How to Study cing The Letter of ST THOMAS AQUINAS fe to hpi BROTHER JOHN - DE MODO sTuDENDI Latin Test with Translation and Exposition by VICTOR WHITE, OP. AQUIN PRESS _ LONDONee cleat gen Lecture read wt 4 Inauguration of Studies for the Year 1944-1945 in the Dowinican Priories of Uawiesyard and Bleckfriars, Oxford. First Esition the present format, 1547 Second ee ereereaeiers Thitd Elition ~~ ages Fourth Edition ~~ ayy Fifth Elition - gag Sixth Edition ~~ ose Seventh Edits = 969 Eighth Edition.» ag60 ARTHURS PRESS LTD. WOODCHESTER, CLOS, A LETTER OF SAINT THOMAS. TO BROTHER JOHN— *DE MODO STUDENDI” QUIA qusesint a me, fh Chiro mihi tare: fe fer Joanne, Seiere in theasuro SSentise " scquirendo, tales me Ubi niger hoc tradiar consi! tbe per rive, et 900 sadn mat cle inmoirey quia per ick a ad itis porter Hiuivemadi_ eat monida men de i ta ‘Tardoguum te esse jubeo, et tarde ad loeu- ton accedentem tem amplecd ; BROTHER JOHN, mot dear to me in Christ! Sinee you have asked me how one should ‘set_abour to equire the treasure of Knowledge, this ia my advice to you concern~ ing it: namely, that $e should "chasse to ‘ates, not steaightway into the ocean, but by way of the litle steams; for diene things ought to resched by way of easy ones. ‘The following, there fore, is my advice 10 you concerning your ‘ay of living = [urge you to hesitate before speaking, and te hesitate before visit= ing the common room20 ate te tt Pee eee Oration] vacace non. Omnibus amabilem te eahubeus, tol exhibere Seedsas;) ed. temini fSnlfarcma te coaltum ostenday; quia nimia fimilentas part con Sone mater 8 Sudin subminisese; Ec de factis ot verbis sacculaium nullatenus Diseursuin super om- pis fugias ; Sanetonum et probe Yestisie non omits. Non respicias 2 quo, sed quod sane dies! menda Ea quie levis fie ot intelligas, de dubiis te De not cease from de- Show yourself t9 be lovable to everybody, S03 bus be very fami lise sith ‘nobody, for too much familiarity breeds contempt and introduces factors which retard study 5 Also, do not in any way get_ yourself ine volved in’ the doings and. sayings of out- siders 5 Avoidaimlessmennder- ings sbove all things; Do not fail to follow Inthe footsteps of the saints and of sound Do not heed by eokom ay ging sid bat ‘chat is said you Should commait to your memory; What you read, set about, to understand, verifying what is doubtful ; |= | Iiora te ne quaeras.” Uius, beati_ Doraini Sequére vestigiey qui frondes, flores et fre= tus, utiles se mira Biles, ia vinew Domini Sabeoth, dum vim comitem habuit, prom tulit ac produsity Hace si secmtus fueris, ad id_attingere poteris, quidguid aftectas, stoked rue mind, at though “you eere wanting 2 6s Yece tte brim} ‘"Scok not the. thin that are too high Follow in the footete ‘of that Blessed Dottie fic, who, while he vet bad life’ for his ile lowetraveller, brovahe forth and produced foliage, blossom, fruit fruit oth service abie and astonishing— in the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts. If you shall “bave followed these, steps, you will Ibe able to attain io whatsoever you have mind. Fare you well *The Noted will be found ot cd owe Commentary, bp. 37, ¢ a.EXPOSITION AND COMME) TARY ay VICTOR WHITE, 0.P. ‘Tuts letter is counted by P.Mandonnet among the ‘vie dubia’? of the writings of St Thomas. I can see no intrins reason in its form or content for doubtin its authenticity. We know that St ‘Thomas did not hesitate to set aside even his major works in order to. rep! requests for assistance from his br in the Dominican Order. We have his patient letter in reply to the Six Questions 9f Brother Gerard of Soissons—and very frivolous ions St Thomas con- sidered at Teast five of them to be—in which he writes: ‘Et licet in pluribus esse occupatus, tamen ne vestrae cari= tatis petitioni deessem, quam cito facuitas se obtulit, vobis reseribere euravi."? ‘There is, indeed, a touch of weariness, if not of irony, in the opening of his reply to the ‘Thirty-Six Questions of an anonymous lector at Venice: ‘Eectis littris vestris, in eis invent ariculorum muititudinem numerosam, super quibus 2 me vobis responderi” infra | quatriduum — vestra cartes postulabat.”¢ But here again St Thomas will fay aside more imposing tasks to meet the request of bis col league: ‘licen’ ewem in plurimis | 6 oe netheaniviseneiyere mane foccupatus, ne tamen deescem sesirve dilectionis obsequio.”