence of the moon, the
lowest sphere.) The individual passive intellect in the individual
man becomes, under the action of the active intellect, the 'acquired
intellect', which is absorbed by the active intellect in such a way
that, although it survives bodily death, it does so not as a personal,
individual existent, but as a moment in the universal and common
intelligence of the human species. There is, therefore, immortality,
but there is no personal immortality. This view was earnestly
combated by St. Thomas Aquinas and other Scholastics, though it
was maintained by the Latin Averroists as a philosophical truth.

More interesting, however, than Averroes's particular philoso¬
phical doctrine is his notion of the general relation of philosophy
to theology. Holding, as he did, that Aristotle was the completer
of human science, 1 the model of human perfection and the author of
a system which is the supreme truth, interpreting Aristotle as
holding the unicity of the active intellect and accepting the
doctrine of the eternity of matter, Averroes had necessarily to
attempt a reconciliation of his philosophical ideas with orthodox
Islamic theology, especially as those were not wanting who were
ready to accuse him of heresy because of his devotion to a pagan
thinker. He accordingly attempted this reconciliation by means
of the so-called ‘double truth' theory. This does not mean that,

1 Dt Anima, 3, 2.

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY

199

according to Averroes, a proposition can be true in philosophy and
false in theology or vice versa : his theory is that one and the same
truth is understood clearly in philosophy and expressed allegori¬
cally in theology. The scientific formulation of truth is achieved
only in philosophy, but the same truth is expressed in theology,
only in a different manner. The picture-teaching of the Koran
expresses the truth in a manner intelligible to the ordinary man,
to the unlettered, whereas the philosopher strips away the allegori¬
cal husk and attains the truth 'unvarnished', free from the
trappings of Vorstellung. Averroes’s idea of the relation of philo¬
sophy to theology resembles somewhat that of Hegel, and it would
be unacceptable, and was unacceptable, to the orthodox Islamic
theologian; but it was not the absurd idea that one proposition
can be true in philosophy and the diametrically opposite proposi¬
tion true in theology. What Averroes did was to make theology
subordinate to philosophy, to make the latter the judge of the
former, so that it belongs to the philosopher to decide what
theological doctrines need to be allegorically interpreted and in
what way they should be interpreted. This view was accepted by
the Latin Averroists, and it was this view, moreover, which drew
upon Averroes, and upon philosophy generally, the hostility of the
Islamic theologians. In regard to statements attributed to
Averroes which taken literally imply that one proposition, for
example, that the active intellect is numerically single, is true in
philosophy and false in theology, it has been suggested that this
was simply a sarcastic way of saying that the theological doctrine
is nonsense. When Averroes says that some proposition is true in
the fideistic theology of the conservatives, who rejected philosophy,
he means that it is 'true' in the School of the enemies of science,
i.e. that it is simply false. He had no use for the traditionalists as
the traditionalists had no use for him, and his attitude in this
matter led to the prohibition in Islamic Spain of the study of
Greek philosophy and to the burning of philosophic works.

5. Of the influence of Averroes in Latin Christendom I shall
speak later; but it may be of interest to add a word here on the
attitude of Dante (1265-1321) towards the Arabian philosophers. 1
The question of Dante's attitude to the Arab philosophers arose
when scholars began to ask themselves seriously and without
prejudice why Dante, who in the Divina Commedia places
Mohammed in hell, not only placed Averroes and Avicenna in

1 For some further remarks on this subject see pp. 439-40.

200

ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

Limbo, but also placed the Latin Averroist Siger of Brabant in
heaven and even went so far as to put his eulogium into the
mouth of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a doughty opponent of
Siger. Obviously Dante was treating these men as philosophers,
and it was because of this fact that he placed the two Islamic
thinkers as high in the scale as he could: as they were not Christians,
he did not consider that he could release them from Inferno alto¬
gether, and so he placed them in Limbo. Siger on the other hand
was a Christian, and so Dante placed him in heaven. That he
made St. Thomas speak his praises and that he put him on the
left of St. Thomas, while St. Albert the Great was on Aquinas's
right, is explicable if we remember that the Thomist system
presupposes a philosophy which is built up by natural reason alone
and that to build up a philosophy by reason alone was precisely
what Siger of Brabant professed to do: it is not necessary to
suppose that Dante approved all Siger's notions, but he takes him
as the symbol of 'pure philosophy'.

However, why did Dante single out Avicenna, Averroes and
Siger of Brabant? Was it simply because they were philosophers
or did Dante owe something himself to the Moslems? It has been
shown by Bruno Nardi, 1 and the theme has been resumed by Asin
Palacios, 2 that Dante owed to the systems of Alfarabi, Avicenna,
Algazel and Averroes important points in his philosophy, for
example, the light-doctrine of God, the theory of the Intelligences,
the influence of the celestial spheres, the idea that only the intel¬
lectual part of the soul is directly and properly created, the need
of illumination for intellection, etc. Some of these ideas were
found in the Augustinian tradition, it is true; but it has been
shown that Dante, far from being a Thomist pure and simple,
owed a considerable debt to the Moslems and to Averroes in
particular. This will explain why he singles out for special treat¬
ment the most eminent of the Islamic philosophers, and why he
places in heaven the greatest of the Latin Averroists.

1 Intorno al tomismo di Dante e alia quistione di Sigieri (Giornale Dantesco,
XXII, 5).

1 Islam and the Divine Comedy (abridged Engl. Transl., London, 1926).

CHAPTER XX

JEWISH PHILOSOPHY
The Cabala—A vicebron — Maitnonides .

1. Philosophy among the Jews really owes its origin to inter¬
course with other nations and cultures. Thus in the first volume
of this history I have already treated of Philo, the Alexandrian
Jew (c. 25 b.c.-c. a.d. 40), who attempted a reconciliation of the
Jewish Scriptural theology and Greek philosophy, producing a
system in which elements of the Platonic tradition (the theory of
Ideas), of Stoicism (doctrine of the Logos) and of Oriental thought
(intermediary beings) were combined. In the philosophy of Philo
the transcendence of God was strongly emphasised, and this insis¬
tence on the divine transcendence was characteristic of the doctrine
of the Cabala , as modified by Greek, particularly by Platonic,
theories. The Cabala consisted of two works, the Jezirah (creation),
which was probably composed after the middle of the ninth century
a.d., and the Sohar (brightness), which was built up from the
beginning of the thirteenth century and committed to writing by
a Spanish Jew about the year 1300. Additions and commentaries
were subsequently made. The Cabalistic philosophy shows the
influence of neo-Platonism in its doctrine of emanation and inter¬
mediary beings between God and the world, and one of the
channels by which neorPlatonism influenced the construction of
the emanationist philosophy of the Sohar was the thought of the
Spanish Jew who was known to the Latin Scholastics as A vicebron.

2. Salomon I bn Gabirol or Avicebron (so called by the Latin
Scholastics, who thought that he was an Arab) was bom at
Malaga about 1021, was educated at Saragossa and died in 1069/70.
He was naturally influenced by the Arabian philosophy and his
chief work, the Fons Vitae, was originally composed in Arabic. The
Arabic original is, however, no longer extant, though we possess the
work in the Latin translation of Joannes Hispanus (Avendeath)
and Dominicus Gundissalinus. The work consists of five books and
had a considerable influence on the Christian Scholastics.

The neo-Platonic influence shows itself in the emanationist
scheme of Avicebron's philosophy. The summit of the hierarchy
of being and the source of all limited being is, of course, God, who
is one and unknowable by the discursive reason, apprehensible

201

202 ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

only in the intuition of ecstasy. To this Avicebron added a peculiar
doctrine concerning the divine will by which are created, or from
which emanate, all lesser beings. The divine will, like God Him¬
self, transcends the composition of matter and form and can be
apprehended only in mystical experience; but the exact relation
of the divine will to God is not easy to determine. The distinction
drawn between the divine essence and the divine will would
appear to make of the latter a distinct hypostasis, though on the
other hand the divine will is depicted as being God Himself as
active ad extra , as God in His appearance. In any case there is a
substitution of Will for Logos. From God, via the divine will,
whether God under one aspect or a distinct hypostasis, proceeds
the cosmic spirit or World-Soul, which is inferior to God and is
composed of matter and form, materia universalis and forma
universalis . From the World-Soul in turn proceed pure spirits and
corporeal things.

The interesting point about Avicebron’s system is, however, not
his emanationist scheme, but rather his doctrine of universal
hylomorphic composition in all beings inferior to God, a doctrine
which was derived, at least indirectly, from Plotinus and which
influenced one tradition of Christian Scholasticism. Just as from
the World-Soul proceed the individual forms, so from the World-
Soul proceed also spiritual matter, which is present in the Intelli¬
gence and in the rational soul, and corporeal matter. Matter, then,
which does not of itself involve corporeality, is the principle of
limitation and finiteness in all creatures: it is the hylomorphic
composition in creatures which marks them off from God, for in
God there is no composition. This doctrine of universal hylo¬
morphic composition in creatures was maintained by St.
Bonaventure, for example, the great Franciscan contemporary of
St. Thomas Aquinas. Moreover, there is a plurality of forms in
every being which possesses in itself a plurality of grades of
perfection, as the human being, for example, the microcosm,
possesses the perfections of corporeality, vegetative life, sensitive
life and intellectual life. Every corporeal being possesses the forma
corporeitatis , but it has further to be given its determinate place
in the hierarchy of being, and this is accomplished by the reception
of the form or forms by which it becomes, e.g. living thing, animal,
dog. It has been maintained that the doctrine of Avicebron was
the real origin of the Augustinian School's theory of the plurality
of forms, but, even granting this, it must also be remembered that

JEWISH PHILOSOPHY 203

the doctrine fitted well into the scheme of the Augustinians'
philosophy, since Augustine had himself taught that the function
of the lower forms is to lead on to the higher forms and that this
is true also of these forms as represented in human knowledge, i.e.
that contemplation of the lower stages of being should lead the
mind to higher stages.

3. The most interesting of the Jewish mediaeval philosophers is,
however, Moses Maimoniies , who was bom at C6rdoba in 1135
and died in Cairo in 1204, having had to abandon Moorish Spain,
which was no longer favourable to philosophers. In his Guide of
the Doubting he attempted to give to theology its rational basis in
philosophy, which for him meant the philosophy of Aristotle,
whom he reverenced as the greatest example of human intellectual
power apart from the Prophets. We must hold fast to what is
given us in sense-perception and what can be strictly demonstrated
by the intellect: if statements contained in the Old Testament
plainly contradict what is plainly established by reason, then such
statements must be interpreted allegorically. This view, however,
did not mean that Maimonides discarded the teaching of theology
whenever Aristotle held something different to that which the
Scripture taught. For example, theology teaches the creation of
the world in time out of nothing, and this means both that God
must be the author of matter as well as of form and that the world
cannot be eternal. If the eternity of the world could be demon¬
strated by reason in such a way that the opposite was clearly seen
to be an impossibility, then we should have to interpret the
Scriptural teaching accordingly; but, as a matter of fact, the
Scriptural teaching is clear and the philosophical arguments
adduced to prove the eternity of the world are inconclusive: we
must, then, reject Aristotle's teaching on this point. Plato came
nearer to the truth than Aristotle, but even he accepted an un¬
created matter. The creation out of nothing of both matter and
form is also necessary, according to Maimonides, if the fact of
miracles, plainly taught in the Old Testament, is to be allowed,
since, if G^d is able to suspend the operation of natural laws, He
must be the absolute Sovereign of nature and He would not be
that unless He were Creator in the full sense of the word. To the
fanatics Maimonides's allegorical interpretation of some of the
Scriptural pictures of God seemed to be a selling of the Holy
Scripture to the Greeks, and some Jews in France even went so
far as to try to enlist the aid of the Inquisition against this

204 ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

'heresy’; but in point of fact he was merely saying that there can
be a fountain of certain truth besides theology. In other words, he
gave a charter to philosophy, and he thus influenced the growth of
philosophical interest among the Jews in Spain, even if his chief
influence lay in the province of theology. That he was no blind
worshipper of Aristotle has been shown already. Aristotle, thought
Maimonides, went wrong in teaching the eternity of the world, and
even if philosophy cannot demonstrate creation in time, it can at
least show that the arguments brought up in favour of the
Aristotelian position are inconclusive and unsound.

Relying partly on the natural theology of Alfarabi and Avicenna,
Maimonides proved the existence of God in various ways, arguing
from creatures to God as first Mover, as necessary Being and as
first Cause. These arguments he supported from statements of
Aristotle in the Physics and Metaphysics. But if Maimonides
anticipated most of the types of proof given later by St. Thomas,
he was more insistent than the latter on the inapplicability of
positive predicates to God. God is pure Act, without matter and
without potency, infinitely removed from creatures, and, in regard
to ‘qualities’, we can say what God is not, rather than what He is.
He is one and transcendent (between God and the world there is a
hierarchy of Intelligences or pure spirits), but we cannot form any
adequate positive idea of God. St. Thomas, of course, would admit
this, but Maimonides was rather more insistent on the via negativa.
We can, however, ascribe to God activities, the activities of crea¬
tion and providence, for example, provided that we realise that
the difference of names does not correspond to any difference in
God Himself and that God Himself is unchangeable. Unlike
Avicebron, Maimonides admitted a special providence on God’s
part in regard to particular creatures, though this is true only of
men, so far as the material world is concerned. The active intellect
is the tenth Intelligence (the Intelligences are without ‘matter’),
but the passive intellects of the just are immortal. Immortality,
then, he admitted only in a limited extension, for the just; but he
maintained the freedom of the will, whereby men become just,
and he denied the determining influence of the celestial bodies and
spheres in regard to human conduct. In fine, Moses Maimonides
made a better business of reconciling Greek philosophy with
Jewish orthodoxy than Avicebron had made of it, and it is note¬
worthy that the influence of the Aristotelian system is more in
evidence in the former’s philosophy than in the latter’s.

CHAPTER XXI

THE TRANSLATIONS

The translated works—Translations from Greek and from Arabic
—Effects of translations and opposition to Aristotelianism.

i. Before the twelfth century part of the Organon of Aristotle
(the Categories and the De Interpretatione) had been available to
mediaeval philosophers in the Latin version by Boethius ( Logica
vetus), but the entire Organon became available fairly early in the
twelfth century. Thus about 1128 James of Venice translated the
Analytics, the Topics and the Sophistical Arguments from Greek into
Latin, the newly translated books of the Organon being known as
the Logica nova . It appears that portions at least of other books
of the Organon besides the Categories and the De Interpretatione
had survived into the twelfth century in the translation of
Boethius; but in any case a complete translation of the Organon
into Latin had been effected by the middle of the century. It is
to be noted that the translation by James of Spain was made from
the Greek, as was also the translation of the fourth book of the
Meteorologica made by Henricus Aristippus before 1162. Henricus
Aristippus was Archdeacon of Catania in Sicily, an island which
was an important centre in the work of translation. Thus it was
in twelfth-century Sicily that Ptolemy’s j^tyiXT] auvTa^; and the
Optics, some of the works of Euclid and Proclus’s Elementatio
physica were translated from Greek into Latin.

Sicily was one centre of the work of translation; Spain was
another, the most famous school of translators being that of
Toledo. Thus under Archbishop Raymond (1126-51) Joannes
Hispanus (Avendeath) translated from the Arabic into Latin (via
Spanish) the Logic of Avicenna, while Dominicus Gundissalinus
translated (with help from other scholars) the Metaphysics of
Avicenna, parts of his Physics, his De Sufficientia, De Caelo et
Mundo and De Mundo, the Metaphysics of Algazel and the De
Scientiis of Alfarabi. Dominicus Gundissalinus and John of Spain
also translated from Arabic into Latin the Fons Vitae of Avicebron.

A distinguished member of this group of scholars was Gerard of
Cremona, who took up work at Toledo in 1134 and died in 1187.
He translated from Arabic into Latin Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics

205

206 ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

(together with the commentary of Themistius), Physics , De Caelo
et Mundo, De Generatione et Corruptione, Meteorologica (first three
books); Alkindi's De Intellectu, De Somno et Visione, De quinque
Essentiis ; the Liber de Causis and some other works.

The Toledo school of translators was still of importance in the
thirteenth century. Thus Michael Scot (Michael Scottus, died
c. 1235) translated at Toledo the De Caelo et Mundo , the De Anima ,
the zoological writings and also (probably) the Physics of Aristotle,
as well as Averroes's commentaries on the De Caelo et Mundo and
the De Anima , Avicenna's compendium of the De Animalibus,
while Herman the German, who died in 1272, as Bishop of Astorga,
translated Averroes’s 'middle commentary' on the Nicomachean
Ethics and also his compendium of the same work and his com¬
mentaries on the Rhetoric and the Poetics .

2. It will be seen from what has already been said that it is a
mistake to imagine that the Latin Scholastics were entirely depen¬
dent on translations from Arabic or even that translation from the
Arabic always preceded translation from the Greek. Thus Henricus
Aristippus's translation of the fourth book of the Meteorologica
from the Greek preceded Gerard of Cremona's translation of the
first three books of the same work from the Arabic. Moreover,
some of the Metaphysics had been translated from the Greek before
the Arabic translation was made. The translation from the Greek, 1
which did not comprise simply the first three books and a small
part of book four, as was formerly supposed, was in use at Paris
by 1210 and was known as the Metaphysica vetus, in distinction
from the translation from the Arabic, which was made by Gerard
of Cremona or Michael Scot and was known (in the first half of the
thirteenth century) as the Metaphysica nova . Books K, M, N, as
well as smaller passages, were missing in this translation. In the
second half of the century the title Metaphysica nova or Translatio
nova was given to the translation from the Greek by William of
Moerbeke (after 1260), upon which translation St. Thomas based
his commentary. It has also been shown that there was a translatio
media from the Greek, on which St. Albert the Great based his
commentary and which was known to St. Thomas.

As regards the ethical writings of Aristotle, a translation of
Books 2 and 3 of the Nicomachean Ethics was available by the end
of the twelfth century. This translation had been made from the
Greek (possibly it was the work of Boethius himself) and was

1 St. Thomas's Translatio Boethii.

THE TRANSLATIONS

207

known as the Ethica vetus, while a later translation (of Book i)
was known as the Ethica nova. A full translation, generally ascribed
to Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253), was then made from the Greek,
the first three books being a recension of the Ethica vetus and the
Ethica nova. The Magna Moralia were translated by Bartholomew
of Messina in the reign of King Manfred (1258-66); but only the
seventh book of the Eudemian Ethics was known in the thirteenth
century.

The De Anima was translated from the Greek before 1215, the
translation from the Arabic by Michael Scot being somewhat later.
William of Moerbeke produced a further version from the Greek or
a corrected edition of the first translation from the Greek. Similarly
there was a translation of the Physics from the Greek before the
two translations from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona and
Michael Scot, while a translation of the De Generatione et Corrup¬
tione from the Greek preceded the translation from the Arabic by
Gerard of Cremona. The Politics were translated from the Greek
about 1260 by William of Moerbeke (there was no translation from
the Arabic), who probably also translated the Economics about
1267. This eminent man, who was bom about 1215 and died in
1286, as Archbishop of Corinth, not only translated Aristotle’s
works from the Greek and re-edited earlier translations (thus
enabling his friend, St. Thomas Aquinas, to write his commen¬
taries), but also translated from the Greek some commentaries by
Alexander of Aphrodisias, Simplicius, Joannes Philoponus and
Themistius, as also some works of Proclus and the latter’s exposi¬
tion of the Timaeus of Plato. 1 His translation of Proclus’s
Elementatio theologica brought to St. Thomas the realisation that
the Liber de Causis was not the work of Aristotle, as it was
previously supposed to be, but was based on the work of Proclus.
It was also William of Moerbeke who translated the Rhetoric of
Aristotle. As to the Poetics, the mediaevals possessed only
Herman the German’s translation of Averroes’s commentary. 2

As modern investigation has shown that translations from the
Greek generally preceded translations from the Arabic, and that,
even when the original translation from the Greek was incomplete,
the Arabic-Latin version soon had to give place to a new and

1 The Timaeus of Plato was known to the West, thanks to Cicero and Chalcidius,
but it was not until the twelfth century that the Meno and Phaedo were translated
(by Henricus Aristippus).

• How far St. Thomas actually used William’s translation has been much
discussed.

208 ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

better translation from the Greek, it can no longer be said that
the mediaevals had no real knowledge of Aristotle, but only a
caricature of his doctrine, a picture distorted by the hand of
Arabian philosophers. What can, however, be said is that they
were not always able to distinguish what was to be ascribed to
Aristotle from what was not to be ascribed to Aristotle. A great
step forward was taken when St. Thomas came to realise that the
Liber de Causis was not the work of Aristotle. He was already
quite conscious of the fact that Averroes's commentaries were not
to be taken as the unquestionable interpretation of Aristotle's
philosophy, but even he seems to have thought, at least for a time,
that the Pseudo-Dionysius was not far from being a follower of
Aristotle. The fact of the matter is, not that the mediaevals had
no reliable texts of Aristotle, but that they were deficient in
historical knowledge: they did not, for example, adequately realise
the relation of Aristotle to Plato or of neo-Platonism to Plato and
Aristotle. That St. Thomas was an able commentator on Aristotle
can be denied only by those unacquainted with his commentaries;
but it would be foolish to claim even for St. Thomas a knowledge
of the history and development of Greek philosophy such as is
open to the modern scholar. He made good use of the information
available to him; but that information was rather limited.

3. The translation of works of Aristotle and his commentators,
as well as of the Arabian thinkers, provided the Latin Scholastics
with a great wealth of intellectual material. In particular they
were provided with the knowledge of philosophical systems which
were methodologically independent of theology and which were
presented as the human mind's reflection on the universe. The
systems of Aristotle, of Avicenna, of Averroes, opened up a wide
vista of the scope of the human reason and it was clear to the
mediaevals that the truth attained in them must have been inde¬
pendent of Christian revelation, since it had been attained by a
Greek philosopher and his Greek and Islamic commentators. In
this way the new translations helped to clarify in the minds of
the mediaevals the relation between philosophy and theology
and contributed very largely to the delimitation of the provinces
of the two sciences. It is, of course, true that Aristotle's
system not unnaturally took the limelight in preference to those
of his commentators, and his philosophy tended to appear in the
eyes of those Latins who were favourably impressed as the ne plus
ultra of human intellectual endeavour, since it constituted the

THE TRANSLATIONS

209

most sustained and extensive effort of the human mind with
which they were acquainted; but they were quite well aware that
it was the work of reason, not a set of revealed dogmas. To us,
looking back from a long way off, it may seem that some of the
mediaevals exaggerated the genius of Aristotle (we also know that
they did not realise the existence of different strata or periods in
Aristotle’s thought), but we should put ourselves for a moment in
their place and try to imagine the impression which would be
made on a mediaeval philosopher by the sight of what in
any case is one of the supreme achievements of the human
mind, a system which, in regard to both completeness and close
reasoning, was unparalleled in the thought of the early Middle
Ages.

However, the system of Aristotle did not meet with universal
welcome and approbation, though it could not be ignored. Largely
because the Liber de Causis (until St. Thomas discovered the truth),
the so-called Theologia Aristotelis (extracts from the Enneads of
Plotinus) and the De secretis secretorum (composed by an Arab
philosopher in the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century)
were wrongly attributed to Aristotle, the latter's philosophy tended
to appear in a false light. Moreover, the attribution of these books
to Aristotle naturally made it appear that the Arab commentators
were justified in their neo-Platonic interpretation. Hence it came
about that in 1210 the Provincial Council of Paris, meeting under
the presidency of Peter of Corbeil, Archbishop of Sens, forbad the
public or private teaching of Aristotle’s ‘natural philosophy' or of
the commentaries on them. This prohibition was imposed under
pain of excommunication and applied to the University of Paris.
In all probability ‘natural philosophy' included the metaphysics
of Aristotle, since when the statutes of the university were sanc¬
tioned by Robert de Coupon, Papal Legate, in 1215 Aristotle's
works on metaphysics and natural philosophy, as well as compendia
of these works and the doctrines of David of Dinant, Amalric of
Bene and Maurice of Spain (probably Averroes, the Moor or
Maurus) were prohibited, though the study of Aristotle's logic was
ordered. The study of the Ethics was not forbidden.

The reason for the prohibition was, as already indicated, largely
due to the ascription to Aristotle of works which were not by him.
Amalric of Bene, whose writings were included in the prohibition
of 1215, maintained doctrines which were at variance with
Christian teaching and which would naturally appear to find some

210

THE TRANSLATIONS

211

ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

support in the philosophy of Aristotle, if the latter were interpreted
in the light of all the books attributed to him, while David of
Dinant, the other heretical philosopher whose writings were pro¬
hibited, had actually appealed to the Metaphysics , which had been
translated into Latin from the Greek version brought from
Byzantium before 1210. To these considerations must be added
the undoubted fact that Aristotle maintained the eternity of the
world. It was, therefore, not unnatural that the Aristotelian
system, especially when coupled with the philosophies of David of
Dinant, Amalric of Bene and Averroes, should appear as a danger
to orthodoxy in the eyes of the traditionalists. The logic of
Aristotle had long been in use, even if the full Organon had come
into circulation only comparatively recently, but the complete
metaphysical and cosmological teaching of Aristotle was a novelty,
a novelty rendered all the more dangerous through association
with heretical philosophies.

However, in 1231 Pope Gregory IX, while maintaining the
prohibition, appointed a commission of theologians, William of
Auxerre, Stephen of Provins and Simon of Authie, to correct the
prohibited books of Aristotle, and as this measure obviously
implied that the books were not fundamentally unsound, the
prohibition tended to be neglected. It was extended to Toulouse
in 1245 by Innocent IV, but by that date it was no longer possible
to check the spread of Aristotelianism and from 1255 all the
known works of Aristotle were officially lectured on in the Univer¬
sity of Paris. The Holy See made no move against the university,
though in 1263 Urban IV renewed the prohibition of 1210,
probably out of a fear of Averroism, the renewed prohibition remain¬
ing a dead letter. The Pope must have known perfectly well that
William of Moerbeke was translating the prohibited works of
Aristotle at his own court, and the prohibition of 1263 must have
been designed as a check to Averroism, not as a seriously meant
attempt to put an end to all study of the Aristotelian philosophy.
In any case the prohibition was of no effect, and finally in 1366 the
Legates of Urban V required from all candidates for the Licentiate
of Arts at Paris a knowledge of all the known works of Aristotle.
It had by then long been clear to the mediaevals that a work like
the Liber de Causis was not Aristotelian and that the philosophy of
Aristotle was not, except, of course, in the eyes of the Latin
Averroists, bound up with the interpretation given it by Averroes
but could be harmonised with the Christian faith. Indeed the

dogmas of faith themselves had by then been expressed by
theologians in terms taken from the Aristotelian system.

This brief summary of the official attitude to Aristotle on the
part of ecclesiastical and academic authority shows that Aristote¬
lianism triumphed in the end. This does not mean, however, that
all mediaeval philosophers of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries extended an equal welcome to Aristotle or that they all
understood him in the same way: the vigour and variety of
mediaeval thought will be made clear in succeeding chapters.
There is truth in the statement that the shadow of Aristotle hung
over and dominated the philosophic thought of the Middle Ages,
but it is not the whole truth, and we would have a very inadequate
idea of mediaeval philosophy in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries if we imagined that it was inspired and characterised
by a slavish acceptance of every word of the great Greek philo¬
sopher.

INTRODUCTION

PART V

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER XXII

INTRODUCTION

The University of Paris—Universities closed and privileged cor¬
porations — Curriculum—Religious Orders at Paris—Currents
of thought in the thirteenth century.

i. The leading philosophers and theologians of the thirteenth
century were all associated, at some period, with the University
of Paris, which arose out of the body of professors and students
attached to the Cathedral School of Notre Dame and the other
schools of Paris, the statutes of the university being sanctioned by
Robert de Coupon, Papal Legate, in 1215. Alexander of Hales,
St. Bonaventure, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas,
Matthew of Aquasparta, Roger Marston, Richard of Middleton,
Roger Bacon, Giles of Rome, Siger of Brabant, Henry of Ghent,
Raymond Lull, Duns Scotus (d. 1308), all either studied or taught
(or both) at Paris. Other centres of higher education were, how¬
ever, growing in importance and acquiring a tradition of their
own. Thus with the University of Oxford were associated the
names of men like Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon and Duns
Scotus, and whereas Paris was the scene of the triumph of Aris-
totelianism, the name of Oxford recalls a characteristic mingling
of the Augustinian tradition with 'empiricism’, as in the philosophy
of Roger Bacon. Yet in spite of the importance of Oxford,
Bologna and, at times, the Papal Court, the University of Paris
was easily the most important centre of higher studies in the
Christendom of the thirteenth century. Scholars might come to
Paris for their studies and then return to Oxford or Bologna to
teach, thus carrying with them the spirit and ideals of the great
university, and even those scholars who never themselves set foot
in Paris were subject to Parisian influence. Robert of Grosseteste,
for instance, who possibly never studied at Paris, was certainly
influenced by professors of Paris.

The international character of the University of Paris, with its

312

213

consequent importance in the intellectual expression and defence
of Christianity, naturally made the maintenance of religious ortho¬
doxy within its precincts one of the interests of the Holy See.
Thus the Averroistic controversy must be seen in the light of the
university’s international standing: it represented in itself the
intellectual culture of the Middle Ages, as far as philosophy and
theology were concerned, and the spread within its walls of a
system of thought which was irreconcilable with Christianity could
not be a matter of indifference to Rome. On the other hand it
would be a mistake to suppose that there was any rigid imposition
of one particular tradition. St. Thomas Aquinas met with diffi¬
culties, it is true, in his acceptance and propagation of Aristote-
lianism; but such difficulties did not last, and even if the philosophy
of Aristotle came in the end to dominate the intellectual life of the
university, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there was
still plenty of room for different philosophical outlooks.

2. The universities, to be constituted as such, had to receive a
formal charter, either from pope or emperor (the University of
Naples received its charter from Frederick II) or, later, from kings.
These charters conferred considerable privileges on professors and
students, privileges which were jealously guarded. The two most
important privileges were those of internal jurisdiction (which still
survives at Oxford, for example) and of power to give the degree,
which carried with it licence to teach. The students were exempt
from military service, except in special circumstances, and the
university was generally exempt from a great deal of taxation,
particularly local taxation. In northern Europe the professors
controlled the university, the rector being elected, whereas the
universities of southern Europe were often distinctly democratic
in their governmental arrangements, but in either case the univer¬
sity was a largely independent and closed corporation, which main¬
tained its privileges against Church and State. In this respect the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge represent more faithfully
the mediaeval tradition and practice than do those continental
universities where rectors and professors are appointed by the
State.

3. In mediaeval times, and the same is true of a much later
period as well, students entered the university at a much earlier
age than they do at present. Thus boys of thirteen or fourteen
might begin attending the university, and if one remembers this
fact, the number of years required in order to obtain the doctorate

214 the thirteenth century

will not appear so surprising. The course in arts lasted some four
and a half to six years, according to the university (though at
Oxford some seven years were required), and for a time at least
the student had to qualify in the faculty of arts before he could
proceed to theology. In the theological course he had to spend
four years in attending lectures on the Bible and then two more
years in attending lectures on the Sentences, after which, if by then
twenty-six years of age, he became a Baccalaureate and lectured
for the two following years on two books of the Bible. He could
then lecture on the Sentences and finally, after several years spent
in study and disputations, he could take the doctorate and teach
theology, the minimum age for this being thirty-four. For teaching
the arts the minimum age required was twenty. At Paris the
tendency was to increase the number of years required for obtain¬
ing the doctorate, though at Oxford the arts course was longer
and the theological course shorter than at Paris.

Those students who took the doctorate and left the university
were known as magistri non regentes, whereas those who remained
to teach were known as magistri regentes ; but, however many
students there may have been who fell into the first class, it is
clear that the long university course was designed to produce
professors and teachers by career.

As for the curriculum, the general practice in the university of
the thirteenth century was to lecture or listen to lectures on certain
texts. Thus, apart from the writings of the grammarians like
Priscian and Donatus and certain other classical texts, the writings
of Aristotle came to dominate the arts school altogether in the
course of time, and it is significant that 'Latin Averroism’ was
represented principally by professors in that faculty. In theology
the Bible and the Sentences of Peter Lombard dominated the
scene, and the professor gave his own views by way of commentary.
Besides the lectures there was another essential feature of the
curriculum, namely the disputation, which took the form either of
an ‘ordinary’ disputation {disputatio ordinaria ) or the ’general’
disputation (de quolibet). The disputationes de quolibet, in which a
choice was made from a great variety of topics, were held at
solemn feasts, and after the disputation in the strict sense, that is,
between a defendant or respondens and the objectors, opponentes,
the professor summed up the whole matter, arguments, objections
and replies, and finished by giving his considered solution ( deter-
minatio) of the point at issue, in which he began with the words.

INTRODUCTION 215

Respondeo dicendum. The final result, arranged by the professor,
was then published as a Quodlibet. (St. Thomas left some eleven
or twelve Quodlibets.) The disputatio ordinaria was also followed
by a determinatio and was published as a quaestio disputata. There
were other forms of disputation as well; but these two, the
disputatio ordinaria and the disputatio de quolibet, were the most
important. They were designed to increase the student’s under¬
standing of a particular theme, and his power of argument and of
refuting objections. In fact, generally speaking, mediaeval univer¬
sity education aimed rather at imparting a certain body of
knowledge and dexterity in dealing with it than at increasing
factual knowledge as in a modern research institute. Of course,
scholars certainly aimed at increasing knowledge speculatively;
but the increase of scientific knowledge, for example, had little
place in mediaeval education, though in the fourteenth century
science made some progress at Paris and at Vienna.

4. Of considerable importance in the life of Paris and Oxford were
the religious Orders, particularly the two mendicant Orders
founded in the thirteenth century, the Dominicans and the
Franciscans. The former Order established itself in Paris in 1217,
the latter a few years later, and both Orders then proceeded to
claim chairs of theology in the university, i.e. they claimed that
their chairs of theology should be incorporated in the university
and that their professors and students should enjoy the university
privileges. There was considerable opposition to this claim from
the teaching body of the university; but in 1229 the Dominicans
received one chair and in 1231 a second, in the same year that
the Franciscans obtained their first chair (they did not receive a
second). Roland of Cremona and John of St. Giles were the first
Dominican professors, Alexander of Hales the first Franciscan
professor. In 1248 the General Chapter of the Dominican Order
decreed the erection of studia generalia (houses of study for the
whole Order, distinct from the houses of study of particular
provinces) at Cologne, Bologna, Montpellier and Oxford, while the
Franciscans meanwhile erected studia generalia at Oxford and
Toulouse. In 1260 the Augustinians opened a house at Paris, the
first official doctor being Giles of Rome, while the Carmelites
opened houses at Oxford in 1253 and at Paris in 1259. Other
Orders also followed suit. _

The religious Orders, particularly the Dominicans and Fran¬
ciscans, accomplished a great work in the intellectual field and

2l6

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

INTRODUCTION

produced men of outstanding eminence (we have only to think of
St. Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas in the Dominican,
of Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure in the Franciscan
Order); but they had to put up with a good deal of opposition,
doubtless inspired in part by jealousy. Not only did their oppo¬
nents demand that no religious Order should occupy more than
one chair at one time, but they even set about attacking the
religious state itself. Thus in 1255 William of St. Amour published
a pamphlet, De pericidis novissimorum temp or um, which drew from
St. Thomas's pen the Contra impugnantes Dei cultum . William of
St. Amour's pamphlet was condemned and in 1257 the seculars
were forbidden to publish writings against the regulars; but in spite
of this prohibition Gerard of Abbeville restarted the opposition with
his Contra adversarium perfectionis christianae . St. Bonaventure
and St. Thomas, however much they might disagree on matters
philosophical, were united in a determination to defend the religious
Orders, and both published replies to Gerard's work, and these in
their turn evoked a counterblast from Nicholas of Lisieux, writing
on behalf of the seculars. The quarrel between regulars and
seculars broke out again on various later occasions, but, as far as
the main point was concerned, the incorporation into the university
of the regular chairs, judgement had been given in favour of the
regulars and it wasnot revoked. One result followed, however, which
is worthy of mention, and that is the founding of the College of
the Sorbonne in 1253 by Robert de Sorbon, chaplain to Louis IX,
for the education of students in theology, secular students being
admitted. If I call the founding of the College of the Sorbonne
and similar colleges a 'result' of the controversy between seculars
and regulars, all I mean is that such colleges were founded partly
perhaps to counterbalance the influence and position of the
regulars and certainly in order to extend to a wider field the
benefits of the type of education and training provided by the
religious.

5. In the thirteenth century one can distinguish various currents
of thought which tended eventually, in the religious Orders, to
become more or less fixed in traditional schools. First of all there
is the Augustinian current of thought, conservative in character
and generally reserved in its attitude towards Aristotelianism, its
attitude varying from marked hostility to partial acceptance. This
current is characteristic of the Franciscan thinkers (and indeed of
the first Dominicans), represented by Grosseteste, Alexander of

217

Hales and St. Bonaventure. Secondly there is the Aristotelian
current of thought, which became characteristic of the Dominicans,
represented by St. Albert the Great (in part) and (fully) by St.
Thomas Aquinas. Thirdly there are the Averroists, represented
by Siger of Brabant. Fourthly one has to take into consideration
the independent and eclectic thinkers like Giles of Rome and Henry
of Ghent. Fifthly, at the turn of the century, there is the great
figure of Duns Scot us who revised the Franciscan tradition in the
light of Aristotelianism and who, rather than St. Bonaventure,
became the accepted Doctor of his order. I cannot enter in detail
into the thought of all the philosophers of the thirteenth century;
but I shall endeavour to put in clear relief their salient charac¬
teristics, show the variety of thought within a more or less common
framework and indicate the formation and development of the
different traditions.

WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE

CHAPTER XXIII

WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE

Reasons for treating of William of Auvergne—God and creatures;
essence and existence—Creation by God directly and in time —
Proofs of God’s existence — Hylomorphism—The soul — Know¬
ledge-William of Auvergne a transition-thinker.

i. William of Auvergne (or William of Paris), author of a De
Trinitate or De primo principio ( c . 1225), a De Anima (1230), a
De universo creaturarum ( c . 1231) and other smaller treatises, was
Bishop of Paris from 1228 to 1249, the year in which he died. He
is not, it is true, one of the best-known thinkers of the Middle
Ages; but he claims our attention as a philosopher and theologian
who was Bishop of Paris at the time when Gregory IX appointed
the commission of theologians to amend the works of Aristotle and
thus tacitly modified the Church's attitude towards the pagan
philosopher. Indeed William of Auvergne represents the attitude
adopted by Gregory IX when he (William) says in his De Anima
that although Aristotle often contradicts the truth and so must be
rejected, his teaching should be accepted when it conforms to the
truth, that is, when it is compatible with Christian doctrine. In his
fundamental line of thought William continues the tradition of
Augustine, Boethius and Anselm, but he knew not only the works
of Aristotle, but also the writings of the Arabian and Jewish
philosophers and he did not hesitate to utilise their ideas exten¬
sively. In general, therefore, one may say that in William of
Auvergne we see an intelligent and open-minded adherent of the
old tradition who was willing to utilise the new currents of thought
but who was perfectly conscious of the points in which the Arabians
and Aristotle himself were at variance with Christian doctrine. He
is, then, an embodiment of the meeting of the twelfth and thir¬
teenth centuries and has a title to be considered when one is
treating of the earlier thinkers of the latter century. Moreover,
he was a secular priest who occupied the episcopal see of Paris at
the time when the mendicant Orders obtained their first chairs,
and on this count too there is justification for discussing his
philosophical ideas before proceeding to deal with the thinkers of
the Franciscan and Dominican Orders. Nor is he himself a

219

negligible figure: on the contrary, his thought is vigorous, original
and systematic.

