YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE HIBBERT LECTURES SECOND SERIES 1916 IFORKS ON KINDRED SUBJECTS BT THE SAME AUTHOR THE RELIGION OF TIME AND THE RELIGION OF ETERNITY. {Essex Hall Lecture.) Essex Hall, 1899. DANTE AND AQUINAS. {Jo-weft Lectures.) Dent & Sons, 191 3. THE HIBBERT LECTURES SECOND SERIES THE REACTIONS BETWEEN DOGMA £^ PHILOSOPHY ILLUSTRATED FROM THE WORKS OF S. THOMAS AQUINAS LECTURES DELIVERED IN LONDON AND OXFORD OCTOBER-DECEMBER 1916 BY PHILIP H. WICKSTEED, M.A., Litt.D. LONDON WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.2 1920 JOSEPHO ESTLIN CARPENTER AMICE CONSTANTISSIME dilectissime tu mihi primitias ingenii tui DEDICASTI JUVENIS TIBI POST OCTO LUSTRA MEMBRA HAEC LIBRI DISIECTA SENEX RETULI MAJORA VIRIBUS MEIS TU SEMPER DE ME SPERABAS MINORA HEU QUANTO SPE TUA BENIGNE TAMEN ACCIPIAS PREFACE My very special thanks are due to the Hibbert Trustees, in the first place, for the characteristic generosity of conception which enabled them to sanction the choice of a subject that lay, in appear ance at least, somewhat out of line with the general scheme of the Hibbert Lectures ; and in the second place, for the unfailing patience and consideration they have exercised during the long delays in pre paring this volume for the press, delays caused in part by the nature of the work, but in part by a protracted period of illness, during which all work had to be suspended. I have further gratefully to acknowledge the kind ness of Dr Estlin Carpenter in looking through my proofs ; courtesies from the staffs of the Bodleian and British Museum libraries ; and resourceful support and suggestion from a much-tried publisher. As for " works consulted," I should like to render a tribute of respectful admiration to Dr Ludwig Schiitz's Thomas- Leooicon,*^ a work which I have * Thomas-Lexicon. Sammlung, Vbersetzung und ErJdarung der i-n sa-mtlichen Werken des h. Thonias vmi Aquin vorkommenden Kunstaus- driicke und rvissenschaftlichen Ausspriiche. Von Dr Ludwig Schutz. Zweite, sehr vergrosserte Auflage. Paderborn, 1895. viii PREFACE found faultlessly accurate, and, within its prescribed limits, almost unfailingly complete.* Other obligations (which, owing to the nature of the work, are not numerous) are recorded as occasion arises. The lectures on which this book is founded were orally delivered in the autumn of 1916 in University Hall, London, and at Manchester College, Oxford, and in preparing them for the press I have preserved the form of direct address and the essentially popular treatment of the subject-matter. I fear I must add that, in spite of many efforts, I have failed to elimi nate repetitions which are less tolerable in a printed volume than in addresses to a partially fluctuating audience. In the notes and citations added to each lecture f I have not aimed at popularity, but have tried to be of some service to students. It has been my wish to substantiate every important statement as to the teaching of Aquinas by direct citation of his own words, and I have followed the same rule as far as possible with regard to other authors that lie on the direct line of comparison or illustration. I am not without hope that these citations, and especi ally those in the two Excursus at the end of the volume, may, if carefully read, be found a useful introduction to the study of Aquinas, and may * Cf. first footnote on p. 205. t The figures in brackets, (1), (2), et eet., refer to those notes at the end of the several lectures. Footnotes on the page are indi cated by the usual signs, *, t, et eet. PREFACE ix smooth out by anticipation certain difficulties in the conceptions and in the technical language of the Schoolmen which are likely to give trouble to the beginner if he attacks the text of S. Thomas without any special preparation.* The English student however, even if his know ledge of Latin is elementary or non-existent, is recommended not to neglect the notes, since he wrill often be able to find material in them which interprets or supplements the text. In particular I hope he will not fail to note the references to the Poet Laureate's Spirit of Man. I chanced (in accordance with the Poet's invitation) to be faithfully " bathing " and "not fishing" in the waters of that unique anthology when this book was going through the press, and I found so much in it which I thought would help my readers that I could not but direct them to it. The Poet may be sure that they who come to fish will return to bathe ; and raeanwhile he will forgive me for seeking to use in fragments what is born to be enjoyed as a whole. A word must be added on the relation of this work to my previous essay on Dante and Aquinas.'^ I have not been able to avoid some overlapping, but in the main the two are supplementary to each other. In especial I must refer the reader to Dante and Aquinas for some general account of S. Thomas * Should this volume fall into the hands of any established Thomist scholar I may perhaps invite him to glance at the treatment of the principia individuantia on pp. 465-475. t Dent & Sons, 1913. X PREFACE and his works, nothing of the kind being attempted in this volume. It may be convenient, however, to add a note here on the chronology of some of the principal works of Aquinas. He was probably born in 1227, and before he was much (or perhaps at all) over thirty he had completed his vast commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, several important opuscula, and the long and elaborate Quaestiones disptitatae de veritate. Much of the next decade of his life was spent in Italy, where he worked for some years (1261-1264) under the direct impulse of Pope Urban IV. In this decade he undertook a mass of exegetical work on the Scriptures and on Aristotle, composed his wonderful Officium de festo corporis Christi, his Quaestio disputata de anima, and his Summa contra Gentiles or Summa philosophica. Before his death in 1274, at the age of about forty- seven, he had lectured again for some years in Paris, had completed the Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei et creaturis together with a further group of Aristotelian commentaries, and had carried the best known of all his works, the Summa Theologiae, to an advanced point in the third section which was to have concluded it.* The list of his authentic works, according to Mandonnet, reaches the figure of eighty-five. * See the catalogue of Ptolemy of Lucca in Des ecrits authentiques de S. Thomas d'Aquin. Seco7ide edition, revue et corrigee. By Pierre Mandonnet, O.P. Fribourg (Suisse), 191O, PREFACE xi Note on the System of References and Abbreviations The student who has the works of Aquinas under his hand will find little difficulty in understanding the references in this book, but a few words on some of the characteristic forms of Scholastic literature may be acceptable to the uninitiated. Amongst the works which Aquinas presents to us in forms more or less familiar to modern readers may be mentioned continuous commentaries on a great number and a great variety of books or other docu ments ; essays on special points of science, philosophy, or theology ; answers to correspondents on specific questions ; and homiletical, liturgical, devotional, and controversial writings of varied interest. But in ad dition to these we possess a number of Quaestiones disputatae, which represent actual discussions which Aquinas conducted in the theological schools. These discussions were open to all students and also to Masters. A fixed subject was handled continuously at successive meetings, under appropriately determined headings, in the form of quaestiones subdivided into articuli, such as : " Whether a disembodied soul retains its powers of sensation." Arguments were urged and authorities quoted on either side, and at the close the teacher summed up the result and gave a definite answer to the question. After the discussion it appears that someone