Chapter VII: Poisonous Food (2)

No one, certainly, will exact of me that I make a minute examination of the innumerable and varying systems or opinions of pagan antiquity; it is enough that I prove my proposition by confining myself to the best philosophy of all paganism. If I make good my assertion respecting the best system of doctrine which ever appeared in Gentile philosophy, it will be evident enough that the same assertion holds even more strongly in reference to other systems, more or less inferior to this one. But this is certain, that gentilism had no philosophy worthy to be compared, much less preferred, to the doctrine of those authors who acknowledged, and, in the best manner of which they were capable, proclaimed the existence of one only supreme and true God, "from whom we derive the principle of our nature, the truth of our knowledge, and the happiness of our life."[114] I turn, therefore, to these authors with the purpose of examining what is good and what is bad in them; "but I find it more suitable to discuss this subject with the Platonists, because their writings are better known; for not only the Greeks, whose language is preëminent among the nations, have made them celebrated by greatly extolling their excellence; but the Latins also, moved by their excellence or their renown, have studied them with greater ardor than any others, and by translating them into our language have made them still more famous and renowned."[115]

From all this, not a few consequences, whose value you above all others are able to judge and appreciate, are immediately deduced with a clearness greater even than we could desire. The first is, that the noblest and greatest problem of modern philosophy, to wit, that the protological and encyclopædic principle cannot be placed elsewhere than in the principle of creation, understood in conformity with the tradition of the Catholic Church; this principle, I say, was stated and solved amply, doubly, irrefutably, by St. Augustine; first, in his _Soliloquies_, where one by one the partial principles of all the sciences are recovered; secondly, in this eighth book of _The City of God_, where the one only rule is laid hold of and exhibited by which to distinguish the only true system among various and opposite philosophical systems. The second consequence is, that those persons must cover their eyes with both hands who will not see and admit that St. Augustine preferred the Platonic doctrine, and specifically preferred the Platonic or Pythagorean ideology, in the clearest terms in which it was possible for him to express his meaning. The third is, that St. Augustine not only derived his ideology from the very principle of creation, in the way of an inference more or less remote; but held it, rather, as an integral part of the principle itself, and made of it a second cycle, one lying between the first, which respects the origin of substances, and the third, which assigns the good of operations. The final consequence is, that this second cycle, relating to rational intelligence, has been passed over by the moderns; which may serve as a useful admonition to them, to convince them thoroughly that no one can take St. Augustine's place in philosophy; that modern philosophy, with all its power, lags very far behind the Augustinian speculations, and that if all other books are understood and studied to the neglect of St. Augustine, this will turn not to his disadvantage but to ours. Thus we see, by a most striking example, that he alone not only saved, by the principle of creation, physics and ethics; but moreover, by that middle cycle, which is as it were central to the other two, saved rational philosophy, without which the other two result less necessarily, and, so to speak, revert back to nullity.

The first of the consequences above enumerated was noted by me in this place many years ago; and has been better exhibited for the benefit of science by the illustrious F. Milone in his book entitled, _La Scuola di Filosofia Razionale Intitolata a S. Augustino_; wherefore I will abstain from considering it any further at present. I will restrict myself on this occasion to taking advantage of the other consequences which follow to a marvel from the ideology, but especially from the genesis of the ideology of St. Augustine. Indeed we have a great number of authors, beginning with the most exalted of all, that is, the seraphic and angelic doctors, and terminating with writers who are still living in Italy, France, and Belgium, who have collected from the Augustinian writings a most extensive list of disputed questions concerning ideology and human knowledge; but, above all, we have two more remarkable collections in the works of those two fathers of the Oratory of France, who are equal to any in learning and merit--Thomassin and Martin.[116] That which may perhaps have something new and original in it, in our own investigation, is the more exact indication of the primitive fountain and source whence these large streams take their issue; that source, namely, from which St. Augustine derived the logical moment of that ideology which he bases, constructs, and amplifies with such great strength; which was the concept, original with him, of that most vast and sublime theory of human cognitions formed by him alone. It appears to me that I have made it clear to all, from those things which have been laid down and the testimonies adduced, that St. Augustine concentrates and hinges the three branches of the natural encyclopædia in one sole principle unfolded in three members: the principle being that of creation; the three members being physics, logic, and ethics; which are respectively the sole cause of existence, the sole light of knowledge, the sole end of virtue. From this every one can see and touch with the hand that St. Augustine found his ideology in the principle of creation, regarded it as a part of the principle of creation, distinguished it from the two extreme cycles, and from the two opposite members of the principle of creation. If any one had denied the ideology of St. Augustine in his time, St. Augustine would have been bound to say that such a person denied the principle of creation; if some one else had vaunted a contrary system of ideology, he would have been bound to judge that system to be contrary to the principle of creation; if any one had demanded from St. Augustine the substantial formula of his ideology, the origin of that ideology, or the proofs of the stability, security, and irrefutable validity of that ideology, he would always have been obliged to answer by appealing to the universal principle established by reason and the Catholic faith, that is, to the principle of creation. Therefore the genesis of the Augustinian ideology, if it had not been already traced out or properly considered before to-day, would be now as clear and certain as the light, and with the eighth book of _The City of God_, we might predict that it would be immortal.