2. From Avicenna, William of Auvergne adopted the distinction
between essence and existence and made it the explanation of the
creature’s finitude and dependence. Esse, existence, does not
belong to the ratio or essence of any object save that one object
(God) in which it is identical with the essence; of all other objects
existence is predicated only ‘accidentally’, i.e. it belongs to them
by participation (per participationem). If we consider any finite
object, we realise that there is a distinction between its ratio or
essential nature and its existence, it is not necessary that it should
exist; but if we consider the necessary Being, we realise that its
essence cannot be conceived without existence. In fine, 'in every¬
thing (other than God) ens is one thing, esse or entitas another’. 1
This means that God alone is pure existence, existence being His
essence, whereas objects do not exist essentially, because they
must, but because their existence is acquired, received. The rela¬
tion, then, of objects other than God to God must be one of
creature to Creator, from which it follows that the theory of
emanation is false: 2 God is absolutely simple. Things did not
pre-exist in God as parts of God, as they would have had to do
if they flowed from God as the waters from a fountain, but only
in the fortnae exemplares, which are identical with God. God sees
Himself as the exemplary cause of all creatures. 3

3. If William of Auvergne rejects the neo-Platonist-Arabian
theory of emanation, he rejects also the notion of creation by way
of intermediaries. The hierarchy of Intelligences posited by
Aristotle and his followers has no foundation in reality; 4 God
created the world directly. From this it follows that He exercises
providence in regard to individual things and William appeals at
length to the instinctive activities of the brutes as an illustration
of the operation of divine providence.® Again, the Aristotelian
doctrine of the eternity of the world is rejected. Whatsoever
people may say and however much they may try to excuse
Aristotle, it is a certain fact that he held that the world is eternal
and that it did not begin to be, and Avicenna followed him in this
opinion. 6 Accordingly William not only gives the reasons why
Aristotle and Avicenna held this opinion, but he even tries to put
them in the best light by improving on their arguments, after

1 Cf. De Universo, i, 3, 26; 2, 2, 8; De Trinitate, 1 and 2.

* De Universo, 1, 1, 17. 9 Ibid., 1, 1, 17. 4 Ibid,, 1. 1, 248.

9 Ibid., 1. 3, 2-3. 4 Ibid., 1, a, 8.

220

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE

221

which he refutes the arguments. For example, the idea that if
God preceded the creation of the world, an infinite duration
would have to be passed through before creation, and the idea
that there would be empty time before creation both rest on a
confusion of time with eternity. The idea of infinite duration
elapsing before creation would have significance only if eternity
were the same as time, i.e. if it were not eternity, if God were in
time; and the idea of empty time before creation is also meaning¬
less, since before creation there can be no time. We have to speak
of God preceding creation, of existing before the world, it is true,
but at the same time we must remember that such phrases are
borrowed from temporal duration and that when applied to what is
eternal, they are used in an analogical, not in a univocal sense.

However, as William of Auvergne remarks, 1 it is not sufficient
to contradict one's opponents and to show the insufficiency of their
arguments unless one goes on to prove one's own position posi¬
tively. He, therefore, gives various arguments for the creation of
the world in time, some of which appear again in St. Bonaventure
and are declared inconclusive by St. Thomas. For example,
William argues, taking the words out of his adversary's mouth, as
it were, that if the world had been eternally in existence, an
infinite time would have been passed through before the present
moment. But it is impossible to pass through an infinite time.
Therefore the world cannot have existed from eternity. Therefore
it was created in time, that is, a first moment of time is assignable.
Again, supposing that the revolutions of Saturn stand to the
revolutions of the sun in a proportion of one to thirty, the sun
will have made thirty times as many revolutions since creation as
Saturn. But if the world exists from eternity, both Saturn and the
sun will have made an infinite number of revolutions. Now, how
can an infinity be thirty times greater than another infinity?

From what has been already said it is clear that William of
Auvergne did not simply deny the neo-Platonic conception of
emanation and the Aristotelian idea of an eternal world, while
maintaining the Augustinian doctrine of direct and free creation
by God in time. On the contrary, he vigorously and exactly
detailed and refuted the arguments of his opponents and elaborated
systematic proofs of his own thesis. That he was able to do this
was largely due to the fact that he was acquainted at first hand
with the writings of Aristotle and the Arabians and did not

1 De Universo, j, 2, n.

hesitate to utilise not only the Aristotelian logic and the Aristote¬
lian categories but also the ideas of Aristotle, Avicenna and others,
when they were acceptable. His utilisation of Avicenna's distinc¬
tion between essence and existence, for instance, has been already
mentioned, and indeed he was the first mediaeval Scholastic to
make this distinction an explicit and fundamental point in his
philosophy. To this distinction, which enabled him to develop
clearly the relation of creature to Creator, William added the
doctrine of analogy. Apropos of the statement that finite things
possess esse r by participation', he observes that the reader is not
to be upset or troubled by the fact that the same word or concept
is applied to both God and creatures, since it is not applied in the
same sense [univoce) or equally: it is applied primarily to God,
who is esse f and only secondarily to creatures who have es$e t who
participate, that is, in existence in virtue of receiving it through
God's creative act. Health, he comments, is predicated of man, of
urine, of medicine and of food, but it is not predicated in the same
sense or in the same way. 1 The illustration of health is somewhat
hackneyed, but it shows that William of Auvergne had appre¬
hended the doctrine of analogy, which is essential to a theistic
philosophy.

4. In regard to proofs of God's existence it is a curious fact that
William of Auvergne made little use of the proofs used by Aristotle
or even by Maimonides. The Aristotelian proof of God as first
unmoved mover is not given, and although William certainly looks
on God as the first efficient cause, his characteristic proof is one
that recalls at least the line of argument adopted by St. Anselm,
even though Anselm's argument is not reproduced. The argument
in question is from the being which exists by participation to the
being which exists essentially, per essentiam. This immediately
suggests the proof from contingency, which appears in the Arabian
and Jewish philosophy, but William prefers to argue from the one
concept to the other. For example, the concept esse adunatum has
as its correlative concept esse non causatum, esse causatum involves
esse non causatum , esse secundarium, esse primum , and so on. 2
William speaks of the analogia oppositorum and points out how the
one concept or word necessarily involves its correlative concept or
word, so that Grunwald 3 can say that William prefers a purely
logical or even grammatical mode of proof, in that from one word

1 De Trinit ., 7. 1 Ibid., 6.

* Geseh. <Ur Gottesbeweise im MittelalUr; BeitrUge, 6, 3, p. 92.

222

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

he concludes to another word which is contained in or presupposed
by the first word. That the argument does tend to give this impres¬
sion is true, and, if it were a purely verbal argument, it would be
open to the retort that the words, or concepts, esse participatum or
esse causatum certainly involve the words, or concepts, esse per
essentiam or esse non causatum, but this is no proof that esse per
essentiam or esse non causatum actually exists, unless it has first
been shown that there is an esse participatum or an esse causatum.
Otherwise the proof would be no more a demonstration of God’s
existence than is St. Anselm’s a priori argument. However,
although William does not sufficiently develop the experiential
character of the proof in regard to its starting-point, his argument
is by no means purely verbal, since he shows that the object which
comes into being cannot be self-dependent or self-caused. Esse
indigentiae demands esse sufficientiae as the reason for its existence,
just as esse potentiate requires being in act to bring it into a state
of actuality. The whole universe requires necessary Being as its
cause and reason. In other words, though one may often get the
impression that William is simply analysing concepts and hypo-
stasising them, he gives a proof which is not merely logical or
verbal but also metaphysical.

5. William of Auvergne accepted the Aristotelian doctrine of
hylomorphic composition, but he refused to admit Avicebron’s
notion that the Intelligences or angels are hylomorphically com¬
posed. 1 It is clear that Aristotle did not think that the rational
soul contains materia prima, since he clearly asserts that it is an
immaterial form, and the account of prime matter given by
Averroes, according to which prime matter is the potentiality of
sensible substance and sensible substance the final act of prime
matter, clearly implies the same, that is, that prime matter is the
matter of sensible substance only. Moreover, what could be the
use of prime matter in the angels, what function could it serve?
Matter in itself is something dead; it cannot contribute in any way
to intellectual and spiritual operations or even receive them. As
he had already utilised the distinction between essence and
existence to explain the finitude of creatures and their radical
difference from God, William did not require universal hylomor¬
phic composition for this purpose, and as he considered that to
postulate the presence of prime matter in the angels would hinder
rather than facilitate the explanation of their purely spiritual

1 De Universe, 2, 2, 8.

WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE

223

operations, he restricted prime matter to the sensible world, as
St. Thomas did after him.

6. In his psychology, as set forth in the De Anima, William of
Auvergne combines Aristotelian and Augustinian themes. Thus
he expressly adopts the Aristotelian definition of the soul as
perfectio corporis physici organici potentia vitam habentis , 1 though
he warns the reader that he is not quoting Aristotle as an unques¬
tionable authority, but proposes to show the truth of the definition.
That he has a soul should be clear to every man, since he is
conscious that he understands and judges; 2 but the soul is not the
whole of man’s nature. If it were, then a human soul joined to an
aerial body, for example, would still be a man, whereas in point
of fact it would not be. Aristotle, then, was correct in saying that
the soul is to the body, as form is to matter. 3 However, that does
not prevent him from saying that the soul is a substance on the
ground that it must be either substance or accident and cannot be
an accident, and he uses the Augustinian comparison of the soul
with a harpist, the body being the harp. It might appear that in
man there are three souls, one being the principle of life (vegetative
soul), the second being the principle of sensation (animal or sensi¬
tive soul) and the third being the principle of intellection (rational
soul); but a little reflection will show that this cannot be so. If
there was an animal soul in man, distinct from the rational or
human soul, then humanity, human nature, would not involve
animality, whereas in point of fact a man is an animal because he
is man, animality belonging to human nature. 4 There is, then, one
soul in man, which exercises various functions. It is created and
infused by God alone, neither generated by the parents nor educed
from the potentiality of matter, 6 and it is, moreover, immortal,
as William proceeds to show by arguments, some of which are of
Platonic origin. For example, if the malice of an evil soul does
not injure or destroy its esse , how can bodily death destroy it? 6
Again, since the body receives life from the soul and the soul’s
power is such that it vivifies a body which, considered in itself, is
dead, that is, lacking life, the fact that the body ceases to live
cannot destroy the vital power inherent in the soul. 7 Further, the
soul can communicate with substantiae separatae and is thus like
to them, immortal; but as the human soul is indivisible and one, it

1 De Anima, 1, I. * Ibid., i, 3. 8 Ibid., 1, 2.

4 Ibid., 4, 1-3. 8 Ibid., 5, iff. • Ibid., 6, 1.

7 Ibid., 6, 7.

224 THE THIRTEENTH century

follows that the whole human soul is immortal, not simply a
rational part. 1

But though he accepts the Peripatetic doctrine of the soul as
form of the body (one must make the reservation that he some¬
times uses Platonic-Augustinian expressions in regard to the soul's
union with the body), William of Auvergne follows St. Augustine
in refusing to recognise a real distinction between the soul and its
faculties. 2 Only a substance can understand or will, an accident
could not do so. Therefore it is the soul itself which understands
or wills, though it exercises itself in regard to different objects, or
to the same objects, in different ways, now by apprehending them,
now by desiring them. From this it would naturally follow that
the Aristotelian distinction between the active and the passive
intellects must be rejected, and indeed William of Auvergne rejects
the doctrines of the active intellect and of the species intelligibilis
altogether. The followers of Aristotle and of his commentators
swallow the theory of the active intellect without any real reflec¬
tion, whereas not only are the arguments adduced to prove the
theory insufficient, but also very good arguments can be adduced
to prove the contrary, the argument from the simplicity of the
soul, for example. The active intellect is, then, to be rejected
as a useless fiction. 3 A fortiori, of course, William rejects the
Arabian idea of a separate active intellect, an idea which,
following Averroes, he ascribed (and probably rightly) to Aristotle
himself.

7. In regard to the active intellect, then, William of Auvergne
parts company with Aristotle and the Arabians in favour of
Augustine, and the Augustinian influence is observable also in his
theory of knowledge. Like Augustine he emphasises the soul's
knowledge of itself, its direct self-consciousness, and, again like
Augustine, he minimises the importance of the senses. It is true
that man is inclined to concentrate on bodily things, the objects
of the senses; that is why a man may neglect the data of self-
consciousness and even be so foolish as to deny the very existence
of the immaterial soul. It is also true that for sense-perception the
senses are necessary, obviously enough, and that corporeal objects
produce a physical impression on the organs of sense. But the
intelligible forms, abstract and universal, by which we know the
objects of the corporeal world, cannot arise either from the objects
themselves or from the phantasms of such objects, since both the
1 De Anima , 6, 8. * Ibid, 9 Ibid,, 7, 3.

WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE

225

objects and the images are particular. How, then, are our abstract
and universal ideas of sensible objects produced? They are
produced by the understanding itself, which is not purely passive,
but active, effectrix earum (scientiarum quae a parte sensibilium ei
advenire videntur) apud semetipsam et in semetipsa . 1 This activity
is an activity of the soul itself, though it is exercised on the
occasion of sense-impressions.

What guarantee is there, then, of the objective character of
abstract and universal ideas? The guarantee is the fact that the
intellect is not merely active but also passive, though it is in
regard to God that it is passive, not in regard to the things of
sense. God impresses on the intellect not only the first principles,
but also our abstract ideas of the sensible world. In the De Anima 2
William teaches explicitly that it is not only the first principles
(regulae primae et per se notae) and the laws of morality ( regulae
honestatis) which are known in this way, but also the intelligible
forms of sensible objects. The human soul occupies a position on
the bounds of two worlds (velui in horizonte duorum mundorum
naturaliter esse constituiam et ordinatam), the one being the world
of sensible objects, to which it is joined by the body, the other
being, not Plato's universal Ideas or Aristotle's separate Intelli¬
gence, but God Himself, creator ipse, who is the exemplar, the
speculum, the liber vivus, so present to the human intellect that
the latter reads off, as it were, in God ( absque ullo alio medio) the
principles and rules and intelligible forms. In this way William of
Auvergne makes the active intellect of Aristotle and the Arabians
to be God Himself, combining this theory with the Augustinian
theory of illumination, interpreted ideogenetically.

8. It may cause surprise that a special chapter has been dedi¬
cated to a man whose name is not among the most famous of
mediaeval thinkers; but William of Auvergne is of interest not
only as a vigorous and systematic philosopher, but also as an
illustration of the way in which the metaphysical, cosmological
and psychological ideas of Aristotle and the Arabians could affect
an open-minded man who stood, generally speaking, in the line of
the older tradition. William of Auvergne was quite ready to
accept ideas from the Aristotelians; he adopted Aristotle's defini¬
tion of the soul, for instance, and utilised Avicenna's distinction
between essence and existence; but he was first and foremost a
Christian philosophei and, apart from any personal predilection
1 De Anima , 5, 6. * 7, 6.

226

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

for Augustine, he was not the type of man to adopt Aristotelian
or supposedly Aristotelian doctrines when these seemed to him to
be incompatible with the Christian faith. Thus the Aristotelian
doctrine of the eternity of the world, the neo-Platonic-Arabian
notions of emanation and of 'creation' by intermediaries, the theory
of a separate, unitary and infra-divine active intellect, he unhesi¬
tatingly rejected. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that
he rejected these ideas as incompatible with Christianity and left
it at that, for he was clearly satisfied in his own mind that the
arguments for the offending positions were inconclusive and
insufficient, while the arguments for his own tenets were conclu¬
sive. In other words, he was a philosopher and wrote as a
philosopher, even though in his works we find theological and
philosophical themes treated together in the same book, a feature
common to most other mediaeval thinkers.

One may say, then, that William of Auvergne was a transition-
thinker. He helped, through his intimate acquaintance with the
writings of Aristotle and of the Arabian and Jewish philosophers,
and through his limited acceptance of their theories, to pave the
way for the completer Aristotelianism of St. Albert and St. Thomas,
while, on the other hand, his clear rejection of some leading notions
of Aristotle and his followers paved the way for the explicitly
anti-Aristotelian attitude of an Augustinian like St. Bonaventure.
He is, as I have said earlier, the embodiment of the meeting of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries: he is, one might say, the twelfth
century meeting the thirteenth century sympathetically, yet by
no means with uncritical admiration or acceptance.

But though we are entitled to regard William of Auvergne as a
transition-thinker in respect of the rising influence and growing
acceptance of Aristotelianism, i.e. as a stage in the development
of thought from the older Augustinianism to the Christian Aris¬
totelianism of St. Thomas, we are also entitled to look upon his
philosophy as a stage in the development of Augustinianism itself.
St. Anselm had made comparatively little use of Aristotelianism,
of which he had but a very restricted knowledge; but later
Augustinians were forced to take account of Aristotle, and we find
Duns Scotus in the thirteenth century attempting the construction
of a synthesis in which Augustinianism would be expounded and
defended with the help of Aristotle. Of course, whether one should
regard these thinkers as Augustinians who modified and enriched
Augustinianism under the influence of Aristotle or as incomplete

WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE 227

Aristotelians, is disputable, and one's estimate of William's philo-
s phy will differ, according as one adopts the one or the other
point of view, but unless one is determined to view mediaeval
philosophy simply in function of Thomism, one should be prepared
to admit that William of Auvergne could be regarded as preparing
the way for Duns Scotus just as well as preparing the way for
St. Thomas. Probably both judgements are true, though from
different viewpoints. In a sense any pre-Thomistic mediaeval
philosopher who made some use of Aristotle was preparing the
way for a more complete adoption of Aristotelianism, and there
can be no difficulty in admitting it; yet it is also legitimate to ask
whether Aristotelian elements were employed in the service of the
Augustinian tradition, so that the resulting philosophy was one in
which characteristic Augustinian themes predominated, or whether
they were employed in the construction of a philosophy which was
definitely orientated towards Aristotelianism as a system. If one
asks this question, there can be little doubt about the answer so
far as William of Auvergne is concerned; so that M. Gilson can
affirm that 'the complex Augustinian of the thirteenth century
is almost completely represented by the doctrine of William of
Auvergne' and that while nothing could stop the invasion of the
Schools by Aristotle, 'the influence of William certainly did much
to retard and limit its progress'. 1

1 La Philosophie au Moyen Age, third edition. 1944 - PP- 4 2 3 ~ 4 *

ROBERT GROSSETESTE

CHAPTER XXIV

ROBERT GROSSETESTE AND ALEXANDER OF HALES

(а) Robert Grosseteste's life and writings—Doctrine of light—God
and creatures—Doctrine of truth and of illumination .

(б) Alexander of Hales's attitude to philosophy—Proofs of God's
existence—The divine attributes—Composition in creatures —

Soul, intellect , will—Spirit of Alexander's philosophy.

When one is treating of mediaeval philosophy, it is not easy to
decide in what way one will group the various thinkers. Thus one
might very well treat Oxford and Paris separately. At Oxford the
general tendency in metaphysics and psychology was conservative,
Augustinian, while at the same time an interest was developed in
empirical studies, and the combination of these two factors would
afford some reason for tracing the course of philosophy at Oxford
from Robert Grosseteste to Roger Bacon in a continuous line;
while as regards Paris the Augustinianism of Alexander of Hales
and St. Bonaventure on the one hand and the Aristotelianism of
St. Albert and St. Thomas on the other hand, together with the
relation between the two Schools, might make it desirable to treat
them in close proximity. However, such a method has its disad¬
vantages. For example, Roger Bacon died (c. 1292) long after
Alexander of Hales (1245), in regard to whose writings he made
some slighting remarks, and also after St. Albert the Great (1280),
towards whom he seems to have felt a special hostility, so that it
would seem desirable to consider Roger Bacon after considering
these two thinkers. One might, even then, leave over Robert
Grosseteste for consideration with Roger Bacon, but the fact
remains that Grosseteste died (1253) well before the Oxford con¬
demnation of series of theses, among which figured some of those
maintained by St. Thomas {1277 and 1284), whereas Roger Bacon
was alive at the time of the condemnations and criticised that of
1277, in so far as he felt that it concerned him personally. While
admitting, then, that there would be a great deal to say in favour
of another mode of grouping, in which more attention would be
paid tc spiritual affinities than to chronology, I decided to treat
first of Robert Grosseteste at Oxford and Alexander of Hales at
Paris, then of Alexander's disciple St. Bonaventure, the greatest
representative of the Augustinian tradition in the thirteenth

218

229

century, then of the Aristotelianism of St. Albert and St. Thomas
and of the ensuing controversies, and only afterwards to consider
Roger Bacon, in spite of his spiritual affinity with Grosseteste.

(a) ROBERT GROSSETESTE

i. Robert Grosseteste was bom in Suffolk about 1170 and
became Chancellor of Oxford University about 1221. From 1229
to 1232 he was Archdeacon of Leicester and in 1235 he became
Bishop of Lincoln, a post which he occupied until his death in
1253. Besides translations (it has already been mentioned that he
probably translated the Ethics directly from the Greek), Robert
Grosseteste composed commentaries on the Posterior Analytics,
the Sophistical Arguments , the Physics, though the Commentary'
on the Physics was rather a compendium than a commentary, and
on the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius. The statement by Roger
Bacon to the effect that Grosseteste neglexit omnino libros Aris-
totelis et vias eorum 1 cannot, therefore, be taken as meaning that
he was ignorant of the writings of Aristotle, but must be under¬
stood in the sense that, though acquainted with the thought of
Aristotle, Grosseteste approached philosophical problems in a
different manner. Bacon's further words make this clear, as he
says that Grosseteste was dependent on other authors than
Aristotle and that he also relied on his own experience.

Of original works Robert Grosseteste published books: De unica
forma omnium, De InteUigentiis, De statu causarum, De potentia et
actu, De veritate, De veritate propositions, De scientia Dei, De ordine
emanandi causatorum a Deo and De libero arbitrio, the authen¬
ticity of the De Anirna not being certain. In works such as those
just named it is quite clear that Grosseteste stood in the Augus¬
tinian tradition, although he knew the philosophy of Aristotle and
utilised some of his themes. But with his Augustinianism he
combined an interest in empirical science which influenced Roger
Bacon and excited his admiration, so that Bacon was led to say of
his master that he knew the sciences better than other men 2 and
was able to explain causes by the aid of mathematics. 8 Thus
Grosseteste wrote De uiilitate artium , De generatione sonorum, De
sphaera , De computo, De generatione stellarum, De cometis, De
impressions aeris , De luce, De lineis , angulis et figuris, De natura
loccrum , De iride, De colore , De calore solis, De differentiis localibus,

1 Compendium studii, ed. Brewer, p. 469. 1 Ibid., p. 472.

• Opus Maius t ed. Bridges, 1, 108.

230

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ROBERT GROSSETESTE

De impressionibus elementorum , De motu corporali , De motu super-
caelestium, De finitate motus et temporis and Quod homo sit minor
mundus.

2. The philosophy of Robert Grosseteste centres round the idea
of light, so dear to the mind of the Augustinian. In the De luce 1
Grosseteste remarks that the first corporeal form, which some call
corporeity, is in his judgement light. Light unites with matter,
that is, with Aristotelian prime matter, to form a simple substance
without dimensions. Why does Grosseteste make light the first
corporeal form? Because it is the nature of light to diffuse itself
and he uses this property of light to explain how a substance
composed of non-dimensional form and non-dimensional matter
acquires tridimensionality. If we suppose that the function of
light is to multiply itself and to diffuse itself and so to be respon¬
sible for actual extension, we must conclude that light is the first
corporeal form, since it would not be possible for the first corporeal
form to produce extension through a secondary or consequent
form. Moreover, light is the noblest of all forms and bears the
greatest resemblance to the separate intelligences, so that on this
title also it is the first corporeal form.

Light (lux) diffuses itself in all directions, 'spherically', forming
the outermost sphere, the firmament, at the farthest point of its
diffusion, and this sphere consists simply of light and prime matter.
From every part of the firmament light (lumen) is diffused towards
the centre of the sphere, this light (the light of experience) being
qorpus spirituale, sive mavis dicere spiritus corporalis 2 This diffu¬
sion takes place by means of a self-multiplication and generation
of light, so that at intervals, so to speak, there arises a new sphere,
until the nine celestial and concentric spheres are complete, the
innermost being the sphere of the moon. This sphere in turn
produces light, but the rarefaction or diffusion is less as the light
approaches the centre, and the four infra-lunar spheres, of fire, air,
water and earth are produced. There are, then, thirteen spheres in
all in the sensible world, the nine celestial spheres, which are
incorruptible and changeless, and the four infra-celestial spheres,
which are corruptible and capable of change.

The degree of light possessed by each kind of body determines
its place in the corporeal hierarchy, light being the species et
perfectio corporum omnium . 3 Grosseteste also explains colour in
terms of light, declaring that it is lux incorporata perspicuo . 4 An

1 Ed. Baur, p. 51. * P, 55. 3 P. 56. 4 De colore, p. 78.

23 I

abundance of light in perspicuo puro is whiteness, while lux pauca
in perspicuo impuro nigredo est f and he explains in this sense the
statement of Aristotle 1 and Averroes that blackness is a privation.
Light again is the principle of motion, motion being nothing else
but the vis multiplicativa lucis 2

3. So far light has been considered as something corporeal, as a
component of the corporeal; but Grosseteste extends the concep¬
tion of light to embrace the spiritual world as well. Thus God is
pure Light, the eternal Light (not in the corporeal sense, of course),
and the angels are also incorporeal lights, participating in the
eternal Light. God is also the 'Form of all things', but Grosseteste
is careful to explain that God is not the form of all things as enter¬
ing into their substance, uniting with their matter, but as their
exemplary form. 3 God precedes all creatures, but 'precedes' must
be understood as meaning that God is eternal, the creature
temporal: if it is understood as meaning that there is a common
duration in which both God and creatures exist, the statement
will be incorrect, since the Creator and the creature do not share
any common measure. 4 We naturally imagine a time in which
God existed before creation, just as we naturally imagine space
outside the universe; but reliance on the imagination in such
matters is a source of error.

4. In the De veritate propositionis b Grosseteste says that veritas
sermonis vel opinionis est adaequatio sermonis vel opmionis et rei,
but he concentrates more on 'ontological truth', on the Augustinian
view of truth. He is willing to accept the Aristotelian view of the
truth of enunciation as adaequatio sermonis et rei or adaequatio rei
ad intellectum, but truth really means the conformity of things to
the eternal Word quo dicuntur and consists in their conformity to
the divine Word. 0 A thing is true, in so far as it is what it ought
to be, and it is what it ought to be when it is conformed to the
Word, that is, to its exemplar. This conformity can be perceived
only by the mind, so that truth may also be defined with St. Anselm
as rectitudo sola mente perceptibilis . 7

From this it follows that no created truth can be perceived
except in the light of the supreme Truth, God. Augustine bore
witness to the fact that a created truth is visible only in so far as
the light of its ratio eterna is present to the mind. 8 How is it, then,

1 Physics, 201 a 6; Metaph., 1065 b 11. * De motu corporali et luce, p. 92.

* De unica forma omnium, p. 109.

4 De ordint emanandi causatorum a Deo, p. 149. P. 144.

• De veritate, pp. 134-5. 7 Ibid., p. 135. • Ibid., p. 137.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ALEXANDER OF HALES

232

that the wicked and impure can attain truth? They cannot be
supposed to see God, who is seen only by the pure of heart. The
answer is that the mind does not perceive the Word or the ratio
eterna directly, but perceives truth in the light of the Word. Just
as the bodily eye sees corporeal objects in the light of the sun
without looking directly at the sun or even perhaps adverting to
it at all, so the mind perceives truth in the light of the divine
illumination without thereby perceiving God, the Veritas summa ,
directly or even without necessarily realising at all that it is only
in the divine light that it sees truth. 1 Thus Grosseteste follows the
Augustinian doctrine of divine illumination, but explicitly rejects
any interpretation of the doctrine which would involve a vision
of God.

Into Grosseteste's views on mathematics, perspective, etc., I
cannot enter: enough has been said to show how Grosseteste's
philosophy was built upon Augustinian lines by a man who yet
knew and was willing to utilise Aristotelian ideas.

(6) ALEXANDER OF HALES

5. There was within the Franciscan Order a party of zealots
who adopted a hostile attitude towards learning and other accom¬
modations to the needs of life, which they regarded as treason to
the simple idealism of the Seraphic Father; but these ‘Spirituals’
were frowned upon by the Holy See, and in point of fact the
Franciscan Order produced a long line of distinguished theologians
and philosophers, the first eminent figure being that of the English¬
man, Alexander of Hales, who was born in Gloucestershire between
1170 and 1180, entered the Franciscan Order about 1231 and died
in 1245. He was the first Franciscan professor of theology at Paris
and occupied the chair until within a few years of his death, having
as his successor John of la Rochelle.

It is difficult to ascertain exactly what contributions to philo¬
sophy are to be ascribed to Alexander of Hales in person, since the
Summa theologica which passes under his name, and which drew
caustic comments from Roger Bacon, comprises elements, parti¬
cularly in the latter portion, taken from the writings of other
thinkers and seems to have attained its final form some ten years
or more after Alexander's death. 2 In any case, however, the work
represents a stage in the development of western philosophy and

1 De veritate , p. 138,

* References below are to the Summa theologica in the Quaracchi edition,
according to volume and section.

233

a tendency in that development. It represents a stage, since the
Aristotelian philosophy as a whole is clearly known and utilised:
it represents a tendency, since the attitude adopted towards
Aristotle is critical, in the sense that Alexander not only attacks
certain doctrines of Aristotle and the Aristotelians but also con¬
siders that the pagan philosophers were unable to formulate a
satisfactory ‘philosophy’, in the wide sense, owing to the fact that
they did not possess the Christian revelation: a man on a hill can
see more even of the valley than the man at the foot of the hill
can see. He followed, therefore, his Christian predecessors (the
Fathers, especially St. Augustine, Boethius, the Pseudo-Dionysius,
St. Anselm, the Victonnes) rather than Aristotle.

6. The doctrine of the Blessed Trinity cannot be attained by
man’s unaided reason, owing to the weakness of the human
intellect, 1 but God’s existence can be known by all men, whether
they are good or bad. 2 Distinguishing God’s existence (quia est)
from His nature (quid est) Alexander teaches that all can know
God’s existence by means of creatures, recognising God as efficient
and final cause. 3 Moreover, though the natural light of reason is
insufficient to attain to a knowledge of the divine nature as it is
in itself, that does not mean that all knowledge of God's nature is
barred to the natural intellect, since it can come to know some¬
thing of God, for example, His power and wisdom, by considering
His operation in creatures, a degree of knowledge open to those
who are not in a state of grace.* This type of knowledge is not
univocal but analogical. 6 For example, goodness is predicated of
God and of creatures, but while it is predicated of God per naturam,
as being identical with His nature and as the self-existent source
of all goodness, it is predicated of creatures per participationem,
inasmuch as creatures depend on God, are God’s effects, and
receive a limited degree of goodness from Him.

In proving God’s existence Alexander makes use of a variety of
arguments. Thus he uses Richard of St. Victor’s proof from
contingency, St. John Damascene's argument from causality and
Hugh of St. Victor’s argument from the soul’s knowledge that it
had a beginning; but he also employs St. Augustine's and St.
Anselm’s proof from the eternity of truth and accepts the latter’s
proof from the idea of the Perfect, as given in the Proslogium , 6 In
addition he maintains that it is impossible to be ignorant of God’s

1 I, no. 10. * i, no. 15. * 1, no. 21. 6 i, no. 15.

* I, no. 21. - i, no. 25.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ALEXANDER OF HALES

234

existence. 1 This is a startling proposition, but it is necessary to
bear in mind certain distinctions. For instance, we must distin¬
guish habitual knowledge and actual knowledge {cognitio habitu,
cognitio actu). The former, says Alexander, is a habit naturally
impressed on the intellect, enabling the intellect to know God, and
would seem to be little more than implicit knowledge, if ‘implicit
knowledge* can be called knowledge at all. St. Albert the Great
comments, rather sarcastically, that this distinction is a solutio
mirabilis 2 Actual knowledge itself must also be distinguished,
since it may comprise the soul's recognition that it is not a se or
it may mean a concentration on creatures. In so far as actual
knowledge of the first sort is concerned, the soul cannot fail to
know God’s existence, though it would appear that the actual
recognition of God may even here be ‘implicit’, but in so far as the
soul is turned away from God by sin and error and rivets its
attention on creatures, it may fail to realise God’s existence. In
this latter case, however, a further distinction must be introduced
between knowledge of God in ratione communi and knowledge of
God in ratione propria . For example, the man who places his
happiness in riches or sensual pleasures knows God in a sense,
since God is Beatitude, but he does not have a true notion of God,
in ratione propria. Similarly the idolater recognises God in
communi , for example, as ‘Something’, but not as He really is, in
ratione propria. Such distinctions may indeed appear somewhat
far-fetched, but Alexander is taking into account such facts as
St. Paul’s 3 saying that the heathen know God but have not
glorified Him as God or St. John Damascene's declaration that
the knowledge of God is naturally impressed on the mind. 4 The
view that the human mind cannot be without any knowledge of
God is characteristic of the Augustinian School; but, in view of the
fact that idolaters and, at least, professed atheists exist, any
writer who wishes to maintain such a view is bound to introduce
the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge or between
knowledge of God in ratione communi and knowledge of God in
ratione propria.

7. Alexander treats of the divine attributes of immutability,
simplicity, infinity, incomprehensibility, immensity, eternity,
unity, truth, goodness, power and wisdom, giving objections, his
own reply to the general question and answers to the objections.

1 1, no. 26. 1 S.T., p.l., tr. 4, q. 19.

Romans 1. 4 De fide orthod,, i, cc. 1 and 3; P.O., 94. 790 and 794.

235

Appeals to former writers and quotations from authorities like
Augustine and Anselm are frequent, nor is the doctrine developed
in a particularly original fashion, but the arrangement is syste¬
matic and careful, and a considerable amount of general philo¬
sophical reflection is included. For instance, when treating of the
unity of the divine nature, Alexander begins by considering unity
in general, defining unitas as indivisio entis and unum as ens
indivisum in se, divisum autem ab aliis , 1 and goes on to consider
the relation of unity to being, truth and goodness. 2 As regards the
divine knowledge, Alexander maintains, following Augustine and
Anselm, that God knows all things in and through Himself. The
exemplar or eternal ‘ideas' of creatures are in God, though,
considered in themselves, they do not form a plurality but are
identical with the one divine essence, so that it is by knowing
Himself that God knows all things. How, then, does He know
evil and sin? Only as defect, i.e. a defect from goodness. If light,
says Alexander, following the Pseudo-Dionysius, were gifted with
the power of knowing, it would know that this or that object was
unreceptive of its action: it would not know darkness in itself
without any relation to light. This involves, of course, the view
that evil is nothing positive but rather a privation, 3 for, if evil
were something positive, it would be necessary either to maintain
dualism or to say that evil has an exemplar in God.

In treating of the divine will Alexander raises the question
whether or not God can order actions which are against the natural
law. The immediate origin of the question is a problem of Scrip¬
tural exegesis; how, for example, to explain God’s order to the
Israelites to despoil the Egyptians, but the question has, of course,
a much wider significance. God, he answers, cannot order an
action which would be formally contrary to the natural law, since
this would be to contradict Himself; He cannot, for instance, will
that man should have any other end but God, since God is
essentially the final end. Nor could God order the Israelites to
steal in the proper sense of the word, as implying an act directed
against God Himself, a sin. God can, however, deprive the
Egyptians of their property and so order the Israelites to take it.
He can also order the Israelites to take something that belongs to
another, since this affects only the ordo ad creaturam , but cannot
order them to take it ex cupiditate , since this affects the ordo
ad Deum and would involve self-contradiction on God’s part. 4

1 i, no. 72. 1 1, no. 73. *Cf. i, nos. 1239. 4 1, no. 276.

236 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

Similarly, God could order the prophet Osee to have intercourse
with a woman who was not his wife, in so far as this act involved
the ordo ad creaturam, but He could not order Osee to do this ex
libidine , since this would involve the ordo ad Deum. Alexander’s
distinctions on this matter are somewhat obscure and not always
satisfactory, but it is in any case clear that he did not believe that
the moral law depends on God's arbitrary fiat , as Ockham was
later to maintain.

8. God is the immediate Creator of the world, in regard both to
matter and form, and the non-eternity of the world can be proved. 1
Thus Alexander rejects the Aristotelian notion of the eternity of
the world, but he accepts the doctrine of hylomorphic composition.
This composition is found in every creature, since ’matter' equals
potentiality, but a more fundamental composition, also found in
every creature, is that between the quo est and the quod est . 2 It
may appear that this is the distinction between essence and
existence, but it seems rather that the quod est refers to the
concrete being, a man, for instance, and the quo est to the abstract
essence, humanity, for example. In any case the distinction is a
'rational' distinction, since we can predicate the quo est of the
quod est, in a certain sense at least, as when we say that this being
is a man. There is no real distinction between a man and his
humanity; yet the humanity is received. In God there is no
dependence, no reception, and so no composition between the quod
est (Deus) and the quo est (Deitas).

9. In accordance with his general spirit of reliance on tradition,
Alexander of Hales gives and defends seven definitions or descrip¬
tions of the human soul. 3 For example, the soul may be defined
as Deifortne spiraculum vitae or as substantia quaedam rationis
particefis , regendo corpori accommodata 5 or as substantia spiritualis a
Deo creata , propria sui corporis vivificatrix* Other definitions are
taken from St. Augustine, St. John Damascene and Seneca. The
soul, insists Alexander, is not a substance simply in the sense that
it is a substantial form, but it is an ens in se, a substance simpliciter ,
composed of 'intellectual' matter and form. If in this respect he
follows the Platonic-Augustinian tradition, even suggesting that
the soul must be a substance since it stands to the body as the
sailor to the ship, he also insists that the soul vivifies the body.

1 2, no. 67. * 2, nos, 59-61. * 2, no. 321.

4 Cf. De sp. et an., c. 42, (placed among works of Augustine; P. L. 40, 811)
and St. Aug., De Gen. ad litt., 7 cc, 1-3.

* St. Aug., De quant . an., c. 13, n. 22. 4 Cassiodorus, De Anima, c. 2.

ALEXANDER OF HALES 237

An angel is also spiraculum vitae, but an angel is not spiraculum
vitae corporis, whereas the soul is the principle of the body’s
life.

Each human soul is created by God out of nothing. 1 The human
soul is not an emanation of God, part of the divine substance, 2 nor
is it propagated in the manner postulated by the traducianists.
Original sin can be explained without recourse to a traducianist
theory. 3 The soul is united with the body after the manner of the
union of form with matter (ad modum forrnae cum materia),* but
this must be interpreted in an Augustinian sense, since the rational
soul is joined to its body ut motor mobili et ut perfectio formalis suo
perfectibili .* The soul has the three powers of the vis vegetativa,
the vis sensitiva and the vis intellectiva, and though these powers
are not to be called parts of the soul, in the strict sense of the word
‘part’, 8 they are yet distinct from one another and from the
essence of the soul. Alexander, therefore, explains Augustine’s
assertion of the identity of the soul and its powers by saying that
this identity is to be referred to the substance, not to the essence
of the soul. 7 The soul cannot subsist without its powers nor are
the powers intelligible apart from the soul, but just as esse and
operari are not identical, so are essentia and potentia not
identical.

The active and passive intellects are duae differentiae of the
rational soul, the former referring to the spiritual form of the soul,
the latter to its spiritual matter, and the active intellect is not
separate from the soul but belongs to it. 8 But together with the
Aristotelian classification of the rational powers of the soul
Alexander gives also the classifications of St. Augustine and St.
John Damascene and attempts to reconcile them. For example,
‘intellect’ in the Aristotelian philosophy refers to our power of
acquiring knowledge of intelligible forms by means of abstraction, 9
and it corresponds, therefore, to the Augustinian ratio, not to the
Augustinian intellectus or intelligentia, which has to do with
spiritual objects. Intellect in the Aristotelian sense has to do
with embodied forms and abstracts them from the phantasmata,
but intellect in the Augustinian sense has to do with non-embodied,
spiritual forms, and when there is question of knowing those forms
which are superior to the human soul, the intellect is powerless
unless it is illuminated by God. 10 Alexander provides no clear

1 2, nos. 329 and 322. * 2, no. 322. • 2, no. 327. 4 2, no. 347.

8 2, no. 345. *2, no. 351. T 2, no. 349, • 2. no. 372.

• 2, no. 368. ld 2, no. 372.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ALEXANDER OF HALES

238

explanation of what this illumination precisely is, but he at least
makes it clear that he accepts the Aristotelian doctrine of abstrac¬
tion in regard to the corporeal world, though in regard to the
spiritual world the doctrine of Aristotle has to be supplemented by
that of Augustine. One may also remark that Alexander was quite
right in seeing in the Peripatetic classification a psychological
analysis and in the Augustinian classification a division according
to the objects of knowledge.