? Only once do we find St Thomas at ail testy when plied with questions by a fellow-friar: ‘Fuis- set_ mihi facilius respondere, si vobis scribere placuisset rationes, quibus dicti articuli vel ssseruntur vel impugnantur.’? But on that occasion there were not six nor thiny-six but Forcy-Two Questions; they had arrived in the middle of High ‘Mass on the Wednesday in Holy Week, they were lergely identical with the questions from the Venetian lector which St Thomas had already answered; they included the question ‘as to whether a workman could move his hand in virue of the movement of the heavenly bodies but without angelic intervention. And, Tast but not least, the questioner on this, occasion was no humble student nor plodding lector, but none other than the Master General of the Order. ‘There was complete obedience, but almost a protest at the conclusion ‘of that lewer: ‘Hacc sunt, Pater reverende, quae mihi sespon- denda occurrunt ad ‘praesens articulis a vobis transmissis, quamvis plures corum sint practer limites theologicae facultatis. Sed ex vestra iniunctione factum swihi debitum, quod (princpii) of professio nullatenus, requirebat.” But certainly there is no intrinsic reason why some young Dominican should not have written to the great man jee /conoid HESS AR to inquire how he should set about his studies, and there is still k assume that St Thom but it is very much to the point: and although in his larger works himself more expan ely, and tet precision and more exact \e fame themes, its content is ly in accord with what we kaow from elsewhere to have deen his convictions I think it may be profitable far us to letter in ght of what elsewhere on the ing and of reaching. t Know whether our redievatist scholars have sny il2as 35 to the identity of this Brother Jonn, or even whether nis was his true name and not an inven- tion of Iater editors. It is clear from St Thomas's reply that he was a Dominicin, that he was just starting on his studies, and that he was young? Brother John, it seems, was ia a hurrys bursting, perhaps, with’ his first fervour; burning with apostolic zeal. The harvest was great, the labourers few—pare ticularly such Isbourers as were intellec- tually “c ped to_ meet the pressing There was a9 time to be lost: Brother John must equip himself without delay, and know alll the answers to all the questions; the truth about God % and his creatures must be speedily mastered, sorted out, decketed and labelied, ready-made at Brother John’s disposal. There was no time to paddle about; he must piunge headlong into the ocean of wisdom and plumb its depths. The world needed, ‘nay, God needed, Brother John: besides, Brother John himself wanted to Anca. “Perhaps it was with some such idea this that he wrote to the famous Master, Thomas of Aquin; in the hope, it may’ be, that he would learn from him some short-cut to wisdom, some get- wise-quickly technique whereby the treasure of knowledge might be obtained with a minimum of delay. St Thomas himself seems to have had some instinct which told him that such was the case: “tale a me tibi super hoc traditur_con- sillum: nt per rivulos, non statim in mare cligas introire, quia pet facilia ad ifficilia oportet devenire’. Behind this simple, almost _ trite, admonition lies a whole philosophy—a philosophy of what it means to kroz, (0 learn, to teach. Centuries before, these questions bad been pretty thoroughly threshed out by Plato, notably in. his Theactetus. Athens, this’ Dialogue relates, was agog with the reputation for brile Jiance and learning of a young man called Theaetetus: ‘his approach to learning and inquiry’ (it was said of him) ‘is like 9hhieves ali this at was delighted, but sceptical, at the news; patfendy, labori- ously, ruthlessly he puts him to the test. Poor Theacretus does not even know what ‘to know’ meens. Step by step he is shown that knowledge is not just per tion, direct sense expericnce, A/S: THESIS. It is not even the simple apprehension of the intellect: ruth is to be attained only in the judgment which can he expressed by a statement or proposition (cf. 185.5)? But nor is it any sort of judement; it is not merely acknowledging what other people think, nor a conviction reached by an accumula: tion of preferences or probabilities. ‘That may be DOXA, opinion, belief, or sentiment but it i not knowledge. I do not Rnow that x is y, unless I know why zis y. And that means argument, ratio- ination, the drawing of conclusions from premisses, the critical verifeation of