In scientific themes a twofold labor must be undergone; on the one hand, in ascertaining, and in elucidating on the other, the matters to be treated of; and the one who must apply himself rigorously to one part of this is rarely able at the same time to attend to the other. This is the case with myself; for, having been obliged to point out the seat and position of the Augustinian ideology in that encyclopædic principle which I have above defined, I could not bring forward the second cycle except as implicated and restricted by the other two, the first and third. I am glad to be able now to supply, at least partially, this defect, by alleging one quite peculiar testimony, which, fortunately, leaves in the background the two cycles with which we are not concerned, and brings forward with admirable distinctness the one which specially concerns us in ideology.

"Now, those authors whom we with justice prefer to all others,"
(says St. Augustine, speaking of the Platonists, Pythagoreans, and
others of the best stamp,) "have distinguished those things which
are perceived by the mind from those which are attained by the
sense; not taking from the senses those things for which they have
a capacity, or granting to them what is beyond their capacity.
But the light of minds by which all things are learned [see here
clearly the second cycle] they affirmed to be God himself, by whom
all things were made."

_Lumen autem mentium esse dixerunt ad discenda omnia eumdem ipsum Deum a quo facta sunt omnia._[117] The principle of creation, then, in so far regards our rational intelligence as it places on the one hand the sensible perception we have of it, and on the other the intelligence which we have in addition as our great prerogative. Rational cognition comes from the conjunction of intellect with sensibility; and therefore the greater part of the ancient philosophers, grossly taking our cognition for an act tied to a mere sensible perception, and badly mixing up sense with intellect and the sensible with the intelligible, knew little or nothing of the contra-position of the one to the other. Some of them, giving every thing to the sensible, fell into Epicureanism, into materialism, into atheism, denying God, and thus the principle of creation; others, paying attention only to the intelligible, rushed into fatalism and pantheism, denying created substances, and thus again the principle of creation. These are the philosophers whom we Catholics cannot prefer to the others; whom St. Augustine says, _non prodest excutere_, it is lost time to discuss them. But those, on the contrary, _quos merito ceteris anteponimus_, began from a fundamental distinction between the intelligible and the sensible, and therefore also between the intelligence and the sensibility; _discreverunt ea quæ mente conspiciuntur ab eis quæ sensibus attinguntur_; nor did they take away from the senses their proper office and necessary value in the act of defending as their principal aim the intelligence, which is so true that they regarded rational cognition as a sort of marriage, and a true coöperation, of the mind with the senses. If, then, concludes the most glorious father of Catholic philosophy, the best sages of antiquity, and we with them admit and give value to the sensibility, that is necessary in order to maintain the principle of creation, since otherwise all the substances created by God, which are sensible natures, disappear. Likewise if the same sages, and we as much as or even more than they, admit and defend intelligence, this is of equal if not greater necessity, in order to keep the same principle of creation. In fact, with the sensibility alone, _non est discere_, we can learn nothing, as the brutes, _certo nusquam discunt_ certainly never learn any thing; but only minds endowed with intelligence, who have as a light _ad discenda omnia, eumdem ipsum Deum a quo facta sunt omnia_--as a light for learning all things, that same God himself who created all things. Since, therefore, by the principle of creation, God is the only light of all minds, so, by denying to minds that divine, creative light, all rational intelligence is denied, and the principle of creation is totally destroyed, just as much as by taking away all substances.