Alexander gives three definitions of free will, that of St. Anselm
(potestas servandi rectitudinem propter se), that of St. Augustine
(,facultas rationis et voluntatis , qua bonum eligitur gratia assistente
et malum eadem desistente) and that of St. Bernard ( consensus ob
voluntatis inamissibilem libertatem et rationis indeclinabile indicium)
and attempts to reconcile them. 1 Liberum arbitrium is common to
God and the soul, but it is predicated neither universally nor
equivocally, but analogically, primarily of God, secondarily of the
creature. 2 In man it is one faculty or function of reason and will
in union, and it is in this sense only that it may be termed distinct
from reason and will: it is not in reality a separate power of the
soul. Moreover, inasmuch as it is bound up with the possession of
reason and will, it is inseparable from the soul, that is, as far as
natural liberty is concerned. Following St. Bernard, Alexander
distinguishes libertas arbitrii and libertas consilii et complaciti and
declares that, while the latter may be lost, the former cannot.

10. Alexander of Hales is of interest, since his main work is a
sustained effort of systematic thought, being a Scholastic presenta¬
tion of the Christian theology and philosophy. In regard to form
it belongs to the mediaeval period of the Summas, sharing in the
merits and defects of that type of compilation, in their succinctness
and orderly arrangement as in their aridity and absence of
developments which, from our point of view, might be desirable.
As regards content, on the one hand Alexander's Summa stands in
close connection with the past, as the author is determined to be
faithful to tradition and very frequently quotes Augustine or
Anselm, Bernard or John Damascene, instead of developing his
own arguments. This does not mean that he appeals simply to
authority, in the sense of merely citing famous names, since he
often quotes the arguments of his predecessors; but it does mean
that the developed arguments which would have been desirable
even at the time he wrote, are absent. However, his work is, of

1 Cf. 2, nos. 393-6. 1 2, no. 402.

239

course, a Summa, and a Summa is admittedly a summary. On the
other hand the work shows a knowledge of Aristotle, though he
is not often explicitly mentioned, and it makes some use of the
Peripatetic doctrine. There is always present, however, the desire
to harmonise the elements taken from Aristotle with the teaching
of Augustine and Anselm, and the general tendency is towards a
contrast between the God-enlightened Christian thinkers on the
one hand and the Philosophers on the other hand. It is not that
Alexander gives the impression of being a polemical writer nor
that he confuses philosophy and theology, 1 but he is chiefly
concerned with the knowledge of God and of Christ. To say that,
is simply to say that he was faithful to the tradition of the
Augustinian School.

1 Cf. 1, no. 2.

ST. BONAVENTURE

CHAPTER XXV

ST. BONAVENTURE—I

Life and works — Spirit—Theology and philosophy—Attitude to
Aristotelianism.

I. St. Bonaventure, Giovanni Fidanza, was bom at Bagnorea
in Tuscany in the year 1221. Healed of a sickness while a child,
through his mother’s invocation of St. Francis of Assisi, he entered
the Franciscan Order at a date which cannot be exactly deter¬
mined. It may have been shortly before or after 1240, but in any
case Bonaventure must have become a Franciscan in time to study
under Alexander of Hales at Paris before the latter’s death in
1245. The teaching of Alexander evidently made a great impres¬
sion on his pupil, for in his Praelocutio prooemio in secundum
librum Sententiarum praemissa Bonaventure declares that just as
in the first book of the Sentences he has adhered to the common
opinions of the masters, and especially to those of ‘our master and
father of happy memory Brother Alexander', so in the following
books he will not stray from their footsteps. 1 In other words
Bonaventure imbibed the Franciscan, i.e. the Augustinian, tradi¬
tion, and he was determined to keep to it. It might perhaps be
thought that this determination indicated simply a pious conserva¬
tism and that Bonaventure was ignorant of or at least ignored and
adopted no definite and positive attitude towards the new philoso¬
phical tendencies at Paris; but the Commentary on the Sentences
dates from 1250-1 (he started lecturing in 1248, on St. Luke’s
Gospel) and at that date Bonaventure cannot have made his
studies at Paris and yet have been ignorant of the Aristotelian
philosophy. Moreover, we shall see later that he adopted a very
definite attitude towards that philosophy, an attitude which was
not simply the fruit of ignorance but proceeded from reflection and
reasoned conviction.

St. Bonaventure was involved in the same difficulties between
regulars and seculars in which St. Thomas Aquinas was involved,
and in 1255 he was excluded from the university, that is, he was
refused recognition as a doctor and professor of the university

1 Alexander appears again as 'our father and master' in 2 Sent., 23, 2, 3; II,
P- 547'

241

staff. He may have been readmitted in 1256, but in any case he
was accepted, along with Aquinas, in October 1257, as a result of
Papal intervention. He was then a professor of theology at the
university, as far as acceptance was concerned, and would doubt¬
less have proceeded to exercise that office had he not been elected
Minister General of his Order on February 2nd, 1257. The fulfil¬
ment of the normal functions of his office would by itself
have prevented his living the settled life of a university professor,
but in addition there were differences of opinion at the time within
the Order itself in regard to its spirit, practice and function, and
Bonaventure was faced with the difficult task of maintaining or
restoring peace. However, in 1259 he wrote the Itinerarium mentis
in Deum, in 1261 his two lives of St. Francis, in 1267 or 1268 the
Collationes de decern praeceptis (Lenten sermons), the De decern
donis Spirilus sancti (about 1270), the Collationes in Hexaemeron
in 1273. The Breviloquium was written before 1257. The Com¬
mentaries on the Scriptures, short mystical treatises, sermons, and
letters on points connected with the Franciscan Order make up his
other writings at various periods of his life.

Although in 1265 Bonaventure had succeeded in inducing the
Pope to rescind his appointment to the Archbishopric of York, he
was appointed Bishop of Albano and Cardinal in 1273. In 1274
he was present at the Council of Lyons, where he preached on the
reunion of the Eastern Church with Rome, but on the conclusion
of the Council he died (July 15th, 1274) and was buried at Lyons in
the presence of Pope Gregory X.

2. St. Bonaventure was not only himself a man of learning, but
he also encouraged the development of studies within the Francis¬
can Order, and this may appear strange in the case of a Franciscan
saint, when it can hardly be said that the founder had envisaged
his friars devoting themselves to erudition. But it is, of course,
perfectly clear to us, as it was to Bonaventure, that an order
consisting largely of priests, with a vocation which involved
preaching, could not possibly fulfil its vocation unless its members,
at least those who were destined for the priesthood, studied the
Scriptures and theology. But it was impossible to study Scholastic
theology without acquiring a knowledge of philosophy, so that
philosophical and theological studies were both necessary. And
once this general principle was admitted, as admitted it must be,
it was hardly practicable to set a limit to the degree of study. If
the students were to be trained in philosophy and theology, they

140

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ST. BONAVENTURE

242

had to have professors and the professors had not only to be
competent themselves but to educate their successors. Moreover,
if apostolic work might involve contact with learned men, perhaps
also with heretics, one could not set on a priori grounds a limit to
the study which might be advisable.

One might indeed multiply such practical considerations, which
justified the development of studies within the Franciscan Order;
but, as far as Bonaventure is concerned, there is an equally
important consideration to be mentioned. St. Bonaventure was
perfectly faithful to the spirit of St. Francis in regarding union
with God as the most important aim in life; but he saw very well
that this would scarcely be attained without knowledge of God
and the things of God, or at least that such knowledge, so far from
being a hindrance to union with God, should predispose the soul
to closer union. After all, it was the study of the Scriptures and of
theology which he recommended and himself pursued, not the
study of questions which had no connection with God, and this
was one of the reasons why he disliked and mistrusted the meta¬
physical philosophy of Aristotle, which had no place for personal
communion with the Godhead and no place for Christ. There is,
as M. Gilson has pointed out, a certain parallel between the life of
St. Francis and the teaching of St. Bonaventure. For just as the
former's personal life culminated in mystical communion with
God, so the latter's teaching culminated in his mystical doctrine,
and just as Francis had approached God through Christ and had
seen, concretely , all things in the light of the divine Word, so
Bonaventure insisted that the Christian philosopher must see the
world in its relation to the creative Word. Christ, as he expressly
says, is the medium or Centre of all sciences, and so he could not
accept the Aristotelian metaphysic, which, so far from knowing
anything of Christ, had rejected even the exemplarism of Plato.

In the end the Franciscan Order accepted Duns Scotus as its
doctor par excellence ; but though it was doubtless right in so doing
and though Scotus was undoubtedly a man of genius, a thinker of
great speculative and analytic ability, one may perhaps say that
it was St. Bonaventure who stood nearer in thought, as in time, to
the spirit of the Seraphic Father. Indeed, it is not without reason
that he was accorded the title of the Seraphic Doctor.

3. St. Bonaventure's view of the purpose and value of study,
determined as much by his own inclinations and spiritual tenden¬
cies as by his intellectual training under Alexander of Hales and

243

his membership of the Franciscan Order, naturally placed him in
the Augustinian tradition. St. Augustine's thought centred round
God and the soul's relation to God, and, since the man who is
related to God is the concrete and actual man of history, who has
fallen from grace and who has been redeemed by grace, Augustine
dealt with man in the concrete and not with the ‘natural man',
not, that is, with man considered apart from his supernatural
vocation and in abstraction from the operation of supernatural
grace. This meant that St. Augustine could make no very rigid
distinction between philosophy and theology, even though he
distinguished between the natural light of reason and supernatural
faith. There is, of course, adequate justification for treating in
philosophy of man in ‘the state of nature', since the order of grace
is super-natural and one can distinguish between the order of grace
and the order of nature; but the point I want to make is simply
this, that if one is principally interested in the soul's advance to
God, as Augustine and Bonaventure were, then one's thought will
centre round man in the concrete, and man in the concrete is man
with a supernatural vocation. Man considered in the ‘state of
nature', is a legitimate abstraction; but this legitimate abstraction
will not appeal to one whose thought centres round the actual
historical order. It is largely a question of approach and method.
Neither Augustine nor Bonaventure would deny the distinction
between the natural and the supernatural, but since they were
both primarily interested in the actual historical man, who, be it
repeated, is man with a supernatural vocation, they naturally
tended to mingle theological and philosophical themes in one
Christian wisdom rather than to make a rigid, methodological
distinction between philosophy and theology.

It may be objected that in this case St. Bonaventure is simply a
theologian and not a philosopher at all; but one can give a similar
answer in the case of Bonaventure as in that of Augustine. If one
were to define a philosopher as one who pursues the study of Being
or the ultimate causes, or whatever other object one is pleased to
assign to the philosopher, without any reference to revelation and
prescinding completely from dogmatic theology, the Christian dis¬
pensation and the supernatural order, then of course neither
Augustine nor Bonaventure could be termed a philosopher; but if
one is willing to admit into the ranks of the philosophers all those
who pursue what are generally recognised as philosophical themes,
then both men must be reckoned philosophers. Bonaventure may

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ST. BONAVENTURE

244

sometimes treat, for instance, of the stages of the soul's ascent
from knowledge of God through creatures to immediate and
interior experience of God and he may speak of the stages without
any clear demarcation of what is proper to theology and what is
proper to philosophy; but that does not alter the fact that in
treating of knowledge of God through creatures, he develops
proofs of God’s existence and that these proofs are reasoned argu¬
ments and so can be termed philosophical arguments. Again,
Bonaventure's interest in the material world may be principally
an interest in that world as the manifestation of God and he may
delight to see therein vestigia of the Triune God, but that does not
alter the fact that he holds certain opinions about the nature of
the world and its constitution which are cosmological, philosophi¬
cal, in character. It is true that to isolate Bonaventure’s philoso¬
phical doctrines is in a sense to impair the integrity of his system;
but there are philosophical doctrines in his system and this fact
entitles him to a place in the history of philosophy. Moreover, as
I shall mention shortly, he adopted a very definite attitude
towards philosophy in general and the Aristotelian system in
particular, and on this count alone he merits a place in the history
of philosophy. One could hardly exclude Kierkegaard from the
history of philosophy, although his attitude towards philosophy,
in his understanding of the term, was hostile, for he philosophised
about philosophy: still less can one exclude Bonaventure whose
attitude was less hostile than that of Kierkegaard and who repre¬
sents a particular standpoint in regard to philosophy, the stand¬
point of those who maintain not only that there is such a thing as
Christian philosophy, but also that every independent philosophy
is bound to be deficient and even partly erroneous as philosophy.
Whether this standpoint is right or wrong, justified or unjustified,
it deserves consideration in a history of philosophy.

Bonaventure was, then, of the Augustinian tradition; but it
must be remembered that a great deal of water had flowed under
the bridge since the time of Augustine. Since that time Scholas¬
ticism had developed, thought had been systematised, the Aris¬
totelian metaphysic had been fully made known to the western
Christian world. Bonaventure commented on the Sentences of
Peter Lombard and he was acquainted with the thought of
Aristotle: we would only expect, then, to find in his writings not
only far more elements of Scholasticism and of the Scholastic
method than in Augustine but also an adoption of not a few

245

Aristotelian ideas, for Bonaventure by no means rejected Aristotle
lock, stock and barrel: on the contrary he respected him as a
natural philosopher, even if he had no high opinion of his meta¬
physics, of his theology at least. Thus from the point of view of
the thirteenth century the Bonaventurian system was a modern
Augustinianism, an Augustinianism developed through the cen¬
turies and re-thought in relation to Aristotelianism.

4. What then was Bonaventure’s view of the general relation of
philosophy to theology and what was his view of Aristotelianism?
The two questions can be taken together, since the answer to the
first determines the answer to the second.

As has already been remarked, Augustine distinguished faith
and reason, and Bonaventure naturally followed him, quoting
Augustine’s words to the effect that what we believe we owe to
authority, what we understand to reason. 1 It follows from this,
one might think, that philosophy and theology are two separate
sciences and that an independent philosophy of a satisfactory
character is, at least theoretically, possible. Indeed Bonaventure
actually makes an explicit and clear distinction between dogmatic
theology and philosophy. For example, in the Breviloquium 2 he
says that theology begins with God, the supreme Cause, with whom
philosophy ends. In other words, theology takes its data from
revelation and proceeds from God Himself to His effects, whereas
philosophy starts with the visible effects and argues to God as
cause. Again, in the De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam 3 he
divides ‘natural philosophy’ into physics, mathematics and meta¬
physics, while in the In Hexaemeron 4 he divides philosophy into
physics, logic and ethics.

In view of the above, how can it be maintained that St. Bona¬
venture did not admit of any rigid distinction between philosophy
and theology? The answer is that he admitted a methodological
distinction between the sciences and also a distinction of subject-
matter, but insisted that no satisfactory metaphysic or philoso¬
phical system can be worked out unless the philosopher is guided
by the light of faith and philosophises in the light of faith. For
instance, he was well aware that a philosopher can arrive at the
existence of God without the aid of revelation. Even if he had not
been convinced of this by his own reason and by the testimony of
the Scriptures, the philosophy of Aristotle would have been

1 Aug., De utilitate credendi, ii, 25; Bonav., Breviloq., 1, 1,4.

* 1, 1. 1 4. 4 4, 2.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

246

sufficient to persuade him of the fact. But he was not content to
say that the knowledge of God so attained is incomplete and
stands in need of the completion provided by revelation: he went
further and stated that such purely rational knowledge is, and
must be, in important points erroneous. This point he proved
empirically. For example, ‘the most noble Plotinus of the sect of
Plato and Tully of the academic sect', in spite of the fact that their
views on God and the soul were preferable to those of Aristotle, fell
into error since they were unaware of the supernatural end of man,
of the true resurrection of the body and of eternal felicity. 1 They
could not know these things without the light of faith, and they
fell into error precisely because they had not got the light of faith.
Similarly, a mere metaphysician may come to the knowledge of the
supreme Cause, but if he is a mere metaphysician he will stop
there, and if he stops there he is in error, since he thinks of God
otherwise than He is, not knowing that God is both one and three.
'Philosophical science is the way to other sciences; but he who
wishes to stop there, falls into darkness.' 2 In other words,
Bonaventure is not denying the power of the philosopher to attain
truth, but he maintains that the man who is satisfied with philo¬
sophy, who is a mere philosopher, necessarily falls into error. It is
one thing if a man comes by reason to know that there exists one
God and then goes on to recognise, in the light of faith, that this
unity is a unity of Nature in Trinity of Persons, and quite another
thing if a man stops short at the unity of God. In the latter case
the man affirms the unity of Nature to the exclusion of the Trinity
of Persons, and to do this is to fall into error. If it is objected that
it is not necessary to exclude the Trinity, since a philosopher may
prescind from revelation altogether, so that his philosophical know¬
ledge, though incomplete, remains valid and true, Bonaventure
would doubtless answer that if the man is simply a philosopher and
rests in philosophy, he will be convinced that God is one in Nature
and not three in Persons. In order to make due allowance for the
completion, he must already possess the light of faith. The light
of faith does not supply the rationed arguments for God's existence
(there is such a thing as philosophy), but it ensures that the
philosophy remains 'open' and that it does not close in on itself
in such a way that error results.

Bonaventure’s view of Aristotelianism follows easily enough
from these premisses. That Aristotle was eminent as a natural

1 In Hexaem 7, 3 Q. * De Demis, 3, 12.

ST. BONAVENTURE 247

philosopher, that is, in regard to sensible objects, Bonaventure
admits: what he will not admit is that Aristotle was a true meta¬
physician, that is, that the metaphysics of Aristotle are satis¬
factory. Some people, seeing that Aristotle was so eminent ift
other sciences, have imagined that he must also have attained
truth in metaphysics; but this does not follow, since the light of
faith is necessary in order to form a satisfactory metaphysical
system. Moreover, Aristotle was so competent in other sciences
precisely because his mind and interests were of such a kind that
he was not inclined to form a philosophy which should point
beyond itself. Thus he refused to find the principle of the world
outside the world: he rejected the ideas of Plato 1 and made the
world eternal.* From his denial of the Platonic theory of ideas
there followed not only the denial of creationism, but also the
denial of God’s knowledge of particulars, and of divine foreknow¬
ledge and providence. 3 Again, the doctrine of the unicity of the
intellect is at least attributed to Aristotle by Averroes, and from
this there follows the denial of individual beatitude or punishment
after death. 4 In short, though all pagan philosophers have fallen
into error, Aristotle was more involved in error than Plato or
Plotinus.

Possibly one may obtain a clearer view of Bonaventure’s notion
of the relation of philosophy to theology if one bears in mind the
attitude of the Catholic philosopher in practice. The latter works
out arguments for the existence of God, for example, but he does
not make himself an atheist for the time being nor does he deny
his faith in the dogma of the Trinity: he philosophises in the light
of what he already believes and he will not conclude to a unity in
God of such a kind that it will exclude the Trinity of Persons. On
the other hand his arguments for God’s existence are rational
arguments: in them he makes no reference to dogma, and the value
of the proofs as such rests on their philosophical merits or demerits.
The philosopher pursues his arguments, psychologically speaking,
in the light of the faith which he already possesses and which he
does not discard during his philosophical studies, and his faith
helps him to ask the right questions and to avoid untrue conclu¬
sions, though he does not make any formal use of the faith in his
philosophic arguments. The Thomist would, of course, say that
the faith is to the philosopher an extrinsic norm, that the philo¬
sopher prescinds from his faith, even though he does not deny it,
1 In Hexaitrt., 6, 2 . 1 Ibid.. 4. * Ibid., 2-3. * Ibid., 4.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

248

and that a pagan could, theoretically at least, reach the same
conclusions in philosophy. St. Bonaventure, however, would reply
that, even though the philosopher may make no formal use of
dogma in this or that metaphysical argument, he certainly
philosophises in the light of faith and that this is something
positive: the action of faith is a positive influence on the mind of
the philosopher and without it he will inevitably fall into error.
One cannot exactly say that St. Bonaventure believed only in a
total Christian wisdom comprising indifferently philosophical and
theological truths, since he admitted a classification of the sciences
in which philosophy figures; but, this latter point once admitted,
one can say that his ideal was the ideal of a Christian wisdom in
which the light of the Word is shed not only on theological but
also on philosophical truths, and without which those truths would
not be attained.

I have argued that since St. Bonaventure certainly treated of
philosophical questions, he has a claim to be included in a history
of philosophy, and I do not see how this contention can be
seriously disputed; but it remains true that he was a theologian,
that he wrote as a theologian and that he did not really consider
philosophical questions and problems for their own sake. St.
Thomas Aquinas was also primarily a theologian, and he wrote
primarily as a theologian; but he did consider philosophical prob¬
lems at length and even composed some philosophical works, which
St. Bonaventure did not do. The Commentary on the Sentences
was not what we would to-day call a philosophical work. It seems,
therefore, to constitute something of an exaggeration when
M. Gilson maintains, in his magnificent study of St. Bonaventure's
philosophical thought, that there is a Bonaventurian philosophical
system, the spirit and content of which can be sharply defined. We
have seen that St. Bonaventure recognised philosophy as a definite
science, separate from theology; but as far as he himself is con¬
cerned, he might be called a philosopher per accidens. In a sense
the same is true, of course, of any mediaeval thinker who was
primarily a theologian, even of St. Thomas; but it is most relevant
in the case of a thinker who was chiefly concerned with the soul's
approach to God. Moreover, M. Gilson probably tends to exag¬
gerate St. Bonaventure's hostility to pagan philosophy and to
Aristotle in particular. I have indeed admitted that St. Bona¬
venture attacked the Aristotelian metaphysic (this is a fact which
cannot be denied) and that he considered that any philosopher

ST. BONAVENTURE 249

who is merely a philosopher will inevitably fall into error; but it is
desirable in this connection to call to mind the fact that St. Thomas
himself insisted on the moral necessity of revelation. On that point
St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas were in agreement. They both
rejected pagan philosophy where it was incompatible with Chris¬
tianity, though they differed as to what precise points were to be
rejected and how far one could go in following Aristotle.

However, though I think that M. Gilson's genius for capturing
the peculiar spirit of the individual thinker and for setting it in
clear relief leads him to exaggerate the systematic aspect of St.
Bonaventure's philosophy and to find a greater opposition between
the views of Bonaventure and Thomas in regard to the pagan
philosophers than probably exists in actual fact, I cannot subscribe
to the judgement of M. Fernand Van Steenberghen 1 that the
philosophy of St. Bonaventure is an eclectic and neo-platonising
Aristotelianism, put at the service of an Augustinian theology.
That Bonaventure made considerable use of Aristotelianism is
perfectly true; but the inspiration of his philosophy is, in my
opinion, what for want of a better word we call ‘Augustinian . As
I remarked in regard to William of Auvergne, it depends to a large
extent on one's point of view whether one calls those Augustinian
theologians who adopted selected Aristotelian doctrines in philo¬
sophy incomplete Aristotelians or modified Augustinians; but in
the case of a man whose whole interest centred round the soul s
ascent to God, who laid such stress on the illuminative action of
God and who, as M. Van Steenberghen himself states when
criticising M. Gilson, never worked out a philosophy for its own
sake, it seems to me that ‘Augustinian' is the only fit word for
describing his thought, if for no better reason than the principle
that maior pars trahit minorem and that the spirit must take
precedence of the letter.

1 Aristote en Occident, p. 147.

CHAPTER XXVI

ST. BONAVENTURE—II: GOD’S EXISTENCE

Spirit of Bonaventure s proofs of God 1 s existence—Proofs from
sensible world —A priori knowledge of God—The Anselmian
argument—Argument from truth .

I. We have seen that St. Bonaventure, like St. Augustine, was
principally interested in the soul’s relation to God. This interest
had an effect on his treatment of the proofs for God’s existence;
he was chiefly concerned to exhibit the proofs as stages in the
soul’s ascent to God or rather to treat them in function of the
soul’s ascent to God. It must be realised that the God to whom
the proofs conclude is not, then, simply an abstract principle of
intelligibility, but is rather the God of the Christian consciousness,
the God to whom men pray. I do not, of course, mean to suggest
that there is, ontologically, any discrepancy or any irreconcilable
tension between the God of the ‘philosophers’ and the God of
experience; but since Bonaventure is primarily interested in God
as Object of worship and prayer and as goal of the human soul, he
tends to make the proofs so many acts of drawing attention to the
self-manifestation of God, whether in the material world or within
the soul itself. Indeed, as one would expect, he lays more emphasis
on proofs from within than on proofs from the material world,
from without. He certainly does prove God’s existence from the
external sensible world (St. Augustine had done this) and he shows
how from the knowledge of finite, imperfect, composite, moving
and contingent beings man can rise to the apprehension of the
infinite, perfect, simple, unchanging and necessary Being; but the
proofs are not systematically elaborated, the reason for this being,
not any inability on Bona venture's part to develop the proofs
dialectically, but rather his conviction that the existence of God
is so evident to the soul through reflection on itself that extra¬
mental creation serves mainly to remind us of it. His attitude is
that of the Psalmist, when he says: Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei, et
opera manuum eius annuntiat firmamentum. Thus it is quite true
that the imperfection of finite and contingent things demands and
proves the existence of absolute perfection, God; but, asks St.
Bonaventure in a truly Platonic manner, ‘how could the intellect

250

ST. BONAVENTURE: GOD’S EXISTENCE 251

know that this being is defective and incomplete, if it had no
knowledge of Being without any defect?’ 1 In other words, the
idea of imperfection presupposes the idea of perfection, so that
the idea of perfection or the perfect cannot be obtained simply by
way of negation and abstraction, and consideration of creatures in
their finiteness and imperfection and dependence serves simply to
remind the soul or to bring the soul to a clearer awareness of what
is in some sense already evident to it, already known to it.

2. St. Bonaventure does not deny for a moment that God’s
existence can be proved from creatures: on the contrary he affirms
it. In the Commentary on the Sentences * he declares that God can
be known through creatures as Cause through effect, and he goes
on to say that this mode of cognition is natural to man inasmuch
as for us sensible things are the means by which we arrive at the
knowledge of ' intelligibilia’ , that is, objects transcending sense.
The Blessed Trinity cannot be proved in the same way, however,
by the natural light of reason, since we cannot conclude to the
Trinity of Persons either by denying certain properties or limita¬
tions of creatures or by the positive way of attributing to God
certain qualities of creatures.* St. Bonaventure thus teaches
clearly enough the possibility of a natural and 'philosophic’
knowledge of God, and his remark on the psychological naturalness
of this approach to God through sensible objects is Aristotelian in
character. Again, in the In H exaimer on* he argues that if there
exists being which is produced, there must be a first Being, since
there must be a cause: if there is being ab alio, there must be
Being a se: if there is a composite being, there must be simple
Being: if there is changeable being, there must be unchanged
Being, quia mobile reducitur ad immobile. The last statement is
obviously a reference to the Aristotelian proof of the existence of
the unmoved mover, though Bonaventure mentions Aristotle only
to say that he argued on these lines to the eternity of the world
and that on this point the Philosopher was wrong.

Similarly in the De Mysterio Trinitatis * Bonaventure gives a
series of brief arguments to show how clearly creatures proclaim
the existence of God. For instance, if there is ens ab alio, there
must exist ens non ab alio, because nothing can bring itself out of
a state of non-being into a state of being, and finally there must
be a first Being which is self-existent. Again, if there is ens

1 Itin., 3, 3. * 1, 3, 2: Utrum. Devs sit cognoscibitis per creaturas.

* l Sent., 3. 4. * 5. * 9 - * 1. 1 . 10-20.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

253

252

possibile, Being which can exist and can not exist, there must be
ens necessarium , being which has no possibility of non-existence,
since this is necessary in order to explain the eduction of possible
being into a state of existence; and if there is ens in potentia , there
must be ens in actu, since no potency is reducible to act save
through the agency of what is itself in act; and ultimately there
must be actus purus , a Being which is pure Act, without any
potentiality, God. Again, if there is ens mutabile, there must be
ens immutabile because, as the Philosopher proves, motion has as
its principle an unmoved being and exists for the sake of unmoved
being, which is its final cause.

It might indeed appear from such passages, where Bonaventure
employs Aristotelian arguments, that the statements to the effect
that Bonaventure regarded the witness of creatures to God's
existence in function of the soul's ascent to God and that he
regarded the existence of God as a self-evident truth, cannot stand.
But he makes it quite clear in various places 1 that he regards the
sensible world as the mirror of God and sense-knowledge or know¬
ledge obtained through sense and reflection on sensible objects as,
formally, the first step in the stages of the soul's spiritual ascent,
the highest stage of which in this life is the experimental knowledge
of God by means of the apex mentis or synderesis scintilla (on this
point he shows himself faithful to the tradition of Augustine and
the Victorines), while in the very article of the De Mysterio
Trinitatis where he gives the proofs cited he affirms emphatically
that God's existence is indubitably a truth naturally implanted in
the human mind [quod Deum esse sit menti humanae indubitabile,
tanquam sibi naturaliter insertum). He goes on to declare that, in
addition to what he has already said on this matter, there is a
second way of showing that the existence of God is an indubitable
truth. This second way consists in showing that what every
creature proclaims is an indubitable truth, and it is at this point
that he gives his succession of proofs or rather of indications that
every creature really does proclaim God’s existence. Subsequently
he adds that there is a third way of showing that God's existence
cannot be doubted and proceeds to give his version of St. Anselm's
proof in the Proslogium . There can, then, be no doubt at all that
Bonaventure affirmed that God's existence is self-evident and
cannot be doubted: the question is rather what exactly he meant
by this, and we will consider this in the next section.

1 For example, in the Itinerarium mentis in Deum, c. r.

ST. BONAYENTURE: GOD'S EXISTENCE

3. In the first place St. Bonaventure did not suppose that
everyone has an explicit and clear knowledge of God, still less that
he has such a knowledge from birth or from the first use of reason.
He was well aware of the existence of idolaters and of the insipiens,
the fool who said in his heart that there is no God. The existence
of idolaters does not, of course, cause much difficulty since idolaters
and pagans do not so much deny the existence of God as possess a
wrong idea of God; but what of the insipiens ? The latter sees, for
example, that the impious are not always punished in this world
or at least that they sometimes appear to be better off in this
world than many good people, and he concludes from this that
there is no divine Providence, no divine Ruler of the world. 1
Moreover, he explicitly affirms, 2 in answer to the objection that
it is useless to prove the existence of that which is self-evident, of
that concerning which no one doubts, that though the existence
of God is indubitable so far as objective evidence is concerned, it
can be doubted propter defectum considerationis ex parte nostra
because ot want of due consideration and reflection on our part.
Does not this look as if Bonaventure is saying no more than that
objectively speaking, the existence of God is indubitable (i.e. the
evidence, when considered, is indubitable and conclusive), but that
subjectively speaking it may be doubted (i.e. because this or that
human being does not give sufficient attention to the objective
evidence); and if this is what he means when he says that God's
existence is indubitable and self-evident, how does his position
differ from that of St. Thomas?

The answer seems to be this. Although St. Bonaventure did not
postulate an explicit and clear idea of God in every human being,
still less any immediate vision or experience of God, he certainly
postulated a dim awareness of God in every human being, an
implicit knowledge which cannot be fully denied and which can
become an explicit and clear awareness through interior reflection
alone, even if it may sometimes need to be supported by reflection
on the sensible world. The universal knowledge of God is, there¬
fore, implicit, not explicit; but it is implicit in the sense that it cam
at least be rendered explicit through interior reflection alone. St.
Thomas admitted an implicit knowledge of God, but by this he
meant that the mind has the power of attaining to the knowledge
of God's existence through reflection on the things of sense amd by
arguing from effect to cause, whereas St. Bonaventure meant
1 De Mysterio Trinitatis, l, 1, conctusio. 1 Ibid., 12.

254

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ST. BONAVENTURE: GOD'S EXISTENCE

something more by implicit knowledge, that is, virtual knowledge
of God, a dim awareness which can be rendered explicit without
recourse to the sensible world.

Application of this view to Bonaventure's concrete instances
may make the understanding of it easier. For instance, every
human being has a natural desire for happiness (appetitus beati-
tudinis). But happiness consists in the possession of the supreme
Good, which is God. Therefore every human being desires God.
But there can be no desire without some knowledge of the object
(sine aliquali notitia ), Therefore the knowledge that God or the
supreme Good exists is naturally implanted in the soul. 1 Similarly,
the rational soul has a natural knowledge of itself, because it is
present to itself and is knowable by itself. But God is most present
to the soul and is knowable. Therefore a knowledge of its God is
implanted in the soul. If it be objected that while the soul is an
object proportionate to its own power of knowing, God is not, the
reply can be made that, if that were true, the soul could never
come to the knowledge of God, which is obviously false. 2

According to the above line of argument, then, the human will
is naturally orientated towards the supreme Good, which is God,
and not only is this orientation of the will inexplicable unless the
supreme Good, God, really exists, but it also postulates an a priori
knowledge of God. 3 This knowledge is not necessarily explicit or
clear, since if it were there could be no atheists, but it is implicit
and vague. If it is objected that an implicit and vague knowledge
of this kind is not knowledge at all, it may be answered that an
unprejudiced man who reflects on the orientation of his will
towards happiness can come to realise that the direction of his
will implies the existence of an adequate object and that this
object, the complete Good, must exist and is what we call God.
He will realise not only that in seeking happiness he is seeking
God, but that this search implies an inkling, as it were, of God,
since there can be no search for what is entirely unknown. There¬
fore, by reflecting on itself, on its own dependence and on its own
desires for wisdom, peace or felicity, the soul can recognise God's
existence and even God's presence, God's activity within it: it is not
necessary for it to seek without, it has only to follow Augustine's

1 De Mysterxo TrinitaHs, 1,1,7. * Ibid., 10.

* When speaking here of a ‘natural' orientation of the will, I do not mean to
use the term in a strictly theological sense, but rather in the sense that the will
of man in the concrete is directed to the attainment of God, prescinding altogether
from the question whether or not there is a desidtrium naturale videndi Deum .

255

advice and enter within itself, when it will see that it was
never without some inkling, some dim awareness, a 'virtual' know¬
ledge of God. To seek for happiness (and every human being must
seek for happiness) and to deny God's existence is really to be
guilty of a contradiction, to deny with the lips what one affirms
with the will and, in the case of wisdom at least, with the intellect.
Whether this line of argument is valid or not, I do not propose to
discuss here. It is obviously open to the objection, cogent or
otherwise, that if there were no God, then the desire for happiness
might be frustra or might have some other cause than the existence
of God. But it is at least clear that St. Bonaventure did not
postulate an innate idea of God in the crude form under which
Locke later attacked innate ideas. Again, when St. Bonaventure
declares that the soul knows God as most present to it, he is not
affirming ontologism or saying that the soul sees God immediately:
he means that the soul, recognising its dependence, recognises, if
it reflects, that it is the image of God: it sees God in His image.
As it necessarily knows itself, is conscious of itself, it necessarily
knows God in at least an implicit manner. By contemplating itself
it can make this implicit awareness explicit, without reference to
the external world. Whether the absence of reference to the
external world is more than formal, in the sense that the external
world is not explicitly mentioned, is perhaps disputable.

4. We have seen that for St. Bonaventure the very arguments
from the external world presuppose some awareness of God, for he
asks how the mind can know that sensible things are defective and
imperfect if it has no previous awareness of perfection, in com¬
parison with which it recognises the imperfections of creatures.
This point of view must be borne in mind when considering his
statement of St. Anselm's proof, which he adopted from the
Proslogium .

In the Commentary on the Sentences 1 St. Bonaventure resumes
the Anselmian argument. God is that than which no greater can
be thought. But that which cannot be thought not to exist is
greater than that which can be thought not to exist. Therefore,
since God is that than which no greater can be thought, God
cannot be thought not to exist. In the De Mysterio Trinitatis 2 he
quotes and states the argument at somewhat greater length and
points out 3 that doubt may arise if someone has an erroneous
notion of God and does not realise that He is that than which no

1 I, 8, i, 2. * i, i, 2 1 —4* # Ibid., conclusio.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

256

greater can be thought. Once the mind realises what the idea of
God is, then it must also realise not only that the existence of God
cannot be doubted, but also that His non-existence cannot even
be thought. As regards Gaunilo’s objection about the best of all
possible islands St. Bonaventure answers 1 that there is no parity,
for while there is no contradiction involved in the concept of a
Being than which no greater can be thought the idea of an island
than which no better can be thought is a contradiction in terms
(cppositio in adiecto), since 'island' denotes an imperfect being
whereas 'than which no better can be thought' denotes a perfect
being.

This method of argument may appear to be purely dialectical,
but, as already mentioned, Bonaventure did not regard the idea
of the perfect as obtained simply through a negation of the
imperfection of creatures, but as something presupposed by our
recognition of the imperfection of creatures, at least in the sense
that man's desire of the perfect implies a previous awareness. In
accordance with the Platonic-Augustinian tradition Bonaventure
presupposed, then, a virtual innate idea of the perfect, which can
be nothing else but God's imprint on the soul, not in the sense that
the soul is perfect but in the sense that the soul receives the idea
of the perfect or forms the idea of the perfect in the light of God,
through the divine illumination. The idea is not something
negative, the realisation of which in concrete existence can be
denied, for the presence of the idea itself necessarily implies God's
existence. On this point we may note the resemblance at least
between St. Bonaventure's doctrine and that of Descartes. 2

5. St. Augustine's favourite argument for the existence of God
had been that from truth and the existence of eternal truths: St.
Bonaventure utilised this argument as well. For example, every
affirmative proposition affirms something as true; but the affirma¬
tion of any truth affirms also the cause of all truth. 3 Even if
someone says that a man is an ass, this statement, whether correct
or not, affirms the existence of the primal truth, and even if a man
declares that there is no truth, he affirms this negation as true and
so implies the existence of the foundation and cause of truth. 4 No
truth can be seen save through the first truth, and the truth

1 De Mysterio Trinitatis, 1, 1, 6,

1 Cf. E. Gilson’s Commentary on the Discours de la Mithode, concerning the idea
of the perfect.

• 1 Sent., 8, x, 2, conclusio.

4 Ibid., 5 and 7. Cf. De Mysterio Trinitatis, 1,1, 26.

ST. BONAVENTURE: GOD'S EXISTENCE 257

through which every other truth is seen, is an indubitable truth:
therefore, since the first Truth is God, God’s existence is in¬
dubitable. 1

But here again St. Bonaventure is not pursuing a merely verbal
and dialectical argument. In a passage of the In Hexaemeron , 2
where he points out that the man who says there is no truth
contradicts himself, since he affirms it as true that there is no
truth, he remarks that the light of the soul is truth, which so
enlightens the soul that it cannot deny truth’s existence without
contradicting itself, and in the Itinerarium mentis in Deum 8 he
maintains that the mind can apprehend eternal truths and draw
certain and necessary conclusions only in the divine light. The
intellect can apprehend no truth with certainty save under the
guidance of Truth itself. To deny God's existence, then, is not
simply to be guilty of a dialectical contradiction; it is also to deny
the existence of the Source of that light which is necessary for the
mind’s attainment of certitude, the light quae illuminat omnem
hominem venientem in hunc mundum: it is to deny the Source in
the name of that which proceeds from the Source.

1 De Mysterio Trinitatis, i, i, 25. 1 4. I. 9 3 *

ST. BONAVENTURE: CREATURES AND GOD

CHAPTER XXVII

ST. BONAVENTURE—III
RELATION OF CREATURES TO GOD

Exempiarism—The divine knowledge—Impossibility of creation
from eternity—Errors which follow from denial of exempiarism
and creation—Likeness of creatures to God , analogy—Is this
world the best possible world?

i. WEhaveseen that the lines of proof adopted by St. Bonaventure
lead, not to the transcendent and self-enclosed unmoved Mover of
Aristotle (though he does not hesitate to utilise the Philosophers
thought and to cite him when he considers it apposite), but to the
God, at once transcendent and immanent, who is the Good which
draws the will, the Truth which is not only foundation of all
particular truths but also the Light which through its radiation
within the soul makes the apprehension of certain truth possible,
the Original which is mirrored in the human soul and in nature,
and the Perfect which is responsible for the idea of the perfect
within the human soul. In this way the arguments for God's
existence stand in close relation to the spiritual life of the soul,
revealing to it the God whom it has always sought, if only in a
semi-conscious fashion, and the God who has always operated
within it. The further knowledge of God which is given by
revelation crowns the philosophic knowledge and opens up to the
soul higher levels of spiritual life and the possibility of a closer
union with God. Philosophy and theology are thus integrated
together, the former leading on to the latter, the latter shedding
light on the deeper meaning of the former.

A similar integration of philosophy and theology is seen in
Bonaventure's doctrine of exempiarism, which in his eyes was a
matter of the greatest importance. In the In Hexaemeron 1 he
makes exempiarism the central point of metaphysics. The meta¬
physician, he says, proceeds from the consideration of created,
particular substance to the uncreated and universal substance
(not in the pantheistic sense, of course), and so, in so far as he
deals in general with the originating Principle of all things, he is
akin to the natural philosopher who also considers the origins of

1 i. 13.