those premisses themselves. and their application to the data of experience; all of which means time and patieree. St Thomas, aided by Aristotle's Analytics and ‘De Anima, ‘will consider ably cevelop these fundamental concep- tions modifying to some extent. the Socratic view of the function of the human teacher as mere midwifery. But, especially in his Question De Magistro 10 | | in the De Veritate (xi), and in the article ‘Whether ope man ean teach another’ in the Summa (L117.1.) he will insist that the acquisition of ‘real knowledge can only be an immanent growth, a gradual and interior process. "It must be a gradual process. for man is no angel, able to see in a flash all the implications of a single, given idea: on the contrary, man can collect his ideas themselves only gradually from successive _ experience: and co-relate one idea with another (cf. 85). Te must be an interZor process, for still less can truth be acquired vicariously; nobody else can do my for me. I do not now thet = is y when all I do is to remember that my teicher, or some other alleged authority, says so. I know it only when I see that it follows from what [ already know. I acquire new knowledge only when E proceed ex notis ad ignota, from what knew to what T did not though for that very reason, what I come to know is already potentially in what I knew before. ‘That is why Brother Joha must proceed ‘per facilia ad cifficilia’; there is no other way, no short cut, And no human teacher, no lector in his rostrum nor St Thomas himself in his Summa, can do the job for him. Knowledge, wisdom, truth, cannot be imposed upon the mind from’ without; they can only grow up 1from within, from the seeds of what we already know. Only by the activity of my own mind, my very own ‘intellectus agens’, as St ‘Thomas maintains ugainst icenna and the Augustinias [lumina- tionists, can the raw material of sense experience be rendered homogeneous with the mind kself, rendered intelligible, converted into ideas (De Ver. x. 6., cf. Ira, 3 and 4). Only by the receptivity of my very own mind, my own “intellectus " possibilis’, as St Thomas maintaing against Averroes, cen ideas be possessed, assimilated, developed, com ordinated, aifirmed, denied (f 1.76.2). And my’ very own senses, exterior and interior, are ‘the oniy windows through which I can see the other, through which Tam in direct contact with existing reality, with truth. Nobody cise, be he never 90 wise, can do this for me. ‘The human teacher can never be a principal cause of my knowledge: not even a secondary principal cause. He is a dis posing, assisting, quxiliary cause only of my knowledge, as the physician is of my health. He can lead me to the waters of wisdom, but he can neither provide them nor make me drink He can help me in two ways, and in two ways only: proponcada signa, eusilia, instrumenta;%® and proponendo discipalo ordinem — principiorun - ae ad con a Proponendo signa: the human teacher can spesk, or write, and I can hear or read his words. Words are primarily signs of ideas: of reality indeed, but, of reality already universalised, classified, mentalised, we might say predigested and rendered apt for the mind's absorption. Tt is easier, St Thomas explains, to attain to truth the aid of signs, hich convey to us the results of the workings of other minds on the raw material of sense-experience, than to have to start from scratch with the chaotic multiplicity of that material itself, Abso- lutely speaking, the human mind can attain for itself all truth within its range by way of its own discovery, per ciam incentionés. But in fact and practice it often needs the assistance of the human teacher, the via disciplinae, the way of learning by the aid of words, conventional signs of ideas already attained by other minds. But we crust never forget that these are signs only, instruments and helps, not objects. Woe betide us when we mistake the signs for the signified: when we study the Summa instead of studying God and his creation with the assistance of the Summa. Woe betide us when we put any human teacher in the place which belongs to God alone; giving to his utterances that unqualified assent which belongs only to. the humble obedience of faith in the First Truth. 