generally drew up a report. First came a summary of the arguments xii PREFACE and quotations advanced against the conclusion finally reached. They were given concisely as sepa rate objecta, or points in opposition (commonly but inaccurately styled objectiones). These objecta, though arranged in some system, need have no connection with each other, might even contradict each other, but they had in common that each of them presented some objection to the conclusion which had been reached. The arguments on the other and victorious side were usually represented, at this stage, merely by the citation of some high authority (which need not, however, be in itself higher than the authorities that had been cited in the objecta), such as Scripture, Aristotle, a decree of a Council, or a liturgical or other formula of the Church. This was labelled sed contra. Sometimes, however, the arguments urged on the right side of the question (or, if the final answer is quaUfied, on the preponderatingly right side) go too far, or otherwise need adjustment, and in that case all such arguments are set out successively under the per contra as though they were another set of objecta. Then follows the summing up of the presiding teacher, constituting the body {corpus) of the article. It consists in a neat, systematic, and constructive argument, essay, or miniature treatise, answering the question under considera tion in a positive and expository rather than a polemical spirit. Then, finally, comes the special refutation or treatment of such points in the objecta (or under the per contra) and such explanations or parryings of the authorities there cited as may PREFACE xiii seem necessary, so far as they have not been in cidentally deflated or made irrelevant in the corpus or systematic answer. All this was done to the best of his ability by the reporter, whoever he might be ; and sometimes, as in the case of a great body of the teaching of Duns Scotus, this was as far as the redaction of the dis cussion ever got. But in the case of Aquinas we are more fortunate. The reportata, or reports, were submitted to him, and were revised for what we may call publication by his own hand. Amongst these Quaestiones disputatae are many works of great importance and of great bulk. On the ground they cover they are fuller and often more search ing than the Summa Theologiae itself. Amongst them are the De potentia, the De malo, the De veritate, and the De anima. They fill two volumes of the collected works of Aquinas, if we include the Quodlibeta. These Quodlibeta form a kind of variant on the Quaestiones disputatae. A professor undertook, on a certain day, to give his answers to any questions which anyone chose to ask him. The questions were on points raised without notice by those present, and need not have any connection with each other. There seems to have been no discussion, and in their published form the Quodlibeta simply gave the questions and the answers. The Summa Theologiae is a textbook, and not a record of actual discussions. But it is throughout thrown into the form of a discussion, and the general xiv PREFACE arrangement of the articles is precisely similar to that in the Quaestiones disputatae.* The abbreviations employed in this volume are as follows : q. = quaestio. a. = articulus. ob. = objectum. contra. (See above.) c. = corpus, or body of the article. ad 1" et cei. = special answer to the first objectum et eet. Thus Sum.. Theol, i''-ii''^ q. 79 : a. 4. ad i" = fourth article of the seventy-ninth question in the first division of the second part of the Summa Theologiae, in the answer to the first objectum. Sum. Theol., iii^ q. 61 : a. 3. c. = the body of the third article of the sixty- first question of the third part of the Summa Theologiae. De potentia (or Quaest. disp. de pot.), q. 3 : a. 6. ad 4°' is to be interpreted on the same system. The arrangement of the commentary on the Sententiae of Petrus Lombardus is more complicated. Peter's work itself is divided into Libri, which are subdivided into Distinctiones. Aquinas takes each Distinction as the basis for a series of quaestiones, * On all these matters consult the works of Mandonnet referred to in the notes on pp. x and 5, PREFACE XV subdivided into articuli, and treated on the same principle as has been expounded above, except that the corpus or substantive answer is called the Solutio. Very often, however, the article itself is again sub divided into quaestiunculae. In such a case the objecta are grouped successively under the headings of quaestiti?ictda 2, 3, et eet. (the heading quaestiuncula 1 being "taken as read," without being written), after which follow the solutiones 1, 2, et eet., each solution being foUowed by a refutation of the special group of objecta which concern it. There may also be references to the prologi prefixed to the several books by Aquinas, or to the divisio textus which opens his treatment of each distinction, or his ex positio textus which closes it. Any system of reference will probably be found extremely bewildering by the unpractised student, but if he is handling the Parma edition, which is the most widely diffused, he will find some relief in the page references to that edition which I have suppUed.* 4 Dist., xlviii. q. 1 : a. 3. sol. c. and ad 1", 4"^ = the body of the solution of the third article of the first question under the forty- eighth distinction in the Commentum in quartum Librum sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi, and also the special answers to the first and fourth objecta under the same article. * On editions of Aquinas and the page references employed in this volume in general see the note on p, 67. xvi PREFACE 4 Dist, 1. q. 2 : a. 3. sol. 2. = the solution of the second quaestiuncula under the third article ofthe second question under the fiftieth distinction, et eet. The references to the commentaries, the opuscula, and the works that are arranged in lectures, or in books and chapters, will present no difficulties ; but it should be noted that the references in square brackets to the sections of the Aristotelian com mentaries, such as [§ 48] on p. 467, are to the division into sections, running continuously through each book of an Aristotelian treatise, which were current in the Schools. They will be found convenient for cross reference to Averrhoes or Albertus Magnus. In citations I have as a rule followed the punctua tion, orthography, and variations of type of the edition to which in each case I give the reference ; and as the editions are not consistent with each other, nor always with themselves, this has resulted in a want of symmetry which 1 must beg the reader to condone. The printed texts of most of the works of Aquinas are so bad as to necessitate frequent correction or emendation. I have exercised some freedom in this matter, but this need give the reader no sense of insecurity, for I hope I have erred in excess rather than in defect in the matter of giving him warning of departures from the actual text of the edition cited. •.• The brief conclusio that appears at the head of the corpus of each article in most editions of the Summa Theologiae is editorial, and not from the hand of Aquinas. ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments A word to the general reader and to the student Notes on chronology of the works of Aquinas Explanation of references Lecture I. The task of Aquinas Conditions of the task of Aquinas The Ecclesiastical Tradition — {a) Dogma . (6) Natiural Theology, et eet. Neoplatonism and the Arabian Neoplatonists Closer determination of the task of Aquinas relation to his precursors Boetius . . , , Scotus Erigena Anselm . . . , The question of the unbelieving opponents Abelard .... Aquinas on reason and revelation and his PASB vii vii viii X xi 1-65 1 212332 36 43 4.550 54 56 Notes to Lecture I. 66-117 On Aristotle and the changing attitude of Christian writers towards him . . . .66 Literary echoes of Neoplatonic mysticism in Augustine and Bernard . . . . .70 Aristotle's deities, Plato's ideas, and the doctrine of the animated heavens in Aristotle, Aquinas, Avicenna, and Averrhoes . . .72 xviii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS PASS 86 Aquinas on Platonic ideas and on Augustine's Platonism Augustine on science and the meanings of Scripture , 89 Citations from — Boetius ,,,••• 89 Erigena . . . • -90 Anselm and earlier writers on the atonement . 