But perhaps some one of you, considering that St. Augustine had been instructed in the Platonic doctrine, as we read in the _Summa_ of Aquinas, will remain doubtful whether the genesis which I have traced out is not that of the Platonic or Pythagorean ideology, whichever we may choose to call it, rather than of the Augustinian. I think that I have in the preceding portion of this dissertation cited from the original texts enough of St. Augustine's own expressions, which always revert to these constant formulas, _qui nobiscum sentiunt, quos merito ceteris anteponimus_, to render it certainly and for ever incontestable that in these passages it is St. Augustine who _cum istis sentit_; it is he who _hos ceteris anteponit_; and by consequence he it is who embraces, explains, and defends the Platonic ideology, amending it where it sins, and supplying to it what it lacks. But, conceding that there is a difficulty here in our way, corroborated by an expression of the angelic doctor, I wish it to be noted distinctly that I do not resolve it principally by alleging any solitary expression whatever of the angel of the schools himself, but by a series of formulæ as distinctly marked in their significance as they are harmoniously located in the structure of his thought and of his boundless learning. Whenever there shall be for the first time produced a copious and well-arranged history of our philosophy, we shall see among other things relating to that most glorious Aquinas, a fact which gives lustre to his works, and is a memorable one in human philosophy; and the fact, which is one completely manifest and palpable, is this, that while he pays so little deference to the Platonic philosophy, while he habitually interprets the ideas of Plato only in the sense ascribed to them by Aristotle and other philosophers, the most hostile to him; while, consequently, he does not notice the Platonic ideology except to reject and confute it, he nevertheless gives us to understand, and professes a hundred times, that he has nothing to oppose to the ideology of St. Augustine; that he agrees that it is not the secondary truths which serve as the rule of our judgments, but rather the one only and primary truth which is the divine light and God himself; that he agrees that our soul is an image of God principally by the intelligence which we possess, into which the light of that first and one truth falling produces there an image of the intelligible things, as like as possible in the spiritual order to that figure which bodies cast upon a mirror by virtue of the exterior material light; that he agrees that our intellect is like wax which receives the impression of the primary truth as if from a seal; that he agrees that those universals from which metaphysics works under the form of principles, mathematics under the form of axioms, morals under the form of unchangeable, imperishable laws, these universals, (_questi generali_,) I say, and nothing else, St. Thomas admits to be eternal, in the eternal light of the eternal truth, which is the light of the divine intelligence.[118] Is there any great need of certifying that these formulæ to which St. Thomas agrees are not a single one of them taken from Aristotle, but are without exception taken from St. Augustine himself? Therefore St. Thomas, who had to treat the ideology of Plato, as it was presented to him, as absurd, sustains and honors as much as we could wish the Augustinian ideology; that is to say, he makes Augustinian and not Platonic the ideology of the eighth book of _The City of God_.[119]

What should hinder us from passing for an instant to those other books altogether similar to this one, _Of the Trinity_, _Of the Literal Interpretation of Genesis_, and the _Confessions_? The last five books of _The Trinity_ are, indeed, a complete ideology which for novelty, sublimity, insight, and scientific force cannot be equalled in the whole range of human science. I will cite only one passage, however, which amid so many others is especially noteworthy, that one, namely, in which Augustine protects and defends, (who would believe it?) against Plato himself, that ideology which is nowadays called Platonic. Here it may be seen in express words.

"Plato, that noble philosopher, ... related that a certain boy who
was asked some questions, I know not precisely what, in geometry,
answered like a person extremely skilled in that branch of study;
whence he attempted to prove that the souls of men have lived here
before they were in their present bodies.... But we ought rather
to believe that the nature of the intellectual mind was so created
that, being naturally coördinated by the Creator to intelligible
things, it sees them in a certain incorporeal light _sui generis_,
in the same way that the bodily eye sees those things which are
circumjacent to it in this corporeal light for which it has been
created with a natural capacity and congruity."[120]

This passage being only an incident in connection with the whole context, we find him saying a little above that this incorporeal light is nothing else than the truth; that these intelligible things are the eternal reasons, and a little below, that this light and these things are "something eternal and unchangeable;" that our soul is made naturally in the image of God, inasmuch as "it can use reason and intelligence to know and form a conception of God," and as noted in another place, "although the mind is not of the same nature with God, nevertheless the image of that nature which is more perfect than any other must be sought and found in that part of our nature which is more perfect than any other."[121]

Joining together and recapitulating all this in the _Confessions_, he says in formal terms:

