Chapter Five
Chapter Five
The Genius of St. Thomas
Although all that we have said so far has been meant to throw light on the genius of St. Thomas, yet perhaps it will be as well to collect in a separate chapter its main characteristics.
Sheer intellectual greatness is never so attractive, never appeals so much to the imagination and to the emotions as greatness of a more practical kind. That is why Napoleon, Caesar, and Joan of Arc will always exercise a greater influence. Yet intellectual greatness must surely have a prior claim to nobility. “Man’s whole dignity,” says Pascal, “consists simply in thought.” Hence, no influence can be more ennobling than the influence of St. Thomas.
It is not merely that he wins our admiration or even our ready allegiance; he overpowers us. Seldom has there been a person who has united such sureness, penetration, and breadth, who has been so well equipped to solve the riddle of the world, or to praise its Author.
His genius will stand the most formidable comparison. His intelligence was as vast as Aristotle’s, as elevated as Plato’s, and as acute as that of Socrates. And if due allowance be made for the difference of the ages in which they lived, his genius in every sphere, except that of mathematics, is as rich as that of Leibnitz. He soared as high as did St. Augustine, although in a different manner. Augustine had the wings of the eagle of St. John. St. Thomas had rather those of the lion of St. Mark, for, if his strength was leonine, the lion had wings.
He seems hardly so much a thinker, as one in whom thought operates of its own accord, without apparent effort, and without the laborious process evident in many great writers. “We feel,” says Père Gratry of him, “that in his company we have leapt over worlds, and that thought no longer encumbers.”
His acumen and deep learning equipped him for any intellectual pursuit. Speculation on the most profound matters was not the uphill work that it is for us.
We shall give the estimate of his contemporaries; that of posterity is familiar to all of us. Chroniclers who knew him well give us some striking details. He had an extraordinary power of concentrating, and, as we have seen, it served him as an effective anesthetic when he underwent surgical treatment. He composed long treatises mentally and dictated them at one sitting. Like Caesar, he could dictate to three or four scribes at once, and on different and always difficult matters. He would dictate in his sleep, or, at any rate, in a kind of sleep, when his body was unconscious and his mind fully awake. His memory, “which never forgot anything,” stored up for him everything that he had ever learned, while his ceaseless application, his calmness, humility, and zeal, enabled him to compose a large number of treatises, even while he was working for others and carrying on controversies.
For us especially, who are considering his work, this aspect of his genius is interesting only as a curiosity; the main questions are, how did he use his powers, and what was the spiritual force behind them? In this respect, his most striking characteristics are his saneness, his simple straightforward manner, and his objectivity. One of his early disciples remarks that he was at once a Common Doctor (Doctor Communis) and an uncommon doctor, in that he followed the beaten path and discovered there truths that nobody had discovered before.
How many philosophical ideas owe their vogue to their provocativeness, to an undisciplined temperament, to a disregard of things as they really are! What Nietzsche calls “pure vision,” vision free from all contingence and personal bias, like that of a pure spirit, is a rare phenomenon. St. Thomas had it. He knew truth instinctively, as an animal knows what is good for it, and we may follow him without fear of being led astray.
His method is always simple. The order of questions, and their treatment is never arbitrary, artificial, or “original.” Everything follows from an ingenuous view of reality, and nature is not seen through a network of plausible concepts. It is true that he is not altogether free from the credulities and crudities of his age, but his sound sense saved him from much of the wasted dexterity, the absurdity and legend, that were then rife. He would not have been the great man he was, had he not been a little ahead of his contemporaries, and, like Saul, higher “from the shoulders and upward.”
Even in the most abstruse questions, he never abandons this simplicity, so hard to achieve; he would rather teach than appear learned.
We have already spoken of his objectivity and its cause, but we must refer to it again here, insofar as it is a mark of his genius, unsurpassed in the genius of others. While we admire the goodnaturedness of Socrates, and the nobility of Plato and Aristotle, we are bound to admit that, from the point of view of philosophy and helpfulness to others, it is better to be above these exquisite human characteristics, in the realms of pure thought. Stylishness has really nothing to do with truth, and the philosopher needs clearness of vision more than polished manners.
It is only the greatest personality that can be impersonal; can forget his status and personal greatness and discuss a question entirely on its merits.
This objectivity, and his constructive mind, led him to uphold certain views that, in his philosophical surroundings, were in danger of being repudiated. He was able to defend his position against the Platonic idealism that held the day. He insisted on the substantial character of the world, its real causality, and the validity of its actions and interactions. He upheld the autonomy of thought against the false mystics of his day, and the validity of experience against those who believed in innate ideas, and the a priori proofs of the existence of God. Amid strong opposition, he upheld the unity of man, the unity of soul and body, and thus prepared the way for the modern theories of psychophysiology.