99 Anselm on faith and reason , . .103 Anselm and Abelard on unbelieving adversaries , 1 06 Abelard on revelation and reason and on Gentile believers , , . ,110 Aquinas on the point that revelation will never contradict reason , . , ,115 Lecture II. The goal postulated by human nature. Preliminary discussion of mysti cism 118-148 Demonstration that the constitution of man implies a divine promise of conclusive bliss as normal to man , , . . ,118 Human blessedness must refer to specifically human faculties of knowledge and love (intellect and will), and must consist primarily in knowing God in his essential being . . .120 Is such knowledge possible to man ? Opposing mystic and Aristotelian answers . , ,128 On certain types of mysticism. Contrast between knowing God in his essence and knowing him through his effects. Illustrations from Goethe and Wordsworth , . .132 Aquinas a mystic in his demand and an Aristotelian in his psychology , . . ,140 Th€ fulfilment of the divine promise and of the human claim only possible by natural and supernatural enlargement of human faculties hereafter, and preparation here by revelation of truths inaccessible to the natural faculties of man. . . . .141 Summary, and repetition of proviso that revealed tmth must not contradict reason . . j 4,g ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS xix PAGE Notes to Lecture II. .... 149-156 On the intellect as a specifically human faculty and its implied promise , . , 149 x^ On the integral place of revelation in the fulfilment of the divine promise , . , .154 Lecture III. Scripture the authoritative guide. Grounds for accepting its authority. " Belief" and knowledge. Joyous or imeasy movements of the intellect under the command of authority. The philosophy of faith, doubt, and conver sion. Grace and the attractive or repel lent aspect of revealed truth . . 157 196 Restatement of the elements of the Thomist synthesis and the essential place in it of the doctrine of revelation . . , , ,157 Demonstration, in the Contra Gentiles, of tlie miraculous authority of the Scripture , , . l60 Adopted as adequate by Protestants, but needs supple menting from the Catholic point of view , 1 64 Necessary links and supplements, establishing the authority of the Church, supplied by Aquinas incidentally , , , , l65 Why only incidentally. Reflections . , . 1 73 Distinction between the certainty of belief on authority (will, love) and the certainty of knowledge (intellect). The meritoriousness of faith , 177 The intellect can be convinced by authority, but can not be satisfied by it, and so may devoutly inquire into the mysteries of faith, under due submission, or may make presumptuous and recalcitrant demands for direct satisfaction. The philosophj of doubt, of conversion, of intolerance, of obscurantism, of strained or insincere apologetics . . , ,186 XX ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS PASB How it can be thought " meritorious " to put conscious pressure upon the intelligence. An illustrative story from Joinville . • • .189 The doctrine of "gi-ace." To a soul in grace the mysteries of faith, though not fully intelligible, are " connatural " and attractive. If the in tellect rebels against them it is a temptation of Satan, and the believer must fear that he is falling from grace . . • ,193 The Contra Gentiles as an attempt to predispose the natural man to feel the mysteries of faith as connatural to him, and to accept them on authority that he lovingly " chooses " to acknowledge , . , . ,194 Notes to Lecture III 197-227 The vocatio interior that drew men to Qirist when he was on earth , , , .197 The principia of theology in the Scripture and the Creeds, and the authority of the Church in interpreting Scripture . . .197 The authority of the usage of the Church . . 210 The will and the intellect in relation to faith, the security of faith, the conditions under which implicit without explicit faith may suffice . 214 The nature of doubt and the connaturality of revealed truths to a soul in grace. On the "belief" of devils ...... 222 Analogy of " disposition '' of a mind to " disposition " of matter when a higher form is to be received . 226 Lecture IV. Natural and Revealed Theology 228-278 (i.) Natural Theology. Proofs of the existence of God. The argument from motion , . , . . 228 Is the order of matter-in-motion self-sustaining ,' , 232 - Platonic superstructure on Aristotelian foundation. Of the One and Unconditioned only negative pre dications can be fully valid . . . 334 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS xxi PAOE But "analogically" understood such terms as "good ness" may be positively and "properly" predicated , . . . . 237 The problem of evil ..... 239 The principle of impossibilia per se. Confusion of grada tion, imperfection and evil. Hell and those in it . . . . . . 244 A Plotinian corrective . . . . .251 Positive " analogical " predications of God, so far as true, are helpful in the variety of their approach towards the ineffable unity of the truth at which they aim . , , 254 Wide scope of natural theology. Significance of the Contra Gentiles. Are the conclusions foregone.^ 255 (ii,) Revealed Theology. The function of reason in respect to revealed truths . 260 Neoplatonic and Christian phases of trinitarian doctrine 262 Platonism and Platonic idealism never dislodged by Aristotelianism from this region of thought. Self-contradiction of Nicene formulse , . 264 Key to disquisitions on the Trinity in Aquinas. Reason must always be controlled, often warned off, but never warped or deflected by the authori tatively determined truth on which it is exercised , , . . , 266 Are the conditions observed ? . , 276 The doctrine of transubstantiation . , . 276 Notes to Lecture IV 279-360 Anselm and Aquinas on the ontological proof , . 279 The argument from motion. Aquinas on Aristotle's views as to the etemity of matter-in-motion, and as to creation . . . .281 Citations illustrative of the theology of negation. Uni vocal, equivocal, analogical, and metaphorical predications . . . . .287 Illustrations of the doctrine of evil as a negation only. Of hell. Of the distinction between the natura and the voluntas of God , , 306 xxii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS PASE Are all the names for God that can be taken in their " proper " sense synonymous ? , . . 324 Enumeration of the chief subjects included in natural theology. An illustration of its limits . 331 Illustrations of the origin and establishment of the Nicene doctrine of thetrinity. Varied attempts to escape from the resultant impasse. (Includ ing (on pp, 335-342) a connected exposition of sundiy aspects of the teaching of Plotinus) . 331 The Eucharist , , , , , 358 Lecture V. Psychology. The visio Dei . 361-391 A glance backward and forward . . 36I Influence of Aristotle's De anima . . S6'i The self-revelation of the Deity both to and in in telligences. Angels and men. Each angel a separate species. Men individuals of one species. Matter the principle of individuation, and the vehicle for actualising the potential faculties of the human mind . . , 364 Data of senses transmuted by the mind into " intelligi bility," Hierarchy of senses , . .371 Abstraction, the specific power of the human mind, cannot wholly sublimate our thoughts from material images ¦ . , . 370 But after death we may hope to gain some powers of direct perception of spiritual beings (angels and God himself) ... 