258

259

things, while in so far as he considers God as final end he shares
his subject-matter to some degree with the moral philosopher,
who also considers the supreme Good as the last end, giving his
attention to happiness in the practical or speculative order. But
in so far as the metaphysician considers God, the supreme Being,
as exemplary cause of all things, he shares his subject-matter with
no one else (cum nullo communicat et verus est tnetaphysicus ). The
metaphysician, however, if he will attain the truth concerning
exempiarism, cannot stop at the mere fact that God is the
exemplary Cause of all things, for the medium of creation, the
express image of the Father and the exemplar of all creatures, is
the divine Word. Precisely as a philosopher he cannot come to
a certain knowledge of the Word, it is true; 1 but then if he is
content to be a mere philosopher, he will fall into error: he must,
enlightened by faith, proceed beyond mere philosophy and realise
that the divine Word is the exemplary Cause of all things. The
purely philosophic doctrine of exempiarism thus prepares the way
for the theology of the Word and, conversely, the theology of the
Word sheds light on the truth attained by philosophy, and in this
sense Christ is the medium not only of theology, but also of
philosophy.

An obvious conclusion in regard to Aristotle follows from this
position. Plato had maintained a doctrine of archetypal ideas or
essences and, whatever Plato himself may or may not have
thought, the neo-Platonists at least 'located' these ideas in the
divine mind, so that St. Augustine was enabled to praise Plato
and Plotinus on this account; but Aristotle rejected the ideas of
Plato and attacked his theory with bitterness (in principio Meta -
physicae et in fine et in mullis aliis locis exsecratur ideas Platonis ).*
In the Ethics too he attacks the doctrine, though the reasons he
gives are worthless (nihil valent rationes suae ). 3 Why did he attack
Plato? Because he was simply a natural philosopher, interested
in the things of the world for their own sake, and gifted with the
sermo scientiae but not with the sermo sapientiae. In refusing to
despise the sensible world and in refusing to restrict certainty to
knowledge of the transcendent Aristotle was right as against Plato,
who, in his enthusiasm for the via sapientiae, destroyed the via
scientiae , and he rightly censured Plato on this point, but he
himself went to the opposite extreme and destroyed the sermo
sapientiae . 4 Indeed, by denying the doctrine of exempiarism,

1 In Hexaim i, 13. * Ibid., 6, 2. # Ibid . 4 Swn., 18.

26o

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

Aristotle necessarily involved himself also in a denial of divine
creation and divine providence, so that his error was worse than
that of Plato. Now, exemplarism, on which Plato insisted, is, as
we have seen, the key to and centre of metaphysics, so that
Aristotle, by rejecting exemplarism, excluded himself from the rank
of metaphysicians, in Bonaventure's understanding of the term.

But we have to go beyond Plato and learn from Augustine, to
whom was given both the sermo sapientiae and the sermo scientiae , 1
for Augustine knew that the ideas are contained in the divine
Word, that the Word is the archetype of creation. The Father
knows Himself perfectly and this act of knowledge is the image
and expression of Himself: it is His Word, His similitudo expres-
siva 2 As proceeding from the Father the Word is divine, the
divine Son (filius denotes the similitudo hypostatica , the similitudo
connaturalis) , 3 and as representing the Father, as Imago , as
similitudo expressa, the Word expresses also, represents, all that
the Father can effect ( quidquid Pater potest) . 4 If anyone could
know the Word, he would know all knowable objects (si igitur
intelligis Verbum, intelligis omnia scibilia ). a In the Son or Word
the Father expressed all that He could make (i.e. all possible beings
are ideally or archetypally represented in the Word) and all that
He would make. 6 The ‘ideas' of all creatures, therefore, possible
and actual, are contained in the Word, and these ideas extend
not only to universals (genera and species ), but also to singular or
individual things. 7 They are infinite in number, as representing
all possibles, as representing the infinite power of God. 9 But when
it is said that there is an infinity of ideas in the Word, it is not
meant that the ideas are really distinct in God, for there is no
distinction in God save the distinctions of Persons: considered as
existent in God, they are not distinct from the divine Essence or
from one another (ideae sunt unum secundum rem ). 9 It follows
that, not being distinct from one another, they cannot form a real
hierarchy. 10 However, although the ideas are ontologically one and
there is no real distinction between them, there is a distinction of
reason, so that they are plures secundum rationem intelligendi . 11
The foundation of the distinction cannot be any real distinction
in the divine Essence, since not only are the ideas ontologically
identical with the simple divine Essence, but also there is no real
relation on the part of God to creatures, for He is in no way

1 Serm ., 4, 19. * Brevxloq., i, 3. * Ibid. 4 In Htxaim.. 3. 4.

4 Ibid. * Ibid., I, 13. T 1 S«n*., 35, art. unicus, 4. 4 Ibid., 5.

4 Ibid., 2. « Ibid., 6. 11 Ibid., 3.

ST. BONAVENTURE: CREATURES AND GOD 261

dependent on creatures, though there is a real relation on the part
of creatures to God and God and creatures are not the same, so that
from the point of view of the things signified or connoted the ideas
are distinct secundum rationem intelligendi. In God the ideas are
one, but from our point of view they stand midway, as it were,
between God the knower and the thing known, the distinction
between them being, not a distinction in what they are (i.e. not a
real distinction) but a distinction in what they connote, and the
foundation of the distinction being the real multiplicity of the
things connoted (i.e. creatures), not any real distinction in
the divine Essence or in the divine knowledge.

Plato was working towards this theory of ideas, but as he lacked
the light of faith, he could not ascend to the true doctrine but
necessarily stopped short: in order to possess the true doctrine of
ideas, it is necessary to have knowledge of the Word. Moreover,
just as creatures were produced through the medium of the Word
and could not have been produced save through the Word, so they
cannot be truly known save in the light of their relation to the
Word. Aristotle may have been, indeed was, an eminent natural
philosopher, but he could not know truly even the selected objects
of his studies, since he did not see them in their relation to the
Word, as reflections of the divine Image.

2. God, then, in knowing Himself knows also all ways in which
His divine essence can be mirrored externally. He knows all the
finite good things which will be realised in time, and this knowledge
Bonaventure c alls the cognitio approbationis , the knowledge of
those things to which His beneplacitum voluntatis extends. He
knows too, not only all the good things which have been, are and
will be in the course of time, but also all the evil things, and this
knowledge Bonaventure calls the cognitio visionis. Needless to say
St. Bonaventure does not mean to imply that evil has its exem¬
plary idea in God: evil is rather the privation in the creature of
that which it ought to have according to its idea in God. God
knows too all possible things, and this knowledge Bonaventure
terms cognitio intelligeniiae. Its objects, the possibles, are infinite
in number, whereas the objects of the two former types of know¬
ledge are finite. 1 The three types of knowledge are, however, not
accidents in God, distinct from one another: considered onto¬
logically, as in God, they are one act of knowledge, identical with
the divine essence.

1 Cf. i Sent., 39, 1, 2 and 3; De Scientia Christi, 1.

262

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

God's act of knowledge is infinite and eternal, so that all things
are present to Him, even future events: there is no succession in
the divine knowledge, and if we speak of God’s 'foreknowledge'
we must understand the futurity as concerning the objects them¬
selves (in the sense that they succeed one another in time and are
known by God to succeed one another in time), not as concerning
the divine knowledge itself. God knows all things by one eternal
act and there is no temporal succession in that act, no before and
after; but God knows eternally, through that one act, things as
succeeding one another in time. Bonaventure therefore makes a
distinction in regard to the statement that God knows all things
praesenter, pointing out that this praesentialitas must be under¬
stood in reference to God (a parte cognoscentis), not in reference to
the objects known (a parte cognitorum). If it were understood in
the latter sense, the implication would be that all things are present
to one another, which is false, for they are not all present to one
another, though they are all present to God. 1 Imagine, he says, 2
an eye fixed and motionless on a wall and observing the successive
movements of all persons and things down below with a single act
of vision. The eye is not changed, nor its act of vision, but the
things under the wall are changed. This illustration, remarks
Bonaventure, is really in no way like what it illustrates, for the
divine knowledge cannot be pictured in this way; but it may help
towards an understanding of what is meant.

3. If there were no divine ideas, if God had no knowledge of
Himself and of what He can effect and will effect, there could be
no creation, since creation demands knowledge on the Creator’s
part, knowledge and will. It is not a matter for surprise, then,
that Aristotle, who rejected the ideas, rejected also creation and
taught the eternity of the world, a world uncreated by God. At
least he is judged to have held this by all the Greek Doctors, like
Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, Damascene and Basil, and
by all the Arabian commentators, while you will never find
Aristotle himself saying that the world had a beginning: indeed he
censures Plato, the only Greek philosopher who seems to have
declared that time had a beginning. 3 St. Bonaventure need not
have spoken so cautiously, since Aristotle certainly did not believe
in a divine creation of the world out of nothing.

St. Thomas saw no incompatibility, from the philosophical
standpoint, between the idea of creation on the one hand and of

1 Cf, 1 Sent., 39, 2, 3, conclusto. * Ibid., 2, conclusio. a In Hexaim., 6, 4.

ST. BONAVENTURE: CREATURES AND GOD 263

the world's eternity on the other, so that for him the world might
have had no beginning in time and yet have been created, that is,
God might have created the world from eternity; but St. Bona¬
venture considered that the eternity of the world is impossible and
that God could not have created it from eternity: if it is created,
then time necessarily had a beginning. It follows that to deny
that time had a beginning is to deny that the world was created,
and to prove that eternal motion or time without a beginning is
impossible is to prove that the world was created. St. Bonaventure,
therefore, regarded the Aristotelian idea of the world's eternity as
necessarily bound up with a denial of creation, and this opinion,
which Aquinas did not share, sharpened his opposition to Aristotle.
Both Bonaventure and Aquinas naturally accepted the/act of the
world having had a beginning in time, since this is taught by
theology; but they differed on the question of the abstract possi¬
bility of creation from eternity, and Bonaventure’s conviction of
its impossibility naturally made him resolutely hostile to Aristotle,
since the latter's assertion of it as a fact, and not merely as a
possibility, necessarily seemed to him an assertion of the indepen¬
dence of the world in relation to God, an assertion which he thought
was primarily due to the Philosopher’s rejection of exemplarism.

For what reasons did Bonaventure hold eternal motion or time
without a beginning to be impossible? His arguments are more or
less those which St. Thomas treats as objections to his own position.
I give some examples.

(i) If the world had existed from eternity, it would follow that
it is possible to add to the infinite. For instance, there would have
been already an infinite number of solar revolutions, yet every day
another revolution is added. But it is impossible to add to the
infinite. Therefore the world cannot have always existed. 1

St. Thomas answers 2 that if time is supposed eternal, it is
infinite ex parte ante , but not ex parte post , and there is no cogent
objection to an addition being made to the infinity at the end at
which it is finite, that is, terminates in the present. To this St.
Bonaventure retorts that, if one considers simply the past, then
one would have to admit an infinite number of lunar revolutions.
But there are twelve lunar revolutions to one solar revolution.
Therefore we are faced with two infinite numbers, of which the
one is twelve times greater than the other, and this is an im¬
possibility.

1 2 1, 1, 1, 2,

1 Contra Gent., 2, 3$.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

264

(i ; ) It is impossible to pass through an infinite series, so that if
time were eternal, that is, had no beginning, the world would
never have arrived at the present day. But it is clear that it has. 1
To this St. Thomas answers* that every passing through or
transitus requires a beginning term and a final term. But if time
is of infinite duration, there was no first term and consequently no
transitus, so that the objection cannot arise. St. Bonaventure
retorts, however, that there is either a revolution of the sun which
is infinitely distant, in the past, from to-day's revolution or there
is not. If there is not, then the distance is finite and the series
must have had a beginning. If there is, then what of the revolution
immediately following that which is infinitely distant from
to-day’s? Is this revolution also infinitely distant from to-day’s
or not? If not, then the hypothetically infinitely distant revolution
cannot be infinitely distant either, since the interval between the
‘first’ and second revolution is finite. If it is, then what of the
third and fourth revolutions, and so on? Are they also infinitely
distant from to-day’s revolution? If they are, then to-day’s
revolution is no less distant from them than from the first. In
this case there is no succession and they are all synchronous,
which is absurd.

(iii) It is impossible for there to be in existence at the same time
an infinity of concrete objects. But, if the world existed from
eternity, there would be in existence now an infinity of rational
souls. Therefore the world cannot have existed from eternity. 3

To this Aquinas answers 4 that some say that human souls do
not exist after the death of the body, while others maintain that
only a (common) intellect remains: others again hold a doctrine of
reincarnation, while certain writers maintain that an infinite
number in act is possible in the case of things which are not
ordered (in his quae ordinem non habent). St. Thomas naturally
held none of the first three positions himself; as to the fourth
position his own final attitude seems to be doubtful, so that
Bonaventure was able to remark rather caustically that the theory
of reincarnation is an error in philosophy and is contrary to the
psychology of Aristotle, while the doctrine that a common intellect
alone survives is an even worse error. As to the possibility of an
infinite number in act he believed that it was an erroneous notion,
on the ground that an infinite multitude could not be ordered and

1 2 Sent., 1, i, 1, 2, 3. 1 Contra Gent., 2, 38: S.T ., la, 46, 2, ad 6.

* 2 Sent., 1, 1, 1, 2, 5. 4 Contra Gent., 2 1 38.

ST. BONAVENTURE: CREATURES AND GOD 265

so could not be subject to divine providence, whereas in fact all
that God has created is subject to His providence.

Bonaventure was thus convinced that it can be philosophically
proved, as against Aristotle, that the world had a beginning and
that the idea of creation from eternity involves a 'manifest contra¬
diction', since, if the world was created from nothing, it has being
after not-being (ess£ post non-esse) 1 and so cannot possibly have
existed from eternity. St. Thomas answers that those who assert
creation from eternity do not say that the world was made post
tiihilutn, but that it was made out of nothing, the opposite of
which is 'out of something'. The idea of time, that is to say, is in
no way implicated. In Bonaventure's eyes it is bad enough to say
that the world is eternal and is uncreated (that is an error which
can be philosophically disproved), but to say that ifc was created
eternally out of nothing is to be guilty of a glaring contradiction,
'so contrary to reason that I should not have believed that any
philosopher, of however little understanding, could have asserted
it'.*

4. If the doctrine of exemplarism is denied, and if God did not
create the world, it is only natural to conclude that God knows
only Himself, that He moves only as final Cause, as object of
desire and love (ut desideratum et amatum) and that He knows no
particular thing outside Himself. 8 In this case God can exercise
no providence, not having in Himself the rationes rerum , the ideas
of things, by which He may know them. 4 The doctrine of St.
Bonaventure is, of course, that God knows things other than
Himself, but that He knows them in and through Himself, through
the exemplary ideas. If he did not hold this, he would have to say
that the divine knowledge receives a complement or perfection
from things outside of God, depends in some way on creatures. In
reality it is God who is completely independent: creatures are
dependent on Him and cannot confer on His Being any perfection/
But if God is wrapped up in Himself, in the sense of having no
knowledge of creatures and exercising no providence, it follows
that the changes or movements of the world proceed either from
chance, which is impossible, or from necessity, as the Arabian
philosophers held, the heavenly bodies determining the move¬
ments of things in this world But if this be so, then all doctrine
of reward or punishment in this life disappears, and in point of

1 2 Sent., 1, 1, 1, 2, 6. * Ibid., conciusio. * In Hcxaem., 6, 2.

* Ibid., 3. 5 Cf. 1 Sent., 39, 1, 1, conciusio.

266 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

fact you will never find Aristotle speaking of a beatitude after the
present life. 1 All these erroneous conclusions follow, then, from a
denial of exemplarism, and it is more than ever clear that exem-
plarism is the key to a true metaphysic and that without it a
philosopher will inevitably fall into errors if he discusses meta¬
physical themes.

5. From the doctrine of exemplarism it follows that there is
some resemblance between creatures and God; but we have to
distinguish various kinds of resemblance ( similitudo ) in order to
attain to a correct idea of the relation of creatures to God, in
order to avoid pantheism on the one hand and an independent
world on the other hand. In the Commentary on the Sentences 2
Bonaventure says that similitudo may mean the agreement of two
things in a third (and this he calls similitudo secundum univoca-
tionem), or it may mean the likeness of one thing to another
without any agreement in a third thing being implied, and it is
in this sense that the creature is said to be a likeness of God. In
the same conclusio (ad 2) he distinguishes similitudo univocationis
sive participationis and similitudo imitationis , et expressions , going
on to remark that the former does not hold good of the relation
between creatures and God, because there is no common term
(quia nihil est commune , because there is nothing common to God
and the creature, that is). What he means is that God and the
creature do not participate in Being, for example, univocally
(precisely in the same sense), for if they did, the creature would
be God and pantheism would result. The creature is, however, an
imitation of God, of the idea of it in God, and God expresses the
idea externally in the finite creature. Therefore, when Bonaventure
rejects similitudo participationis, we must understand participation
as referring here to participation in something common to both
God and creatures in a univocal sense, in a tertium commune as
he puts it.

It may be objected that if there is nothing common between
God and creatures, there can be no likeness; but the community
which St. Bonaventure wishes to exclude is univocal community,
to which he opposes analogy . The likeness of the creature to God
or of God to the creature (exemplaris ad exemplatum) is one kind of
analogy, the other being that of proportionalitas (habitudo duorum
ad duo), which exists between sets of things belonging to different
genera, though in the case of the relation between creatures and

1 In Hexaem., 6, 3. 1 1, 35, art . u»., 1. conclusio.

ST. BONAVENTURE: CREATURES AND GOD 267

God it is only the creature which is a member of a generic class.
Thus a teacher is to his school what a pilot is to his ship, since
both direct. 1 In the latter place Bonaventure distinguishes
proportion in a wide sense, which includes proportionality, from
proportion in a strict sense, which exists between members of the
same class, arithmetical numbers, for example. Proportion in this
strict sense cannot, of course, exist between God and creatures.

But though Bonaventure speaks of analogy of proportionality,
the analogies to which he gives most attention are those of likeness,
for he loved ever to find expressions, manifestations, images and
vestigia of God in the world of creatures. Thus in the Commentary
on the Sentences , 2 after excluding similitudo per convenientiam
omnimodam in natura , which holds good between the three divine
Persons, each of whom is identical with the divine Nature, and
similitudo per participationem alicuius naturae universalis, which
holds good between man and ass, in virtue of their common
sharing in the genus animal, he admits proportionality, similitudo
secundum proportionalitatem (giving here the example of the pilot
and the charioteer in relation to the objects they direct) and
similitudo per convenientiam ordinis (sicui exemplatum assimilatur
exemplari), and proceeds to discuss these latter types of analogy,
both of which, as already mentioned, hold good between the
creature and God.

Every creature, says Bonaventure, is a vestigium of God, and the
two types of analogy (that of the exemplatum to the exemplar and
that of proportionality) apply to every creature, the first inasmuch
as every creature is the effect of God and is conformed to God
through the divine idea, the second inasmuch as the creature also
produces an effect, although not in the same way as God produces
His effect (sicut enim Deus producit suum effectum, sic et agens
creatum, licet non omnino —for the creature is not the total cause
of its effect). But though every creature is a vestigium Dei, this
general conformity of the creature to God is comparatively remote
(magis de longinquo): there is another type of likeness which is
closer (de proximo) and more express and which applies only to
certain creatures. All creatures are ordered to God, but only
rational creatures are directed immediately (immediate) to God,
the irrational creatures being directed to God mediately (mediante
creatura rationali). The rational creature alone can know God, can

1 Cf. 1 Sent., 3, 1, art . un. t 2, 3 and 1 ibid., 48, i, 1, conclusio .

1 2 Sent., 16, 1, 1, conclusio .

268

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

praise God and serve God consciously, and so has a greater
conformity to God, a greater convenientia ordinis than the irra¬
tional creature. Now, the greater the convenientia ordinis , the
greater and closer and more express is the resemblance or
similitudo. This closer resemblance is called by Bona venture imago.
Every creature is, then, a vestigium Dei , but only the rational
creature is an imago Dei , for it resembles God in the possession of
spiritual powers through which it can become ever more and more
conformed to God.

A similar difference between the rational creature and the irra¬
tional creature can be observed if we consider the analogy of
proportionality. We can say, if we make the due allowances and
reservations, that as God is to the creature, as Cause, that is, to
His effect, so is the creature to its effect, and this holds good of all
creatures in so far as they are active agents: but the effect
considered is extrinsic to the agent, whereas in the case of rational
creatures, and of them alone, there is an intrinsic proportion. In
God there is a unity of Nature in a Trinity of Persons, and in man
there is a unity of essence with a trinity of powers which are
ordered to one another, the relation between them resembling in
some way the relations in God ( quasi consimili modo se habentium,
sicut se habent personae in divinis). Bona venture does not mean
that we can prove the doctrine of the Trinity by the natural light
of reason from a consideration of human nature, for he denies the
possibility of any strict philosophical proof of the mystery, but
rather that, guided by the light of faith, we can find an analogy
to the Trinity in human rational nature. As the divine Nature is
to the three divine Persons, so [quasi consimili modo) is the human
nature or essence to its three powers. This is an 'express' resem¬
blance of proportion and on this count, too, man is to be called the
image of God. The word 'express' means that the Blessed Trinity
has expressed itself, manifested itself to some degree in the
constitution of human nature, and it is clear that for Bona venture
the analogy of resemblance (i.e. exemplati ad exemplar) is more
fundamental than the analogy of proportionality, the latter being
really treated in function of the former and having no concrete
value or meaning apart from it.

In this way Bona venture is enabled to order the hierarchy of
being according to the closeness or remoteness of the likeness of
the creature to God. The world of purely sensible things is the
vestigium or umbra Dei, though here too he finds analogies of the

ST. BONAVENTURE: CREATURES AND GOD 269

Trinity; it is the liber scriptus forinsecus. When considered by the
natural philosopher who is nothing else but a natural philosopher
it is simply natura: such a man cannot read the book of nature,
which is to him no vestigium Dei but something considered for its
own sake and without reference to God. 1 The rational creation
stands above the purely sensible creation and is imago Dei, God's
image in a special sense. But the phrase 'image of God' is itself
of wide application, for it covers not only the natural substance of
men and angels, but also that supernatural likeness which is the
result of the possession of grace. The soul in grace is the image of
God in a higher sense than is the purely natural essence of man,
and the soul in heaven, enjoying the beatific vision, is God's image
in a yet deeper sense. Thus there are many grades of analogy, of
likeness to God, and every grade must be seen in the light of the
Word, who is the consubstantial image of the Father and the
Exemplar of all creation, reflected in creatures according to various
degrees of 'expression'. We may note not only the constant
integration of theology and philosophy, but also the fact that the
various degrees of likeness stand in close relation to the intellectual
and spiritual life of man. The ascent to God on the part of the
individual involves a turning from the umbra or pure vestigium,
contemplated by the senses, from the liber scriptus forinsecus, to
the interior reflection of God, the imago Dei , the liber scriptus
intrinsecus, in obedience to the command of Augustine to go
within oneself, and so ultimately to the contemplation of God in
Himself, the exemplatum. The fact that St. Bonaventure does not
treat theology and philosophy in watertight compartments of their
own enables him to link up his vision of the universe with the
ascetical and mystical life and so to deserve the name of a
specifically Christian thinker.

6 . Is this world, which reflects so admirably the Divine Creator,
the best of all possible worlds? We must first of all distinguish
two questions. Could God make a better world than this world?
Could God have made this world better than it is? Bonaventure
answers to the first question that God could have made a better
world than this one, by creating nobler essences, and that this
cannot be denied without thereby limiting the divine power. As
to the second question, it all depends on what you mean by
'world' and by 'better'. If you refer to the substances which go
to make up the world, are you asking if God could make these

1 In Hexaim., 12, 15.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

270

substances better in the sense of making them nobler essences or
substances, that is, of a higher kind, or are you asking if God
could make these substances accidentally better, that is, while
remaining within their own class? If the former, then the answer
is that God could indeed change the substances into nobler ones,
but it would not be the same world and God would not be making
this world better. If the latter, then God could make this world
better. To take an example. If God changed a man into an angel,
the man would no longer be a man and God would not be making
the man better; but God could make a man better by increasing
his intellectual power or his moral qualities. 1 Again, while God
could make this man or this horse a better man or horse, we must
make another distinction if it is asked whether or not God could
make man as such better, in the sense of placing him in better
conditions. Absolutely speaking He could; but if one takes into
consideration the purpose for which He has placed man in these
conditions or allowed him to be in these conditions it may very
well be that He could not make man better. For instance, if God
brought it about that all men served Him well, He would be
making man better, from the abstract viewpoint; but if you
consider the purpose for which God has permitted man to serve
Him well or ill, He would not be making man better by practically
overriding his free will. Finally, if anyone asks why, if God could
have made or could make the world better, He has not done so or
does not do so, no answer can be given save this, that He so willed
and that He Himself knows the reason ( solutio non potest dari nisi
haec, quia voluit , et rationem ipse novit ) 2

1 I Sent., 44, 1, 1, conclusia. 9 Ibid., ad 4.

CHAPTER XXVIII

ST. BONAVENTURE—IV: THE MATERIAL CREATION

Hylomorphic composition in all creatures — Individuation —

Light—Plurality of forms —Rationes seminales.

1. St. Bonaventure accepted from his master, Alexander of
Hales, the doctrine of the hylomorphic composition of all creatures,
the doctrine, that is, that all creatures are composed of matter and
form. By ‘matter’ he naturally meant in this connection the
principle of potentiality in the widest sense, not ‘matter’ in the
sense in which matter is opposed to spirit. ‘Matter considered in
itself is neither spiritual nor corporeal’, and so in itself it is indif¬
ferent to the reception either of a spiritual or of a corporeal form;
but as matter never exists on its own, apart from a definite form,
and as, once united with a corporeal or a spiritual form, it always
remains corporeal or spiritual as the case may be, it follows that
the matter actually present in a corporeal substance is different
in kind from that in a spiritual substance. 1 ‘Matter’ may be
regarded in more than one way. If one considers it from the point
of view of ‘privation’ [perprivationem) , abstracting from all forms,
whether substantial or accidental, one must admit that it is
essentially the same in all creatures, ‘for if either kind of matter is
separated from all forms and all accidents, no difference at all will
be seen.’ But if matter is looked at ‘analogically’ {secundum
analogiam), that is, as potentiality, as a foundation for form, one
must make a distinction. In so far as matter is looked on as
providing a foundation for form in regard simply to being (in
ralione entis), it is essentially the same in both spiritual and
material creatures, since both spiritual and material creatures
exist and subsist, and one can consider their existence by itself,
without going on to consider the precise way in which they exist
or the kind of things they are. This is the way in which the
metaphysician considers matter, and so in the eyes of the meta¬
physician matter is similar in the spiritual and in the material
creation. If, however, matter is simply looked on in its relation to
motion in the wide sense, understood, that is, as change, then it
is not the same in creatures which cannot undergo substantial

1 2 Sent 3, 1, 1, 2, conclusio ad 3.

271

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ST. BONA VENTURE: MATERIAL CREATION

272

change or receive corporeal forms and in creatures which can
undergo substantial change and receive corporeal forms, though
it can be considered as analogically similar, inasmuch as angels are
susceptible of, for example, divine influence. It is the natural
philosopher or physicus who considers matter in this light.

Without going into the further distinctions made by Bonaventure
and without attempting a judgement on his doctrine, one can say,
then, that his teaching on the hylomorphic composition of all
creatures is this, that matter is the principle of potentiality as such.
Both spiritual creatures and material creatures are dependent
beings, not self-existent beings, so that if one considers potentiality
in abstraction from all form, looking on it as a co-principle of
being, one can say with the metaphysician that it is essentially the
same in both. If, however, one considers it as actually existent, as
standing in relation to a concrete form, spiritual or material, it is
not the same in both. The natural philosopher considers bodies
and is concerned with matter, not its abstract essence but as
existent in a particular type of being, as standing in a concrete
relation to a certain kind of form, material form; and matter
considered in this light is not to be found in spiritual beings. One
might, of course, object that if matter as concretely existing, as
united with form, is of different kinds and remains different, there
must be something in the matter itself which makes it of different
kinds so that its similarity in the spiritual and material created
orders cannot be more than analogical; but Bonaventure admits
that matter never actually exists apart from form and only states
that if it is considered, as it can be considered, in abstraction from
all form, as mere potentiality, then it can justly be said to be
essentially the same. If the angels have an element of possibility,
of potency in them, as they have, they must possess matter, for
matter, considered in itself, is simply possibility or potency. It is
only in the Being who is pure Act, without any potency or
possibility, that there is no matter,

2. Is matter the principle of individuation? Some thinkers, says
St. Bonaventure, 1 have held this, relying on the words of Aristotle,
but it is very difficult to see how that which is common to all can
be the principal cause of distinction, of individuality. On the
other hand, to say that form is the principle of individuation and
to postulate an individual form, following on that of the species,
is to go to the opposite extreme and forget that every created form
1 2 Sent,, 3, 1, a, 3, conclusio.

273

is capable of having another like it. It is better to hold that
individuation arises from the actual union of matter and form,
which appropriate one another, as it were, through their union.
Seals are made by different impressions in wax, and without the
wax there would be no plurality of seals, but without the different
impressions the wax would not become many. Similarly, matter is
necessary if there is to be distinction and multiplicity, number, but
form is also necessary, for distinction and multiplication presup¬
pose the constitution of a substance through the elements compos¬
ing it. That an individual substance is something definite, of a
definite kind, it owes to the form; that it is this something, it owes
principally to matter, by which the form acquires position in place
and time. Individuation denotes principally something substantial,
a substance composed of matter and form, but it also denotes
something which can be considered an accident, namely number.
Individuality ( discretio individualis) denotes two things: individua¬
tion, which arises from the union of the two principles, matter and
form, and secondly distinction from other things, which is the
origin of number; but the former, individuation, is the more
fundamental.

Personality ( discretio personalis) arises when the form united
with matter is a rational form, and it thus adds to individuality
the dignity of rational nature, which holds the highest place among
created natures and is not in potency to a higher substantial form.
But there is something more needed to constitute^ personality,
namely that within the suppositum there should be no other nature
of a greater eminence and dignity, that within the suppositum
rational nature should possess actualem eminentiam, (In Christ the
human nature, though perfect and complete, does not possess
actualem eminentiam and so is not a person.) ‘We must say, then,
that just as individuality arises from the existence of a natural
form in matter, so personality arises from the existence of a noble
and supereminent nature in the substance/ 1

As St. Bonaventure attributes matter, that is, a spiritual matter,
to the angels, he is able to admit a plurality of individual angels
within the same species without being compelled like St. Thomas
to postulate as many angelic species as there are angels. The
Scriptures show us some angels as exercising similar functions and
this argues similarity of being, while the Tove of charity 1 also
demands the multiplicity of angels within the same species. 2

1 2 Sent., 3, 1, 2, 2, conclusio. * Ibid., 3, 1,2, 1.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ST. BONAVENTURE: MATERIAL CREATION

274

3. In the corporeal creation there is one substantial form which
all bodies possess, and that is the form of light. 1 Light was created
on the first day, three days before the production of the sun, and
it is corporeal in Bonaventure's opinion, although St. Augustine
interpreted it as meaning the angelic creation. It is not, properly
speaking, a body but the form of a body, the first substantial
form, common to all bodies and the principle of their activity, and
the different kinds of body form a graded hierarchy according as
they participate more or less in the form of light. Thus the
'empyrean' stands at one end of the scale, while the earth stands
at the other, the lower end. In this way the light-theme, so dear
to the Augustinian School and going back to Plotinus and to
Plato's comparison of- the Idea of the Good with the sun, finds a
prominent place in the philosophy of St. Bonaventure.

4. Obviously if Bonaventure holds that light is a substantial
form, possessed by all bodies, he must also hold that there can be
a plurality of substantial forms in one substance. For him there
was no difficulty in holding this, since he looked on form as that
which prepares the body for the reception of other and higher
perfections. While for St. Thomas substantial form was limitative
and definitive, so that there could not be more than one substantial
form in a body, for St. Bonaventure form looked forward and
upward, so to speak, not so much rounding off the body and
confining it as preparing it for fresh possibilities and perfections.
In the In Hexaemeron 2 he went so far as to say that it is mad
(insanum ) to say that the final form is added to prime matter
without there being something which is a disposition for it or in
potency to it, without there being any intermediate form, and he
loved to trace a parallel between the order of grace and that of
nature. Just as the gift of knowledge disposes for the gift of
wisdom and is not itself annulled by the gift of wisdom, and as
the gifts do not annul the theological virtues, so one form pre¬
disposes for a higher form and the latter, when received, does not
expel the former but crowns it.

5. It is only to be expected that St. Bonaventure, who avowedly
walked in the path of the Augustinian tradition, would accept the
doctrine of rationes seminales, especially as this doctrine lays
emphasis on the work of the Creator and diminishes the inde¬
pendence of the natural agent, though it was no more a ‘scientific'
doctrine in the modern sense of the word with St. Bonaventure

1 Cf, 2 Sent., 13. 1 4, 10.

275

than it was with St. Augustine: for both men it was required by
true Scriptural exegesis or rather by a philosophy which took
account of the data of revelation, with the added reason in the
case of Bonaventure that it was held by his great predecessor, the
Christian philosopher par excellence , who was endowed with both
the sermo sapientiae and the sertno scientiae . T believe that this
position should be held, not only because reason inclines us to it,
but also because the authority of Augustine, in his literal
commentary on Genesis, confirms it/ 1

Bonaventure thus maintained a certain latitatio formarum of
things in matter; but he refused to accept the view that the forms
of things which appear in time were originally in matter in an
actual state, like a picture covered with a cloth, so that the
particular agent only uncovers them, like the man who takes away
the cloth from the picture and lets the painting appear. On this
view contrary forms, which exclude one another, would have been
together at the same time in the same subject, which is impossible.
Nor will he accept the view that God is the only efficient cause in
the eduction of forms, for this would mean that God creates all
forms in the way in which He creates the rational human soul and
that the secondary agent really does nothing at all, whereas it is
clear that its activity really does contribute something to the
effect. The second of these two views would reduce or do away
altogether with the activity of the created agent, while the first
would reduce it to a minimum, and Bonaventure is unwilling to
accept either of them. He prefers the view ‘which seems to have
been that of Aristotle, and which is now commonly held by the
doctors of philosophy and theology 1 that ‘almost all the natural
forms, corporeal forms at least, such as the forms of the elements
and the forms of mixtures, are contained in the potency of matter
and are reduced to act ( educuntur in actum) through the action of
a particular agent/ But this may be understood in two ways. It
may mean that matter has both the potency to receive the form
and the inclination to co-operate in the production of the form and
that the form to be produced is in the particular agent as in its
effective and original principle, so that the eduction of the form
takes place by the multiplication of the form of the agent, as one
burning candle may light a multitude of candles, or it may mean
that matter contains the form to be educed not only as that in
which and, to a certain extent, by which the form is produced, but

1 2 Sent., 7, 2, 2, 1, tesp .

276 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

also as that from which it is produced, though in the sense that it
is concreated with matter and in matter, not as an actual, but as
a virtual form. On the first hypothesis the forms are not indeed
said to be created by the agent, since they do not come out of
nothing, though all the same a new essence would seem to be
produced in some way, whereas on the second hypothesis no new
essence or quiddity is produced, but the form which existed in
potency, virtually, is reduced to act, is given a new dispositio. The
second hypothesis, therefore, attributes less to the created agent
than does the first, since the created agent simply brings it about
that what formerly existed in one way now exists in another way,
whereas on the first hypothesis the created agent would produce
something positively new, even if not by way of creation out of
nothing. If a gardener tends the rose-tree so that the rose-buds
can blossom into roses he does something, it is true, but less than
he would do, were he to produce a rose-tree from some other form
of tree. Bonaventure, then, anxious to avoid attributing even the
semblance of creative powers to a created agent, chooses the
hypothesis which attributes less to the work of the created agent
and more to the work of the Creator.

The forms which are educed were, therefore, originally in matter
in a virtual state. These virtual forms are the rationes seminales.
A ratio seminalis is an active power, existing in matter, the active
power being the essence of the form to be educed, standing to the
latter in the relation of esse incompletum to esse completum or of
esse in potentia to esse in actu . 1 Matter is thus a seminarium or
seed-bed in which God created in a virtual state corporeal forms
which would be successively educed therefrom. This applies not
only to the forms of inorganic things, but also to the souls of brutes
and vegetables. Needless to say, Bonaventure is aware that the
activity of particular agents is necessary for the birth of an animal,
but he will not admit the traducianist theory, according to which
the soul of a new animal is produced by ‘multiplication’ of the soul
of the parent, yet without any diminution on the latter’s part, as
this theory implies that a created form can produce a similar form
out of nothing. 1 What happens is that the parent animals act
upon what they have themselves received, the seminal principle,
the seminal principle being an active power or potency containing
the new soul in germ, though the activity of the parents is necessary
in order that the virtual should become actual. Bonaventure thus

1 2 Sent., 18, I, 3, retp. * Ibid., l. ly I, I, resp.

ST. BONAVENTURE: MATERIAL CREATION

277

steers a middle course between attributing too little or nothing to
the created agent and attributing what seemed to him too much,
his general principle being that while God produces things out of
nothing, a created agent can only produce something which already
existed in potency, by which he means in a virtual state. 1 It is,
however, useless to look for an exact description and explanation
of the concrete working of his theory of rationes seminales, since
it is founded partly on authority and partly on a priori philosophic
reasoning, not on empirical observation or scientific experiment.

1 Cf. 2 Sent 7, 2 , 2 . 2, resp.

CHAPTER XXIX

ST. BONAVENTURE—V: THE HUMAN SOUL

Unity of human soul—Relation of soul to body—Immortality of
the human soul—Falsity of Averroistic monopsychism — Know¬
ledge of sensible objects and of first logical principles—Knowledge
of spiritual realities — Illumination—The soul's ascent to God —
Bonaventure as philosopher of the Christian life .

i. We have seen that, according to St. Bonaventure, the souls of
animals are produced seminaliter ; but this does not, of course,
apply to the human soul, which is produced immediately by God,
created by Him out of nothing. The human soul is the image of
God, called to union with God, and on this count [propter digni¬
tatem) its production was fittingly reserved by God to Himself.
This reasoning involves theology, but Bonaventure also argues
that since the human soul is immortal, incorruptible, its production
can be effected only by that Principle which has life and perpetuity
of itself. The immortality of the human soul implies a Matter' in
the soul which is incapable of being an element in substantial
change; but the activity of created agents is confined to working
on transmutable matter and the production of a substance with
unchangeable matter transcends the power of such agents. It
follows that the traducianist view must be rejected, even if
Augustine inclined to it on occasion because he thought that
thereby he could explain the transmission of original sin. 1

What is it that God creates? It is the entire human soul, not the
rational faculty alone. There is one soul in man, endowed with
rational and sensitive faculties, and it is this soul which God
creates. The body was contained seminaliter in the body of Adam,
the first man, and it is transmitted by means of the seed, but this
does not mean that the body has a sensitive soul, educed from the
potency of matter and distinct from the created and infused
rational soul. The seed contains, it is true, not only the super¬
fluity of the father’s nourishment, but also something of his
humiditas radicalis , so that there is in the embryo, before the
infusion of the soul, an active disposition towards the act of
sensation, a kind of inchoate sensibility; but this disposition is a

1 2 Sent,, 18, 2 , 3, resp.