It was to Aristotle that he was chiefly indebted for these principles, but he developed them on broader lines. He realized their full force and import and grasped the link that connects them with objective truth, as opposed to false idealism. “Aristotle,” he says, “does not seek truth in the same way as other philosophers.” (He is thinking especially of Plato.) “He begins with sensible, observable things and proceeds to things separated from matter . . . They, on the other hand, set out to apply intelligible and abstract things to things of sense.”25
The height to which his thought aspired necessitated a firm hold on reality; the tall tree must be deep-rooted. He built on a solid foundation, so unlike the airy construction of the Sophists. He was in contact with things, not merely with ideas. And he was in touch with other thinkers and respectful toward tradition. Hence, by a comparison of the views of great men, he was able to control his own speculations. Knowledge is, after all, only a mode of living and therefore depends upon life and upon living beings. Cut it off from these, and it becomes a prey to chimeras. When, however, it is necessary to choose from what they offer, men and epochs must be prudently distinguished, without any violent reaction or rupture. “His mind,” wrote Doctor Willmann, “was like a lake which receives the torrents of water from every side, and allows the impurities that they contain to sink to the bottom, so as to remain a clear reflector of the blue sky above.”
St. Thomas’s genius had just the right proportions of moderation and boldness. While it is true that a genius that is somewhat unbalanced does more for the progress of thought than a second-rate mind, the really marvelous genius is the one that is well balanced and whose daring takes the form of raising commonplaces to sublime ideas.
Bossuet speaks of these unbalanced minds as “more able to push things to extremes than to prevent reason following its bias, and competent rather to collect ideas than to reduce them to their natural unity.” If St. Thomas does not allow his reason to follow its natural bias in this way, it is not because he is timid, but because he is extremely daring.
Conditions being what they were in his age, his prudence, docility, humility, and piety could not prevent his being a revolutionary. It sounds strange to call one a revolutionary whose sole intention was to restore order, but really order is the end, although not always the outcome, of every revolution. It was his love of truth and his clearsightedness that made him speak a new language and seem subversive. He marches straight ahead, and his free step is bolder than deeds of valor, as his humility is more exalted than pride. He is never surprised. We may wander around him, looking in vain for the reconciliation of truths. Then he will speak to us in a strange tongue, but strange only because it is eternal.
We must repeat, however well known it may be, that the most outstanding characteristic of his genius was his power of synthesis. He had the knack of getting at the roots of things and following up all their ramifications. His special aptitude was to centralize, unify, and disentangle, and thus to render things clear.
A principle is the germ of expansion, and nobody knew better than he did how to foster the germ and bring it to maturity. While he cannot be said to have invented the guiding principles of science, still, it was he who brought them into play, and surely he who could discover their full force, and could properly use and apply them, may be called their inventor. Capable of dealing with a multitude of facts, ideas, texts, and documents, sacred and profane, he was able to make from them a synthesis, simple and grand, without wrong emphasis or false perspective.
In his system, the solution of the smallest practical question involves the whole universe; its whole framework is apparent in its least application. In Michelangelo’s figures, noble and elegant as they are, we can always see the skeleton. Beethoven works out a symphony by subtle variations of the theme, but the theme is always there. In Shakespeare or in Corneille, the lively trait, the unexpected answer, or the sudden gesture are meant only to bring out the soul of a person or of a situation. Similarly, the far-reaching principles in St. Thomas, the skeleton of his system, his whole mind and broad outlook are revealed in every development and every particular conclusion. Everything flows from first principles. Nothing is a mere expedient. This sense of unity, this sense of the correlation of all ideas and of all beings is one of the most striking characteristics of his writings. He sets his course by the stars.
“Philosophy,” wrote Novalis, “is a kind of homesickness, a longing to be at home everywhere. St. Thomas’s ambition was to be thus present by his thought in every part of the universe. He never for a moment relinquished it. He found science, as it were, a heap of iron filings, and he turned it into a perfect system, governed by definite laws. He united things without confusing them. He could gauge the relative values of the great and the small, and classify each according to its proper laws. He found the absolute in every particular value, and vice versa. He set out to discover in God the origin of everything in the world. He fulfilled Amiel’s description of a great mind as an Esprit sphérique, qui voit tout, sait tout, envellope tout.26
It is true that there was more than one error into which his synthesis might have led him. There are philosophers who build up their system with abstract concepts, the value of which is purely logical, and thus turn living nature into a piece of machinery. The poet, on the other hand, makes everything live, but blurs the outlines and the mutual relations of things. Between these extremes is the eclectic, who makes a clever selection, but who never gets to the heart of nature, where is to be found the unity of all his theses. The true philosopher must unite all things by probing them more deeply. There is no other way of reconciling facts, doctrines, tendencies, or men. St. Thomas had not that “way of keeping assiduously on the surface of things.” He goes straight to the truth, where all things are reconciled; to reality, to being, where, divine and human, every partial truth, every correct tendency, and every age finds its justification.