3g4 But our natural powers, even so, must remain inadequate to the vision of God in his essence . , 386 This vision can only become possible to us by the miraculous self-imparting of God to our souls , 388 An anecdote as to a mystic experience of S. Thomas , 391 Notes to Lecture V. . . . , 392-409 The special place of man in the manifold self-revelation of God. Man is supreme over material nature and constitutes the horizon between the material and spiritual orders . , . 392 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS xxiii PAQB The development of infants, had man not fallen. Indi viduality within a species. Matter as the "thingness'' of things. Berkleyan idealism and the Thomist belief in the objectivity of material things . . , 396 On species sensibiles, phantasmata, and on species in- telligibiles (a) as creations of the mind, (6) as divinely implanted media quibus of the direct perception of spiritual existences , 403 Miscellaneous references and illustrations . , 406 Lecture VI. Doctrine of the Soul . . 410-448 Aristotle regarded the human soul, or collectivity of vital functions, as the realisation of the vital potenti alities of man, and therefore as a form. The Christian consciousness regarded it as an entity, Aquinas had to show that it is both. Analogous difficulties in modern times raised by doctrine of evolution . , ,410 Examination of the meaning of "soul" and "form." The rational soul as the form of man . 414 Problem of individuality within a species, Principia individuantia. Unity of forms. Embryology , 423 Attempted solution. Graded series of forms culminating in forms that are entities , . , 430 Reflections on the problem of the connection between body and soul. The illusory nature of material " explanations " of the phenomena of con sciousness . , , , , 436 Sense of kinship with the spirit of the universe fostered by the intellectual, aesthetic, and moral con stitution of our minds . , 443 Notes to Lecture VI 449-479 On Aristotle's views as to the cosmic connections of the human vols, and the interpretation of them by Arabian and Christian philosophers . , 449 What Aquinas means by " understanding " a thing * , 458 * For supplementary note on this subject see Index II, under intelligere. XXIV ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS PAOU 461 462 A disembodied soul is not a "man " Argument for the immortality of the soul On the principia individuantia . . ¦ ^"^ Illustrations of the doctrine of the continuous gradation of forms ; and the kinship of the soul to the power behind and within nature . . 475 Lecture VII. Ethics .... 480-509 Contrasts between Aristotelian and Christian ethics. Relative and absolute standards. Sense of sin. Love of God. Slavery and the relations of the sexes. Heaven and disinterestedness. Asceticism . . " • ¦ 4'80 Distinction (analogous to that between the truths of reason and those of revelation) between the ethics of the natural (Aristotelian) virtues and the ethics of the supernatural or "infused" virtues that come as gracious " gifts " from God . . , . . .492 Merit and freedom of the will. Parallel and contrast between a fixed goal for the will and fixed starting points (axioms) for the intellect. Need of the "infused" virtues of grace to "repair the ravage ofthe fall " in man's moral nature. The Beatitudes . . . 496 Love of God {caritns) and the natural passions. Mortal and venial sin , . , , 504 Notes to Lecture VII. . Aristotle, Bernard, and Aquinas on bliss and human and beyond the range of man Fear as a motive and in relation to love . Matrimony . . . , , The Virgin and the state of innocence . Natural and infused virtues, gifts, and cnritas Lecture VIII. Poetry and Imagination . Hymns and the Officium corporis Christi Hypothetical psychologies 510- -525 love 510 511 514 514 5lfe 526- -548 526 531 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS xxv PASE On unfallen man , . . . .532 On angels and eternity . , , , 536 On harmonisings , . , , , 544 Epilogue 549-565 Continuity of thought under metamorphoses of system , 549 Epigenesis the characteristic of the system of Aquinas. His sharp division between reason and revela tion prepares the way for the extinction of theology as a guaranteed system imposed from above on human thought and experience . 551 Heirs of the inheritance of the Church ? . . 559 Affinity between sincerity of conviction and sense of absolute values , , , , 562 Notes to Lecture VIII. . . . 566-581 The Officium de festo corpo-ris Christi . . . 566 The state of innocence ..... 567 Interpretation, by means of our own experiences and psychology, of the angelic states of conscious ness. On eternity, on memory, on relations between angel and angel and between angel and man , . . , , 572 On harmonisings , , . , 579 Excursus I. Intellect and Will . . 582-620 Unity of the anima atnd multiplicity of its powers . 582 The object of the will is the bonum and its " act " is love, expressed as choice (not as effort). The object of the intellect is the verum and its " act " is understanding . . . 584 The goal of the intellect is in its own act of under standing, the goal of the will is not in its own act of loving but in possession. Movement and rest in either case . , ,585 Reactions between will and intellect , . ,587 Freedom, under limitation, of the will in its choice. Parallel freedom of the intellect. Primacy of the intellect . . , , 589 xxvi ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE The will cannot force a man against his inclination. The intellect may , . • , 601 Parallel and contrast between fixed goal of the will and fixed starting points of the intellect, Intellectus proper and ratio parallel to voluntas proper and electio . . . . • , 602 Indication of bearing of this analysis on the question of determinism and ofthe doctrine ofthe trinity . 605 Final analysis and illustration of the relation between the knowledge and the love of God and con clusive blessedness .... 606 Excursus II. The Beatific Vision . . 621-659 Extended use of the word wio , , . .621 The doctrine of media visionis, and the demonstration that the medium suh quo alone will be needed by the blessed for the visio Dei . . 622 The doctrine of the lumen glorice and of the ipsa essentia Dei as the forma that makes the soul deiform , 628 Participation of the lumen glorice not equal in degree to all the blessed , , , , .637 God in himself is the supremely intelligible. Summary 639 Sharpness of distinction between natural and super natural powers of " vision," and between the experiences of the earthly and the heavenly state specially characteristic of Aquinas and Albertus Magnus. Illustrative quotations from other writers ..... 644 Addenda . . . . . . .659 Index I. Of Names and Titles . . ,661 Index II. Of Terms and Selected Subjects . 