278

ST. BONAVENTURE: THE HUMAN SOUL

279

disposition to accomplishing the act of sensation through the
power of the soul, once it has been infused: at the complete
animation of the embryo by the infusion of the soul this inchoate
sensibility ceases or rather it is subsumed under the activity of the
soul, which is the principle of sensation as well as of intellection.
In other words, St. Bonaventure is careful to maintain the
continuity of life and the reality of parentage while avoiding any
splitting of the human soul into two. 1

2. The human soul is the form of the body: St. Bonaventure
uses the Aristotelian doctrine against those who hold that the
souls of all men are one substance. The rational soul is the act
and entelechy of the human body: therefore since human bodies
are distinct, the rational souls which perfect those bodies will also
be distinct’: 2 the soul is an existent, living, intelligent form,
endowed with liberty. 3 It is present wholly in every part of the
body, according to the judgement of St. Augustine, which Bona¬
venture approves as preferable to the theory that the soul is
primarily present in a determinate part of the body, the heart for
instance. 'Because it is the form of the whole body, it is present in
the whole body; because it is simple, it is not present partly here
and partly there; because it is the sufficient moving principle
[motor sufficiens) of the body, it has no particular situation, is not
present at one point or in a determinate part/ 4

But though Bonaventure accepts the Aristotelian definition of
the soul as the form of the body, his general tendency is Platonic
and Augustinian in character, inasmuch as he insists that the
human soul is a spiritual substance, composed of spiritual form
and spiritual matter. It is not enough to say that there is in the
soul composition of ex quo est and quod est, since the soul can act
and be acted upon, move and be moved, and this argues the
presence of ‘matter’, the principle of passivity and mutability,
though this matter transcends extension and corruptibility, being
spiritual and not corporeal matter. 5 This doctrine may seem to
contradict the admitted simplicity of the human soul, but
Bonaventure points out 8 that ‘simplicity’ has various meanings
and degrees. Thus ‘simplicity’ may refer to absence of quantita¬
tive parts, and this the soul enjoys, being simple in comparison
with corporeal things; or it may refer to absence of constitutive
parts, and this the soul does not enjoy. The main point, however,

1 Cf. 2 Sent., 30, 3, i and 31,1,1. * Ibid,, 18, 2, 1, contra 1.

* Breviloq., 2, 9. 4 1 Sent., 8, 2, art. un., 3, resp . 6 2 Sent., 17, 1, 2, resp.

8 Ibid., ad 5.

28 o

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

is that the soul, though form of the body and moving principle of
the body, is also much more than this, and can subsist by itself,
being hoc aliquid , though as a hoc aliquid which is partly passive
and mutable it must have in it spiritual matter. The doctrine of
the hylomorphic composition of the human soul is thus calculated
to ensure its dignity and its power of subsistence apart from
the body.

If the soul is composed of form and spiritual matter, it follows
that it is individuated by its own principles. 1 If this is so, however,
why is it united with the body, for it is an individual spiritual
substance in its own right? The answer is that the soul, even
though a spiritual substance, is so constituted that it not only can
inform a body but also has a natural inclination to do so. Con¬
versely, the body, though also composed of matter and form,
has an appetitus for being informed by the soul. The union
of the two is thus for the perfection of each and is not to the
detriment of either soul or body. 2 The soul does not exist
simply, or even primarily, to move the body 3 but to enjoy God;
yet it exercises its powers and potentialities fully only in informing
the body and it will one day, at the resurrection, be reunited
with the body. Aristotle was ignorant of this, and it is not
to be wondered at that he was ignorant of it, for ‘a philosopher
necessarily falls into some error, unless he is aided by the light
of faith'. 4

3. The doctrine of the hylomorphic composition of the human
soul naturally facilitates the proof of its immortality, since
Bonaventure does not link the soul so closely to the body as does
the Aristotelian doctrine; but his favourite proof is the one drawn
from the consideration of the ultimate purpose of the soul (ex
consideratione finis ). The soul seeks for perfect happiness (a fact
which no one doubts, ‘unless his reason is entirely perverted'). But
no one can be perfectly happy if he is afraid of losing what he
possesses: on the contrary, it is this very fear which makes him
miserable. Therefore, as the soul has a natural desire for perfect
happiness, it must be naturally immortal. This proof presupposes
the existence of God, of course, and the possibility of attaining
perfect happiness, as also the existence of a natural desire for
human happiness; but it was Bonaventure's favourite proof
because of its spiritual character, because of its connection with

* Cf., ibid. 17, 1, 2, ad 6.

* Ibid.

ST. BONAVENTURE: THE HUMAN SOUL 281

the movement of the soul towards God: it is for him the ratio
principalis , the principle argument. 1

In a rather similar way he argues 2 from consideration of the
formal cause, from the nature of the soul as the image of God.
Because the soul has been made for the attainment of happiness,
which consists in the possession of the supreme Good, God, it must
be capable of possessing God (capax Dei) and so must be made in
His image and likeness. But it would not be made in the likeness
of God if it were mortal. Therefore it must be immortal. Again
(arguing ex parte materiae), Bonaventure declares that the form of
the rational soul is of such dignity that it makes the soul like to
God, with the result that the matter which is united to this form
(i.e. the spiritual matter) finds its satisfaction and completion in
union with this form alone, so that it must be likewise immortal.

Bonaventure gives other arguments, such as that from the neces¬
sity of sanctions in an after life 3 and from the impossibility of
God's bringing the good to frustration. In the latter proof he
argues that it would be against divine justice for that which has
been well done to tend towards evil and frustration. Now,
according to all moral teaching a man ought to die rather than
commit injustice. But if the soul were mortal, then its adhesion
to justice, lauded by all moral philosophers, would come to
nothing, and this is contrary to divine justice. More Aristotelian
in character are the arguments drawn from the soul's power of
reflection on itself and from its intellectual activity, which has no
intrinsic dependence on the body, to prove its superiority to
corporeal matter and its incorruptibility. 4 But though these
Aristotelian proofs are probably more acceptable to us, as pre¬
supposing less and as involving no theology, in Bonaventure’s eyes
it was the proofs borrowed from Augustine or dependent on his
line of thought which were more telling, especially that from the
desire of beatitude. The Augustinian proof from the soul's
apprehension of and assimilation to abiding truth is given by
Bonaventure, 6 but it does not appear as a potissimus modus of
proving the soul’s immortality. This qualification is reserved for
the proofs drawn from the desire for beatitude.

If it were objected against Bonaventure that this form of proof
presupposes the desire for union with God, for beatitude in the full
sense, and that this desire is elicited only under the action of grace

1 2 Sent., 19, 1, 1, resp. * Ibid.

* Ibid., 7 ft.; cf. De Anima, Bk, 3.

1 2 Sent., 18, 2, 1, ad 1.
* Ibid., 18, 2, 1, ad 6.

9 Ibid., sed contra 3, 4.
1 2 Sent., 11.

282

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ST. BONAVENTURE: THE HUMAN SOUL

and so belongs to the supernatural order and not to the order of
nature, which is the object of the philosopher’s study, the Saint
would doubtless answer that he had not the slightest intention of
denying the work of grace or its supernatural character, but that,
on the other hand, the true philosopher considers the world and
human life as they are and that one of the data is precisely the
desire for complete happiness. Even though the desire may imply
the operation of grace, it is a datum of experience and so can be
taken into account by the philosopher. If the philosophei cannot
explain it without recourse to theology, that is only another proof
of Bonaventure’s principle that no philosophy can be satisfactory
unless it is illumined by the light of faith. In other words, whereas
the ’Thomist’ systematically eliminates from the data of experience
all he knows to be supernatural and then, as philosopher, considers
the resulting ’nature’, the Bonaventurian philosopher starts from
nature in the sense of the given. It is perfectly true that grace is
not something ’given’ in the sense of visible or apprehensible with
certainty by unaided reason, but some of its effects are given in
experience and these the philosopher will take into account, though
he cannot explain them without reference to theology. The
Thomist approach and the Bonaventurian approach are therefore
different and one cannot force them into the same mould without
thereby distorting one or the other.

4. All that has been said on the human soul implies the indivi¬
duality of the soul, but Bonaventure was quite aware of the
Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle and argued explicitly against
it. Averroes maintained that both the active and passive intellects
survive death, and, whatever Aristotle himself may have
taught, his commentator, Averroes, certainly held that these intel¬
lects are not individual to each man, are not parts or faculties of
individual men, but rather unitary substances, cosmic intelligences.
Such a position, however, is not only heretical and contrary to the
Christian religion, but also against reason and experience. 1 It is
against reason since it is clear that the intellectual soul is a perfec¬
tion of man as man, and men differ from one another, are individual
persons, as men and not merely as animals, which would be the
case if the rational soul were numerically one in all men. It is
against experience, since it is a matter of experience that different
men have different thoughts. And it is no good saying that this
difference of thoughts comes simply from the diversity of species

1 2 Sent., 18, 2, 1, resp.

283

in the imaginations of different men, that is, that it is only the
perishable imagination, fed by the senses, which is different in
different individuals, since men differ in ideas, for example, of the
virtues, which are not founded on sense-perception and which are
not abstracted from imaginative species . Nor, from the point of
view of Bonaventure, is it a good argument to say that the intel¬
lectual soul is independent of the body and cannot therefore be
individuated by it, for the soul is not individuated by the body
but by the union of its two constitutive principles, spiritual matter
and spiritual form.

5. In regard to the content of the soul's knowledge of sensible
objects, this is dependent on sense-perception, and St. Bonaventure
agrees with Aristotle that the soul does not of itself have either
knowledge or species of sensible objects: the human intellect is
created in a state of ’nudity' and is dependent on the senses and
imagination. 1 The sensible object acts upon the sense organ and
produces therein a sensible species, which in turn acts upon the
faculty of sensation, and then perception takes place. It will be
noted that St. Bonaventure, in admitting a passive element in
sensation, departs from the teaching of St. Augustine; but at the
same time he holds that the faculty of sensation or sensitive power
of the soul judges the content of sensation, for example, that this
is white, the passive reception of the species being attributed
primarily to the organ, the activity of the judgement to the
faculty. 2 This judgement is not, of course, a reflective judgement,
it is rather a spontaneous awareness; but it is possible because the
faculty of sensation is the sensitive faculty of a rational soul, for
it is the soul which communicates to the body the act of sensation. 3
The separate sensations, for example, of colour and touch, are
unified by the ’common sense' and preserved in the imagination,
which is not the same as ’memory' if the latter is taken as meaning
recordatio or recalling at will. 4 Finally the active and passive
intellects, working in co-operation, abstract the species from the
imagination. The active and passive intellects are not two powers,
one of which can work without the other, but are two ’differences'
of the same intellectual faculty of the soul. We can indeed say
that the active intellect abstracts and the passive intellect receives,
but Bonaventure qualifies this statement by affirming that the

1 2 Sent., 3, 2, 2, 1, resp . and ad 4. * Ibid., 8, 1, 3, 2, ad 7.

* Ibid., 25, 2, art. un., 6, resp.

* Ibid., 7, 2, 1, 2, resp., where Bonaventure distinguishes memory as habit.
reientio speciei, from the act of remembering or recordatio.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ST. BONA VENTURE; THE HUMAN SOUL

284

passive intellect has the power of abstracting the species and
judging it, though only with the help of the active intellect, while
the active intellect is dependent for its activity of knowing on the
information of the passive intellect by the species. There is, in
fact, only one complete act of intellection and the active and
passive intellects co-operate inseparably in that act. 1

Clearly, then, apart from various ‘Augustinianisms’, such as the
refusal to make a real distinction between the faculties of the soul,
Bonaventure’s view of the way in which we acquire our knowledge
of sensible objects approximates more or less closely to the
Aristotelian theory. He admits that the soul, in regard to know¬
ledge of such objects, is originally a tabula rasa , 2 and he has no
place for innate ideas. Moreover, this rejection of innate ideas
applies also to our knowledge of first principles. Some people have
said that these principles are innate in the active intellect, though
acquired as far as the possible intellect is concerned; but such a
theory agrees neither with the words of Aristotle nor with the
truth. For if these principles were innate in the active intellect,
why could it not communicate them to the possible intellect
without the help of the senses, and why does it not know these
principles from the very beginning? A modified version of innatism
is that the principles are innate in their most general form while
the conclusions or particular applications are acquired, but it
would be difficult on such a view to show why a child does not
know the first principles in their general form. Moreover, even
this modified innatism contradicts both Aristotle and Augustine.
Bonaventure doubtless considered that a theory which united
against it both Aristotle and Augustine could not possibly be true.
It remains then to say that the principles are innate only in the
sense that the intellect is endowed with a natural light which
enables it to apprehend the principles in their universality when
it has acquired knowledge of the relevant species or ideas. For
example, no one knows what a whole is or a part until he has
acquired the species or idea in dependence on sense-perception;
but once he has acquired the idea, the light of the intellect enables
him to apprehend the principle that the whole is greater than the
part. 3 On this matter, therefore, St. Bonaventure is at one with
St. Thomas.

6 . But though we have no innate knowledge of sensible objects or
of their essences or of the first principles, logical or mathematical,

1 2 Sent., 24, 1, 2, 4. 1 Ibid., resp . * Ibid., 39/ 1, 2, resp.

285

it does not follow that our knowledge of purely spiritual
realities is acquired through sense-perception. ‘God is not known
by means of a likeness drawn from sense’, 1 but rather by the soul's
reflection on itself. It has no intuitive vision of God, of the divine
Essence, in this life, but it is made in the image of God and is
orientated towards God in desire and will, so that reflection on its
own nature and on the direction of the will enables the soul to
form the idea of God without recourse to the external sensible
world. In this sense the idea of God is ‘innate’, though not in the
sense that every man has from the beginning a clear, explicit and
accurate knowledge of God. The direction of the will, its desire
for complete happiness, is the effect of the divine action itself, and
reflection on this desire manifests to the soul the existence of the
Object of the desire, which indeed it already knows in a kind of
vague awareness, though not necessarily in an explicit idea. ‘The
knowledge of this truth (God’s existence) is innate in the rational
mind, inasmuch as the mind is an image of God, by reason of which
it has a natural appetite and knowledge and memory of Him in
whose image it has been made and towards whom it naturally
tends, that it may find its beatitude in Him.* 2 The knowledge of
God is of various kinds: God has a comprehensive knowledge of
Himself, the Blessed know Him clearly (elate et perspicue), we
know Him partly and in a hidden way (ex parte et in aenigmate),
this last knowledge being contained implicitly in or implied by the
knowledge which each soul has that it did not always exist and
must have had a beginning. 8

The knowledge of the virtues too must be ‘innate’ in the sense
that it is not derived from sense-perception. An unjust man can
know what justice is; but obviously he cannot know justice
through its presence in his soul, since he does not possess it, nor
can he know it through abstraction from sensible species, since it
is not an object of sense and has no likeness in the world of sense.
He cannot know it by its effects, since he would not recognise the
effects of justice unless he previously knew what justice is, just as
one cannot recognise the effects of a man’s activity as the effects
of a man’s activity unless one previously knows what a man is. 4
There must, therefore, be some a priori or innate knowledge of the
virtues. In what sense is it innate? There is no innate idea (species
innata) in the sense of a clear idea or intellectual likeness of the

1 2 Sent., 39, 1, 2, resp. 1 D$ Myst. Trinit., 1, i, resp.

* Ibid., 1, 2, ad 14. 4 De Scientia Christi, 4, 23.

286

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ST. BONAVENTURE: THE HUMAN SOUL

virtue in the mind from its beginning; but there is present in the
soul a natural light by which it can recognise truth and rectitude,
and there is present also an affection or inclination of the will.
The soul knows, therefore, what rectitude is and what an affection
or inclination of the will is, and in this way it recognises what
rectitudo affectionis is. As this is charity, it knows what charity is,
even though it does not actually possess the virtue of charity. 1

Thus the knowledge of the virtues is innate in much the same
sense as knowledge of God is innate, not as an innate explicit
species or idea, but in the sense that the soul has in itself all the
material needed to form the explicit idea, without its being
necessary for it to have recourse to the sensible world. The innate
idea of Bonaventure is a virtually innate idea. Of course, there is
one big difference between our knowledge of the virtues and our
knowledge of God, for while we can never apprehend the essence
of God in this life, it is possible to apprehend the essence of the
virtues. However, the ways in which we arrive at the knowledge
of the virtues and of God arc similar, and we can say that the soul
possesses an innate knowledge of the principles necessary to its
conduct. It knows by self-reflection what God is, what fear is and
what love is, and so it knows what it is to fear and to love God. 2
If anyone quotes in opposition the Philosopher's dictum nihil est
in intellectu , quod prius non fuerit in sensu , the answer is that the
dictum must be understood as having reference only to our know¬
ledge of sensible objects or to the acquisition of ideas which are
capable of being formed by abstraction from sensible species. 3

7. But though Bonaventure will not admit that the first prin¬
ciples relating to the world about us or indeed even the first
principles of conduct are explicit in the mind from the beginning
or infused into it from outside apart from any activity on
the part of the mind itself, it does not follow that he is prepared
to dispense with the Augustinian doctrine of illumination; on the
contrary, he regards it as one of the cardinal truths of metaphysics.

Truth is the adaequatio rei et intellectus , 4 involving the object
known and the knowing intellect. In order that truth in this
sense, truth apprehended, may exist, conditions are required on
the part of both subject and object, immutability on the part of
the latter and infallibility on the part of the former. 5 But if
Bonaventure is prepared to echo in this way the words of the

1 1 Sent., 17, x. art. un., 4, resp. * 2 Sent., 39, 1, 2, resp. * Ibid.

* 1 Sent., resp., ad 1. 2, 3; ci. Breviloq., 6. 8. * De Scientia Chrtsti, 4. resp.

287

Theaetetus , demanding these two conditions in order that cognitio
certitudinalis, certain knowledge, may exist, he is necessarily faced
by problems similar to those with which Plato and Augustine were
faced, since no created object is strictly immutable and all sensible
objects are perishable, while the human mind is not of itself
infallible in regard to any class of object. It must, therefore,
receive help from outside, and naturally Bonaventure had recourse
to the Augustinian theory of illumination, which commended itself
to him, not only because St. Augustine had held it but also because
it emphasised both the dependence of the human intellect on God
and the interior activity of God in the human soul. For him it was
both an epistemological truth and a religious truth, something that
could be established as a necessary conclusion from a study of the
nature and requirements of certainty and also something upon
which one could profitably meditate in the religious sense. Indeed
for him the intellectual life and the spiritual life cannot properly
be separated.

The human mind, then, is subject to change, doubt, error, while
the phenomena which we experience and know are also changeable.
On the other hand it is an indubitable fact that the human mind
does possess certainties and knows that it does so and that we
apprehend unchanging essences and principles. It is only God,
however, who is unchanging, and this means that the human mind
is aided by God and that the object of its certain knowledge is seen
in some way as rooted in God, as existing in the rationibus aeternis
or divine ideas. But we do not apprehend these divine ideas
directly, in themselves, and Bonaventure points out with Augustine
that to follow the Platonic doctrine is to open the door to scepti¬
cism, since if the only certain knowledge attainable is direct
knowledge of the eternal archetypes or exemplars and if we have
no direct knowledge of these archetypes, the necessary conclusion
is that true certainty is unattainable by the human mind. 1 On
the other hand it is not sufficient to say that the ratio aeterna
influences the mind in this sense only, that the knowing mind
attains not the eternal principle itself but only its influence, as a
habitus mentis , for the latter would be itself created and subject
to the same conditions as the mind of which it is a disposition. 2
The rationes aeternae , then, must have a direct regulative action on
the human mind, though remaining themselves unseen. It is they
which move the mind and rule the mind in its certain judgements,
1 De Scientia Christi, 4, resp . * Ibid.

2 88

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ST. BONAVENTURE: THE HUMAN SOUL

enabling it to apprehend the certain and eternal truths in the
speculative and moral orders and to make certain and true judge¬
ments even concerning sensible objects: it is their action (which is
the divine illumination) which enables the mind to apprehend the
unchanging and stable essences in the fleeting and changing objects
of experience. This does not mean that Bonaventure contradicts
the approval he has given to Aristotle's doctrine about our know¬
ledge of the sensible world, but it does mean that he considers it
insufficient. Without sense-perception we would never indeed
know sensible objects and it is quite true that the intellect
abstracts, but the divine illumination, the direct action of the
ratio aeterna, is necessary in order that the mind should see in the
object the reflection of the unchanging ratio and be able to make
an infallible judgement concerning it. Sense-perception is required
in order that our ideas of sensible objects should arise, but the
stability and necessity of our judgements concerning them are due
to the action of the rationes aeternae , since neither are the sensible
objects of our experience unchanging nor are the minds which
know them infallible of themselves. The dim (obtenebratae) species
of our minds, affected by the obscurity of phantasmata , are thus
illumined in order that the mind should know. Tor if to have real
knowledge means to know that a thing cannot possibly be other¬
wise, it is necessary that He alone should cause us to know, who
knows the truth and has the truth in Himself/ 1 Thus it is through
the ratio aeterna that the mind judges all those things which we
know by the senses. 2

In the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum 3 St. Bonaventure describes
how the exterior sensible objects produce a likeness of themselves
(similitudo) first in the medium and then through the medium on
the organ of sense, and so on the interior sense. The particular
sense, or the faculty of sensation acting through the particular
sense, judges that this object is white or black or whatever it is,
and the interior sense that it is pleasing, beautiful, or the reverse.
The intellectual faculty, turning itself towards the species, asks
why the object represented is beautiful and judges that it is
beautiful because it possesses certain characteristics. But this
judgement implies a reference to an idea of beauty which is stable
and unchanging, not bound to place or time. This is where the
divine illumination comes in, namely to explain the judgement in
its unchanging and supertemporal aspect by reference to the
1 In Htxdtm 12, 5. 1 Itin. Mentis in Deum , 2, 9. ■ 2, 4-6.

289

directing and regulating ratio aeterna , not to supersede or annul
the work of the senses or the activity of abstraction. All sensible
objects which are known enter the mind through the three
psychical operations of apprehensio , oblectatio and diiudicaiio , but
the latter operation, to be true and certain, must be a judgement
made in the light of the rationes aeternae .

Now, as we have seen earlier, the rationes aeternae are onto-
logically identified and are in fact identical with the Word of God.
It follows then that it is the Word which illuminates the human
mind, that Word which enlightens every man who comes into the
world. ‘Christ is the interior teacher and no truth is known except
through Him, not by His speaking as we speak, but by His
enlightening us interiorly. ... He is intimately present to every
soul and by His most clear ideas He shines upon the dark ideas
of our minds/ 1 We have no vision of the Word of God and though
the light is so intimately within us, it is invisible, inaccessibilis : we
can only reason to its presence from observation of its effects. 2
Thus Bonaventure's doctrine of illumination and his interpretation
of Augustine do not involve ontologism. His doctrine completes
his seemingly Aristotelian affirmation of abstraction and his denial
of the properly innate character of even the first principles, giving
to his teaching a peculiar and non-Aristotelian, an Augustinian
flavour and colour. We abstract, yes, but we could not seize the
intelligible and stable merely through abstraction, we need also
the divine illumination: we can attain knowledge of moral prin¬
ciples by interior reflection, yes, but we could not apprehend their
unchanging and necessary character without the regulative and
guiding action of the divine light. Aristotle failed to see this, he
failed to see that as we cannot know creatures fully unless we see
them as exemplata of the divine exemplar , so we cannot form certain
judgements about them without the light of the divine Word, of
the Ratio Aeterna. Exemplarism and illumination are closely
connected, the true metaphysician recognises them both: Aristotle
recognised neither.

8 . There are only four faculties of the soul, the vegetative and
sensitive powers, the intellect and the will; but Bonaventure
distinguishes various ‘aspects' of the soul and, in particular, of
the intellect or mind according to the objects to which its attention
is directed and according to the way in which it is directed. It
would, then, be a mistake to suppose that he meant that ratio,

1 In Hexaem „ 12, 5. 'Ibid., 12, 11.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ST. BONA VENTURE: THE HUMAN SOUL

290

intellectus, intelligentia and apex mentis or synderesis scintilla 1 are
all different faculties of the soul:, they denote rather different
functions of the rational soul in its upward ascent from sensible
creatures to God Himself. In the Commentary on the Sentences 2
he says expressly that the division of the reason into lower and
higher ( ratio inferior and ratio superior) is not a division into
different faculties: it is a division into officia and dispositions ,
which is something more than a division into aspects ( aspectus ).
The lower reason is reason turned towards sense-objects, the higher
reason is reason turned towards intelligible objects, and the term
‘lower’ and ‘higher’ thus refer to different functions or officia of the
same faculty; but there is this further point to be added, that the
reason as directed to intelligibles is strengthened and invigorated,
whereas, directed to sensibles, it is in a manner weakened and
drawn down, so that although there is only one ratio, the distinc¬
tion between higher and lower reason corresponds not only to dif¬
ferent functions, but also to different dispositions of the one reason.

The stages of the upward ascent of the mind scarcely need much
elaboration, as they are more connected with ascetical and mystical
theology than with philosophy in our sense; but since they are
connected with philosophy in Bonaventure’s understanding of the
term, it is as well to touch very briefly on them, as they illustrate
his tendency to integrate philosophy and theology as closely as
possible. Walking in the footsteps of Augustine and the Victorines
Bonaventure traces the ascending stages of the soul's life, stages
which correspond to different potentialities in the soul and lead
him from the sphere of nature into that of grace. Starting from
the soul’s sensitive powers ( sensualitas) he shows how the soul
may see in sensible objects the vestigia Dei, as it contemplates
sensible things first as God’s effects, then as things wherein God
is present, and he accompanies it, with Augustine, as it retires
within itself and contemplates its natural constitution and powers
as the image of God. The intelligence is then shown contemplating
God in the soul’s faculties renewed and elevated by grace, being
enabled to do so by the Word of God. In this stage, however, the
soul still contemplates God in His image, which is the soul itself,
even if elevated by grace, and it can proceed yet further, to the
contemplation of God supra nos, first as Being, then as the Good.
Being is good, and the contemplation of God as Being, the perfec¬
tion of being, leads to the realisation of Being as the Good, as

1 I tin. Mentis in Deum, i, 6 . 1 2 Sent., 24, 1, 2, 2, resp.

291

diffusivum sui , and so to the contemplation of the Blessed Trinity.
Further than this the intellect cannot go: beyond lies the luminous
darkness of mystical contemplation and ecstasy, the apex affectus
outstripping the mind. The will, however, is a faculty of the one
human soul and, though issuing from the substance of the soul, it
is not a distinct accident, so that to say that the affection of the
will outruns the intellect is simply to say that the soul is united to
God by love so closely that the light infused into it blinds it. There
can be but one higher stage, reserved for the next life, and that is
the vision of God in heaven.

9. It will be remembered that the three cardinal points of
metaphysics for Bonaventure are creation, exemplarism and illu¬
mination. His metaphysical system is thus a unity in that the
doctrine of creation reveals the world as proceeding from God,
created out of nothing and wholly dependent on Him, while the
doctrine of exemplarism reveals the world of creatures as standing
to God in the relation of imitation to model, of exemplatum to
exemplar , while the doctrine of illumination traces the stages of
the soul's return to God by way of contemplation of sensible
creatures, of itself and finally of Perfect Being. The divine action
is always emphasised. Creation out of nothing can be proved, as
also God's presence and activity in creatures and especially in the
soul itself: God's action enters into the apprehension of every
certain truth, and even though for the establishment of the higher
stages of the soul's ascent the data of theology are required, there
is in a sense a continuity of divine action in increasing intensity.
God acts in every man's mind when he attains truth, but at this
stage the activity of God is not all-sufficient, man is also active
through the use of his natural powers: in the higher stages God's
action progressively increases until in ecstasy God takes possession
of the soul and man's intellectual activity is superseded.

Bonaventure may thus be termed the philosopher of the
Christian life, who makes use of both reason and faith in order to
produce his synthesis. This integration of reason and faith,
philosophy and theology, is emphasised by the place he accords
to Christ, the Word of God. Just as creation and exemplarism
cannot be properly understood apart from the realisation that it
is through the Word of God that all things are created and that
it is the Word of God, the consubstantial image of the Father,
whom all creatures mirror, so illumination in its various stages
cannot be properly understood apart from the realisation that it is

292 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

the Word of God who illumines every man, the Word of God who
is the door through which the soul enters into God above itself,
the Word of God who, through the Holy Spirit whom He has sent,
inflames the soul and leads it beyond the limitations oi its clear
ideas into the ecstatic union. Finally it is the Word of God who
shows us the Father and opens to us the beatific vision of heaven.
Christ in fact is the medium omnium scientiarum , 1 of metaphysics
as of theology, for though the metaphysician as such cannot attain
to knowledge of the Word through the use of the natural reason,
he can form no true and certain judgements without the illumina¬
tion of the Word, even if he is quite unaware of this, and in
addition his science is incomplete and vitiated by its incomplete¬
ness unless it is crowned by theology.

1 In Hexabn i, n.

CHAPTER XXX

ST. ALBERT THE GREAT

Life and intellectual activity—Philosophy and theology — God —
Creation—The soul—Reputation and importance of St. Albert.

i. Albert the Great was bom in 1206 at Lauingen in Swabia,
but left Germany in order to study the arts at Padua, where he
entered the Dominican Order in 1223. After having lectured in
theology at Cologne and other places he received the doctorate at
Paris in 1245, having Thomas Aquinas among his pupils fi;om 1245
to 1248. In the latter year he returned to Cologne accompanied by
Thomas, in order to establish the Dominican house of studies there.
His purely intellectual work was interrupted, however, by adminis¬
trative tasks which were laid upon him. Thus from 1254 until
1257 was Provincial of the German Province and from 1260
until 1262 Bishop of Ratisbon. Visits to Rome and the preaching
of a Crusade in Bohemia also occupied his time, but he seems to
have adopted Cologne as his general place of residence. It was
from Cologne that he set out for Paris in 1277, to defend the
opinions of Thomas Aquinas (died 1274), and it was at Cologne
that he died on November 15th, 1280.

It is clear enough from his writings and activities that Albert
the Great was a man of wide intellectual interests and sympathies,
and it is hardly to be expected that a man of his type would ignore
the rise of Aristotelianism in the Parisian Faculty of Arts, espe¬
cially as he was well aware of the stir and trouble caused by the
new tendencies. As a man of open mind and ready intellectual
sympathy he was not one to adopt an uncompromisingly hostile
attitude to the new movement, though,on the other hand, he was
not without strong sympathy for the neo-Platonist and Augus-
tinian tradition. Therefore, while he adopted Aristotelian elements
and incorporated them into his philosophy, he retained much of
the Augustinian and non-Aristotelian tradition, and his philosophy
bears the character of a transitional stage on the way to that fuller
incorporation of Aristotelianism which was achieved by his great
pupil, St. Thomas Aquinas. Moreover, being primarily a theolo¬
gian, Albert could not but be sensible of the important points on
which Aristotle's thought clashes with Christian doctrine, and that

293

294 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

uncritical acceptance of Aristotle which became fashionable in a
section of the Faculty of Arts was impossible for him. It is indeed
no matter for surprise that though he composed paraphrases on
many of the logical, physical (for example, on the Physics and De
Caelo et Mundo), metaphysical and ethical works ( Nicomachean
Ethics and Politics) of Aristotle, he did not hesitate to point out
errors committed by the Philosopher and published a De unitate
intellectus against Averroes. His declared intention in composing
the paraphrases was to make Aristotle intelligible to the Latins,
and he professed to give simply an objective account of Aristotle’s
opinions; but in any case he could not criticise Aristotle without
showing something of his own ideas, even if his commentaries are
for the most part impersonal paraphrases and explanations of the
Philosopher’s works.

It has not been found possible to determine with any degree of
accuracy the dates of Albert’s writings or even the order in which
he published them, but it seems that the publication of his
Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard and the Summa
de Creaturis antedate the publication of his paraphrases of
Aristotle’s works. He also published Commentaries on the books
of the Pseudo-Dionysius. The De unitate intellectus appears to
have been composed after 1270, and the Summa theologiae, which
may be a compilation due to other hands, remained unfinished.

One cannot pass over in silence a remarkable side of Albert’s
interest and activity, his interest in the physical sciences. In an
enlightened manner he insisted on the necessity of observation and
experiment in these matters, and in his De vegetalihus and De
animalibus he gives the results of his own observations as well as
ideas of earlier writers. Apropos of his description of trees and
plants he remarks that what he has set down is the result of his
own experience or has been borrowed from authors whom he
knows to have confirmed their ideas by observation, for in such
matters experience alone can give certainty. 1 His speculations are
often very sensible, as when, in opposition to the idea that the
earth south of the equator is uninhabitable, he affirms that the
reverse is probably true, though the cold at the poles may be so
excessive as to prevent habitation. If, however, there are animals
living there, we must suppose that they have coats thick enough
to protect them against the climate and these coats are probably
white in colour. In any case it is unreasonable to suppose that

1 Liber 6, de Veget. et Plantis, Tract, i, c. I.

ST. ALBERT THE GREAT

295

people living on the lower part of the earth would fall off, since
the term ‘lower' is only relative to us. 1 Naturally Albert relies
very much on the opinions, observations and guesses of his
predecessors; but he frequently appeals to his own observation, to
what he has personally noticed of the habits of migrating birds, or
of the nature of plants, for example, and he shows a robust
common sense, as when he makes it plain that a priori arguments
for the uninhabitable character of the 'torrid zone' cannot out¬
weigh the evident fact that parts of lands which we know to be
inhabited lie in that zone. Again, when speaking of the lunar halo
or 'rainbow', 2 he remarks that according to Aristotle this pheno¬
menon occurs only twice in fifty years, whereas he and others
have observed it twice in one year, so that Aristotle must have
been speaking from hearsay and not from experience. In any
case, whatever value the particular conclusions drawn by St.
Albert have, it is the spirit of curiosity and the reliance on obser¬
vation and experiment which is remarkable and helps to distin¬
guish him from so many Scholastics of a later period. Incidentally
this spirit of inquiry and wide interests brings him near, in this
respect, to Aristotle, since the Philosopher himself was well aware
of the value of empirical research in scientific matters, however
much later disciples may have received all his dicta as unquestion¬
able and lacked his inquiring spirit and many-sided interests.

2. St. Albert the Great is quite clear as to the distinction
between theology and philosophy, and so between the theology
which takes as its foundation the data of revelation and the
theology which is the \tork of the unaided natural reason and
belongs to metaphysical philosophy. Thus metaphysics or first
theology treats of God as the first Being ( secundum quod substat
proprietatibus entis primi), while theology treats of God as known
by faith [secundum quod substat attributis quae per fidem attri -
buuntur). Again, the philosopher works under the influence of the
general light of reason given to all men, by which light he sees the
first principles, while the theologian works by the supernatural
light of faith, through which he receives the revealed dogmas. 3
St. Albert has, therefore, little sympathy for those who deny or
belittle philosophy, since not only does he make use of dialectic in
theological reasoning, but he also recognises philosophy itself as
an independent science. Against those who assert that it is wrong

1 Cf. De Natura Locorum, Tract. 1, cc. 6, 7, 8, 12.

* Liber 3, Meteorum, Tract. 4, c. 11. * 1 Summa TkeoL , I, 4, ad 2 et 3.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

296

to introduce philosophic reasoning into theology, he admits that
such reasoning cannot be primary, since a dogma is proved
tamquam ex priori, that is, a dogma is shown by the theologian to
have been revealed and is not a conclusion from philosophic
argument; but he goes on to say that philosophic arguments can
be of real utility in a secondary capacity, when dealing with
objections brought by hostile philosophers, and speaks of the
ignorant people who want to attack in every way the employment
of philosophy and who are like ‘brute animals blaspheming against
that of which they are ignorant’. 1 Even in the Order of Preachers
there was opposition to philosophy and the study of such ‘profane’
science, and one of the greatest services rendered by St. Albert was
to promote the study and use of philosophy in his own Order.

3. The doctrine of St. Albert is not a homogeneous system, but
rather a mixture of Aristotelian and neo-Platonic elements. For
instance, he appeals to Aristotle when giving a proof for God’s
existence from motion, 2 and he argues that an infinite chain of
principia is impossible and contradictory, since there would in
reality be no principium. The primum principium or first principle
must, by the very fact that it is the first principle, have its exis¬
tence from itself and not from another: its existence (esse) must be
its substance and essence. 3 It is the necessary Being, without any
admixture of contingence or of potency, and Albert shows also
that it is intelligent, living, omnipotent, free, and so on, in such a
way that it is its own intelligence; that in God’s knowledge of
Himself there is no distinction between subject and object; that
His will is not something distinct from His essence. Finally he
carefully distinguishes God, the first Principle, from the world by
observing that none of the names which we ascribe to God can be
predicated of Him in their primary sense. If, for example, He is
called substance, this is not because He falls within the category
of substance, but because He is above all substances and the whole
category of substance. Similarly, the term ‘being’ primarily refers
to the general abstract idea of being, which cannot be predicated
of God. 4 In fine, it is truer to say of God that we know what He is
not rather than what He is. 6 One may say, then, that in the
philosophy of St. Albert God is depicted, in dependence on
Aristotle, as first unmoved Mover, as pure Act and as the self-

> Comm, in Epist. 9 B .Dion. Areop., 7, 2.

- Lib. I, de cawsts et proc. universitatis, 1,7. * Ibid., I, 8. Ibid., 3, b.

» Comm, in Epist. 9 B. Dion. Areop., 1.

ST. ALBERT THE GREAT

297

knowing Intellect, but emphasis is laid, in dependence on the
writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius, on the fact that God transcends
all our concepts and all the names we predicate of Him.

4. This combination of Aristotle and the Pseudo-Dionysius safe¬
guards the divine transcendence and is the foundation for a
doctrine of analogy; but when it comes to describing the creation
of the world Albert interprets Aristotle according to the doctrine
of the Peripatetici , that is to say, according to what are in reality
neo-Platonic interpretations. Thus he uses the words fluxus and
emanatio [fluxus est emanatio formae a primo fonte % qui omnium
fortnarum est fons et origo) 1 and maintains that the first principle,
intellectus universaliter agens, is the source whence flows the second
intelligence, the latter the source whence flows the third intelli¬
gence, and so on. From each subordinate intelligence is derived
its own proper sphere, until eventually the earth comes into being.
This general scheme (Albert gives several particular schemes,
culled from the 'ancients') might seem to impair the divine trans¬
cendence and immutability, as also the creative activity of God;
but St. Albert does not, of course, think of God as becoming less
through the process of emanation or as undergoing any change,
while he also insists that a subordinate cause works only in
dependence on, with the help of, the higher cause, so that the
whole process must ultimately be referred to God. This process is
variously represented as a graded diffusion of goodness or as a
graded diffusion of light. However, it is clear that in this picture
of creation St. Albert is inspired far more by the Liber de causis,
the neo-Platonists and the neo-Platonising Aristotelians than by
the historic Aristotle, while on the other hand he does not appear
to have realised that the neo-Platonic notion of emanation, though
not strictly pantheistic, since God remains distinct from all other
beings, is yet not fully in tune with the Christian doctrine of free
creation out of nothing. I do not mean to suggest for a moment
that St. Albert intended to substitute the neo-Platonic emanation
process for the Christian doctrine: rather did he try to express the
latter in terms of the former, without apparently realising the
difficulties involved in such an attempt.

St. Albert departs from the Augustinian-Franciscan tradition by
holding that reason cannot demonstrate with certainty the world's
creation in time, that is, that the world was not created from
eternity, 2 and also by denying that angels and the human soul are

1 Lib . i, de causis et proc . universitatis, 4, 1, 1 In Phys. $ 8, 1, 13.

Z g 8 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

composed of matter and form, in this evidently thinking of matter
as related to quantity; but on the other hand he accepts the
doctrine of the rationes seminales and that of light as the forma
corporcitatis. Moreover, besides adopting doctrines sometimes
from Aristotelianism and sometimes from Augustinianism or neo¬
platonism, St. Albert adopts phrases from the one tradition while
interpreting them in the sense of the other, as when he speaks of
seeing essences in the divine light, while meaning that the human
reason and its operation is a reflection of the divine light, an effect
thereof, but not that a special illuminating activity of God is
required over and above the creation and conservation of the
intellect. In general he follows the Aristotelian theory of abstrac¬
tion. Again, Albert by no means always makes his meaning clear,
so that it remains doubtful whether or not he considered that the
distinction between essence and existence is real or conceptual.
As he denied the presence of matter in the angels, while affirming
that they are composed of 'essential parts’, it would indeed seem
reasonable to suppose that he maintained the theory of the real
distinction, and he speaks in this sense on occasion; but at other
times he speaks as if he held the Averroist theory of a conceptual
distinction. We are left in difficulty as to the interpretation of his
thought on this and other points owing to his habit of giving
various different theories without any definite indication of which
solution to the problem he himself adopted. It is not always clear
how far he is simply reporting the opinions of others and how far
he is committing himself to the affirmation of the opinions in
question. It is impossible, then, to speak of a completed 'system'
of Albert the Great: his thought is really a stage in the adoption of
the Aristotelian philosophy as an intellectual instrument for the
expression of the Christian outlook. The process of adopting and
adapting the Aristotelian philosophy was carried much further by
St. Albert’s great pupil, Thomas Aquinas; but it would be a
mistake to exaggerate the Aristotelianism even of the latter. Both
men remained to a great extent in the tradition of Augustine,
though both men, St. Albert in an incomplete, St. Thomas in a
more complete fashion, interpreted Augustine according to the
categories of Aristotle.