5‘Mens quidem est sui furis'; St Thomas echoes ‘Seneca in his very weatise on obedience, and explains that the mind in fis own interior, incocporeal operations should therefore ‘obey God alone (E-IT re4.s}. ‘Unus est magister vester', said a greater than Seneca: (cf. Matt.23.s) ‘call no man your master, your Rabbi, your teacher on earth’. And 3¢ Thomas comments: ‘We are forbidden to call any man our master in the sense of auributing to. him the primary authority to teach (principalicas magisterii) which belongs to Gad, thus putting our trust in the wisdom of men; but rather, what we have heard from men, should we bring to the bar of divine truth which speaks within us by the impression of its own Hikeness; for by this we are enabled to pass judgment on all things’ (De Ver. xi.t xd 3). Bus, secondly, the human teacher ean assist” us proponendo ordirem princi- Piorum ad comclusiones. "The Thomistic cher, unlike the Socratic teacher, must himself know bis stuf. ‘I am so far tike the midwife’, had said Sooretes, ‘that I cannot mys! give birth to wisdom; and the common reproach is true that, though Tgvestion ofhers . . . there is no’ wisdom in me’ (Theaetetus 150 ¢). Neither will St Thomas, nor a Thomistic keeturer, give birth to wisdom in us; he cannot waik the road to knowledge for us; but lead us he "4 can, precisely because, and in so far as, he bas himself already tenddon the same road. and, knowing the way, is able by signs to show us how one step follows another, So ‘docere’ for St Thomas, is a ‘ducere’ (De Ver. xi.t) a leading, a guid metaphorically, funus alum docere dicitur, quod swum, discursum rationis, quer in se facit ratione natural, alteri exponit per signa : et sic ratio naturalig discipul, per huiusmodi sibi propo sita, sicut per quaedam instrumenta, pervenit ad engnitionem ignotorim’# (i a superb definition which we teachers and pupils might take as a subject for occasional meditation and self-examination, But the essential task of attaining knowledge is always the task of the ‘ratio naturalis Giseipuli’, of the thinking faculties of the learner himself. The acquisition of real knowledge means time—and trouble. great deal of trouble; for man is io angel, no ‘intellectus purus’. Man is a rational animal, and a fallen, disintegrated one at that. [n 1-11.16. 2 ad 3, St Thomas succinctly sums up man’s tragic condition, and the particular problems which it sets the would-be student. ‘With regard to knowledge there is in man a conflict of inclinations. From the side of his soul a man is impelled by the desire to know things? and in this matter it is needful that he should irmuously bridle this appetite, lest he drive himself immoderately in trying to know things (“ne immoderate rerum: cognitioni xstendat”). Bue from the side of his bodily constitution, he is impelled tc five froin the labour involved in acquiring knowledge.” It is a strange and tragic position indee the very appetite for knowledge, uncon= trolled, unbridled, undirect 4, acquisition of knowledge, defeats the attain- ment of truth, ‘The human mind is che faculty of being ; its native thirst is to know being, all bei ry being. But ‘corpus aggravat animam'!4; and the ‘anima est forma corporis’; ‘our minds are sense- locked, time-conditioned, able to entertain only one idea at a time, to proceed but slowly from one judgment to another. What is the remedy? The old Platon’st, and still more the néo-Platonist, hed sud in effect: Crush the ‘animal’ to free the ‘rationale’; repress the body, che senses, the imagination, the emotions; liberate’ the divine soul’ from the prison-house of the body, and then the soul may have all its desizes in the contemplation of the trans sendent Ideas. No, says St Thomas in effect. ‘Truly the ‘body weighs down the soul’, truly the flesh lusteth against the spirit and must be pacified and tamed ; the life of the four cardinal virtues, with the balance and harmony they bring, is an indispensable prerequisite of the life of study and contem- piation. But there is one vice, and one vice only, that directly and immediately militates against the life of study and contemplation, and that vice is cmiositas, 16 “Curiositas’ takes many forms, which St Thomas enumerates and discusses in ILII.267, but they all have this in commen, that they are manifestations of a disordered desire to know, an unreasonable appetite for Feason, a refusal to accept man’s animal condition and its consequences. The first and foremost enemy of the acquisition of truth, the principal foe of the student as. such, ig not the lust of the flesh against the spirit but the lust of the spirit against the flesh; not the im but