666 CORRIGENDA Page 1 78, note, and page 222, lines 4, 5, for ' Excursus ii," read ' Excursus i,' Page 413, line 28, for ' composition ' read ' constitution,' THE REACTIONS BETWEEN DOGMA AND PHILOSOPHY ILLUSTRATED FROM THE WORKS OF S. THOMAS AQUINAS LECTURE I THE TASK OF AQUINAS i. Introductory The conditions under which S. Thomas Aquinas undertook his great synthesis of dogma and philo sophy, combined with the special characteristics of his genius, constantly invite us to step beyond the limits of his own Creed and Church ; for his works present us with luminous examples of phenomena common to all advanced religious evolutions. They teach us to recognise the same underlying problems, and analogous attempts to solve them, under the widest diversity of technical expression. They per petually provoke us to deeper and more fearless thought, and they are as rich in impressive and even terrible warnings as they are in guidance and stimulation. The general title of this course of lectures indicates that it is quite as much from this comparative point of view as under their more obvious significance as an historical monument in 2 THE TASK OF AQUINAS the development of Christianity, and as a corpus theologicum of almost unrivalled influence in the Schools, that I approach the works of Aquinas; and I must ask my courteous hearers to accept both the limitations and the digressions that this treatment will carry with it. The thirteenth century is characterised by that alliance between Aristotelianism and Catholic theo logy, which was prepared by the learning and intellectual curiosity of Albert of Cologne {c. 1193- 1280), and was cemented by his yet more illustrious pupil, Thomas of Aquino {c. 1226-1274) ; and to speak of it as an " alliance " is already to give some hint of the special significance of the Thomist syn thesis. Reactions between Christian teaching and systems of thought more or less independent of it, or even alien to its essential spirit, present themselves to us at every stage in the development of the Church. We have only to mention the Rabbinic tradition, Paulinism, the Greek Mystery religions, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and the schools of Alexandria, or, at a later date, Nominalism and Realism, or Humanism, to remind ourselves of the continuous transformations through which Christian thought has passed, under the influence of its intellectual environment. But, in the Christian " Peripatetics " of the thirteenth cen tury, and pre-eminently in Aquinas himself, we see the process that is always going on incidentally and half unconsciously coming out into the clear daylight as a deliberate and fully conscious construction. INTRODUCTORY 3 Thomas knows perfectly w^ell what he is doing, and he has not the least desire to conceal it. Thus it often happens that what, in other cases, we have to conjecture or detect is in his case deliberately set out before us, and that too by an intelligence of which lucidity, order, and fearless integrity are no less characteristic than profundity. Aquinas arranges a formal alliance, as between two high contracting parties, in which frontiers are determined, principles laid down, relations defined, and rights safeguarded with admirable precision ; but the whole is inspired by an entente cordiale in marked contrast with the lurking suspicions or repudiations with which, in many other cases, Christian teachers have attempted to fence or to disguise their indebtedness to Ethnic thinkers or practices. (1)* The Christian Peripatetics accepted Aristotelianism on its own merits ; and, as a system, Aristotelianism was an innovation in the thirteenth century. It is true that as early as at the turn of the fifth and the sixth centuries the logical treatises of Aristotle had been translated into Latin by Boetius, and thence forth it had become impossible for the Western Church to enter upon any close process of consecu tive reasoning without employing the Aristotelian " Instrument " or Organon. But from the sub stantive teaching of Aristotle, from his views on cosmography, psychology, ethics, sociology, and the ultimate nature of knowledge and reality, the * The figures in brackets refer to the notes at the end of each lecture. 4 THE TASK OF AQUINAS Western world was almost entirely cut off for the next seven hundred years. And when at last this vast body of systematised thought found its way to the Occident, it came upon the Christian theologians from outside, much as the doctrine of Evolution came upon the theologians of the nineteenth century. The Church looked upon it with a not unnatural suspicion, and repeatedly forbade the public delivery of lectures on Aristotle at the University of Paris. The channels through which the fuller knowledge of Aristotle first reached Europe were enough in themselves to rouse the suspicious vigilance of the guardians of ecclesiastical orthodoxy ; for it came in the shape of the paraphrases of Avicenna (f 1037), or accompanied by the commentaries of Averrhoes (tll98); and these two Mussulman scholars (who were in different degrees suspect as heretics in the eyes of the orthodox theologians of Islam itself) emphasised the pantheistic side of Aristotle's teach ing, and combined it with emanational doctrines, elaborated under Neoplatonic influences which had been definitely repudiated by the Church. Moreover, Averrhoes flatly denied the personal immortality of the soul, and expounded Aristotle in this sense. (2) It is easy to see, therefore, that the alarm of the Church was not unreasonable when teachers at the universities took to lecturing on Aristotle's philo sophy (as apparently some of them did) without any reference to its bearing upon CathoUc truth, or any warning against the danger of some of its doctrines. But at the same time such men as INTRODUCTORY 5 Albert and Thomas, who were perfectly sincere and loyal sons of the Church, accepted the new light with enthusiasm. They were conscious that it enlarged their horizon, deepened and clarified their thought in every direction, laid open the secrets of nature to their gaze, and furnished them with an invaluable instrument of precision in the pursuit, consolidation, and propagation of systematic knowledge, whether secular or spiritual. Officially, the Church was far from taking up a mCTely reactionary and obscurantist attitude towards this fresh influx of intellectual life. Her precaution ary measures did not contemplate the suppression of private study, teaching, or discussion of the works of Aristotle, but the suspension of public lectures on Aristotle to the miscellaneous body of students in the universities until such time as a duly appointed commission should have defined the points at which his system was at variance with Christian truth. The commission was appointed, but it never re ported. The prohibitions were never withdrawn, but neither were they enforced, and it was tacitly assumed that Albert and Thomas had actually per formed the necessary task and had effectively shielded students of the new learning from the dangers it seemed to threaten.* Naturally, all this was not accomplished without * The admirable monograph on Siger de Brabant, by Pierre Man donnet, O.P, (vols, vi, and vii. in the series Les Philosophes Beiges), Louvain (vol, vi, etude critique, 1911, preceded by vol. vii, iextes inedits, 1908), is the one repository of accurate and reliable infor mation on this whole question. 6 THE TASK OF AQUINAS opposition ; and the vigilance of that opposition may explain the almost nervous emphasis with which Albert repeatedly declares that he is responsible only for expounding Aristotle, and must never on any account be held to be committing himself to the truth ofthe doctrines he is expounding. (3) But it was Thomas rather than Albert who practically met the requirements of the Holy See by determining the relations between Aristotelianism and the Christian faith. He had a perfectly clear and precise concep tion of the conditions of his task. He saw that the whole articulation of the systematic exposition of Christian dogma must be transformed by the new body of thought and knowledge, though the ultimate data and the final conclusions of theology alike had been settled once for all. There could be no con scious give and take between Catholic truth and any other system whatever. Thomas himself never compromises his rigid orthodoxy and, even at his utmost intellectual need, he will not bate a jot or ease off a corner of the authoritative creed. Here, then, we have a systematised corpus theologi cum on the one hand, with some points, to be sure, open to discussion and investigation, but with no possibility of concession where a decision has been pronounced by the due authority ; and a corpus philosophicum on the other hand, that, without possessing any abstract authority of an external nature, is so inherently convincing that it practically stands as another unchallenged body of truth. This second body of truth comes from outside the Church INTRODUCTORY 7 and in complete external independence of it. On what terms were