5. St. Albert was convinced that the immortality of the soul can
be demonstrated by reason. Thus in his book on the nature and
origin of the soul 1 he gives a number of proofs, arguing, for

1 Liber de naiura et origine animat, 2, 6; cf. also De Anima, 3.

ST. ALBERT THE GREAT

299

example, that the soul transcends matter in its intellectual
operations, having the principle of such operations in itself, and so
cannot depend on the body secundum esse et essentiam . But he
will not allow that the arguments for the unicity of the active
intellect in all men are valid, arguments which, if probative, would
deny personal immortality. He treats of this matter not only in
the De Anima, but also in his special work on the subject, the
Libellus de unitate intellectus contra Averroem . After remarking
that the question is very difficult and that only trained philo¬
sophers, accustomed to metaphysical thinking, should take part
in the dispute, 1 he goes on to expose thirty arguments which the
Averroists bring forward or can bring forward to support their
contention and observes that they are very difficult to answer.
However, he proceeds to give thirty-six arguments against the
Averroists, outlines his opinion on the rational soul and then
answers in tum ? the thirty arguments of the Averroists. The
rational soul is the form of man, so that it must be multiplied in
individual men: but what is multiplied numerically must also be
multiplied substantially. If it can be proved, then, as it can be
proved, that the rational soul is immortal, it follows that the
multiplicity of rational souls survive death. Again, esse is the act
of the final form of each thing (formae ultimae), and the final or
ultimate form of man is the rational soul. Now, either individual
men have their own separate esse or they have not. If you say
that they do not possess their own individual esse , you must be
prepared to admit that they are not individual men, which is
patently false, while if you admit that each man has his own
individual esse, then he must also have his own individual
rational soul.

6. St. Albert the Great enjoyed a high reputation, even during
his own lifetime, and Roger Bacon, who was far from being an
enthusiastic admirer of his work, tells us that 'just as Aristotle,
Avicenna and Averroes are quoted ( allegantur ) in the Schools, so
is he'. Roger Bacon means that St. Albert was cited by name,
which was contrary to the custom then in vogue of not mentioning
living writers by name and which gives witness to the esteem he
had won for himself. This reputation was doubtless due in large
part to the Saint's erudition and to his many-sided interests, as
theologian, philosopher, man of science and commentator. He had
a wide knowledge of Jewish and Arabian philosophy and frequently

"c. 7.

3oo

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

quotes the opinions of other writers, so that, in spite of his frequent
indefiniteness of thought and expression and his mistakes in
historical matters, his writings give the impression of a man of
extensive knowledge who had read very widely and was interested
in many lines of thought. His disciple, Ulric of Strasbourg, a
Dominican, who developed the neo-Platonic side of St. Alberts
thought, called him "the wonder and miracle of our time'; 1 but,
apart from his devotion to experimental science, St. Albert’s
thought is of interest to us primarily because of its influence on
St. Thomas Aquinas, who, unlike Ulric of Strasbourg and John of
Fribourg, developed the Aristotelian aspect of that thought. The
master, who outlived his pupil, was devoted to the latter’s
memory, and we are told that when St. Albert, as an old man,
used to think of Thomas at the commemoration of the dead in the
Canon of the Mass, he would shed tears as he thought of the death
of him who had been the flower and glory of the world.

St. Albert’s reputation as a man of learning and wide-ranging
interests was justly merited; but his chief merit, as several
historians have noticed, was that he saw what a treasure for the
Christian West was contained in the system of Aristotle and in
the writings of the Arabian philosophers. Looking back on the
thirteenth century from a much later date, one is inclined to
contemplate the invasion and growing dominance of Aristote-
lianism in the light of the arid Scholastic Aristotelianism of a later
period, which sacrificed the spirit to the letter and entirely mis¬
understood the inquiring mind of the great Greek philosopher, his
interest in science and the tentative nature of many of his conclu¬
sions; but to regard the thirteenth century in this light is to be
guilty of an anachronism, for the attitude of the decadent
Aristotelians of a later period was not the attitude of St. Albert.
The Christian West possessed nothing of its own in the way of
pure philosophy or of natural science which could compare with
the philosophy of Aristotle and the Arabians. St. Albert realised
this fact clearly; he saw that a definite attitude must be adopted
towards Aristotelianism, that it could not simply be disregarded,
and he was rightly convinced that it would be wasteful and even
disastrous to attempt to disregard it. He saw too, of course, that
on some points Aristotle and the Arabians held doctrines which
were incompatible with dogma; but at the same time he realised
that this was no reason for rejecting in its entirety what one had
1 Summa de bono t 4, 3, 9.

ST. ALBERT THE GREAT 301

to reject in part. He endeavoured to make Aristotelianism intelli¬
gible to the Latins and to show them its value, while pointing out
its errors. That he accepted this or that point, rejected this or
that theory, is not so important as the fact that he realised the
general significance and value of Aristotelianism, and it is surely
not necessary to be a rigid Aristotelian oneself in order to be able
to appreciate his merits in this respect. It is a mistake so to stress
St. Albert’s independence, in regard to some of Aristotle’s scientific
observations, for example, that one loses sight of the great service
he did in drawing attention to Aristotle and displaying something
of the wealth of Aristotelianism. The passage of years certainly
brought a certain unfortunate ossification in the Aristotelian
tradition; but the blame for that cannot be laid at the door of
St. Albert the Great. If one tries to imagine what mediaeval
philosophy would have been without Aristotle, if one thinks away
the Thomistic synthesis and the philosophy of Scotus, if one strips
the philosophy of St. Bonaventure of all Aristotelian elements,
one will hardly look on the invasion of Aristotelianism as an
historical misfortune.

CHAPTER XXXI

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS—I

Life — Works—Mode of exposing St. Thomas s philosophy—The
spirit of St. Thomas's philosophy.

i. Thomas Aquinas was bom in the castle of Roccasecca, not far
from Naples, at the end of 1224 or beginning of 1225, his father
being the Count of Aquino. At the age of five years he was placed
by his parents in the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino as an
oblate, and it was there that the future Saint and Doctor made his
first studies, remaining in the monastery from 1230 to 1239, when
the Emperor Frederick II expelled the monks. The boy returned
to his family for a few months and then went to the University of
Naples in the autumn of the same year, being then fourteen years
old. In the city there was a convent of Dominican friars, and
Thomas, attracted by their life, entered the Order in the course of
the year 1244. This step was by no means acceptable to his
family, who no doubt wished the boy to enter the abbey of Monte
Cassino, as a step to ecclesiastical preferment, and it may have
partly been due to this family opposition that the Dominican
General resolved to take Thomas with him to Bologna, where he
was himself going for a General Chapter, and then to send him on
to the University of Paris. However, Thomas was kidnapped by
his brothers on the way and was kept a prisoner at Aquino for
about a year. His determination to remain true to his Order was
proof against this trial, and he was able to make his way to Paris
in the autumn of 1245.

Thomas was probably at Paris from 1245 until the summer of
1248, when he accompanied St. Albert the Great to Cologne, where
the latter was to found a house of studies (studium generate) for
the Dominican Order, remaining there until 1252. During this
period, first at Paris, then at Cologne, Thomas was in close contact
with Albert the Great, who realised the potentialities of his pupil,
and while it is obvious that his taste for learning and study must
in any case have been greatly stimulated by intimate contact with
a professor of such erudition and such intellectual curiosity, we can
hardly suppose that St. Albert's attempt to utilise what was
valuable in Aristotelianism was without direct influence on his

302

AQUINAS 303

pupil's mind. Even if St. Thomas did not at this early date in his
career conceive the idea of completing what his master had begun,
he must at least have been profoundly influenced by the latter's
open-mindedness. Thomas did not possess the all-embracing
curiosity of his master (or one might say perhaps that he had a
better sense of mental economy), but he certainly possessed greater
powers of systematisation, and it was only to be expected that the
meeting of the erudition and open-mindedness of the older man
with the speculative power and synthesising ability of the younger
would result in splendid fruit. It was St. Thomas who was to
achieve the expression of the Christian ideology in Aristotelian
terms, and who was to utilise Aristotelianism as an instrument of
theological and philosophical analysis and synthesis; but his
sojourn at Paris and Cologne in company with St. Albert was
undoubtedly a factor of prime importance in his intellectual
development. Whether or not we choose to regard St. Albert's
system as incomplete Thomism is really irrelevant: the main fact
is that St. Albert (mutatis mutandis) was Thomas's Socrates.

In 1252 St. Thomas returned from Cologne to Paris and con¬
tinued his course of studies, lecturing on the Scriptures as Bacca -
laureus Biblicus (1252-4) and on the Sentences of Peter Lombard
as Baccalaureus Sententiarius (1254-6), at the conclusion of which
period he received his Licentiate, the licence or permission to teach
in the faculty of theology. In the course of the same year he
became Magister and lectured as Dominican professor until 1259.
Of the controversy which arose concerning the Dominican and
Franciscan chairs in the university mention has already been made.
In 1259 he left Paris for Italy and taught theology at the studium
curiae attached to the Papal court until 1268. Thus he was at
Anagni with Alexander IV (1259-61), at Orvieto with Urban IV
(1261-4), Santa Sabina in Rome (1265-7), and at Viterbo with
Clement IV (1267-8). It was at the court of Urban IV that he
met the famous translator, William of Moerbeke, and it was Urban
who commissioned Thomas to compose the Office for the feast of
Corpus Christi.

In 1268 Thomas returned to Paris and taught there until 1272,
engaging in controversy with the Averroists, as also with thosp
who renewed the attack on the religious Orders. In 1272 he was
sent to Naples in order to erect a Dominican studium generate ,
and he continued his professorial activity there until 1274, when
Pope Gregory X summoned him to Lyons to take part in the

3 o4 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

Council. The journey was begun but never completed, as St.
Thomas died on the way on March 7th, 1274, at the Cistercian
monastery of Fossanuova, between Naples and Rome. He was
forty-nine years of age at the time of his death, having behind
him a life devoted to study and teaching. It had not been a life
of much external activity or excitement, if we except the early
incident of his imprisonment, the more or less frequent journeys
and the controversies in which the Saint was involved; but it was
a life devoted to the pursuit and defence of truth, a life also
permeated and motivated by a deep spirituality. In some ways
Thomas Aquinas was rather like the professor of legend (there are
several stories concerning his fits of abstraction, or rather concen¬
tration, which made him oblivious to his surroundings), but he
was a great deal more than a professor or theologian, for he was
a Saint, and even if his devotion and love are not allowed to
manifest themselves in the pages of his academic works, the
ecstasies and mystical union with God of his later years bear
witness to the fact that the truths of which he wrote were the
realities by which he lived.

2. St. Thomas’s Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard
dates probably from 1254 to 1256, the De principiis naturae from
1255, the De ente et essentia from 1256 and the De Veritate from
between 1256 and 1259. It may be that the Quaestiones quod-
libetales 7,8,9,10 and 11 were also composed before 1259, i.e. before
Thomas left Paris for Italy. The In Boethium de Hebdotnadibus
and the In Boethium de Trinitate are also to be assigned to this
period. While in Italy St. Thomas wrote the Summa contra
Gentiles, the De Potentia, the Contra err ores Graecorum, the De
emptione et venditione and the De regimine principum. To this
period belong also a number of the Commentaries on Aristotle: for
example, those on the Physics (probably), the Metaphysics, the
Nicomachean Ethics, the De Anima, the Politics (probably). On
his return to Paris, where he became engaged in controversy with
the Averroists, St. Thomas wrote the De aeternitate mundi contra
murmur antes and the De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas, the
De Malo (probably), the De spiritualibus creaturis, the De anima
(i.e. the Quaestio disputata), the De unione Verbi incarnati, as well
as the Quaestiones quodlibetales 1 to 6 and the commentaries on
the De causis, the Meteorologica 1 and the Perihermeneias, also

1 The supplement to the Commentary on the Meteorologica seems to have been
completed by an anonymous writer, drawing on Peter ol Auvergne.

AQUINAS 305

belong to this period, while during his stay at Naples St. Thomas
wrote the De mixtione elementorum, the De motu cordis, the De
virtutibus, and the commentaries on Aristotle’s De Caelo and De
generatione et corruptione. As to the Summa Theologica, this was
composed between 1265 (at the earliest) and 1273, the Pars pritna
being written in Paris, the Prima secundae and Secunda secundae
in Italy, and the Tertia pars in Paris between 1272 and 1273. The
Supplementum, made up from previous writings of St. Thomas,
was added by Reginald of Pipemo, St. Thomas’s secretary from the
year 1261. One must add that Peter of Auvergne completed the
commentary on the De Caelo and that on the Politics (from Book 3,
lectio 7), while Ptolemy of Lucca was responsible for part of the
De regimine principum, St. Thomas having written only the first
book and the first four chapters of the second book. The Compen¬
dium theologiae, an unfinished work, was a product of the later
years of St. Thomas’s life, but it is not certain if it was written
before or after his return to Paris in 1268.

A number of works have been attributed to St. Thomas which
were definitely not written by him, while the authenticity of
certain other small works is doubtful, for example, the De natura
verbi intellectus. The chronology which has been given above is
not universally agreed upon. Mgr. Martin Grabmann and P&re
Mandonnet, for instance, ascribing certain works to different years.
On this subject the relevant works mentioned in the Bibliography
can be consulted.

3. To attempt to give a satisfactory outline of the 'philosophical
system’ of the greatest of the Schoolmen is to attempt a task of
considerable magnitude. It does not indeed appear to me an
acute question whether one should attempt a systematic or a
genetic exposition, since the literary period of St. Thomas’s life
comprises but twenty years and though there were modifications
and some development of opinion in that period, there was no
such considerable development as in the case of Plato and still
less was there any such succession of phases or periods as in the
case of Schelling. 1 To treat the thought of Plato genetically
might well be considered desirable (though actually, for purposes
of convenience and clarity, I adopted a predominantly systematic
form of exposition in my first volume) and to treat the thought of
Schelling genetically is essential; but there is no real reason against

1 Recent research, however, tends to show that there was more development in
St. Thomas's thought than is sometimes supposed.

3 o6 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

presenting the system of St. Thomas systematically: on the
contrary, there is every reason why one should present it systema¬
tically.

The difficulty lies rather in answering the question, what precise
form the systematic exposition should take and what emphasis and
interpretation one should give to the component parts of its
content. St. Thomas was a theologian and although he distin¬
guished the sciences of revealed theology and philosophy, he did
not himself elaborate a systematic exposition of philosophy by
itself (there is theology even in the Summa contra Gentiles), so that
the method of exposition is not already decided upon by the
Saint himself.

Against this it may be objected that St. Thomas certainly did
fix the starting-point for an exposition of his philosophy, and
M. Gilson, in his outstanding work on St. Thomas, 1 argues that
the right way of exposing the Thomistic philosophy is to expose
it according to the order of the Thomistic theology. St. Thomas
was a theologian and his philosophy must be regarded in the light
of its relation to his theology. Not only is it true to say that the
loss of a theological work like the Summa Theologica would be a
major disaster in regard to our knowledge of St. Thomas’s philo¬
sophy, whereas the loss of the Commentaries on Aristotle, though
deplorable, would be of less importance; but also St. Thomas's
conception of the content of philosophy or of the object which the
philosopher (i.e. theologian-philosopher) considers, was that of
le rivilable, that which could have been revealed but has not been
revealed and that which has been revealed but need not have
been revealed, in the sense that it can be ascertained by the
human reason, for example, the fact that God is wise. As M.
Gilson rightly remarks, the problem for St. Thomas was not how
to introduce philosophy into theology without corrupting the
essence and nature of philosophy, but how to introduce philosophy
without corrupting the essence and nature of theology. Theology
treats of the revealed, and revelation must remain intact; but
some truths are taught in theology which can be ascertained
without revelation (God’s existence, for example), while there are
other truths which have not been revealed but which might have
been revealed and which are of importance for a total view of
God's creation. St. Thomas’s philosophy should thus be regarded
in the light of its relation to theology, and it is a mistake to collect

1 Le Thomisme, jth edition, Paris, 1944.

AQUINAS 307

the philosophical items from St. Thomas's works, including his
theological works, and construct a system out of them according
to one's own idea of what a philosophical system should be, even
though St. Thomas would very likely have refused to recognise
such a system as corresponding with his actual intentions. To
reconstruct the Thomistic system in such a way is legitimate
enough for a philosopher, but it is the part of the historian to
stick to St. Thomas’s own method.

M. Gilson argues his point with his customary lucidity and
cogency, and it seems to me that his point must, in general, be
admitted. To begin an historical exposition of St. Thomas's
philosophy by a theory of knowledge, for example, especially if
the theory of knowledge were separated from psychology or the
doctrine of the soul, would scarcely represent St. Thomas’s own
procedure, though it would be legitimate in an exposition of
'Thomism' which did not pretend to be primarily historical. On
the other hand, St. Thomas certainly wrote some philosophical
works before he composed the Summa Theologica , and the proofs
of the existence of God in the latter work obviously presuppose a
good many philosophical ideas. Moreover, as those philosophical
ideas are not mere ideas, but are, on the principles of St. Thomas's
own philosophy, abstracted from experience of the concrete, there
seems to me ample justification for starting with the concrete
sensible world of experience and considering some of St. Thomas's
theories about it before going on to consider his natural theology.
And this is the procedure which I have actually adopted.

Another point. St. Thomas was an extremely clear writer; but
none the less there have been and are divergences of interpretation
in regard to certain of his doctrines. To discuss fully the pros and
cons of different interpretations is, however, not possible in a
general history of philosophy: one can do little more than give the
interpretation which commends itself in one’s own eyes. At the
same time, as far as the present writer is concerned, he is not
prepared to state that on points where a difference of interpreta¬
tion has arisen, he can give what is the indubitably correct
interpretation. After all, concerning which great philosopher's
system is there complete and universal agreement of interpreta¬
tion? Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel? In the
case of some philosophers, especially in the case of those who have
expressed their thought clearly and carefully, like St. Thomas,
there is a pretty generally accepted interpretation as to the main

3 o8 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

body of the system; but it is doubtful if the consent ever is or
ever will be absolute and universal. A philosopher may write
clearly and yet not express his final thought on all problems which
arise in connection with his system, especially as some of those
problems may not have occurred to him: it would be absurd to
expect of any philosopher that he should have answered all
questions, settled all problems, even that he should have rounded
off and sealed his system in such a way that there could be no
possible ground for divergence of interpretation. The present
writer has the greatest respect and reverence for the genius of
St. Thomas Aquinas, but he does not see that anything is to be
gained by confusing the finite mind of the Saint with Absolute
Mind or by claiming for his system what its author himself would
certainly never have dreamed of claiming.

4. The philosophy of St. Thomas is essentially realist and
concrete. St. Thomas certainly adopts the Aristotelian statement
that first philosophy or metaphysic studies being as being; but it
is perfectly clear that the task he sets himself is the explanation
of existent being, so far as this is attainable by the human mind.
In other words, he does not presuppose a notion from which
reality is to be deduced; but he starts from the existent world
and inquires what its being is, how it exists, what is the condition
of its existence. Moreover, his thought concentrates on the
supreme Existence, on the Being which does not merely possess
existence, but is Its own existence, which is the very plenitude
of existence, ipsum esse subsistens: his thought remains ever in
contact with the concrete, the existent, both with that which has
existence as something derived, something received, and with that
which does not receive existence but is existence. In this sense it
is true to say that Thomism is an 'existential philosophy’, though
it is very misleading, in my opinion, to call.St. Thomas an ‘existen¬
tialist’, since the Existenz of the existentialists is not the same
thing as St. Thomas’s esse ; nor is St. Thomas’s method of approach
to the problem of existence the same as that of the philosophers
who are now called existentialists.

It has been maintained that St. Thomas, by bringing esse to the
forefront of the philosophic stage, advanced beyond the philo¬
sophies of essence, particularly beyond Plato and the philosophies
of Platonic inspiration. There is certainly truth in this contention:
although Plato did not disregard the question of existence, the
salient characteristic of his philosophy is the explanation of the

AQUINAS 309

world in terms of essence rather than of existence, while even for
Aristotle, God, although pure Act, is primarily Thought, or Idea,
the Platonic Good rendered 'personal'. Moreover, although
Aristotle endeavoured to explain form and order in the world and
the intelligible process of development, he did not explain the
existence of the world; apparently he thought that no explanation
was needed. In neo-Platonism again, though the derivation of the
world is accounted for, the general scheme of emanation is primarily
that of an emanation of essences, though existence is certainly not
left out of account: God is primarily the One or the Good, not
ipsum esse subsistens, not the 1 am who am. But one should
remember that creation out of nothing was not an idea at which
any Greek philosopher arrived without dependence on Judaism
or Christianity and that without this idea the derivation of the
world tends to be explained as a necessary derivation of essences.
Those Christian philosophers who depended on and utilised neo-
Platonic terminology spoke of the world as flowing from or
emanating from God, and even St. Thomas used such phrases on
occasion; but an orthodox Christian philosopher, whatever his
terminology, regards the world as created freely by God, as
receiving esse from ipsum esse subsistens. When St. Thomas
insisted on the fact that God is subsistent existence, that His
essence is not primarily goodness or thought but existence, he was
but rendering explicit the implications of the Jewish and Christian
view of the world’s relation to God. I do not mean to imply that
the idea of creation cannot be attained by reason; but the fact
remains that it was not attained by the Greek philosophers and
could hardly be attained by them, given their idea of God.

Of St. Thomas’s general relation to Aristotle I shall speak later;
but it,may be as well to point out now one great effect which
Aristotelianism had on St. Thomas’s philosophical outlook and
procedure. One might expect that St. Thomas, being a Christian,
a theologian, a friar, would emphasise the soul’s relation to God
and would begin with what some modem philosophers call ‘sub¬
jectivity’, that he would place the interior life in the foreground
even of his philosophy, as St. Bonaventure did. In point of fact,
however, one of the chief characteristics of St. Thomas’s philo¬
sophy is its 'objectivity' rather than its ‘subjectivity’. The imme¬
diate object of the human intellect is the essence of the material
thing, and St. Thomas builds up his philosophy by reflection on
sense-experience. In the proofs which he gives of God’s existence

3 io THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

the process of argument is always from the sensible world to God.
No doubt certain of the proofs could be applied to the soul itself
as a starting-point and be developed in a different way; but in
actual fact this was not the way of St. Thomas, and the proof
which he calls the via manifestior is the one which is most dependent
on Aristotle’s own arguments. This Aristotelian 'objectivity' of
St. Thomas may appear disconcerting to those for whom ‘truth
is subjectivity’; but at the same time it is a great source of
strength,.since it means that his arguments can be considered in
themselves, apart from St. Thomas’s own life, on their own merits
or demerits, and that observations about 'wishful thinking’ are
largely irrelevant, the relevant question being the objective
cogency of the arguments themselves. Another result is that St.
Thomas’s philosophy appears ‘modem’ in a sense in which the
philosophy of St. Bonaventure can hardly do. The latter tends
to appear as essentially bound up with the general mediaeval
outlook and with the Christian spiritual life and tradition, so that
it seems to be on a different plane from the ‘profane’ philosophies
of modem times, whereas the Thomistic philosophy can be
divorced from Christian spirituality and, to a large extent, from
the mediaeval outlook and background, and can enter into direct
competition with more recent systems. A Thomistic revival has
taken place, as everybody knows; but it is a little difficult to
imagine a Bonaventurian revival, unless one were at the same
time to change the conception of philosophy, and in this case the
modem philosopher and the Bonaventurian would scarcely speak
the same language.

Nevertheless, St. Thomas was a Christian philosopher. As
already mentioned, St. Thomas follows Aristotle in speaking of
metaphysics as the science of being as being; but the fact that his
thought centres round the concrete and the fact that he was a
Christian theologian led him to emphasise also the view that ‘first
philosophy is wholly directed to the knowledge of God as the last
end’ and that ’the knowledge of God is the ultimate end of every
human cognition and operation'. 1 But actually man was created
for a profounder and more intimate knowledge of God than he
can attain by the exercise of his natural reason in this life, and so
revelation was morally necessary in order that his mind might be
raised to something higher than his reason can attain to in this
life and that he should desire and zealously strive towards

1 Contra Gent., 3, 25.

AQUINAS 311

something 'which exceeds the whole state of this life.' 1 Metaphysics
has its own object, therefore, and a certain autonomy of its own,
but it points upwards and needs to be crowned by theology:
otherwise man will not realise the end for which he was created
and will not desire and strive towards that end. Moreover, as the
primary object of metaphysics, God, exceeds the apprehension of
the metaphysician and of the natural reason in general, and as
the full knowledge or vision of God is not attainable in this life,
the conceptual knowledge of God is crowned in this life by
mysticism. Mystical theology does not enter the province of
philosophy, and St. Thomas's philosophy can be considered with-
out reference to it; but one should not forget that for St. Thomas
philosophical knowledge is neither sufficient nor final.

1 Contra Gent., 1, 5.

CHAPTER XXXII

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS—II
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

Distinction between philosophy and theology—Moral necessity of
revelation—Incompatibility of faith and science in the same
mind concerning the same object—Natural end and supernatural
end — St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure — St. Thomas as 'inno¬
vator .

i. That St. Thomas, made a formal and explicit distinction
between dogmatic theology and philocophy is an undoubted and
an indubitable fact. Philosophy and the other human sciences
rely simply and solely on the natural light of reason: the philo¬
sopher uses principles which are known by the human reason (with
God's natural concurrence, of course, but without the supernatural
light of faith), and he argues to conclusions which are the fruit of
human reasoning. The theologian, on the other hand, although he
certainly uses his reason, accepts his principles on authority, on
faith; he receives them as revealed. The introduction of dialectic
into theology, the practice of starting from a revealed premiss or
from revealed premisses and arguing rationally to a conclusion,
leads to the development of Scholastic theology, but it does not
turn theology into philosophy, since the principles, the data, are
accepted as revealed. For instance, the theologian may attempt
with the aid of categories and forms of reasoning borrowed from
philosophy to understand a little better the mystery of the
Trinity; but he does not thereby cease to act as a theologian, since
all the time he accepts the dogma of the Trinity of Persons in one
Nature on the authority of God revealing: it is for him a datum
or principle, a revealed premiss accepted on faith, not the conclu¬
sion of a philosophical argument. Again, while the philosopher
starts from the world of experience and argues by reason to God
in so far as He can be known by means of creatures, the theologian
starts with God as He has revealed Himself, and the natural
method in theology is to pass from God in Himself to creatures
rather than to ascend from creatures to God, as the philosopher
does and must do.

It follows that the principal difference between theology and

312

AQUINAS: PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 313

philosophy lies in the fact that the theologian receives his principles
as revealed and considers the objects with which he deals as
revealed or as deducible from what is revealed, whereas the
philosopher apprehends his principles by reason alone and con¬
siders the objects with which he deals, not as revealed but as
apprehensible and apprehended by the natural light of reason. In
other Words, the fundamental difference between theology and
philosophy does not lie in a difference of objects concretely
considered. Some truths are proper to theology, since they cannot
be known by reason and are known only by revelation, the mystery
of the Trinity, for example, while other truths are proper to
philosophy alone in the sense that they have not been revealed;
but there are some truths which are common to both theology and
philosophy, since they have been revealed, though at the same
time they can be established by reason. It is the existence of these
common truths which makes it impossible to say that theology and
philosophy differ primarily because each science considers dif¬
ferent truths: in some instances they consider the same truths,
though they consider them in a different manner, the theologian
considering them as revealed, the philosopher as conclusions of a
process of human reasoning. For example, the philosopher argues
to God as Creator, while the theologian also treats of God as
Creator; but for the philosopher the knowledge of God as Creator
comes as the conclusion of a purely rational argument, while the
theologian accepts the fact that God is Creator from revelation,
so that it is for him a premiss rather than a conclusion, a premiss
which is not hypothetically assumed but revealed. In technical
language it is not primarily a difference of truths considered
‘materially', or according to their content, which constitutes the
difference between a truth of theology and a truth of philosophy,
but rather a difference of truths considered ‘formally 1 . That is to
say, the same truth may be enunciated by both the theologian and
the philosopher; but it is arrived at and considered by the theolo¬
gian in a different way from that in which it is arrived at and
considered by the philosopher. Diversa ratio cognoscibilis diversi-
tatem scientiarum inducit . . . . ‘There is, therefore, no reason why
another science should not treat of the very same objects, as
known by the light of divine revelation, which the philosophical
sciences treat of according as they are knowable by the light of
natural reason. Hence the theology which belongs to sacred
doctrine differs generically from that theology which is a part of

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

3 i 4

philosophy.’ 1 Between dogmatic theology and natural theology
there is a certain overlapping; but the sciences differ generically
from one another.

2. According to St. Thomas, almost the whole of philosophy is
directed to the knowledge of God, at least in the sense that a good
deal of philosophical study is presupposed and required by natural
theology, that part of metaphysics which treats of God. Natural
theology, he says, is the last part of philosophy to be learnt. 2
Incidentally, this statement does not support the view that one
should start the exposition of the Thomist philosophy with
natural theology; but in any case the point I now want to make
is that St. Thomas, seeing that natural theology, if it is to be
properly grasped, requires much previous study and reflection,
insists that revelation is morally necessary, given the fact that
God is man’s end. Moreover, not only does natural theology
require more reflection and study and ability than most men are
in a position to devote to it, but also, even when the truth is
discovered, history shows that it is often contaminated by error.
Pagan philosophers have certainly discovered God's existence; but
error was often involved in their speculations, the philosopher
either not realising properly the unity of God or denying divine
providence or failing to see that God is Creator. If it were a
question simply of astronomy or natural science, errors would not
matter so much, since man can perfectly well attain his end even
if he holds erroneous opinions concerning astronomical or scientific
matters; but God is Himself man’s end, and knowledge of God is
essential in order that man should direct himself rightly towards
that end, so that truth concerning God is of great importance and
error concerning God is disastrous. Granted, then, that God is
man’s end, we can see that it is morally necessary that the
discovery of truths so important for life should not be left simply
to the unaided powers of those men who have the ability, the zeal
and the leisure to discover them, but that these truths should also
be revealed. 3

3. At once the question arises whether the same man can at the
same time believe (accept on authority by faith) and know (as
a result of rational demonstration) the same truth. If God's
existence, for instance, has been demonstrated by a philosopher,
can he at the same time believe it by faith? In the De Veritate*

■ Contra Gent., l, 4
4 M. 9 -

AQUINAS: PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 315

St. Thomas answers roundly that it is impossible for there to be faith
and knowledge concerning the same object, that the same truths
should be both known scientifically (philosophically) and at the
same time believed (by faith) by the same man. On this supposi¬
tion it would seem that a man who has proved the unity of God
cannot believe that same truth by faith. In order, then, that it
should not appear that this man is failing to give assent to articles
of faith, St. Thomas finds himself compelled to say that such truths
as the unity of God are not properly speaking articles of faith,
but rather praeambula ad artic-ulos . 1 He adds, however, that
nothing prevents such truths being the object of belief to a man
who cannot understand or has no time to consider the philosophical
demonstration, 1 and he maintains his opinion that it was proper
and fitting for such truths to be proposed for belief. 8 The question
whether a man who understands the demonstration but who is not
attending to it or considering it at the moment, can exercise faith
in regard to the unity of God he does not explicitly answer. As to
the opening phrase of the Creed {Credo in unurn Deum, I believe
in one God), which might seem to imply that faith in the unity of
God is demanded of all, he would, on his premisses, have to say
that the unity of God is here not to be understood by itself but
together with what follows, that is, as a unity of Nature in a
Trinity of Persons.

To go into this question further and to discuss with what sort
of faith the uneducated believe the truths which are known
(demonstratively) by the philosopher, would be inappropriate here,
not only because it is a theological question, but also because it is
a question which St. Thomas does not explicitly discuss: the main
point in mentioning the matter at all is to illustrate the fact that
St. Thomas makes a real distinction between philosophy on the
one hand and theology on the other. Incidentally, if we speak of
a 'philosopher', it must not be understood as excluding the
theologian: most of the Scholastics were both theologians and
philosophers, and St. Thomas distinguishes the sciences rather
than the men. That St. Thomas took this distinction seriously
can also be seen from the position he adopted towards the question
of the eternity of the world (to which I shall return later). He
considered that it can be demonstrated that the world was created,
but he did not think that reason can demonstrate that the world

1 S.T., la. 2, 2, ad 1; De Verit., 14, 9, ad 9.

• S.T., la, 2, 2, ad 1. • Contra Gent., 1, 4.

1 5 . 7 *., la, 1, i, ad 2.

* Cl. S.T., la, I, 1; Contra Gent., 1, 4.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

316

was not created from eternity, although it can refute the proofs
adduced to show that it was created from eternity. On the other
hand we know by revelation that the world was not created from
eternity but had a beginning in time. In other words, the theolo¬
gian knows through revelation that the world was not created
from eternity, but the philosopher cannot prove this—or rather
no argument which has been brought forward to prove it is
conclusive. This distinction obviously presupposes or implies a
real distinction between the two sciences of philosophy and
theology.

4. It is sometimes said that St. Thomas differs from St. Augus¬
tine in that while the latter considers man simply in the concrete,
as man called to a supernatural end, St. Thomas distinguishes two
ends, a supernatural end, the consideration of which he assigns to
the theologian, and a natural end, the consideration of which he
assigns to the philosopher. Now, that St. Thomas distinguishes
the two ends is quite true. In the De Veritate 1 he says that the
final good as considered by the philosopher is different from the
final good as considered by the theologian, since the philosopher
considers the final good (bonum uUimum) which is proportionate
to human powers, whereas the theologian considers as the final
good that which transcends the power of nature, namely life
eternal, by which he means, of course, not simply survival but the
vision of God. This distinction is of great importance and it has
its repercussion both in morals, where it is the foundation of the
distinction between the natural and the supernatural virtues, and
in politics, where it is the foundation of the distinction between
the ends of the Church and the State and determines the relations
which should exist between the two societies; but it is not a
distinction between two ends which correspond to two mutually
exclusive orders, the one supernatural, the other that of ‘pure
nature’: it is a distinction between two orders of knowledge and
activity in the same concrete human being. The concrete human
being was created by God for a supernatural end, for perfect
happiness, which is attainable only in the next life through the
vision of God and which is, moreover, unattainable by man by
his own unaided natural power; but man can attain an imperfect
happiness in this life by the exercise of his natural powers,
through coming to a philosophic knowledge of God through
creatures and through the attainment and exercise of the natural

1 M. 3.

AQUINAS: PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 317

virtues . 1 Obviously these ends are not exclusive, since man can
attain the imperfect felicity in which his natural end consists
without thereby putting himself outside the way to his super¬
natural end; the natural end, imperfect beatitude, is proportionate
to human nature and human powers, but inasmuch as man has
been created for a supernatural final end, the natural end cannot
satisfy him, as St. Thomas argues in the Contra Gentiles 2 ; it is
imperfect and points beyond itself.

How does this affect the question of the relation between
theology and philosophy? In this way. Man has one final end,
supernatural beatitude, but the existence of this end, which
transcends the powers of mere human nature, even though man
was created to attain it and given the power to do so by grace,
cannot be known by natural reason and so cannot be divined by
the philosopher: its consideration is restricted to the theologian.
On the other hand, man can attain through the exercise of his
natural powers to an imperfect and limited natural happiness in
this life, and the existence of this end and the means to attain it
are discoverable by the philosopher, who can prove the existence
of God from creatures, attain some analogical knowledge of God,
define the natural virtues and the means of attaining them. Thus
the philosopher may be said to consider the end of man in so far
as this end is discoverable by human reason, i.e. only imperfectly
and incompletely. But both theologian and philosopher are con¬
sidering man in the concrete: the difference is that the philosopher,
while able to view and consider human nature as such, cannot
discover all there is in man, cannot discover his supernatural
vocation; he can only go part of the way in discovering man’s
destiny, precisely because man was created for an end which
transcends the powers of his nature. It is, therefore, not true to
say that for St. Thomas the philosopher considers man in a
hypothetical state of pure nature, that is, man as he would have
been, had he never been called to a supernatural end: he considers
man in the concrete, but he cannot know all there is to be known
about that man in the concrete. When St. Thomas raises the
question whether God could have created man inpuris naturalibus 8
he is asking simply if God could have created man (who even
in this hypothesis was created for a supernatural end) without

1 Cf. In Boethium de Trinitate, 6, 4, 5; In 1 Sent., prol., I. 1; De Veritate, 14, 2;
5 .T., la, Ilae, 5, 5. 1 3, 27ff.

• In 2 Jent., 29, 1, 2; ibid., 29, 2. 3; S.T ., la, 95. I. 4: Qnodlibet, I, 8.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

318

sanctifying grace, that is to say, if God could have first created
man without the means of attaining his end and then afterwards
have given it; he is not asking if God could have given man a
purely natural ultimate end, as later writers interpreted him as
saying. Whatever, then, the merit of the idea of the state of pure
nature considered in itself may be (this is a point I do not propose
to discuss), it does not play a part in St. Thomas's conception of
philosophy. Consequently he does not differ from St. Augustine
so much as has been sometimes asserted, though he defined the
spheres of the two sciences of philosophy and theology more
clearly than Augustine had defined them: what he did was to
express Augustinianism in terms of the Aristotelian philosophy, a
fact which compelled him to utilise the notion of natural end,
though he interpreted it in such a way that he cannot be said to
have adopted a starting-point in philosophy totally different from
that of Augustine.

Actually the idea of the state of pure nature seems to have been
introduced into Thomism by Cajetan. Suarez, who himself adopted
the idea, remarks that ‘Cajetan and the more modem theologians
have considered a third state, which they have called purely
natural, a state which can be thought of as possible, although
it has not in fact existed’, 1 Dominicus Soto 2 says that it is a
perversion of the mind of St. Thomas, while Toletus 3 observes
that there exist in us a natural desire and a natural appetite
for the vision of God, though this opinion, which is that of
Scotus and seems to be that of St. Thomas, is contrary to that of
Cajetan.

5. St. Thomas certainly believed that it is theoretically possible
for the philosopher to work out a true metaphysical system without
recourse to revelation. Such a system would be necessarily imper¬
fect, inadequate and incomplete, because the metaphysician is
primarily concerned with the Truth itself, with God who is the
principle of all truth, and he is unable by purely human rational
investigation to discover all that knowledge of Truth itself, of
God, which is necessary for man if he is to attain his final end.
The mere philosopher can say nothing about the supernatural end
of man or the supernatural means of attaining that end, and as the
knowledge of these things is required for man’s salvation, the
insufficiency of philosophical knowledge is apparent. On the other

1 De Gratia , Prolegom,, 4, c. i. n. a. * In 4 Sent., 49, 2, 1 ; p. 903, 1613 edit.

* In Sumtnam Sancti Thomae , la. 1. 1, t. I. pp. 17-19, 1869 edit.

AQUINAS: PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 319

hand, incompleteness and inadequacy do not necessarily mean
falsity. The truth that God is one is not vitiated by the very fact
that nothing is said or known of the Trinity of Persons; the further
truth completes the first, but the first truth is not false, even taken
by itself. If the philosopher states that God is one and simply
says nothing about the Trinity, because the idea of the Trinity has
never entered his head; or if he knows of the doctrine of the
Trinity and does not himself believe it, but simply contents him¬
self with saying that God is one; or even if he expresses the view
that the Trinity, which he understands wrongly, is incompatible
with the divine unity; it still remains true that the statement that
God is one in Nature is a correct statement. Of course, if the
philosopher states positively that God is one Person, he is stating
what is false; but if he simply says that God is one and that God
is personal, without going on to state that God is one Person, he
is stating the truth. It may be unlikely that a philosopher would
stop short at saying that God is personal, but it is at least theoreti¬
cally possible. Unless one is prepared to condemn the human
intellect as such or at any rate to debar it from the discovery of
a true metaphysic, one must admit that the establishment of a
satisfactory metaphysic is abstractly possible, even for the pagan
philosopher. St. Thomas was very far from following St. Bona-
venture in excluding Aristotle from the ranks of the meta¬
physicians: on the contrary, the latter was in Thomas's eyes the
philosopher par excellence, the very embodiment of the intellectual
power of the human mind acting without divine faith, and he
attempted, wherever possible, to interpret Aristotle in the most
‘charitable’ sense, that is, in the sense which was most compatible
with Christian revelation.

If one emphasises simply this aspect of St. Thomas's attitude
towards philosophy, it would seem that a Thomist could not
legitimately adopt a consistently hostile and polemical attitude
towards modem philosophy. If one adopts the Bonaventurian
position and maintains that a metaphysician cannot attain truth
unless he philosophises in the light of faith (though without, of
course, basing his philosophical proofs on theological premisses),
one would only expect that a philosopher who rejected the super¬
natural or who confined religion within the bounds of reason alone,
should go sadly astray; but if one is prepared to admit the possi¬
bility of even a pagan philosopher elaborating a more or less
satisfactory metaphysic, it is unreasonable to suppose that in

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

320

several centuries of intensive human thought, no truth has come
to light. It would seem that a Thomist should expect to find fresh
intellectual illumination in the pages of the modem philosophers
and that he should approach them with an initial sympathy and
expectancy rather than with an a priori suspicion, reserve and
even hostility.