"Behold how much I have wandered about in my memory seeking thee,
O Lord! and I have not found thee outside of it; ... for where
I have found the truth, there I have found my God, the truth
itself."[122]

Moreover, in those most stupendous books of the _Literal Interpretation of Genesis_, he undertakes to distinguish partitively the vision in the light of the truth from all the other manners of vision conceded to the nature of the human soul, and terminates with a final contrast which presents the fundamental opposition between the intelligent soul and its intellectual light in these words:

"Even in that kind of things seen by intellectual vision,
(_intellectualium visorum_, understand here that which he is wont
to call _intellectum rationale_,) those which are seen in the
soul itself, as virtues, the contraries of which are vices, are
one thing; ... the light itself by which the soul is illuminated,
so that it is able to see in a true intellectual apprehension
all things either in itself (rational knowledge) or in that
(intellectual knowledge;) for that indeed is God himself; but this
created existence, although made rational and intelligent (these
two terms correspond to the two members, _either in itself, or in
that_) after his image, when it attempts to gaze upon that light
trembles with weakness, and can do but little; yet it derives
from thence whatever it does understand according to its ability.
When, therefore, it is rapt into that region, and, being withdrawn
from the senses, is brought more directly face to face with that
vision, not by any local presence in space, but in a manner
peculiar to itself; it even sees in a way superior to its ordinary
power that by the aid of which it also sees whatsoever it does see
in itself by understanding."[123]

The few moments which remain to me will barely suffice for the briefest possible exposition of the contrast between the belligerent ideology of modern Catholics and the certain and incontestable ideology founded by the prince of all our philosophers, of which I have just given a sketch in his own words. I feel bound to say one thing here which has probably not been attended to, but is nevertheless not the less true or the less demonstrable to a wise critical judgment. However much it is to be lamented that the modern philosophy of the Catholic masters, through a miserable obliviousness of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, has brought once more into vogue and patronized so long, in great measure so blindly also, the Gentile dispute between the ideology of Plato and that of Aristotle; this most obstinate war, more bitterly waged in our day than ever before, has no right to be considered as excusable. Whoever will look a little into the interior of this matter, will be persuaded that the great mass of questions of this kind should rather be regarded as vain and superfluous, than as founded on unreasonable or unjust opinions. The Catholic ontologists and the Catholic psychologists sustain one and the same thing in two contrary parties; but that which all in common wish to maintain appears to the members of one party to be badly comprehended and worse defined by those of the other. All say unanimously, We ought to hold that theory alone as good and perfect in which is maintained the capital distinction between God and his creation; in which is firmly established the knowledge of God on the one hand, and that of things created on the other; in which neither the reality of the divine nature, which is the principle of every other reality, nor the reality of that which is created, apart from which that principle itself is no longer such, and all knowledge is overturned and destroyed from summit to foundation, is compromised. This all profess and maintain. But when it comes to the definition of a theory sufficient for such a lofty scope, the one party divide themselves from the other through the diverse aspect in which they regard, on the one side, that most sublime and universal truth which they hold as anterior to the mind, and, on the other side, the multitude of created natures which are perceived by the internal or external sensible faculty. To make my meaning clearer, there are two points to be made secure in ideology: the truth by which all things which are true exist; and the true things which furnish the argument by which their principle, that is, the truth, is proved. The psychologists observe the following maxim, which is irreprehensible. It is impossible to prove the existence of the creator without asserting and proving the existence of the creation; since we cannot attain to the scientific notion of the truth except by the medium of the knowledge of actualities. The ontologists contemplate the matter from another entirely diverse side, reasoning with equal evidence in this form. To know a thing to a certain extent, is to distinguish to the same extent whether it be true or false; but we must necessarily distinguish whether a thing be true or false by the light of truth--_the truth, however, is God_; therefore, without an interior and divine light, neither man nor angel can know any thing whatsoever. But take care, exclaim the psychologists, that you do not by such a method destroy physical cognition; in fact, if every thing is known in the truth, which is eternal and immutable, created things, which are mutable and temporal, cannot be known at all. You ought rather to take much greater care, reply the ontologists, lest by your mode of reasoning you deny and destroy metaphysical cognition; in fact, the universal cannot be any kind of created thing, since every creature is completely individual and particular; wherefore, it follows, from your statement, that the universals are nothing either physically or metaphysically. The psychologists rejoin by saying, God in creating things renders them knowable; therefore, when we know them, this comes from the fact that they are thus created--that is, precisely knowable. The ontologists with equal force respond, We agree entirely that created things are knowable because they are created; but since they would not be created except for the divine action of the creator, so they would not be any more knowable except for the divine action which creates their knowledge in the human mind; wherefore, in the same way as the drawing of a substance from nothing requires omnipotence, which is entirely from God, the giving of intelligence to a created spirit requires the truth, which is entirely from God, and is God himself. But, reply again the psychologists, you are obliged to admit the reality of the created apart from the divine reality; therefore, also, its cognoscibility. And you, reply the ontologists, ought further to maintain the contra-position of intelligence to sensibility. We, who profess that the intelligibility of things consists in a divine light, easily secure the contra-position of intelligence and sensibility by means of the contra-position of God and created substances visible in the creation; whereas, taking away the divine light, the creation alone remains to form the object of the sensibility on one part, and the object of intelligence on the other. But in that case it is impossible to secure one's self scientifically, logically, demonstratively, as is necessary, from confounding intellect with sense, which results--note it well!--in the denial of the creation of man itself, and the reduction to nullity not less of revealed religion than of natural morality.[124]