the two corpora veritatis to be brought into harmonious relations ? Albert had de veloped them both, and had brought them into friendly relations, but it was Thomas who cemented and defined their formal alliance. The feat is the more interesting and instructive, because on many points the Aristotelian philosophy appears to be alien alike to the history and the genius of Christianity, whereas there is a natural affinity between Christian thought and Platonism. I shall touch later on (p. 262) upon some aspects of the close interactions between the doctrinal develop ments of Neoplatonism and Christian theology in the formative period of the Church, but it is enough to note here that Augustine, whose thought domi nated the Western Church, was thoroughly imbued with Platonism, and that, on almost every point in which Platonism and Aristotelianism are divided, it was the former that had been hitherto assimilated by Christianity. The two terms of the synthesis we are to examine, therefore, are the Aristotelian philosophy and the body of Christian doctrine that bore, in its very birth-marks, the evidence of its Platonic affinities. To justify these statements, it will be necessary to touch upon some of the most general characteristics of Aristotle's teaching, though time will hardly allow me to attempt, even in briefest outline, a general exposition of his system. In this survey, such as 8 THE TASK OF AQUINAS it is, the points alike of contrast and of contact between Aristotehanism and the teachings of Plato, of Neoplatonism and of Platonised Christian thought, will sometimes be pointed out and must always be present to our minds.* ii. The Aristotelian Philosophy To begin with, Aristotle had perfect faith in the ultimate validity of the data of the senses. Indeed, the human mind or consciousness is nothing else than a capacity for receiving sense impressions and dealing with them by certain processes of its own, which constitute our mental life ; and of these processes the most essential is the power of abstraction, which man alone of animals possesses. Man can compare his impressions and experiences of every kind with each other, can trace the resemblances and differences between them, and can concentrate his attention upon this or that aspect of a concrete thing, to the exclusion of all its other aspects. It is thus that he can build up an abstract science upon the basis of con crete experiences or familiarity with concrete things. This is admirably expressed by Aquinas himself when he says, "It is the function of our reason to distin guish between things which in actual experience are combined ; and to unite, under certain aspects, by com paring them with each other, things that are diverse." f For instance, we have no cognisance of anything * Vide pp. 66-68, for notes (l)-(3), in illustration of points in the foregoing section, t Sum. Theol, V-.-iV-". q. 27 : a, 2, ad 2"". THE ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY 9 that is long without being broad and deep also ; but we can, if we choose, make abstraction of a single dimension in a number of real things which exist in three dimensions ; we can compare them with each other solely in regard to this one dimension, rigidly excluding from our consideration everything that depends on their thickness or depth, and so we can arrive at a geometry of the line which is per fectly valid, and may have its very practical applica tions, though there are no such things as lines in nature. For a line is defined as length without breadth, and length without breadth nowhere exists. All our knowledge is based on the consideration of such abstractions ; for it is by the " abstraction," or " consideration-apart," of certain properties possessed in common by a number of individual beings, each one of which beings also possesses properties of its own which are not shared by all the rest, that we can form the groups and classes upon which all scientific and philosophical thought is built. Some of these groups seem to be " natural," that is to say, each group consists of beings obviously like each other and unlike others ; and such groups may spontaneously acquire group-names of wider or narrower range, such as " plants," " stones," " lions," or may suggest themselves to thinkers and students only, though recognised as " natural " when once perceived, such as " vertebrates." But other group ings are felt to be " logical," " technical," " formal," "artistic," or in sorae way dictated by our own tastes, emotions, or intellectual convenience, rather 10 THE TASK OF AQUINAS than as indicating " natural " groups. Thus we may think of the group of " beautiful things," including men and women, thoughts, mathematical demon strations, poems, actions, desires, sword hilts, and I know not what; or we may consider the group of " courageous " or " parsimonious " individuals or actions, or we may think of "round" or of "soft" things, and in all these cases we may try to define to ourselves exactly what it is that we call " beauty," " courage," and so forth. When we do so we shall become aware that we are but endeavouring to carry further a process of spontaneous abstraction which has already made us attend to some subtle charac teristic felt, but not analysed, which is common to all the things that we qualify as "beautiful" (or whatever it may be), and is absent from all others. Now these abstract qualities of " beauty " and so forth no more exist apart from the things from which we have abstracted our conception of them, than length exists apart from long things or leonicity apart from lions. There is no " absolute beauty," existing apart, which is beauty and nothing else, by participation in which things are beautiful, any more than there is an absolute " man " who is just humanity and nothing else, by imperfect resemblance to which "man" we are "human." Whether we are dealing with "quiddity" — the answer to the question, " What is it ? "—or with " quality " — the answer to the question ''What like is it?"— and whether our question be answered by "stone," " tree," or the like, or by "round," " beautiful," or the like, in any case the concrete object . THE ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY 11 is given us by our senses and our experience, while grouping and abstraction are arrived at by processes of the mind. And, consequently, the concrete is the practically familiar and accessible, but the abstract is the intellectually luminous and intelligible. Thus the whole doctrine of the illusory character of the world of sense is foreign to the Aristotelian system. The world of abstractions and ideals is not a world of prototypes of which the actually existing things are a kind of reflection or distortion, but is a conceptual world, sublimated from the world of sense and experience, not existing in itself apart from things, but existing for the mind in things. From this it will be readily understood that Aristotle concerns himself little with problems of the ultimate origin of things. He does not philosophise on creation, but demonstrates, to his own satisfaction, the eternity of the existing order of nature ; and he is not so much interested in the question of whence things came, as in the examination and analysis of how they exist, the attempt to understand their con nections and sequences, and the examination of their relations to human life and purposes. It is true that he takes a deep interest in all historical and organic developments (in embryology, or in the growth of social institutions, for example), so far as they come under actual observation, historical record or even in teUigent conjecture, but the ultimate origin of things is practically outside the range of his speculation. He takes the universe as he finds it, and attempts to understand it rather than to account for it. 12 THE TASK OF AQUINAS This characteristic of Aristotle's philosophy be comes especiaUy conspicuous in his