He dwelt in a region between concrete reality and its principles, and could therefore discover the relationship of the one with the other, deducing facts from principles, or principles from facts, according as he possessed the one or the other at the outset. This is not, as has been asserted, “weighing reality in shadowy scales.” While it is possible to be too abstract (and we may grant that this was true, in a sense, of St. Thomas), reality is not thereby lost sight of, because the abstract is the measure of reality; indeed the abstract is just as real, since it is the operation of a real being, the intelligence. The platinum bar that represents the standard meter is itself a material thing, but, at a certain temperature, it is a true measure of material things.
St. Thomas is moreover just as clever in matters of detail as he is in tracing the bold outlines; his breadth of outlook in no way impairs his analysis of particular points. He analyzed only where it was necessary to test an element in his great system, and he avoided subtlety that served no purpose. It was not his wish to astonish by microscopic analysis; he preferred to convince by clear vision, aware that the vast expanse of truth surrounds, like an aureole, each minute element.
Let us finish with some account of his moral and mystical genius, as this will help us to form a better idea of his genius in metaphysics. It has been said that, in metaphysics, St. Thomas is “superficial.” That was not the opinion of Leibnitz. Such a view shows either a complete absence of knowledge or an uncommon lack of judgment.
On first reading, we may be misled by his deliberate inaccuracies and by his provisos, which are full of meaning for the learned, easy for the beginner, and clear to all. These were due to the depth and breadth of his thought, to his clarity, and to the didactic character of his writings. He had a happy knack of avoiding an explanation that was inopportune, of economizing the truth, and of shelving by a noncommittal answer a difficulty that he did not wish to discuss. This should be a matter for praise rather than blame; we should admire his silence, as we admire the pauses in a magic symphony.
The principal attacks on Thomistic metaphysics come from those whose own philosophy is either physical or idealistic, the two extremes that reduce metaphysics to a branch of physics and psychology respectively.
St. Thomas, on the contrary, is a real metaphysician. He places the object of this science in Being, taken in its widest sense, and in the common attributes of being; he seeks an explanation of derived being, not in itself, but in the profounder principles of its source. He reiterates Aristotle’s saying that we can no more build up the world of experience with experience than we can build houses with houses. The whole object of metaphysics is to try to grasp the mystery that lies behind visible things.
It is only a great mind that can move in this higher sphere of the eternal principles that govern our changeable, temporal world. Many are ignorant of its very existence, unless they know of it through their religion. Still, all thought presupposes it, and the task of a genius in metaphysics is to unravel its mysteries and make it known to others to express the deepest of nature’s secrets and speak nature’s most exalted language.
St. Thomas was primarily a theologian, and his metaphysics were chiefly built up around the mysteries of God. Not that this prevented him from using his great gifts to form a complete metaphysical system. He was naturally led to this from the fact that God, who is self-subsisting Being, in one sense coincides with the object of metaphysics, just as the sun coincides with the real image of it, which the astronomer sees in his telescope. He therefore made every effort to probe the mystery of God in philosophy, and as far as possible to explore his intimate truths. Not even the supreme mystery of the Trinity was beyond his speculations. He skirted around it and argued about it from outside, rather as a skilled mathematician invents formulae for unknown realities. God was impenetrable, but he could circle around him, and light up the frontiers; and in the penumbra, the God-fearing soul finds peace.
In treating of creation, he strives to explain the inner workings of being, before it becomes a phenomenon, the conditions that make it a phenomenon, and the nature of a phenomenon, which is also a form of being, since appearance has a reality of its own and needs explaining just as much as any other reality. Yet his teaching is not esoteric; it exactly reflects reality.
A genius in metaphysics, he is possibly an even greater genius in moral theology. His very sanctity made it inevitable. Abounding charity urges the philosopher to mix with men, as Raphael walked with the young Tobias, and showed him how to overcome the monstrous fish and to find the medicines that he sought. St. Thomas thought in order to serve others, and his thought is colored by this solicitude.