On the other hand, though St. Thomas's attitude towards the
pagan philosophers, and towards Aristotle in particular, differed
from that of St. Bonaventure, it is not right to exaggerate their
difference of outlook. As has already been mentioned, St. Thomas
gives reasons why it is fitting that even those truths about God
which can be discovered by reason should be proposed for men's
belief. Some of the reasons he gives are not indeed relevant to the
particular point I am discussing. For example, it is perfectly true
that many people are so occupied with earning their daily bread
that they have not the time to give to metaphysical reflection,
even when they have the capacity for such reflection, so that it is
desirable that those metaphysical truths which are of importance
for them in their lives should be proposed for their belief: other*
wise they will never know them at all, 1 just as most of us would
have neither the time nor the energy to discover America for
ourselves, did we not already accept the fact that it exists on the
testimony of others; but it does not necessarily follow that those
who have the time and ability for metaphysical reflection will
probably draw wrong conclusions, except in so far as metaphysical
thinking is difficult and requires prolonged attention and concen-
tration, whereas 'certain people', as St. Thomas remarks, are lazy.
However, there is this further point to be borne in mind, 2 that on
account of the weakness of our intellect in judging and on account
of the intrusion of the imagination falsity is generally (plerutnque )
mixed with truth in the human mind's conclusions. Among the
conclusions which are truly demonstrated there is sometimes
[aliquando) included a false conclusion which has not been demon¬
strated but is asserted on the strength of a probable or sophistical
reasoning passing under the name of demonstration. The practical
result will be that even certain and sure conclusions will not be
whole-heartedly accepted by many people, particularly when they
see philosophers teaching different doctrines while they themselves
are unable to distinguish a doctrine which has been truly demon¬
strated from one which rests on a merely probable or sophistical

1 Contra Gent., 1,4. 1 Ibid.

AQUINAS: PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 321

argument. Similarly, in the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas
observes that the truth about God is arrived at by the human
reason only by a few men and after a long time and ‘with the
admixture of many errors'. 1 When the Saint says that it is desirable
that even those truths about God which are rationally demon¬
strable should be proposed as objects of belief, to be accepted on
authority, he emphasises indeed the practical requirements of the
many rather than the speculative insufficiency of metaphysics as
such, but he does admit that error is frequently mixed with the
truth, either because of over-hastiness in jumping to conclusions
or because of the influence of passion and emotion or of imagina¬
tion. Possibly he did not himself apply this idea with perfect
consistency in regard to Aristotle and was too ready to interpret
Aristotle in the sense which was most compatible with Christian
doctrine, but the fact remains that he acknowledges theoretically
the weakness of the human intellect in its present condition,
though not its radical perversion. Accordingly, though he differs
from St. Bonaventure in that he admits the abstract possibility,
and indeed, in Aristotle’s case, the concrete fact, of a ‘satisfactory’
metaphysic being elaborated by a pagan philosopher and also
refuses to allow that its incompleteness vitiates a metaphysical
system, he also admits it is likely that any independent meta¬
physical system will contain error.

Perhaps it is not fanciful to suggest that the two men's abstract
opinions were largely settled by their attitude towards Aristotle.
It might, of course, be retorted that this is to put the cart before
the horse, but it will appear more reasonable if one considers the
actual circumstances in which they lived and wrote. For the first
time Latin Christendom was becoming acquainted with a great
philosophical system which owed nothing to Christianity and
which was represented by its fervent adherents, such as Averroes,
as being the last word in human wisdom. The greatness of
Aristotle, the depth and comprehensiveness of his system, was a
factor which could not be ignored by any Christian philosopher of
the thirteenth century; but it could be met and treated in more
than one way. On the one hand, as expounded by Averroes,
Aristotelianism conflicted on several very important points with
Christian doctrine, and it was possible to adopt a hostile and
unreceptive attitude towards the Aristotelian metaphysic on this
count. If, however, one adopted this course, as St. Bonaventure

1 S.T., la, r, 1, in corpore.

322 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

did, one had to say either that Aristotle’s system affirmed philoso¬
phical truth but that what was true in philosophy might not be
true in theology, since God could override the demands of natural
logic, or else that Aristotle went wrong in his metaphysics. St.
Bonaventure adopted the second course. But why, in Bona-
venture’s view, did Aristotle go wrong, the greatest systematiser
of the ancient world? Obviously because any independent philo¬
sophy is bound to go wrong on important points simply because
it is independent: it is only in the light of the Christian faith that
one can elaborate anything like a complete and satisfactory
philosophical system, since it is only in the light of the Christian
faith that the philosopher will be enabled to leave his philosophy
open to revelation: if he has not that light, he will round it off and
complete it, and if he rounds it off and completes it, it will be
thereby vitiated in part at least, especially in regard to those parts,
the most important parts, which deal with God and the end of
man. On the other hand, if one saw in the Aristotelian system a
magnificent instrument for the expression of truth and for the
welding together of the divine truths of theology and philosophy,
one would have to admit the power of the pagan philosopher to
attain metaphysical truth, though in view of the interpretation of
Aristotle given by Averroes and others one would have also to
allow for and explain the possibility of error even on the part of the
Philosopher. This was the course adopted by St. Thomas.

6 . When one looks back on the thirteenth century from a much
later date, one does not always recognise the fact that St. Thomas
was an innovator, that his adoption of Aristotelianism was bold
and ’modem'. St. Thomas was faced with a system of growing
influence and importance, which seemed in many respects to be
incompatible with Christian tradition, but which naturally capti¬
vated the minds of many students and masters, particularly in the
faculty of arts at Paris, precisely because of its majesty, apparent
coherence and comprehensiveness. That Aquinas boldly grasped
the bull by the horns and utilised Aristotelianism in the building
up of his own system was very far from being an obscurantist
action: it was, on the contrary, extremely ‘modem’ and was of
the greatest importance for the future of Scholastic philosophy
and indeed for the history of philosophy in general. That some
Scholastics in the later Middle Ages and at the time of the
Renaissance brought Aristotelianism into discredit by their obscu¬
rantist adherence to all the Philosopher’s dicta , even on scientific

AQUINAS: PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 323

matters, does not concern St. Thomas: the plain fact is that they
were not faithful to the spirit of St. Thomas. The Saint rendered,
on any count, an incomparable service to Christian thought by
utilising the instrument which presented itself, and he naturally
interpreted Aristotle in the most favourable sense from the
Christian standpoint, since it was essential to show, if he was to
succeed in his undertaking, that Aristotle and Averroes did not
stand or fall together. Moreover, it is not true to say that St,
Thomas had no sense of accurate interpretation: one may not
agree with all his interpretations of Aristotle, but there can be no
doubt that, given the circumstances of the time and the paucity
of relevant historical information at his disposal, he was one of
the most conscientious and the finest commentators of Aristotle
who have ever existed.

In conclusion, however, it must be emphasised that though
St. Thomas adopted Aristotelianism as an instrument for the
expression of his system, he was no blind worshipper of the
Philosopher, who discarded Augustine in favour of the pagan
thinker. In theology he naturally treads in the footsteps of
Augustine, though his adoption of the Aristotelian philosophy as
an instrument enabled him to systematise, define and argue
logically from theological doctrines in a manner which was foreign
to the attitude of Augustine: in philosophy, while there is a great
deal which comes straight from Aristotle, he often interprets
Aristotle in a manner consonant with Augustine or expresses
Augustine in Aristotelian categories, though it might be truer to
say that he does both at once. For instance, when treating of
divine knowledge and providence, he interprets the Aristotelian
doctrine of God in a sense which at least does not exclude God’s
knowledge of the world, and in treating of the divine ideas he
observes that Aristotle censured Plato for making the ideas inde¬
pendent both of concrete things and of an intellect, with the tacit
implication that Aristotle would not have censured Plato, had the
latter placed the ideas in the mind of God. This is, of course, to
interpret Aristotle in meliorem partem from the theological stand¬
point, and although the interpretation tends to bring Aristotle
and Augustine closer together, it most probably does not represent
Aristotle’s actual theory of the divine knowledge. However, of
St. Thomas's relation to Aristotle I shall speak later.

CHAPTER XXXIII

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS—III
PRINCIPLES OF CREATED BEING

Reasons for starting with corporeal being — Hylomorphism — Re¬
jection of rationes seminales— Rejection of plurality of substan¬
tial forms—Restriction of hylomorphic composition to corporeal
substances—Potentiality and act—Essence and existence.

I. In the Summa Theologica, which, as its name indicates, is a
theological synopsis, the first philosophical problem of which St.
Thomas treats is that of the existence of God, after which he
proceeds to consider the Nature of God and then the divine
Persons, passing subsequently to creation. Similarly, in the Summa
contra Gentiles , which more nearly resembles a philosophical
treatise (though it cannot be called simply a philosophical treatise,
since it also treats of such purely dogmatic themes as the Trinity
and the Incarnation), St. Thomas also starts with the existence of
God. It might seem, then, that it would be natural to begin the
exposition of St. Thomas's philosophy with his proofs of God's
existence; but apart from the fact (mentioned in an earlier chapter)
that St. Thomas himself says that the part of philosophy which
treats of God comes after the other branches of philosophy, the
proofs themselves presuppose some fundamental concepts and
principles, and St. Thomas had composed the De ente et essentia ,
for example, before he wrote either of the Summae. It would not
in any case be natural, then, to start immediately with the proofs
of God's existence, and M. Gilson himself, who insists that the
natural way of expounding St. Thomas's philosophy is to expound
it according to the order adopted by the Saint in the Summae ,
actually begins by considering certain basic ideas and principles.
On the other hand, one can scarcely discuss the whole general
metaphysic of St. Thomas and all those ideas which are explicitly
or implicitly presupposed by his natural theology: it is necessary
to restrict the basis of one's discussion.

To a modern reader, familiar with the course and problems of
modem philosophy, it might seem natural to begin with a discus¬
sion of St. Thomas's theory of knowledge and to raise the question
whether or not the Saint provides an epistemological justification

AQUINAS: PRINCIPLES OF CREATED BEING 325

of the possibility of metaphysical knowledge. But although St.
Thomas certainly had a Theory of knowledge' he did not live after
Kant, and the problem of knowledge did not occupy that position
in his philosophy which it has come to occupy in later times. It
seems to me that the natural starting-point for an exposition of the
Thomist philosophy is the consideration of corporeal substances.
After all, St. Thomas expressly teaches that the immediate and
proper object of the human intellect in this life is the essence of
material things. The fundamental notions and principles which
are presupposed by St. Thomas's natural theology are not, accord¬
ing to him, innate, but are apprehended through reflection on and
abstraction from our experience of concrete objects, and it seems,
therefore, only reasonable to develop those fundamental notions
and principles first of all through a consideration of material
substances. St. Thomas's proofs of God's existence are a posteriory,
they proceed from creatures to God, and it is the creature's nature,
the lack of self-sufficiency on the part of the immediate objects of
experience, which reveals the existence of God. Moreover, we can,
by the natural light of reason, attain only that knowledge of God
which can be attained by reflection on creatures and their relation
to Him. On this count too it would seem only ‘natural' to begin
the exposition of the Thomist philosophy with a consideration
of those concrete objects of experience by reflection on which we
arrive at those fundamental principles which lead us on to develop
the proofs of God's existence.

2. In regard to corporeal substances St. Thomas adopts from
the very outset the common-sense standpoint, according to which
there are a multiplicity of substances. The human mind comes to
know in dependence on sense-experience, and the first concrete
objects the mind knows are material objects into relation with
which it enters through the senses. Reflection on these objects,
however, at pnce leads the mind to form a distinction, or rather
to discover a distinction, in the objects themselves. If I look out
of my window in the spring I see the beech-tree with its young
and tender green leaves, while in the autumn I see that the leaves
have changed colour, though the same beech-tree stands out there
in the park. The beech is substantially the same, a beech-tree, in
spring and autumn, but the colour of its leaves is not the same:
the colour changes without the beech-tree changing substantially.
Similarly, if I go to the plantation, one year I see the larches as
small trees, newly planted; later on I see them as bigger trees: their

326 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

size has changed but they are still larches. The cows in the field
I see now in this place, now in that, now in one posture, now in
another, standing up or lying down, now doing one thing, now
another, eating the grass or chewing the cud or sleeping, now
undergoing one thing, now another, being milked or being rained
on or being driven along, but all the time they are the same
cows. Reflection thus leads the mind to distinguish between
substance and accident, and between the different kinds of accident,
and St. Thomas accepts from Aristotle the doctrine of the ten
categories, substance and the nine categories of accident.

So far reflection has led us only to the idea of accidental change
and the notion of the categories: but further reflection will intro¬
duce the mind to a profounder level of the constitution of material
being. When the cow eats grass, the grass no longer remains what
it was in the field, but becomes something else through assimila¬
tion, while on the other hand it does not simply cease to be, but
something remains in the process of change. The change is
substantial, since the grass itself is changed, not merely its colour
or size, and the analysis of substantial change leads the mind to
discern two elements, one element which is common to the grass
and to the flesh which the grass becomes, another element which
confers on that something its determination, its substantial
character, making it to be first grass, then cow-flesh. Moreover,
ultimately we can conceive any material substance changing into
any other, not necessarily directly or immediately, of course, but
at least indirectly and mediately, after a series of changes. We
come thus to the conception on the one hand of an underlying
substrate of change which, when considered in itself, cannot be
called by the name of any definite substance, and on the other
hand of a determining or characterising element. The first element
is 'prime matter', the indeterminate substrate of substantial
change, the second element is the substantial form, which makes
the substance what it is, places it in its specific class and so
determines it as grass, cow, oxygen, hydrogen, or whatever it
may be. Every material substance is composed in this way of
matter and form.

St. Thomas thus accepts the Aristotelian doctrine of the hylo-
morphic composition of material substances, defining prime matter
as pure potentiality and substantial form as the first act of a
physical body, ‘first act 1 meaning the principle which places the
body in its specific class and determines its essence. Prime matter

AQUINAS: PRINCIPLES OF CREATED BEING 327

is in potentiality to all forms which can be the forms of bodies, but
considered in itself it is without any form, pure potentiality: it is,
as Aristotle said, nec quid nec quantum nec quale nec aliud quidquam
eorunt quibus determinate ens . 1 For this reason, however, it cannot
exist by itself, for to speak of a being actually existing without act
or form would be contradictory: it did not, then, precede form
temporally, but was created together with form. 2 St. Thomas is
thus quite clear on the fact that only concrete substances, indi¬
vidual compositions of matter and form, actually exist in the
material world. But though he is at one with Aristotle in denying
the separate existence of universal (though we shall see presently
that a reservation must be made in regard to this statement), he
also follows Aristotle in asserting that the form needs to be
individuated. The form is the universal element, being that which
places an object in its class, in its species, making it to be horse
or elm or iron: it needs, then, to be individuated, in order that it
should become the form of this particular substance. What is the
principle of individuation? It can only be matter. But matter is
of itself pure potentiality: it has not those determinations which
are necessary in order that it should individuate form. The
accidental characteristics of quantity and so on are logically
posterior to the hylomorphic composition of the substance. St.
Thomas was, therefore, compelled to say that the principle of
individuation is materia signata quantitate , in the sense of matter
having an exigency for the quantitative determination which it
receives from union with form. This is a difficult notion to under¬
stand, since although matter, and not form, is the foundation of
quantitative multiplication, matter considered in itself is without
quantitative determination: the notion is in fact a relic of the
Platonic element in Aristotle’s thought. Aristotle rejected and
attacked the Platonic theory of forms, but his Platonic training
influenced him to the extent of his being led to say that form,
being of itself universal, requires individuation, and St. Thomas
followed him in this.- Of course, St. Thomas did not think of forms
first existing separately and then being individuated, for the forms
of sensible objects do not exist in a state of temporal priority to
the composite substances; but the idea of individuation is certainly
due originally to the Platonic way of thinking and speaking of
forms: Aristotle substituted the notion of the immanent substantial
form for that of the ‘transcendent’ exemplar form, but it would

1 In 7 Metaphlectio 2 . * S.T., la, 66, i, in corpore.

328 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

not become an historian to turn a blind eye to the Platonic legacy
in Aristotle's thought and consequently in that of St. Thomas.

3. As a logical consequence of the doctrine that prime matter as
such is pure potentiality, St. Thomas rejected the Augustinian
theory of rationes seminales : l to admit this theory would be to
attribute act in some way to what is in itself without act. 2 Non¬
spiritual forms are educed out of the potentiality of matter under
the action of the efficient agent, but they are not previously in
prime matter as inchoate forms. The agent does not, of course,
work on prime matter as such, since this latter cannot exist by
itself; but he or it so modifies or changes the dispositions of a given
corporeal substance that it develops an exigency for a new form,
which is educed out of the potentiality of matter. Change thus
presupposes, for Aquinas as for Aristotle, a ‘privation’ or an
exigency for a new form which the substance has not yet got but
‘demands’ to have in virtue of the modifications produced in it
by the agent. Water, for example, is in a state of potentiality to
becoming steam, but it will not become steam until it has been
heated to a certain point by an external agent, at which point it
develops an exigency for the form of steam, which does not come
from outside, but is educed out of the potentiality of matter.

4. Just as St. Thomas rejected the older theory of rationes
seminales , so he rejected the theory of the plurality of substantial
forms in the composite substance, affirming the unicity of the
substantial form in each substance. In his Commentary on the
Sentences St. Thomas seems indeed to accept the forma corporeitatis
as the first substantial form in the corporeal substance; 3 but even
if he accepted it at first, he certainly rejected it afterwards. In the
Contra Gentiles 4 he argues that if the first form constituted the
substance as substance, the subsequent forms would arise in some¬
thing which was already hoc aliquid in actu, something actually
subsisting, and so could be no more than accidental forms.
Similarly he argues against the theory of Avicebron 5 by pointing
out that only the first form can be the substantial form, since it
would confer the character of substance, with the result that other

1 In 2 Sent., 18, I. 2.

1 St. Thomas certainly employed the name, rationes seminales, but he meant
thereby primarily the active forces of concrete objects, e.g. the active power
which controls the generation of living things and restricts it to the same species,
not the doctrine that there ^re inchoate forms in prime matter. This last theory
he either rejected or said that it did not fit in with the teaching of St. Augustine
(cf. loc. cit., S.T ., la, 115, 2; De Veritate , 5, 9, ad 8 and ad 9).

* Cf. In 1 Sent., 8, 5, 2; 2 Sent., 3, 1, 1.

4 4, 81. 6 Quodhbet , 11, 3, 3, in corpore.

AQUINAS: PRINCIPLES OF CREATED BEING 329

subsequent forms, arising in an already constituted substance,
would be accidental. (The necessary implication is, of course, that
the substantial form directly informs prime matter.) This view
aroused much opposition, being stigmatised as a dangerous inno¬
vation, as we shall see later when dealing with the controversies
in which St. Thomas’s Aristotelianism involved him.

5. The hylomorphic composition which obtains in material
substances was restricted by St. Thomas to the corporeal world:
he would not extend it, as St. Bonaventure did, to the incorporeal
creation, to angels. That angels exist, St. Thomas considered to be
rationally provable, quite apart from revelation, for their existence
is demanded by the hierarchic character of the scale of being. We
can discern the ascending orders or ranks of forms from the forms
of inorganic substances, through vegetative forms, the irrational
sensitive forms of animals, the rational soul of man, to the infinite
and pure Act, God; but there is a gap in the hierarchy. The
rational soul of man is created, finite and embodied, while God is
uncreated, infinite and pure spirit: it is only reasonable, then, to
suppose that between the human soul and God there are finite and
created spiritual forms which are without body. At the summit
of the scale is the absolute simplicity of God: at the summit of
the corporeal world is the human being, partly spiritual and partly
corporeal: there must, therefore, exist between God and man beings
which are wholly spiritual and yet which do not possess the
absolute simplicity of the Godhead. 1

This line of argument was not new: it had been employed in
Greek philosophy, by Poseidonius, for example. St. Thomas was
also influenced by the Aristotelian doctrine of separate Intelli¬
gences connected with the motion of the spheres, this astronomical
view reappearing in the philosophy of Avicenna, with which St.
Thomas was familiar; but the argument which weighed most with
him was that drawn from the exigencies of the hierarchy of being.
As he distinguished the different grades of forms in general, so he
distinguished the different 'choirs’ of angels, according to the object
of their knowledge. Those who apprehend most clearly the good¬
ness of God in itself and are inflamed with love thereat are the
Seraphim, the highest ‘choir’, while those who are concerned with
the providence of God in regard to particular creatures, for
example, in regard to particular men, are the angels in the
narrower sense of the word, the lowest choir. The choir which is

1 Cf. De spirit. ereat I, 5.

330

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

concerned with, inter alia, the movement of the heavenly bodies
(which are universal causes affecting this world) is that of the
Virtues. Thus St. Thomas did not postulate the existence of angels
primarily in order to account for the movement of the spheres.

Angels exist therefore; but it remains to be asked if they are
hylomorphically composed. St. Thomas affirmed that they are
not so composed. He argued that the angels must be purely
immaterial, since they are intelligences which have as their correla¬
tive object immaterial objects, and also that their very place in
the hierarchy of being demands their complete immateriality. 1
Moreover, as St. Thomas places in matter an exigency for quantity
(which possibly does not altogether square with its character of
pure potentiality), he could not in any case attribute hylomorphic
composition to the angels. St. Bonaventure, for example, had
argued that angels must be hylomorphically composed, since other¬
wise they would be pure act and God alone is pure act; but St.
Thomas countered this argument by affirming that the distinction
between essence and existence in the angels is sufficient to safeguard
their contingency and their radical distinction from God. 2 To this
distinction I shall return shortly.

A consequence of the denial of the hylomorphic composition of
the angels is the denial of the multiplicity of angels within one
species, since matter is the principle of individuation and there is
no matter in the angels. Each angel is pure form: each angel,
then, must exhaust the capacity of its species and be its own
species. The choirs of angels are not, then, so many species of
angels; they consist of angelic hierarchies distinguished not speci¬
fically but according to function. There are as many species as
there are angels. It is of interest to remember that Aristotle, when
asserting in the Metaphysics a plurality of movers, of separated
intelligences, raised the question how this could be possible if
matter is the principle of individuation, though he did not answer
the question. While St. Bonaventure, admitting the hylomorphic
composition of angels, could and did admit their multiplicity
within the species, St. Thomas, holding on the one hand that
matter is the principle of individuation and denying its presence
in the angels on the other hand, was forced to deny their multi¬
plicity within the species. For St. Thomas, then, the intelligences
really became separate universal, though not, of course, in the

1 S.T ., la, 50, 2; De spirit, creat., 1,1.

* De spirit, creat., 1,1; S.T., la, 50, 2, ad 3; Contra Gent., 2, 30; Quodlibet, 9, 4, 1.

AQUINAS: PRINCIPLES OF CREATED BEING 331

sense of hypostatised concepts. It was one of the discoveries of
Aristotle that a separate form must be intelligent, though he failed
to see the historic connection between his theory of separate
intelligences and the Platonic theory of separate forms.

6. The establishment of the hylomorphic composition of material
substances reveals at once the essential mutability of those sub¬
stances. Change is not, of course, a haphazard affair, but proceeds
according to a certain rhythm (one cannot assume that a given
substance can become immediately any other substance one likes,
while change is also guided and influenced by the general causes,
such as the heavenly bodies); yet substantial change cannot take
place except in bodies, and it is only matter, the substrate of
change, which makes it possible. On the principle which St.
Thomas adopted from Aristotle that what is changed or moved is
changed or moved ‘by another’, ab alio, one might argue at once
from the changes in the corporeal world to the existence of an
unmoved mover, with the aid of the principle that an infinite
regress in the order of dependence is impossible, but before going
on to prove the existence of God from nature, one must first
penetrate more deeply into the constitution of finite being,

Hylomorphic composition is confined by St. Thomas to the
corporeal world; but there is a more fundamental distinction, of
which the distinction between form and matter is but one example.
Prime matter, as we have seen, is pure potentiality, while form is
act, so that the distinction between matter and form is a distinc¬
tion between potency and act, but this latter distinction is of
wider application than the former. In the angels there is no
matter, but there is none the less potentiality. (St. Bonaventure
argued that because matter is potentiality, therefore it can be in
angels. He was thus forced to admit the forma corporeitatis, in
order to distinguish corporeal matter from matter in the general
sense. St. Thomas, on the other hand, as he made matter pure
potentiality and yet denied its presence in the angels, was forced
to attribute to matter an exigency for quantity, which comes to
it through form. Obviously there are difficulties in both views.)
The angels can change by performing acts of intellect and will,
even though they cannot change substantially: there is, therefore,
some potentiality in the angels. The distinction between poten¬
tiality and act runs, therefore, through the whole of creation,
whereas the distinction between form and matter is found only
in the corporeal creation. Thus, on the principle that the reduction

332 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

of potentiality to act requires a principle which is itself act, we
should be in a position to argue from the fundamental distinction
which obtains in all creation to the existence of pure Act, God; but
first of all we must consider the basis of potentiality in the angels.
In passing, one can notice that the distinction of potency and act
is discussed by Aristotle in the Metaphysics .

7. We have seen that hylomorphic composition was restricted
by St. Thomas to corporeal substance; but there is a profounder
composition which affects every finite being. Finite being is being
because it exists, because it has existence: the substance is that
which is or has being, and ‘existence is that in virtue of which a
substance is called a being'. 1 The essence of a corporeal being is
the substance composed of matter and form, while the essence of
an immaterial finite being is form alone; but that by which a
material substance or an immaterial substance is a real being ( ens)
is existence (esse), existence standing to the essence as act to
potentiality. Composition of act and potentiality is found, there¬
fore, in every finite being and not simply in corporeal being. No
finite being exists necessarily; it has or possesses existence which
is distinct from essence as act is distinct from potentiality. The
form determines or completes in the sphere of essence, but that
which actualises the essence is existence. ‘In intellectual substances
which are not composed of matter and form (in them the form is
a subsistent substance), the form is that which is; but existence is
the act by which the form is; and on that account there is in them
only one composition of act and potentiality, namely composition
of substance and existence. ... In substances composed of matter
and form, however, there is a double composition of act and
potentiality, the first a composition in the substance itself, which
is composed of matter and form, the second a composition of the
substance itself, which is already composite, with existence. This
second composition can also be called a composition of the quod
est and esse, or of the quod est and the quo est .' 2 Existence, then, is
neither matter nor form; it is neither an essence nor part of an
essence; it is the act by which the essence is or has being. 'Esse
denotes a certain act; for a thing is not said to be (esse) by the fact
that it is in potentiality, but by the fact that it is in act.' 3 As
neither matter nor form, it can be neither a substantial nor an
accidental form; it does not belong to the sphere of essence, but is
that by which forms are.

1 Contra Gent., 2, 54, 1 Ibid. 8 Ibid., 1, 22.

AQUINAS: PRINCIPLES OF CREATED BEING 333

Controversy has raged in the Schools round the question whether
St. Thomas considered the distinction between essence and exis¬
tence to be a real distinction or a conceptual distinction. Obviously
the answer to this question depends largely on the meaning
attached to the phrase 'real distinction’. If by real distinction
were meant a distinction between two things which could be
separated from one another, then certainly St. Thomas did not
hold that there is a real distinction between essence and existence,
which are not two separable physical objects. Giles of Rome
practically held this view, making the distinction a physical dis¬
tinction; but for St. Thomas the distinction was metaphysical,
essence and existence being the two constitutive metaphysical
principles of every finite being. If, however, by real distinction is
meant a distinction which is independent of the mind, which is
objective, it seems to me not only that St. Thomas maintained
such a distinction as obtaining between essence and existence, but
that it is essential to his system and that he attached great
importance to it. St. Thomas speaks of esse as adveniens extra, in
the sense that it comes from God, the cause of existence; it is act,
distinct from the potentiality which it actualises. In God alone,
insists St. Thomas, are essence and existence identical: God exists
necessarily because His essence is existence: all other things
receive or ‘participate in' existence, and that which receives must
be distinct from that which is received. 1 The fact that St. Thomas
argues that that whose existence is other than its essence must
have received its existence from another, and that it is true of
God alone that His existence is not different from or other than
His essence, seems to me to make it perfectly clear that he
regarded the distinction between essence and existence as objective
and independent of the mind. The ‘third way’ of proving the
existence of God appears to presuppose the real distinction between
essence and existence in finite things.

Existence determines essence in the sense that it is act and
through it the essence has being; but on the other hand existence,
as act, is determined by essence, as potentiality, to be the existence
of this or that kind of essence.* Yet we must not imagine that
essence existed before receiving existence (which would be a
contradiction in terms) or that there is a kind of neutral existence
which is not the existence of any thing in particular until it is
united with essence: the two principles are not two physical things

1 Cf. S.T., la, 3, 4; Contra Gent., x, 22. 1 De Potentia, 7, 2, ad 9.

334

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

united together, but they are two constitutive principles which are
concreated as principles of a particular being. There is no essence
without existence and no existence without essence; the two are
created together, and if its existence ceases, the concrete essence
ceases to be. Existence, then, is not something accidental to the
finite being: it is that by which the finite being is a being. If we
rely on the imagination, we shall think of essence and existence as
two things, two beings; but a great deal of the difficulty in under¬
standing St. Thomas's doctrine on the subject comes from
employing the imagination and supposing that if he maintained
the real distinction, he must have understood it in the exaggerated
and misleading fashion of Giles of Rome.

The Moslem philosophers had already discussed the relation of
existence to essence. Alfarabi, for example, had observed that
analysis of the essence of a finite object will not reveal its existence.
If it did, then it would be sufficient to know what human nature
is, in order to know that man exists, which is not the case. Essence
and existence are, therefore, distinct, and Alfarabi drew the some¬
what unfortunate conclusion that existence is an accident of the
essence, Avicenna followed Alfarabi in this matter. Although
St. Thomas certainly did not regard existence as an 'accident', in
the De ente et essentia 1 he follows Alfarabi and Avicenna in their
way of approaching the distinction. Every thing which does not
belong to the concept of the essence comes to it from without
(adveniens extra) and forms a composition with it. No essence can
be conceived without that which forms part of the essence; but
every finite essence can be conceived without existence being
included in the essence. I can conceive ‘man' or ‘phoenix' and
yet not know if they exist in nature. It would, however, be a
mistake to interpret St. Thomas as though he maintained that
the essence, prior to the reception of existence, was something on
its own, so to speak, with a diminutive existence proper to itself:
it exists only through existence, and created existence is always
the existence of this or that kind of essence. Created existence and
essence arise together, and although the two constitutive principles
are objectively distinct, existence is the more fundamental. Since
created existence is the act of a potentiality, the latter has no
actuality apart from existence, which is ‘among all things the
most perfect’ and ‘the perfection of all perfections'. 2

St. Thomas thus discovers in the heart of all finite being a

1 C. 4. % De Petenlia, 7, 2, ad 9.

AQUINAS: PRINCIPLES OF CREATED BEING 335

certain instability, a contingency or non-necessity, which imme¬
diately points to the existence of a Being which is the source of
finite existence, the author of the composition between essence and
existence, and which cannot be itself composed of essence and
existence but must have existence as its very essence, existing
necessarily. It would indeed be absurd and most unjust to accuse
Francis Suarez (1548-1617) and other Scholastics who denied the
‘real distinction’ of denying the contingent character of finite being
(Suarez denied a real distinction between essence and existence
and maintained that the finite object is limited because ab alio);
but I do not personally feel any doubt that St. Thomas himself
maintained the doctrine of the real distinction, provided that the
real distinction is not interpreted as Giles of Rome interpreted it.
For St. Thomas, existence is not a state of the essence, but rather
that which places the essence in a state of actuality.

It may be objected that I have evaded the real point at issue,
namely the precise way in which the distinction between essence
and existence is objective and independent of the mind. But St.
Thomas did not state his doctrine in such a manner that no
controversy about its meaning is possible. Nevertheless it seems
clear to me that St. Thomas held that the distinction between
essence and existence is an objective distinction between two
metaphysical principles which constitute the whole being of the
created finite thing, one of these principles, namely existence,
standing to the other, namely essence, as act to potency. And
I do not see how St. Thomas could have attributed that importance
to the distinction which he did attribute to it, unless he thought
that it was a 'real' distinction.

CHAPTER XXXIV

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS—IV: PROOFS OF GOD’S EXISTENCE

Need of proof — St. Anselm's argument—Possibility of proof —

The first three proofs—The fourth proof—The proof from finality
—The 'third way' fundamental.

t. Before actually developing his proofs of God’s existence St.
Thomas tried to show that the provision of such proofs is not a
useless superfluity, since the idea of God’s existence is not,
properly speaking, an innate idea nor is 'God exists’ a proposition
the opposite of which is inconceivable and cannot be thought. To
us indeed, living in a world where atheism is common, where
powerful and influential philosophies eliminate or explain away
the notion of God, where multitudes of men and women are
educated without any belief in God, it seems only natural to think
that God’s existence requires proof. Kierkegaard and those philo¬
sophers and theologians who follow him may have rejected natural
theology in the ordinary sense; but normally speaking we should
not dream of asserting that God’s existence is what St. Thomas
calls a per se notum. St. Thomas, however, did not live in a world
where theoretic atheism was common, and he felt himself com¬
pelled to deal not only with statements of certain early Christian
writers which seemed to imply that knowledge of God is innate in
man, but also with the famous argument of St. Anselm which
purports to show that the non-existence of God is inconceivable.
Thus in the Summa Theologica 1 he devotes an article to answering
the question ntrum Deum esse sit per se notum, and two chapters
in the Summa contra Gentiles 2 to the consideration de opinione
dicentium quod Deum esse demonstrari non potest, quum sit per se
notum.

St. John Damascene 3 asserts that the knowledge of God’s
existence is naturally innate in man; but St. Thomas explains
that this natural knowledge of God is confused and vague and
needs elucidation to be made explicit. Man has a natural desire
of happiness ( beatitudo ), and a natural desire supposes a natural
knowledge; but although true happiness is to be found only in
God, it does not follow that every man has a natural knowledge

1 La, 2, i. * i, io-n. * De fide orthodoxa, I, 3.

336

AQUINAS: PROOFS OF GOD'S EXISTENCE 337

of God as such: he has a vague idea of happiness since he desires
it, but he may think that happiness consists in sensual pleasure
or in the possession of wealth, and further reflection is required
before he can realise that happiness is to be found only in God.
In other words, even if the natural desire for happiness may form
the basis for a proof of God’s existence, a proof is none the less
required. Again, in a sense it is per se notum that there is truth,
since a man who asserts that there is no truth inevitably asserts
that it is true that there is no truth, but it does not follow that
the man knows that there is a primal or first Truth, a Source of
truth, God: further reflection is necessary if he is to realise this.
Once again, although it is true that without God we can know
nothing, it does not follow that in knowing anything we have an
actual knowledge of God, since God’s influence, which enables us
to know anything, is not the object of direct intuition but is
known only by reflection. 1

In general, says St. Thomas, we must make a distinction between
what is per se notum secundum se and what is per se notum quoad
nos. A proposition is said to be per se nota secundum se when the
predicate is included in the subject, as in the proposition that man
is an animal, since man is precisely a rational animal. The proposi¬
tion that God exists is thus a proposition per se nota secundum se,
since God's essence is His existence and one cannot know God's
nature, what God is, without knowing God’s existence, that He is;
but a man has no a priori knowledge of God’s nature and only
arrives at knowledge of the fact that God’s essence is His existence
after he has come to know God’s existence, so that even though
the proposition that God exists is per se nota secundum se, it is
not per se nota quoad nos.

2. In regard to the 'ontological' or a priori proof of God's
existence given by St. Anselm, St. Thomas answers first of all
that not everyone understands by God ‘that than which no greater
can be thought'. Possibly this observation, though doubtless true,
is not altogether relevant, except in so far as St. Anselm considered
that everyone understands by ‘God’ that Being whose existence

1 It may appear that St. Thomas's attitude in regard to 'innate 1 knowledge of
God does not differ substantially from that of St. Bonaventure. In a sense this is
true, since neither of them admitted an explicit innate idea of God; but St.
Bonaventure thought that there is a kind of initial implicit awareness of God, or
at least that the idea of God can be rendered explicit by interior reflection alone,
whereas the proofs actually given by St. Thomas all proceed by way of the
external world. Even if we press the 1 Aristotelian' aspect of Bona venture's epis¬
temology, it remains true that there is a difference of emphasis and approach io
the natural theology of the two philosophers.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

338

he intended to prove, namely the supremely perfect Being. It
must not be forgotten that Anselm reckoned his argument to be
an argument or proof, not the statement of an immediate intuition
of God. He then argues, both in the Sumnta contra Gentiles and
in the Summa Theologica, that the argument of St. Anselm involves
an illicit process or transition from the ideal to the real order.
Granted that God is conceived as the Being than which no greater
can be thought, it does not follow necessarily that such a Being
exists, apart from its being conceived, that is, outside the mind.
This, however, is not an adequate argument, when taken by itself
at least, to disprove the Anselmian reasoning, since it neglects the
peculiar character of God, of the Being than which no greater can
be thought. Such a Being is its own existence and if it is possible
for such a Being to exist, it must exist. The Being than which no
greater can be thought is the Being which exists necessarily, it is
the necessary Being, and it would be absurd to speak of a merely
possible necessary Being. But St. Thomas adds, as we have seen,
that the intellect has no a priori knowledge of God’s nature. In
other words, owing to the weakness of the human intellect we
cannot discern a priori the positive possibility of the supremely
perfect Being, the Being the essence of which is existence, and we
come to a knowledge of the fact that such a Being exists not
through an analysis or consideration of the idea of such a Being,
but through arguments from its effects, a posteriori.

3. If God’s existence cannot be proved a priori, through the
idea of God, through His essence, it remains that it must be proved
a posteriori, through an examination of God's effects. It may be
objected that this is impossible since the effects of God are finite
while God is infinite, so that there is no proportion between the
effects and the Cause and the conclusion of the reasoning process
will contain infinitely more than the premisses. The reasoning starts
with sensible objects and should, therefore, end with a sensible
object, whereas in the proofs of God's existence it proceeds to an
Object infinitely transcending all sensible objects.

St. Thomas does not deal with this objection at any length, and
it would be an absurd anachronism to expect him to discuss and
answer the Kantian Critique of metaphysics in advance; but he
points out that though from a consideration of effects which are
disproportionate to the cause we cannot obtain a perfect know¬
ledge of the cause, we can come to know that the cause exists.
We can argue from an effect to the existence of a cause, and if the

AQUINAS: PROOFS OF GOD’S EXISTENCE 339

effect is of such a kind that it can proceed only from a certain
kind of cause, we can legitimately argue to the existence of a cause
of that kind. (The use of the word ‘effect’ must not be taken as
begging the question, as a peiitio principii: St. Thomas argues
from certain facts concerning the world and argues that these facts
require a sufficient ontological explanation. It is true, of course,
that he presupposes that the principle of causality is not purely
subjective or applicable only within the sphere of ‘phenomena’ in
the Kantian sense; but he is perfectly well aware that it has to be
shown that sensible objects are effects, in the sense that they do
not contain in themselves their own sufficient ontological explana¬
tion.)

A modem Thomist, wishing to expound and defend the natural
theology of the Saint in the light of post-mediaeval philosophic
thought, would rightly be expected to say something in justifica¬
tion of the speculative reason, of metaphysics. Even if he con¬
sidered that the onus of proof falls primarily on the opponent of
metaphysics, he could not neglect the fact that the legitimacy and
even the significance of metaphysical arguments and conclusions
have been challenged, and he would be bound to meet this
challenge. I cannot see, however, how an historian of mediaeval
philosophy in general can justly be expected to treat St. Thomas
as though he were a contemporary and fully aware not only of the
Kantian criticism of the speculative reason, but also of the attitude
towards metaphysics adopted by the logical positivists. Never¬
theless, it is true that the Thomist theory of knowledge itself
provides, apparently at least, a strong objection against natural
theology. According to St. Thomas the proper object of the
human intellect is the qutdditas or essence of the material object:
the intellect starts from the sensible objects, knows in dependence
on the phantasm and is proportioned, in virtue of its embodied
state, to sensible objects. St. Thomas did not admit innate ideas
nor did he have recourse to any intuitive knowledge of God, and
if one applies strictly the Aristotelian principle that there is
nothing in the intellect which was not before in the senses (Nihil
in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu), it might well appear
that the human intellect is confined to knowledge of corporeal
objects and cannot, owing to its nature or at least its present state,
transcend them. As this objection arises out of the doctrine of
Thomas himself, it is relevant to inquire if the Saint attempted to
meet it and, if so, how he met it. With the Thomist theory of

34 o THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

human knowledge I shall deal later; 1 but I shall give immediately
a brief statement of what appears to be St. Thomas's position on
this point without development or references.