Ethics. He is never troubled by what we caU "the problem of evil." He has not to account for the failure of actual humanity to realise our ideal of what humanity should be, or for the lack of correspondence between the world as we would have it and the Avorld as it is. He is indeed perfectly aware of these discords, and they do present a " problem " to him, and a problem of supreme importance ; but it is not, primarily at any rate, the problem of how they come to be here, but the problem of how to deal with them and as far as possible to get rid of them, or at least reduce and control them. He " accepts " them as the starting-point of fact, and in this sense does not care to go behind them ; but he does not "accept" them in the sense of being content to leave them just where they are. Thus his great treatise on Ethics is reared not upon any abstract sanction, such as "life in accordance with nature," or " in accordance with the precepts of the Deity," or in obedience to the "categorical imperative" of the conscience, but simply on the observation of the type of conduct which, as a matter of fact, we admire and wish to cultivate and propagate. He tries to give precision and system to our ideas about this, and then to devise methods of education and political institutions calculated to imbue our children and our citizens with wholesome moral pre judices, so as to make them contract good habits and hence acquire good sympathies, which will THE ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY 13 afterwards justify themselves to reflection and so consolidate and strengthen themselves. From first to last, it is an education of the sense and feeling for admirable conduct, and a training in its practice. The ultimate basis of it all is simply the fact that there is a type of conduct and of intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic aptitude and experience that we admire, that we aspire to, and that we wish to spread. It is clear that, as far as we have yet gone, this philosophy, whatever its merits or demerits, is neither Platonic, Neoplatonic, nor Christian. And we are to remember that for our present purposes these three systems of thought, though not identical, form a single group, with the common characteristics of which we may contrast the fundamental traits of Aristotelianism. Something equivalent to the doc trine of the " fall of man," for instance, is common to them all, and is essentially alien to Aristotle's teach ing. And since the philosophic side of Christian speculation had been, in all its deeper essentials, under continuously Platonic and Neoplatonic in fluences, right up to the period of the Aristotelian revival of the thirteenth century, we can already see how much there is to explain the natural suspicion with which orthodox upholders of the Christian tradition might be expected to look upon the Aristotelian philosophy. But we have not yet examined the point at which Aristotehanism, in actual fact, impinged most violently upon Christian thought, and yet at the same time 14 THE TASK OF AQUINAS found its closest attachments to it. I refer to the Aristotelian doctrine of "vitality," including what we are compelled to speak of under the hopelessly misleading title of his " theory of the soul." We have seen that, in considering the fundamental problem of the relation of the particular to the general, the concrete to the abstract, the sensible to the in telligible, Aristotle assigned a commanding position to the power of abstraction or generalisation. But we must now turn to the question of his treatment of this power of abstraction itself, not as an instrument we use in thinking but as becoming, in its turn, an object of our thought and speculation. What place did he assign to it in the whole scheme of things which philosophy must examine and try to give an account of? Thought is a special form of vital energy, and, from many points of view, all the phenomena of "life" must be regarded as constituting a single group. This " life " or " vital principle," anima or ^v^, in its generality, is the subject of Aristotle's treatise, De anima, or liept rpvxf]^- Our usual rendering of this title is " Aristotle on the Soul," but Aristotle reproaches his precursors with confining their atten tion, when speculating on the subject of the "soul" (if we must so translate it), too exclusively to the human "soul." He himself is careful to note that there are living things whose " life " or " soul " con sists exclusively in the lowest order of vital functions, namely, those of nutrition and reproduction. For plants are alive, but have no senses, and therefore THE ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY 15 no susceptibility to pleasure or pain, and still less any proper consciousness. Higher than this vege table "soul," or vitality, stands the animal "soul," which has all the functions that constitute the vegetable life, but combines with them sense per ceptions, and therefore sensitiveness to pleasure and pain, in various degrees of elaboration. This involves the capacity for forming desires, and for the most part it is accompanied by powers of locomotion assistant to the realisation of these desires. Some animals too have memory and the power of utilising experience in the pursuit of their desires ; and others, such as bees, have an instinctive sagacity independent of experi ence. But man alone has the power of abstraction, and therefore of reasoning, or of pursuing and con templating truth or beauty for their ow^n sakes. Now it is not usual to think of the life or " soul " of a plant or even of an animal as a separate entity distinguishable and separable from the living creature itself We can, of course, by abstraction, concentrate our attention upon the function alone, or upon the physical organ alone, or more generally upon the " life " alone, or the " organism " alone ; but what we actually encounter is the "living organism," which ceases to be an organism when it ceases to function as such. And when Aristotle passes to that special and characteristic functioning of the human vitality or " soul," which we may speak of as " mentality," or the "mind," he finds that it is nothing else than a capacity to deal in a certain way with the data sup pUed by the senses, and that it is wholly dependent 16 THE TASK OF AQUINAS upon these data for its development from a poten tiality into an actuality. Body and soul, then, are to Aristotle an organic whole, and he is never troubled by certain questions that perpetually haunt the Platonist. For the Platonist, thinking of the " soul " as the essential man himself, and of the body merely as its abode, or perhaps its prison, is constantly asking himself why the soul is placed in the body at all, and whether it would not get on much better without it ; whereas Aristotle was perfectly convinced that, without the body, the soul would not get on at aU, for it would not be there any more than the cutting power of an axe could get on, or could be, without the steel. It seems, then, as if Aristotelianism were leading us to a point at which the question of the immor tality of the soul could not be so much as entertained, and as if, in Aristotle's view, mind were a mere func tion of matter. And yet it is really at this very point that we find the bridge by which the Christian Peripatetics could cross from their Aristotelian science to their Platonised religious philosophy, escorted by no other than Aristotle himself. For Aristotle was in truth as far as possible from being a materialist. No thinker distinguishes more explicitly between states of consciousness and the physical modifications of the organs that accom pany them, between " a ferment of blood around the heart," for instance, and the desire to be avenged.* The earUest Greek philosophers had indeed taken * De anima, lib, i, cap, i. sec. 16 (403*. 