I will not proceed any further, but will leave it to the historians of Catholic philosophy to continue, if they see fit, this chain of parallel arguments, which describe the whole cause of combat between the two great modern schools. The sketch I have given will, I hope, suffice to convince you, first of all, of that which is chiefly commendable, honorable, and worthy of attention in this dispute, which, in many other respects, is so excessively wearisome. I have demonstrated that the two contrary parties look toward one and the same end--which is, to make valid in ideology the Catholic principle of creation; that both govern themselves by the same criterion--which is, the genuine and Catholic interpretation of the principle of creation, more or less known naturally, and perfectly defined in Catholic doctrine. All this is due to the praise of the two schools, and to the glory of that philosophy to which both pride themselves in belonging. This, however, would go but a little way toward the attainment of that peace at the present day so necessary, and always so desirable. Since, therefore, all truths are in agreement with each other, and are harmoniously united in one only and self-same truth, I have consequently wished to demonstrate by actual proofs that, aside from human weakness and the errors of certain teachers on both sides, the living and substantial arguments on either side which are brought forward in an opposite sense are not really opposed to each other, being drawn from the difference of terms, and the fact that they apprehend and contemplate from opposite sides that truth which is, above all others, universal and comprehensive in the principle common to both parties. This consideration, most powerful for promoting the peace we all desire and recommend, ought so much the more to be held as good and sound, as the Augustinian formula in which all the force of Catholic philosophy is concentrated with the most luminous evidence, appears divided into two parts, and distributed between the argumentation of the two opposite schools. For, while the one sustains that first clause which forbids to take away from the senses their proper capacity--_neque sensibus adimentes id quod possunt_--the other stands firmly by the last clause, which declares that the light of the mind is God, _lumen autem mentium ad discenda omnia esse ipsum Deum a quo facta sunt omnia_. But would it not be a great fault of the ideologists, to whatever school they might belong, if they should wilfully dismember and destroy the organism of Christian protology? Is it, perhaps, not true that the Catholic masters of modern psychologism and ontologism all completely agree in that maxim, as new in itself as it is felicitous for the whole human encyclopædia, and clearly distinct to us?

"The whole discipline of wisdom pertaining to the instruction
of man is the correct discrimination of the creator from the
creation; the worship of the one as possessing supreme dominion,
and the acknowledgment of the simple subjection of the other."[125]

Let us then bring these things back to their origin, and the philosophers of our times will recognize that they have much the advantage in antiquity and merit of the philosophers of another class who are the chiefs of natural science; the psychologists will observe that they have a psychological formation in St. Thomas against which Catholic ontologism cannot have any just complaints; on the other hand, the ontologists will observe that there is an ontological form in St. Augustine to which nothing is wanting of that which Catholic psychologism can hold as correct. The time is past for beginning philosophy over again _da capo_; whoever wishes to participate in it, let him gather it from the most choice, weighty, and authoritative traditions. That peace which for so many ages it has been impossible to conclude, was already made centuries ago. There was no ideological dispute, (whoever maintained that there was?)--no! there was only diversity of method of exposition and of language, between St. Augustine and his most faithful disciple, who was in every sense the Angelical; and this was wrought by the infinite Providence, so that Catholic intellect might remake philosophy twice over by the two opposite ways, from intelligence to sense, and from sense to intelligence. It is a shame to mention the Platonists with dispraise, when our glory is a Catholic Plato; it is a vile thing to lose one's self in reproaches against Aristotle, after that a Catholic Aristotle has filled the whole church with the fame of his wisdom.