Objects, whether spiritual or corporeal, are knowable only in so
far as they partake of being, are in act, and the intellect as such
is the faculty of apprehending being. Considered simply in itself,
therefore, the intellect has as its object all being; the primary
object of intellect is being. The fact, however, that a particular
kind of intellect, the human intellect, is embodied and is dependent
on sense for its operation, means that it must start from the things
of sense and that, naturally speaking, it can come to know an
object which transcends the things of sense (consideration of self-
knowledge is here omitted) only in so far as sensible objects bear
a relation to that object and manifest it. Owing to the fact that
the human intellect is embodied its natural and proper object,
proportionate to its present state, is the corporeal object; but this
does not destroy the primary orientation of the intellect to being
in general, and if corporeal objects bear a discernible relation to
an object which transcends them, the intellect can know that such
an object exists. Moreover, in so far as material objects reveal
the character of the Transcendent, the intellect can attain some
knowledge of its nature; but such a knowledge cannot be adequate
or perfect, since sense-objects cannot reveal adequately or perfectly
the nature of the Transcendent. Of our natural knowledge of God's
nature I shall speak later: 2 let it suffice to point out here that when
St. Thomas says that the corporeal object is the natural object of
the human intellect, he means that the human intellect in its
present state is orientated towards the essence of the corporeal
object, but that just as the embodied condition of the human
intellect does not destroy its primary character as intellect, so its
orientation, in virtue of its embodied state, towards the corporeal
object does not destroy its primary orientation towards being in
general. It can therefore attain to some natural knowledge of
God, in so far as corporeal objects are related to Him and reveal
Him; but this knowledge is necessarily imperfect and inadequate
and cannot be intuitive in character.

4. The first of the five proofs of God's existence given by St.
Thomas is that from motion, which is found in Aristotle 3 and was
utilised by Maimonides and St. Albert. We know through sense-
perception that some things in the world are moved, that motion

1 See Ch. XXXVIII. * See Ch. XXXV. * Metaph Bk. 12; Physics , Bk. 8.

AQUINAS: PROOFS OF GOD'S EXISTENCE 341

is a fact. Motion is here understood in the wide Aristotelian sense
of reduction of potency to act, and St. Thomas, following Aristotle,
argues that a thing cannot be reduced from potency to act except
by something which is already in act. In this sense 'every thing
which is moved is moved by another'. If that other is itself moved,
it must be moved by yet another agent. As an infinite series is
impossible, we come in the end to an unmoved mover, a first
mover, 'and all understand that this is God'. 1 This argument
St. Thomas calls the manifestior via . 2 In the Summa contra
Gentiles 3 he develops it at considerable length.

The second proof, which is suggested by the second book of
Aristotle's Metaphysics 4 and which was used by Avicenna, Alan
of Lille and St. Albert, also starts from the sensible world, but
this time from the order or series of efficient causes. Nothing can
be the cause of itself, for in order to be this, it would have to exist
before itself. On the other hand, it is impossible to proceed to
infinity in the series of efficient causes: therefore there must be a
first efficient cause, 'which all men call God'.

The third proof, which Maimonides took over from Avicenna and
developed, starts from the fact that some beings come into exis¬
tence and perish, which shows that they can not be and can be,
that they are contingent and not necessary, since if they were
necessary they would always have existed and would neither come
into being nor pass away. St. Thomas then argues that there must
exist a necessary being, which is the reason why contingent beings
come into existence. If there were no necessary being, nothing at
all would exist.

There are several remarks which must be made, though very
briefly, concerning these three proofs. First of all, when St. Thomas
says that an infinite series is impossible (and this principle is
utilised in all three proofs), he is not thinking of a series stretching
back in time, of a ‘horizontal’ series, so to speak. He is not saying,
for example, that because the child owes its life to its parents and
its parents owe their lives to their parents and so on, there must
have been an original pair, who had no parents but were directly
created by God. St. Thomas did not believe that it can be proved
philosophically that the world was not created from eternity: he
admits the abstract possibility of the world’s creation from
eternity and this cannot be admitted without the possibility of a
beginningless series being admitted at the same time. What he

1 S.T., la, 2, 3, in corpore. * Ibid. 3 i, 13. 4 C. 2.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

342

denies is the possibility of an infinite series in the order of actually
depending causes, of an infinite Vertical' series. Suppose that the
world had actually been created from eternity. There would be
an infinite horizontal or historic series, but the whole series would
consist of contingent beings, for the fact of its being without
beginning does not make it necessary. The whole series, therefore,
must depend on something outside the series. But if you ascend
upwards, without ever coming to a stop, you have no explanation
of the existence of the series: one must conclude with the existence
of a being which is not itself dependent.

Secondly, consideration of the foregoing remarks will show that
the so-called mathematical infinite series has nothing to do with
the Thomist proofs. It is not the possibility of an infinite series
as such which St. Thomas denies, but the possibility of an infinite
series in the ontological order of dependence. In other words, he
denies that the movement and contingency of the experienced
world can be without any ultimate and adequate ontological
explanation.

Thirdly, it might seem to be rather cavalier behaviour on St.
Thomas's part to assume that the unmoved mover or the first
cause or the necessary being is what we call God. Obviously if
anything exists at all, there must be a necessary Being: thought
must arrive at this conclusion, unless metaphysics is rejected
altogether; but it is not so obvious that the necessary being must
be the personal Being whom we call God. That a purely philoso¬
phical argument does not bring us to the full revealed notion of
God needs no elaboration; but, even apart from the full notion
of God as revealed by Christ and preached by the Church, does a
purely philosophical argument give us a personal Being at all?
Did St. Thomas's belief in God lead him perhaps to find more in
the conclusion of the argument than was actually there? Because
he was looking for arguments to prove the existence of the God
in whom he believed, was he not perhaps over-hasty in identifying
the first mover, the first cause and the necessary being with the
God of Christianity and religious experience, the personal Being
to whom man can pray? I think that we must admit that the
actual phrases which St. Thomas appends to the proofs given in
the Summa Theologica (et hoc omnes intelligunt Deum, causam
cfficientem primam quam omnes Deum nominant, quod omnes dicunt
Deum) constitute, if considered in isolation, an over-hasty conclu¬
sion; but, apart from the fact that the Summa Theologica is a

AQUINAS: PROOFS OF GOD'S EXISTENCE 343

summary (and mainly) theological text-book, these phrases should
not be taken in isolation. For example, the actual summary proof
of the existence of a necessary being contains no explicit argument
to show whether that being is material or immaterial, so that the
observation at the end of the proof that this being is called by
everyone God might seem to be without sufficient warrant; but
in the first article of the next question St. Thomas asks if God is
material, a body, and argues that He is not. The phrases in the
question should, therefore, be understood as expressions of the
fact that God is recognised by all who believe in Him to be the first
Cause and necessary Being, not as an unjustifiable suppression of
further argument. In any case the proofs are give* by St. Thomas
simply in outline: it is not as though he had in mind the composi¬
tion of a treatise against professed atheists. If he had to deal with
Marxists, he would doubtless treat the proofs in a different, or at
least in a more elaborate and developed manner: as it is, his main
interest is to give a proof of the praeambula Jidei . Even in the
Summa contra Gentiles the Saint was not dealing primarily with
atheists, but rather with the Mohammedans, who had a firm belief
in God.

5. The fourth proof is suggested by some observations in
Aristotle’s Metaphysics 1 and is found substantially in St. Augustine
and St. Anselm. It starts from the degrees of perfection, of good¬
ness, truth, etc., in the things of this world, which permit of one
making such comparative judgements as 'this is more beautiful
than that', 'this is better than that'. Assuming that such judge¬
ments have an objective foundation, St. Thomas argues that the
degrees of perfection necessarily imply the existence of a best, a
most true, etc., which will be also the supreme being (maxitne ens).

So far the argument leads only to a relatively best. If one can
establish that there actually are degrees of truth, goodness and
being, a hierarchy of being, then there must be one being or
several beings which are comparatively or relatively supreme. But
this is not enough to prove the existence of God, and St. Thomas
proceeds to argue that what is supreme in goodness, for example,
must be the cause of goodness in all things. Further, inasmuch as
goodness, truth and being are convertible, there must be a
supreme Being which is the cause of being, goodness, truth,
and so of all perfection in every other being; et hoc dicimus
Deum .

1 2. 1; 4. 4-

344 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

As the term of the argument is a Being which transcends all
sensible objects, the perfections in question can obviously be only
those perfections which are capable of subsisting by themselves,
pure perfections, which do not involve any necessary relation to
extension or quantity. The argument is Platonic in origin and
presupposes the idea of participation. Contingent beings do not
possess their being of themselves, nor their goodness or onto¬
logical truth; they receive their perfections, share them. The
ultimate cause of perfection must itself be perfect: it cannot receive
its perfection from another, but must be its own perfection: it is
self-existing being and perfection. The argument consists, then, in
the application of principles already used in the foregoing proofs
to pure perfections: it is not really a departure from the general
spirit of the other proofs, in spite of its Platonic descent. One of
the main difficulties about it, however, is, as already indicated, to
show that there actually are objective degrees of being and
perfection before one has shown that there actually exists a Being
which is absolute and self-existing Perfection.

6. The fifth way is the teleological proof, for which Kant had
a considerable respect on account of its antiquity, clarity and
persuasiveness, though, in accordance with the principles of the
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, he refused to recognise its demonstra¬
tive character.

St. Thomas argues that we behold inorganic objects operating
for an end, and as this happens always or very frequently, it
cannot proceed from chance, but must be the result of intention.
But inorganic objects are without knowledge: they cannot, then,
tend towards an end unless they are directed by someone who is
intelligent and possessed of knowledge, as 'the arrow is directed
by the archer'. Therefore there exists an intelligent Being, by
whom all natural things are directed to an end; et hoc dicimus
Deutti. In the Summa contra Gentiles the Saint states the argu¬
ment in a slightly different manner, arguing that when many
things with different and even contrary qualities co-operate
towards the realisation of one order, this must proceed from an
intelligent Cause or Providence; et hoc dicimus Deum. If the proof
as given in the Summa Theologica emphasises the internal finality
of the inorganic object, that given in the Summa contra Gentiles
emphasises rather the co-operation of many objects in the realisa¬
tion of the one world order or harmony. By itself the proof leads
to a Designer or Governor or Architect of the universe, as Kant

AQUINAS: PROOFS OF GOD'S EXISTENCE 345

observed; further reasoning is required in order to show that this
Architect is not only a ‘Demiurge’, but also Creator.

7. The proofs have been stated in more or less the same bold
and succinct way in which St. Thomas states them. With the
exception of the first proof, which is elaborated at some length in
the Summa contra Gentiles, the proofs are given only in very bare
outline, both in the Summa Theologica and in the Summa contra
Gentiles. No mention has been made, however, of Aquinas’s (to
our view) somewhat unfortunate physical illustrations, as when he
says that fire is the cause of all hot things, since these illustrations
are really irrelevant to the validity or invalidity of the proofs as
such. The modem disciple of St. Thomas naturally has not only
to develop the proofs in far greater detail and to consider diffi¬
culties and objections which could hardly have occurred to St.
Thomas, but also to justify the very principles on which the
general line of proof rests. Thus, in regard to the fifth proof given
by St. Thomas, the modem Thomist must take some account of
recent theories which profess to render intelligible the genesis of
the order and finality in the universe without recourse to the
hypothesis of any spiritual agent distinct from the universe, while
in regard to all the proofs he has not only, in face of the Kantian
Critique, to justify the line of argument on which they rest, but
he has to show, as against the logical positivists, that the word
‘God’ has some significance. It is not, however, the task of the
historian to develop the proofs as they would have to be developed
to-day, nor is it his task to justify those proofs. The way in which
St. Thomas states the proofs may perhaps cause some dissatis¬
faction in the reader; but it must be remembered that the Saint
was primarily a theologian and that, as already mentioned, he
was concerned not so much to give an exhaustive treatment of
the proofs as to prove in a summary fashion the praeambula fidei.
He, therefore, makes use of traditional proofs, which either had
or seemed to have some support in Aristotle and which had been
employed by some of his predecessors.

St. Thomas gives five proofs, and among these five proofs he
gives a certain preference to the first, to the extent at least of
calling it the via mani/estior. However, whatever we may think
of this assertion, the fundamental proof is really the third proof
or ‘way’, that from contingency. In the first proof the argument
from contingency is applied to the special fact of motion or
change, in the second proof to the order of causality or causal

346 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

production, in the fourth proof to degrees of perfection and in the
fifth proof to finality, to the co-operation of inorganic objects in
the attainment of cosmic order. The argument from contingency
itself is based on the fact that everything must have its sufficient
reason, the reason why it exists. Change or motion must have its
sufficient reason in an unmoved mover, the series of secondary
causes and effects in an uncaused cause, limited perfection in
absolute perfection, and finality and order in nature in an Intelli¬
gence or Designer. The 'interiority' of the proofs of God's existence
as given by St. Augustine or St. Bonaventure is absent from the
five ways of St. Thomas; but one could, of course, apply the
general principles to the self, if one so wished. As they stand, the
five proofs of St. Thomas may be said to be an explicitation of the
words of the Book of Wisdom 1 and of St. Paul in Romans 2 that God
can be known from His works, as transcending His works.

1 Ch. 13. 1 Ch. z.

CHAPTER XXXV

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS—V: GOD’S NATURE

The negative way—The affirmative way — Analogy—Types of
analogy—A difficulty—The divine ideas—No real distinction
between the divine attributes—God as existence itself '.

I. Once it has been established that the necessary Being exists,
it would seem only natural to proceed to the investigation of God's
nature. It is very unsatisfactory simply to know that a necessary
Being exists, unless at the same time we can know what sort of a
Being the necessary Being is. But a difficulty at once arises. We
have in this life no intuition of the divine essence; we are dependent
for our knowledge on sense-perception, and the ideas which we
form are derived from our experience of creatures. Language too
is formed to express these ideas and so refers primarily to our
experience and would seem to have objective reference only within
the sphere of our experience. How, then, can we come to know a
Being which transcends sense-experience? How can we form ideas
which express in any way the nature of a Being which transcends
the range of our experience, the world of creatures? How can the
words of any human language be at all applicable to the Divine
Being?

St. Thomas was well aware of this difficulty, and indeed the
whole tradition of Christian philosophy, which had undergone the
influence of the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius, himself depen¬
dent on neo-Platonism, would have helped, if help had been
needed, to prevent him indulging in any over-confidence in the
power of the human reason to penetrate the divine essence.
Rationalism of the Hegelian type was quite foreign to his mind,
and we find him saying that we cannot come to know of God quid
sit , what He is (His essence), but only an sit or quod sit, that He
is (His existence). This statement, if taken alone, would seem to
involve complete agnosticism as regards the divine nature, but
this is not St. Thomas's meaning, and the statement must be
interpreted according to his general doctrine and his explanation
of it. Thus in the Summa contra Gentiles 1 he says that ‘the divine
substance exceeds by its immensity every form which our intellect

1 1. 14.

347

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

348

attains; and so we cannot apprehend it by knowing what it is,
but we have some notion of it by coming to know what it is not/
For example, we come to know something of God by recognising
that He is not, and cannot be, a corporeal substance: by denying
of Him corporeality we form some notion of His nature, since we
know that He is not body, though this does not give us of itself
a positive idea of what the divine substance is in itself, and the
more predicates we can deny of God in this way, the more we
approximate to a knowledge of Him.

This is the famous via remotionis or via negativa, so dear to the
Pseudo-Dionysius and other Christian writers who had been
strongly influenced by neo-Platonism; but St. Thomas adds a very
useful observation concerning the negative way. 1 In the case of
a created substance, he says, which we can define, we first of all
assign it to its genus by which we know in general what it is, and
then we add the difference by which it is distinguished from other
things; but in the case of God we cannot assign Him to a genus,
since He transcends all genera, and so we cannot distinguish Him
from other beings by positive differences (per affirmativas different
lias). Nevertheless, though we cannot approach to a clear idea of
God's nature in the same way in which we can attain a clear idea of
human nature, that is, by a succession of positive or affirmative
differentiations, such as living, sensitive or animal, rational, we
can attain some notion of His nature by the negative way, by a
succession of negative differentiations. For example, if we say that
God is not an accident, we distinguish Him from all accidents; if
we say that He is not corporeal, we distinguish Him from some
substances; and thus we can proceed until we obtain an idea of
God which belongs to Him alone ( propria consideratio) and which
suffices to distinguish Him from all other beings.

It must, however, be borne in mind that when predicates are
denied of God, they are not denied of Him because He lacks any
perfection expressed in that predicate, but because He infinitely
exceeds that limited perfection in richness. Our natural knowledge
has its beginning in sense and extends as far as it can be led by
the help of sensible objects. 2 As sensible objects are creatures of
God, we can come to know that God exists, but we cannot attain
by means of them any adequate knowledge of God, since they are
effects which are not fully proportionate to the divine power. But
we can come to know about Him what is necessarily true of Him

1 Contra Cent., 1, 14, * S.T., la, 12, 12. in corpore.

AQUINAS: GOD'S NATURE 349

precisely as cause of all sensible objects. As their cause, He
transcends them and is not and cannot be a sensible object Him¬
self: we can, then, deny of Him any predicates which are bound
up with corporeality or which are inconsistent with His being the
first Cause and necessary Being. But hate non removentur ab eo
propter ejus defectum , sed quia superexcedit . 1 If we say, therefore,
that God is not corporeal, we do not mean that God is less than
body, that He lacks the perfection involved in being body, but
rather that He is more than body, that He possesses none of the
imperfections necessarily involved in being a corporeal substance.

Arguing by means of the negative way St. Thomas shows that
God cannot be corporeal, for example, since the unmoved Mover
and the necessary Being must be pure Act, whereas every corporeal
substance is in potentiality. Again, there cannot be any composi¬
tion in God, either of matter and form or of substance and
accident or of essence and existence. If there were composition of
essence and existence, for instance, God would owe His existence
to another being, which is impossible, since God is the first Cause.
There cannot in fine be any composition in God, as this would be
incompatible with His being as first Cause, necessary Being, pure
Act. We express this absence of composition by the positive word
'simplicity', but the idea of the divine simplicity is attained by
removing from God all the forms of composition which are found
in creatures, so that 'simplicity' here meins absence of composi¬
tion. We cannot form an adequate idea of the divine simplicity
as it is in itself, since it transcends our experience: we know,
however, that it is at the opposite pole, so to speak, from simplicity
or comparative simplicity in creatures. In creatures we experience
the more complex substance is the higher, as a man is higher than
an oyster; but God's simplicity means that He possesses the fullness
of His being and perfection in one undivided and eternal act.

Similarly, God is infinite and perfect, since His esse is not some¬
thing received and limited, but is self-existent; He is immutable,
since the necessary Being is necessarily all that it is and cannot
be changed; He is eternal, since time requires motion and in the
immutable Being there can be no motion. He is one, since He is
simple and infinite. Strictly speaking, however, says St. Thomas,
God is not eternal, but is eternity, since He is His own subsistent
esse in one undivided act. To go through all the various attributes
of God which can be known by the negative way is unnecessary:

1 S.T., la, 12, 12, in corpore.

350 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

it is sufficient to have given some examples to show how, after
proving that God exists as unmoved Mover, first Cause, and
necessary Being, St. Thomas then proceeds to remove from God,
to deny of God, all those predicates of creatures which are incom¬
patible with God’s character as unmoved Mover, first Cause and
necessary Being. There cannot be in God corporeality, composi¬
tion, limitation, imperfection, temporality, etc.

2. Predicates or names such as 'immutable'and 'infinite' suggest
by their very form their association with the negative way, immut¬
able being equivalent to not-mutable and infinite to not-finite;
but there are other predicates applied to God which suggest no
such association, such as good, wise, etc. Moreover, while a
negative predicate, says St. Thomas, 1 refers directly not to the
divine substance, but to the 'removal' of something from the
divine substance, that is, the denial of some predicate's applica¬
bility to God, there are positive predicates or names which are
predicated of the divine substance affirmatively. For example, the
predicate 'non-corporeal' denies corporeality of God, removes it
from Him, whereas the predicate good or wise is predicated
affirmatively and directly of the divine substance. There is, then,
an affirmative or positive way, in addition to the negative way.
But what is its justification if these perfections, goodness, wisdom,
etc., are experienced by us as they are in creatures, and if the
words we use to express these perfections express the ideas we
derive from creatures? Are we not applying to God ideas and
words which have no application save within the realm of expe¬
rience? Are we not faced with the following dilemma? Either we
are predicating of God predicates which apply only to creatures,
in which case our statements about God are false, or we have
emptied the predicates of their reference to creatures, in which
case they are without content, since they are derived from our
experience of creatures and express that experience?

First of all, St. Thomas insists that when affirmative predicates
are predicated of God, they are predicated positively of the divine
nature or substance. He will not allow the opinion of those who,
like Maimonides, make all predicates of God equivalent to negative
predicates, nor the opinion of those who say that 'God is good’ or
'God is living’ means simply ‘God is the cause of all goodness’ or
‘God is the cause of life’. When we say that God is living or God
is life, we do not mean merely that God is not non-living: the

1 S.T., la, 13, 2, in cerpott.

AQUINAS: GOD’S NATURE 351

statement that God is living has a degree of affirmation about
it that is wanting to the statement that God is not a body. Nor
does the man who states that God is living mean only that God
is the cause of life, of all living things: he means to say something
positive about God Himself. Again, if the statement that God is
living meant no more than that God is the cause of all living
things, we might just as well say that God is body, since He is the
cause of all bodies. Yet we do not say that God is body, whereas
we do say that God is living, and this shows that the statement
that God is living means more than that God is the cause of life,
and that a positive affirmation is being made concerning the
divine substance.

On the other hand, none of the positive ideas by means of which
we conceive the nature of God represent God perfectly. Our ideas
of God represent God only in so far as our intellects can know
Him; but we know Him by means of sensible objects in so far as
these objects represent or mirror God, so that inasmuch as
creatures represent God or mirror Him only imperfectly, our ideas,
derived from our experience of the natural world, can themselves
represent God only imperfectly. When we say that God is good
or living, we mean that He contains, or rather is the perfection of,
goodness or life, but in a manner which exceeds and excludes all
the imperfections and limitations of creatures. As regards what is
predicated (goodness, for example), the affirmative predicate which
we predicate of God signifies a perfection without any defect; but
as regards the manner of predicating it every such predicate
involves a defect, for by the word (nomen) we express something
in the way it is conceived by the intellect. It follows, then, that
predicates of this kind may, as the Pseudo-Dionysius observed, be
both affirmed and denied of God; affirmed propter nominis rationem,
denied propter significandi modum . For example, if we make the
statement that God is wisdom, this affirmative statement is true
in regard to the perfection as such; but if we meant that God is
wisdom in precisely that sense in which we experience wisdom, it
would be false. God is wise, but He is wisdom in a sense transcend¬
ing our experience; He does not possess wisdom as an inhering
quality or form. In other words, we affirm of God the essence of
wisdom or goodness or life in a 'supereminent' way, and we deny
of God the imperfections attendant on human wisdom, wisdom as
we experience it. 1 When, therefore, we say that God is good, the

1 Contra Gent., i, 30.

352

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

meaning is not that God is the cause of goodness or that God is
not evil, but that what we call goodness in creatures pre-exists in
God secundum modum altiorem . From this it does not follow that
goodness belongs to God inasmuch as He causes goodness, but
rather that because He is good, He diffuses goodness into things,
according to the saying of Augustine, "because He is good, we
exist". 1

3. The upshot of the foregoing considerations is, therefore, that
we cannot in this life know the divine essence as it is in itself, but
only as it is represented in creatures, so that the names we apply
to God signify the perfections manifested in creatures. From this
fact several important conclusions must be drawn, the first being
this, that the names we apply to God and to creatures are not to
be understood in an univocal sense. For example, when we say
that a man is wise and that God is wise, the predicate "wise" is not
to be understood in an univocal sense, that is, in precisely the
same sense. Our concept of wisdom is drawn from creatures, and
if we applied precisely this concept to God, we should be saying
something false about God, since God is not, and cannot be, wise
in precisely the same sens* in which a man is wise. On the other
hand, the names we apply to God are not purely equivocal, that
is to say, they are not entirely and completely different in meaning
from the meaning they bear when applied to creatures. If they
were purely equivocal, we should have to conclude that we can
gain no knowledge of God from creatures. If wisdom as predicated
of man and wisdom as predicated of God signified something com¬
pletely different, the term "wise" as applied to God would have no
content, no significance, since our knowledge of wisdom is drawn
from creatures and is not based on direct experience of the divine
wisdom. Of course, it might be objected that, though it is true
that if the terms predicated of God were used in an equivocal
sense, we should know nothing of God from creatures, it does not
follow that we can know anything about God from creatures; but
St. Thomas's insistence that we can know something of God from
creatures is based on the fact that creatures, as effects of God,
must manifest God, though they can do this only imperfectly.

Yet if the concepts derived from our experience of creatures and
then applied to God are used neither in an univocal nor in an
equivocal sense, in what sense are they used? Is there any half¬
way house? St. Thomas replies that they are used in an analogical

1 s.r.. Ia, 13, 2.

AQUINAS: GOD'S NATURE 353

sense. When an attribute is predicated analogically of two different
beings, this means that it is predicated according to the relation
they have to some third thing or according to the relation the one
has to the other. As an example of the first type of analogical
predication St. Thomas gives his favourite example, health. 1 An
animal is said to be healthy because it is the subject of health,
possesses health, while medicine is said to be healthy as being the
cause of health, and a complexion is said to be healthy as being
the sign of health. The word "healthy 1 is predicated in different
senses of the animal in general, the medicine and the complexion,
according to the different relations they bear to health; but it is
not predicated in a purely equivocal sense, for all three bear some
real relation to health. Medicine is not healthy in the same sense
that animal is healthy, for the term "healthy" is not employed
univocally, but the senses in which it is used are not equivocal or
purely metaphorical, as when we speak of a smiling meadow. But
this, says St. Thomas, is not the way in which we predicate
attributes of God and creatures, for God and creatures have no
relation to any third object: we predicate attributes of God and
creatures, in so far as the creature has a real relation to God.
When, for example, we predicate being of God and creatures, we
attribute being first and foremost to God, as self-existing being,
secondarily to creatures, as dependent on God. We cannot predi¬
cate being univocally of God and creatures, since they do not
possess being in the same way, nor do we predicate being in a
purely equivocal sense, since creatures have being, though their
being is not like the divine being but is dependent, participated
being.

As regards what is meant by the words we apply to God and
creatures, it is attributed primarily to God and only secondarily
to creatures. Being, as we have seen, belongs essentially to God,
whereas it does not belong essentially to creatures but only in
dependence on God: it is being, but it is a different kind of being
from the divine being, since it is received, derived, dependent,
finite. Nevertheless, though the thing signified is attributed
primarily to God, the name is predicated primarily of creatures.
The reason is tnat we know creatures before we know God, so
that since our knowledge of wisdom, for example, is derived from
creatures and the word primarily denotes the concept derived
from our experience of creatures, the idea of wisdom and the word
1 Contra Gent., I, 34; S.T., Ia, 13, 5.

354

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

are predicated primarily of creatures and analogically of God, even
though in actual fact wisdom itself, the thing signified, belongs
primarily to God.

4. Analogical predication is founded on resemblance. In the De
Veritale 1 St. Thomas distinguishes resemblance of proportion
(convenientia proportions) and resemblance of proportionality ( con -
venientia proportionalitatis). Between the number 8 and the
number 4 there is a resemblance of proportion, while between the
proportions of 6 to 3 and of 4 to 2 there is a resemblance of
proportionality, that is, a resemblance or similarity of two propor¬
tions to one another. Now, analogical predication in a general
sense may be made according to both types of resemblance. The
predication of being in regard to created substance and accident,
each of which has a relation to the other, is an example of analogi¬
cal predication according to proportion, while the predication of
vision in regard to both ocular and intellectual vision is an
example of analogical predication according to proportionality.
What corporeal vision is to the eye, that intellectual apprehension
or vision is to the mind. There is a certain similarity between the
relation of the eye to its vision and the relation of mind to its
intellectual apprehension, a similarity which enables us to speak
of Vision 1 in both cases. We apply the word ‘vision* in the
two cases neither univocally nor purely equivocally, but analo¬
gically.

Now, it is impossible to predicate anything analogically of God
and creatures in the same way that it is possible to predicate being
of substance and accident, for God and creatures have no mutual
real relationship; creatures have a real relation to God, but God
has no real relation to creatures. Nor is God included in the defini¬
tion of any creature in the way that substance is included in the
definition of accident. It does not follow, however, that there can
be no analogy of proportion between God and creatures. Though
God is not related to creatures by a real relation, creatures
have a real relation to God, and we are able to apply the same
term to God and creatures in virtue of that relation. There are
perfections which are not bound up with matter and which do
not necessarily imply any defect or imperfection in the being of
which they are predicated. Being, wisdom and goodness are
examples of such perfections. Obviously we gain knowledge of
being or goodness or wisdom from creatures; but it does not follow

1 2, II, in corpore .

AQUINAS: GOD’S NATURE 355

that these perfections exist primarily in creatures and only secon¬
darily in God, or that they are predicated primarily of creatures
and only secondarily of God. On the contrary, goodness, for
instance, exists primarily in God, who is the infinite goodness and
the cause of all creaturely goodness, and it is predicated primarily
of God and only secondarily of creatures, even though creaturely
goodness is what we first come to know. Analogy of proportion is
possible, then, in virtue of the creature's relation and likeness to
God. To this point I shall return shortly.

It has been argued that St. Thomas came to abandon analogy
of proportionality in favour of the analogy of proportion (in the
acceptable sense); but this does not seem to me likely. In the
Commentary on the Sentences 1 he gives both types of analogy,
and even if in later works, like the De Potentia, the Sumnta contra
Gentiles and the Summa Theologica , he seems to emphasise analogy
of proportion, that does not seem to me to indicate that he ever
abandoned analogy of proportionality. This type of analogical
predication may be used in two ways, symbolically or properly.
We can speak of God as ‘the Sun', meaning that what the sun is
to the bodily eye, that God is to the soul; but we are then speaking
symbolically, since the word ‘sun' refers to a material thing and
can be predicated of a spiritual being only in a symbolic sense.
We can say, however, that there is a certain similarity between
God's relation to His intellectual activity and man's relation to
his intellectual activity, and in this case we are not speaking merely
symbolically, since intellectual activity as such is a pure perfection.

The foundation of all analogy, then, that which makes analogical
predication possible, is the likeness of creatures to God. We do not
predicate wisdom of God merely because God is the cause of all
wise things, for in that case we might just as well call God a stone,
as being the cause of all stones; but we call Him wise because
creatures, God's effects, manifest God, are like to Him, and because
a pure perfection like wisdom can be formally predicated of Him.
But what is this likeness? In the first place it is only a one-way
likeness, that is, the creature is like to God, but we cannot properly
say that God is like the creature. God is the absolute standard, as
it were. In the second place creatures are only imperfectly like
God; they cannot bear a perfect resemblance to Him. This means
that the creature is at the same time both like and unlike God. It is
like God in so far as it is an imitation of Him; it is unlike God in

1 In 4 Sent., 49, 2, 1, ad 6.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

356

so far as its resemblance to Him is imperfect and deficient. Analo¬
gical predication, therefore, lies between univocal and equivocal
predication. In analogical predication the predicate is applied to
God and creatures neither in precisely the same sense nor in
totally different senses; it is applied at the same time in similar
and dissimilar senses. 1 This notion of simultaneous similarity and
difference is fundamental in analogy. The notion may, it is true,
occasion considerable difficulties from the logical standpoint; but
it would be inappropriate to discuss here the objections of modem
positivists to analogy.

St. Thomas distinguishes, then, analogy of proportion (analogia
secundum convenientiam proportionis) and analogy of proportionality
[analogia secundum convenientiam proportionalitatis). As we have
seen, he does not admit in regard to God and creatures that
analogy of proportion which is applicable to substance and accident
in respect of being; by analogy of proportion in natural theology
he means that analogy in which a predicate is applied primarily
to one analogue, namely God, and secondarily and imperfectly to
the other analogue, namely the creature, in virtue of the creature's
real relation and likeness to God. The perfection attributed to the
analogues is really present in both of them, but it is not present in
the same way, and the one predicate is used at the same time in
senses which are neither completely different nor completely
similar. Terminology has changed since the time of St. Thomas,
and this kind of analogy is now called analogy of attribution.
Analogy of proportionality, the resemblance of proportions, is
sometimes called analogy of proportion, in distinction from the
analogy of attribution; but not all Scholastics and commentators
on St. Thomas employ the terms in precisely the same way.

Some Scholastics have maintained that being, for example, is
predicable of God and creatures only by analogy of proportionality
and not by analogy of attribution. Without, however, wishing to
enter on a discussion of the value of analogy of proportionality as
such, I do not see how we could know that God has any perfection
save by way of the analogy of attribution. All analogical predica¬
tion rests on the real relation and likeness of creatures to God, and
it seems to me that the analogy of proportionality presupposes
analogy of proportion or attribution and that the latter is the more
fundamental of the two kinds of analogy.

5. If one reads what St. Thomas has to say of analogy, it may

1 Cf, S. 7 \, la, 13, 5, in corpore.

AQUINAS: GOD’S NATURE 357

appear that he is simply examining the way in which we speak
about God, the verbal and conceptual implications of our state¬
ments, and that he is not actually establishing anything about our
real knowledge of God. But it is a fundamental principle with
St. Thomas that the perfections of creatures must be found in the
Creator in a super-eminent manner, in a manner compatible with
the infinity and spirituality of God. For example, if God has
created intellectual beings, God must be possessed of intellect; we
cannot suppose that He is less than intellectual. Moreover, a
spiritual being must be an intellectual form, as Aristotle says,
and the infinite spiritual being must be possessed of infinite intelli¬
gence. On the other hand, God's intelligence cannot be a faculty
distinct from His essence or nature, since God is pure Act and not
a composite being, nor can God know things successively, since
He is changeless and incapable of accidental determination. He
knows future events in virtue of His eternity, by which all things
are present to Him. 1 God must possess the perfection of intellec¬
tuality, but we cannot form any adequate concept of what the
divine intelligence is, since we have no experience of it: our
knowledge of the divine intelligence is imperfect and inadequate,
but it is not false; it is analogical knowledge. It would be false
only if we were unaware of its imperfection and actually meant to
ascribe to God finite intelligence as such: we cannot help thinking
and speaking of the divine intelligence in terms of human concepts
and language, since there are no others available to us, but at the
same time we are aware that our concepts and language are
imperfect. We cannot, for instance, help speaking as though God
'foresaw' future events, but we are aware that for God there is
not past or future. Similarly we must ascribe to God the perfection
of free will in respect of other objects than Himself, but God's free
will cannot involve changeableness: He willed freely to create the
world in time, but He willed it freely from all eternity, in virtue
of the one act of will which is identical with His essence. Of the
divine free will we can, therefore, form no adequate conception;
but the relation of creatures to God shows us that God must
possess free will and we can realise some of the things which the
divine free will cannot mean; yet the positive reality of the divine
free will exceeds our comprehension, precisely because we are
creatures and not God. Only God can comprehend Himself.

It can scarcely be denied, however, that a grave difficulty arises

1 Cf. S.T., la, 14, 13.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

358

in connection with the doctrine of analogy. If our idea of intelli¬
gence, for example, is derived from human intelligence, it obviously
cannot, as such, be applied to God, and St. Thomas insists that no
predicate which is applied to God and creatures is applied univo-
cally. On the other hand, unless we were willing to acquiesce in
agnosticism, we could not allow that such predicates are used in a
purely equivocal sense. What, then, is the positive content of our
concept of the divine intelligence? If St. Thomas adhered simply
to the via negativa the difficulty would not arise: he would be
saying simply that God is not not-intelligent or that He is super-
intelligent, admitting that we have no positive idea of what the
divine intelligence is. But St. Thomas does not stick simply to
the via negativa : he admits the via affirmativa. Our idea of divine
intelligence has, therefore, a positive content; but what can that
positive content be? Is the reply that a positive content is obtained
by denying the limitations of human intelligence, its finiteness,
discursive character, potentiality and so on? In this case, however,
we either attain a positive concept of the divine intelligence as such
or we attain a concept of the ‘essence’ of intelligence, apart from
finitude or infinity, which would seem to be univocal in respect of
God and creatures. It might even appear that the negations either
cancel out the content altogether or make it into an idea of the
essence of intelligence which would be univocal in respect of divine
and human intelligence. It was for this reason that Duns Scotus
later insisted that we can form univocal concepts applicable to
both God and creatures, though there is no univocity in the real
order in respect of God and creatures. It is sometimes said that
analogical concepts are partly the same as and partly different
from univocal concepts; but the same difficulty recurs. The
element of ‘sameness’ will be an univocal element, while the ele¬
ment of ‘difference’ will either be negative or it will have no
content, since we have no immediate experience of God from which
the idea can be derived. But further consideration of this point is
best reserved for our treatment of St. Thomas’s doctrine of
knowledge. 1

6 . Mention of the divine intelligence naturally leads one on to
raise the question what St. Thomas thought of the doctrine of the
divine ideas. In the first place he establishes that there must be
ideas in the divine mind, necesse est ponere in mente divina ideas , 2
since God has created things not by chance, but intelligently,

1 Cf. Ch. XXXVIII, sect. 4. * S.T., la, i 5 , 1.

AQUINAS: GOD’S NATURE 359

according to the exemplary idea He conceived in His mind. He
remarks that Plato erred in asserting the existence of ideas which
were not in any intellect, and he observes that Aristotle blamed
Plato on this account. As a matter of fact, Aristotle, who did not
believe in any free creation by God, did not blame Plato for making
the ideas independent of the divine mind, but for maintaining their
subsistence apart from the human mind, if one is considering their
subjective reality, and apart from things, if one is considering
their objective reality as forms. In asserting the existence of ideas
in the divine mind St. Thomas is therefore following in the wake
of the tradition which began with Plato, was developed in Middle
Platonism and neo-Platonism and lived on, in a Christian setting,
in the philosophy of Augustine and those who followed him.

One of the reasons why the neo-Platonists placed the ideas in
the Nous, the second hypostasis or first emanating divine being,
and not in the One or supreme Godhead was that the presence of
a multiplicity of ideas in God would, they thought, impair the
divine unity. How did St. Thomas meet this difficulty, when the
only real distinction he could admit in God was the distinction
between the three divine Persons in the Trinity (and with this
distinction he was not, of course, concerned as philosopher)? His
answer is that from one point of view we must say that there is a
plurality of ideas in God, as Augustine said, since God knows each
individual thing to be created, but that from another point of
view there cannot be a plurality of ideas in God, since this would
contradict the divine simplicity. What he means is this. If by
idea one refers to the content of the idea, then one must admit
a plurality of ideas in God, since God knows many objects; but if
by idea one means the subjective mental determination, the
species, then one cannot admit a plurality of ideas in God, since
God’s intellect is identical with His undivided essence and cannot
receive determinations or any sort of composition. God knows
His divine essence not only as it is in itself, but also as imitable
outside itself in a plurality of creatures. This act of knowledge,
as it exists in God, is one and undivided and is identical with His
essence; but since God not only knows His essence as imitable in
a multiplicity of creatures, but also knows that in knowing His
essence He knows a multiplicity of creatures, we can and must
speak of a plurality of ideas in God, for ‘idea’ signifies, not the
divine essence as it is in itself, but the divine essence as the
exemplar of this or that object. And it is the exemplar of many

360 THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

objects. In other words, the truth or falsity of our statements in
regard to God must be estimated in terms of human language.
To deny a plurality of ideas in God without qualification would
be to deny that God knows a plurality of objects; but the truth
that God knows His essence as imitable by a plurality of creatures
must not be stated in such a way as to imply that there is a
multiplicity of real species or really distinct modifications in the
divine intellect. 1

This discussion of the divine ideas is of some interest because it
shows that St. Thomas is by no means simply an Aristotelian, but
t