Scholasticism has been accused of atrophying the mind, and drying up the emotions. If that be so, then, as Auguste Comte says of positivism, these effects are produced only in its organes vulgaires. It is certainly not true of St. Thomas.
But something more is required besides the inclination to serve. There must be a certain aptitude for morals, and this could not be lacking in one who was remarkable for his sound judgment, discrimination, accuracy, and good sense. If “most prudent” was one of the titles given to St. Thomas by his friends, is it not prudence, in fact, that is the essential virtue in moral principles as it is in practical morals? The common belief that the faculty of abstraction is opposed to common sense is a gross error. It might be true of those whose outlook is not wide enough to envisage both, but a genius is bound to realize the metaphysical foundation of morals, and the necessary and eternal principles that govern our contingent acts. “An incomplete theory,” writes Novalis, “is ruinous to practical affairs, but a complete theory safeguards them.” If we grant, with Goethe, that “different philosophies are merely different forms of life,” we are bound to admit that a great philosopher must be a great moral legislator as well. It is because the vulture soars so high that it catches its prey upon the plains.
St. Thomas’s moral theology has all the characteristics of his metaphysics. The main theses are accurately defined, while there is an extraordinary wealth of detail. We have only to read his treatise on the passions in the Prima Secundae, or his account of the secondary virtues in the Secunda Secundae, to see how subtle he can be.
Yet, to cope with the contingencies of everyday life, his moral genius had to be extremely adaptable, broadening out to the wide possibilities of real life and narrowing down to the principles of morality proper. A morality as exact as geometry is necessarily deceptive; it is a sort of cubism, in which the living figures are unrecognizable. Moreover, he is very different from certain casuists. He considered it a contradiction to speak of really concrete cases of conscience as solvable in the abstract, without reference to the subject and circumstances of the particular actions. It is impossible, he maintains, to define the individual by a string of notions, and every moral case is essentially individual, and therefore “ineffable.” This does not deny the possibility of definite decisions in moral matters; it simply maintains that this science has limitations and that facts and conscience are beyond its scope.
St. Thomas had a genius for moderating these cases, as well as a genius for definite decisions. He united the Greek aptitude for defining and the Roman respect for law. His treatment of justice and laws, and his De Educatione Principum show him at once politician, lawmaker, and legal adviser — in short, the complete moralist. For politics, despite the modern interpretations of the word, is only a development, and an application to collective facts, of the aims of individual men, and of the principles of the moral law. It is not a branch of physics, unconnected with the higher ends of human life.
Lastly, St. Thomas is a genius in his treatment of the mystic life, because mysticism bears the same relation to metaphysics and to morality, in the higher order of things, as these sciences bear to law, sociology, and politics, in our ordinary life. Mysticism deals with what is divine in us, in the same way that metaphysics deals with abstract thought, and moral theology with our natural acts. Emerson’s description of Plato as the “Euclid of Sanctity” could be even more aptly applied to St. Thomas. Better than Plato, he formulated, as far as is possible, mysteries that, although not in themselves capable of formulation, may be defined extrinsically, explained by analogy, enunciated provisionally, and be shown to follow definite laws. He expounds clearly what the greatest mystics have sometimes confused in a cloud of imagery. He treats of ecstasies and deep love in an intellectual, not emotional, way.
Yet his knowledge of the inner life of the soul was not merely theoretical; he lived the life and experienced the ecstasies, but always with his emotions under control. He was to see in an ecstasy these limitations of his work, and to cry out, when the sublimity of divine truth overpowered him, “Here must my writings cease.”
It is extraordinary how, as he rose higher in the supernatural, he seemed, as Barrès says of Dante, to be nearer to nature. He was driven to insist and to depend more and more upon the analogical character of the relations between creature and Creator. Yet his words are always exact, and, whether his principles are taken from Scripture or from reason, his proofs are always rigorous and rational.
His holiness was intellectual, and he gave intellectual expression to the deep, mystical experiences of the greatest souls. His inner, mystical life, his secret communing with God, become in his writings so many abstract concepts, to all appearances as lifeless as the principles of geometry. He does not use the language of a St. Teresa or a Ruysbroek or a John of the Cross. His vocation was to be a constraining and sobering influence; everything was subordinated to his proper work of teaching, which was not allowed to suffer for the sake of discussing what had no direct bearing on his teaching. The heart and the imagination must be rigorously subjected to the intelligence. His asceticism, his religion, his holiness, his oblation, adoration, holocaust was the right use of his reason. “The hero,” says Emerson, “is he who is steadfastly concentrated,” and it is in this sense that St. Thomas was a genius in philosophy, morality, and mysticism.