The learned Caramuele affirmed that if that ancient Plato of heathenism could have seen the Aristotle who diverged from him so widely, as St. Thomas re-cast him, corrected and entirely altered, he would have been forced to applaud him, and to declare himself satisfied with him. Cardinal Sigismund Gerdil announced and demonstrated[126] that in the ideology of St. Thomas more than one principle is encountered wonderfully conformed to the principles of St. Augustine. The _Scuola di Filosofia Razionale_ of the excellent F. Milone is for this reason more precious and valuable in my eyes, that he, contrary to Gioberti, who is only one among numberless others, marks out a theory of peace between the ontological and psychological method, between St. Augustine and St. Thomas. It is a matter of the most transparent certainty that, if the ontologism of Catholic authors is reduced to a profession of the philosophical doctrines of St. Augustine, well understood and better exposed and elucidated, nothing can be more secure and more respectable among Catholics than ontologism; nor is it less certain and transparent that, if the psychologism of Catholic authors turns to a maintenance of the philosophical doctrines of St. Thomas, well and symmetrically arranged, and with fine language reduced to science and made accessible to our age, nothing can be more adapted to our time, or more suitable, or more irreprehensible than the same psychologism. Let Catholic philosophers follow the example of the holy church, who, since the time of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, has turned toward no one a regard more steady and fixed than to Augustine and Thomas.

In the name of these most authoritative and most blessed doctors, I pray for Catholic philosophy the just and desired tranquillity, which can only be obtained from a direction less arbitrary in the selection of questions, and more capable of embracing all the grand problems. Ideology distinguishes naturally between the objective and the subjective; in it the ontologists are accustomed to establish with sound reasoning the objectivity of the truth, and likewise the psychologists the subjectivity of signs and knowledge. If both the one and the other desire to become victors in such a grand combat, let them make place, as they ought, the ontologists to larger considerations respecting the created, _non adimentes sensibus id quod possunt_; and the psychologists to a greater security of the intelligibility of things, _non dantes sensibus ultra quam possunt_. Then, the choice will be free to all to select between the two opposite methods, and they can, in respect to that divine light, _quo illustratur anima_, profess indifferently the original formula of Catholic ontologism in St. Augustine, or the imitative exposition of Catholic psychologism in St. Thomas. With these peace-makers, so glorious, so well-deserving, so venerable, it appears to me that we ought at once to treat of peace. May these saints aid from heaven my humble undertaking!

FOOTNOTES:

[112] Rom. i. 19, 20; Acts xvii. 28; Colos. ii. 8. These texts are given according to St. Augustine's rendering. This gives "a constitutione mundi" instead of "a creatura mundi," as in the Vulgate. The author, following St. Augustine, Tertullian, and Cardinal Tolet, understands St. Paul to say that God has been manifested to men through his works ever since the world began.--_Abridged from the note of the author._

[113] _De Civ. Dei_, lib. viii.; (1) cap. 1; (2) cap. 4; (3) cap. 5; (4) cap. 10; (5) cap. 9. This last quotation is abridged.--_Trans._

[114] _Civ. Dei_, lib. viii. cap. 9.

[115] _Ibid._, lib. viii. cap. 10.

[116] Thomassin, _Dogm. Theol. de Deo_. Martin, _S. Aur. Aug. Hipponen. Epis. Philosophia_. Ed. Jul. Fabre. Parisiis. 1863.

[117] _Civ. Dei_, lib. viii. c. 7.

[118] Nothing is more noteworthy than this passage of the _Summa_. (Pars Prima, Qu. 15, a. 1, ad. 1.) Et sic etiam Aristoteles, lib. 3. Metaphys. improbat opinionem Platonis de ideis, secundum quod ponebat eas per se existentes, non in intellectu. In many other places, St. Thomas cites the doctrines of Plato on the faith of Aristotle. In support of the allegations of the text, consult the _Summa_. P. 1, qu. 16, a. 6. _Ibid._ ad. 1, et qu. 12, a. 2, et qu. 88, a. 3, ad. 1. _Ibid._ qu. 84, a. 5. _Ibid._ qu. 16, a. 7.