30 sq.). THE ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY 17 it as an axiom that "like knows like," and had therefore assumed that the "soul" which can take cognisance of the material world must itself be material. But Anaxagoras, an earlier contemporary of Socrates, maintained that vov'. 13, 14). 22 THE TASK OF AQUINAS effort of the genius of the Christian Church on the dogmatic field. In the twelfth century it was already too late for the bold and liberal spirit of Abelard to succeed in reviving any plastic quality in Christian dogmatics. The era of systematising, defining, and harmonising had definitely arrived ; and the file was all that was left to represent the shaping and mould ing instruments commanded by the earlier centuries. Even Abelard himself, in his Sic et Non, had in cidentally given a powerful impulse to this crystallis ing movement — or rather arrest of movement. But it is in the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, the representative dogmatist of the twelfth century, that the spirit of systematising finds its classical expression. After the example of Abelard's Sic et Non, Peter collected, weighed and if possible harmonised, the typical utterances of the most authoritative Fathers on every point of dogmatic theology, taken in regular sequence, under the main heads of God (or the Mystery of the Trinity), Creation, the Incarnation and the Sacraments. His work became the estab lished text-book in the theological schools. The first great synthetic treatise of Aquinas himself consists in his elaborate lectures on the Sentences; and both his master Albert and his Franciscan contem porary Bonaventura composed bulky volumes in the same form. But Peter the Lombard left many ques tions open, or gave more or less confused answers to them; nor was his authority above challenge. The systematising and harmonising genius of Aquinas still found much on which to exercise itself. That THE ECCLESIASTICAL TRADITION 23 genius was ennobled by a moral and spiritual insight that often raises it to a high plane of interpretative beauty, but the limits within which it might reshape its material were narrowly defined. Everyone knows what the main outline of the dogmatic system so defined was and is, and Aquinas accepted it with uncompromising sincerity and good faith. That is all that need be said here, though we shall have to deal more closely with certain points of dogma later on (p. 259). But the Christian tradi tion was not only dogmatic. It had its intimately connected mystic and philosophic sides also ; and though we have defined the task of Aquinas as consisting in the drawing up of the terms of an aUiance between a corpus dogmaticum and a corpus philosophicum, yet we must never forget that the corpus dogmaticum had itself been formed under philosophical or speculative impulses ; and, moreover, in the Christian consciousness it was surrounded by and bathed in a more or less independent stream of mystic philosophy, with which it remained in con tinuous relations. {b) Natural Theology. Philosophy. Mysticism. The distinction here drawn must be developed a little further. It is a matter of common knowledge, to which I have already referred, and to which we shall have to return, that in the early and formative centuries the actual dogmatic scheme of the Church was moulded under Platonic influences, and therefore, so far as those influences were actually embedded 24 THE TASK OF AQUINAS and incorporated in the beliefs that had become formally or traditionally authoritative, Aquinas had no option but to accept them in unqualified loyalty. But, independently of this definite incor poration in dogma, the Platonic influences had continued to flow alike through the thought and the devotions of Christian men ; and Aquinas would meet them, on the field of natural theology, of philosophic speculation, and of mystical devotion, all down and all across the stream of Christian thought and experience. If this Platonic way of thinking and feeling had too far coloured the minds of Christian writers whom Aquinas was not bound to consider authoritative, he could freely ignore or refute them ; but it complicated his task by its visible presence in writers such as Augustine, whose opinions he hardly felt free to dismiss, but whose ex pressions he could not possibly relish. Within certain limits, however, it had entered deeply into his own Christian consciousness, and he must find terms between it and his Aristotelian convictions on his own account. It is to these Platonic influences in their several modes of operation that we mu.st now turn our attention. Hebraism is, of course, the matrix of Christianity, but, apart from Greek influence, pure Hebraism can hardly be said to have had any formulated philosophy at all. And though the development of doctrine in the apostolic age under Paul (still unfathomed and enigmatic as I confess it appears to me) was decisive THE ECCLESIASTICAL TRADITION 25 in raising Christian thought out of a purely personal, historic, and apocalyptic atmosphere, into that of abstract, cosmic, and properly " theological " specu lation, and mystic experience, it nevertheless remains broadly true that, whenever Judaism or Christianity sought to fmd or frame a philosophy, it was to some form of Platonism that they turned. The successive steps of the resultant development are marked by the later forms of Hebrew " Wisdom," by Philo Judaeus, the contemporary of Jesus ; by the Fourth Gospel, at the beginning of the second century ; by Clement of Alexandria, at the turn of the second and third centuries ; by his disciple Origen, in the early third century; and (for our purposes) by Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, in the fourth century. Side by side with this Jewish and Christian Platon- ising ran the speculations of the Ethnic school that found its highest exponent in Plotinus, in the third century ; and to this non-Christian school the term Neoplatonic is usuaUy confined, though some of the Christian thinkers should by rights be included in it ; for they took an independent share, and sometimes probably took the lead, in the transformation of the old Platonic tradition. The reactions of the two schools upon each other were indeed of the most intimate nature. Each alike, in its developed form, of which Clement (died early in the third century) and Plotinus (t 279) may be taken as the best single exponents, started from the thesis that the First Cause, being all-embracing, cannot be defined, but 26 THE TASK OF AQUINAS can only be approached philosophically by the nega tive process of removing limitations, and saying that the Absolute Unity is not anything whatever which the phenomenal world of relativity and multiplicity is. Hence the profound philosophic "agnosticism" of both schools and the attempts of both to build a bridge of some kind between unity and multiplicity, by means of mediating emanations or manifestations from the side of the Uncreated, to which corre sponded, on the human side, either a faculty of faith, receptive of definite revelations, or a capacity for direct vision of the indescribable, in favoured moments here, and perhaps normally hereafter (p. 129). Both sought, by a system of allegorising, to rationalise and spiritualise the crudities of writings and legends sanctioned by antiquity and tradition in their re spective environments, and both alike developed a definitely trinitarian dogma, which on the Ethnic side remained purely philosophical, whereas on the Chris tian side it was connected with the doctrine of the Incarnation, and so with the historic appearance of the Word made flesh. In both, the Trinity was graded. Thus Clement, after applying a string of superlatives to the " nature of the Son," ends with "closest of all to the only Omnipotent."* And Plotinus more expressly : " What then shall we say of the Absolute ? That nothing comes from it save what is next greatest to it. Now next greatest after it, and second to it, is voSs, for vov