[119] F. Milone, in his Neapolitan edition, adds the following note: "Throughout this entire passage we find a mixture of the Platonic and the Augustinian, (p. 1, qu. 15, a. 3,) where St. Thomas appears to intend to collect from St. Augustine the true meaning of Plato, or again to remand to Plato the admirable design of the ideology of St. Augustine. Sed contra, ideæ sunt rationes in mente divina existentes, ut per Augustinum patet; sed omnium quæ cognoscit, Deus habet proprias rationes; ergo omnium quæ cognoscit habet ideam. Respondeo dicendum, quod cum ideæ a Platone ponerentur principia cognitionis rerum et generationis ipsarum, ad utrumque se habet idea prout in mente divina ponitur. Et secundum quod est principium factionis rerum, exemplar dici potest, et ad practicam cognitionem pertinet; secundum autem quod principium cognoscitivum est, proprie dicitur ratio, et potest etiam ad scientiam speculativum pertinere. There is not, I say, in all our own Marsilius, a more respectful and favorable comment upon Plato; but the key is found in that observation on which the whole thing depends, _ut per Augustinum patet_." Worthy of consideration under this head are also the articles 3, 4, and 5, under the 79th question.

[120] _De Trin._ lib. xii. § 24. _Vide etiam Retract._ lib. 1 cap. 4. Arnob. _Contra Gentes_, lib. 11. § 14. Tertull. _De Anima_, cap. 24 and 28.

[121] _De Trin._ lib. xii. § 2, 3, 5, 12, 23. _Ibid._ lib. xv. § 10. _Ibid._ lib. xiv. § 6, 11.

[122] Lib. x. cap. 24.

[123] _De Gen. ad Litt._ lib. xii. cap. 31, § 59.

[124] The _Civilta Cattolica_, (series v. vol. viii. 585) seems to have wished to continue the series of these opposing arguments of the antagonistic schools, where, in the name of those whom I call psychologists, it speaks thus: "To maintain the essential distinction between the sense and the intellect, it is not necessary to attribute to the latter the immediate perception of a divine object, as, to maintain the essential distinction between the body and the spirit, it is not necessary to ascribe to the second a divine existence. It suffices that as the spirit is differentiated from the body by the immateriality of its essence, so the intellect should be differentiated from the sense by the immateriality of its cognoscitive power." If it be so, the ontologists will respond, that in the above passage the word _sense_ signifies only that with which we perceive bodies; so that to sense is given as its term or object that which is corporeal, and to intellect that which is spiritual. Now, S. Augustine had at first adopted the same language; but afterward he recognized its imperfection, and in his _Retractations_ (lib. i. cap. 1, 3, 4) declares that the word sense ought to include also the _intimate sense_ with which the soul perceives what passes within itself. Then this has as object that which is spiritual. Therefore the spirituality of its object cannot any longer serve to differentiate intellect from sense. (Vid. _La Scuola_ of F. Milone, p. 32, et seq.)

[125] St. Aug. lib. 83, Quæst. ad qu. 81.

[126] _Difesa di Malebr._ diss. prelim. § 25.

MY CHRISTMAS GIFT.

On the eve of Christmas Day,
Ere the moon began to rise,
I fell to dreaming.
When a fairy did display,
Spread before my wond'ring eyes,
Bright jewels gleaming
Like the stars at night.
Then to me--"Choose which to send
As a present to your friend,
And thus your friendship plight."
Ah! how rare the jewels seemed
Ere those words were spoken.
After, I no longer deemed
Gems a fitting token.
"Jewels may her garments grace:
'Tis not there that I would place
Something to remind her thought
Of the friendship of my heart.
Not all gems that may be bought
Would of that be counterpart."
"Hoity, toity!" said the fairy,
"This is extraordinary!
Don't you know 'tis customary?"
"Yes," said I; "but on this morn
Could I but her _heart_ adorn
With some little gift of mine,
Then 'twould have a fitting shrine."
Gathering up her jewels rare,
Said the fairy, "Don't despair.
Send her what her heart can wear."
Reaching out my eager hand--
"Have you in all fairy-land
Such a boon at my command?"
Raising up her eyes to heaven--
"Only there such gifts are given.
Gifts that make the heart more fair
God bestows. The price--a prayer."

God knows the prayer is said, my friend.
I doubt not He the gift will send.

A HERO, OR A HEROINE?