the impetuo: Now the remedy for this vice is the virtue of studiositas; and ‘studiositas’, the dis- tinctive virtue of the student, is not, contrary to what we tend to suppose, a som of fortitude but 2 sozt of temperance. It is not, ‘that is to say, 2 bold aggression against difficulties and’ obstacles, an affair of wet towels, clenched teeth, furrowed brow : but contrariwise a bridling, a controlling, 2 directing of desire—of the innate desire of the intellect to know (H-IL166}. The intellect, being immaterial, cannot be forced, and while the Divine Sophia will give hereelf to humble souls, she will not be raped. “Studiosites’, says St Thomas, is to man’s mind what chastity is to the body, and ‘curiositas’ is a sort of intellectual promis- cuity. As unbalanced sexual lust defeats the purpose and even the delight of sex, so ‘curiositas’ defeats the purpose of the intellect, and deadens the delights which the 71 Wisdom finds in dwelling f. Proverts 3.31) I desice to know of Brother cust nut be weakened, stil less dindened) iris wis that ail pride oe needed motivation for ail his studies. But in Leon of b mist net be a hurry. [cis slow +0 done by era 3 but if Brother Join thinks is worse to [oliow. is of the remainder of the lever seom to have nothing to do with intellectual, scientific method at all, Brother Ik of the moral virtues to prevent immederate vehemence of the emotions, and to auicten the disturbances arising from external business’ (II-IT 180, 2). So, instead of some elaborate methodo- logico-pecagogical technique, what Brother Joan yets fisst of all from the great Master Thomas is a list of matter-of-fact common~ places which he might have got any day from his novice-master. He must be careful about keeping silence : he must be slow to he must embrace purity of con- stience he must not cease to spend plenty of time in prayer. Also, he must keep to his cell, love his cell—'si vis’, adds St Thomas rather unexpectedly, ‘in’ cellam vinariara introduci'—from which I can only assume that admission to the wine-cellar was the replies by telling him how to lite, He © i rth century novice’s idea of bliss; an rinues : ‘E ; inordinate desire to which St Thomas, as a tua’. That ‘ergo’ must. seem’ strancely yychologist, and mindful of Canticles inconsequential until we remember what ! ‘es a symbolic interpretation. He must St Thomas, developing some ileas in think twice before wandering off to the Arisotle’s. Ethics, has to sav about, the common-roomi#; he must be on amicable ‘elation of the life of virtue to the life of terms with bis compasions, neither aloof contemplation. Essentialiter moral virtue has : from any nor too familiar with any; and he de ‘the search ‘ must not get himself entangled in the affaics emrcens prfibens, of outsiders. Above all, he must avoid it is indisp ce oF contem= ‘discursus’—whieh perhaps we can -best lation is impeded both by the eehemence =~ Manslate by "rushing about’ inthe colloquial Bf the emutions, by which the attention of sense—and imitate the cxaraples of the the soul is drawn from the things of the saints and other sound men. mind to the things of sense, and also by ‘Trite, conventional platitudes they may 18 t 19 iseem; but we know that in St Thomas's mind they were not platitudirous: they were not, that i to say, just current con= ventional ideas uncritically accepted. but established conclusions drawn from certain premisses, based upon and confirmed by experience. St Thomas did not merely swallow them argued them ail out. Silence is essential to the life of study, because to iearn means to listen and one cannot listen when one is talking nor in 2 hubbub of chatter. Tt means listening, not merely nor principally to the external, human teacher specking without, but above all to Gnd “qui sous interius et principaliter and ‘vithout whose interior lielit no 8 any efficacy (De Fer. the exterior hubbub of talk interferes wich study; but still more the interior” hubbub of untamed. warring cravings and moral confliets—heace ‘purity of conscience’. Praver is necessary, not as something heterogeneous to the study of theology, but a5 that which puts us into ditect couch with its subject matter, which is Ged, and without which it is remote and lifeless. Theology, ‘oratio de Deo’,!8 is lifeless and unreal without ‘oratio ad Deum’. God cannot be expressed: he can only be adcressed—is the motto of some modern existentialist divines. St Thereas will agree at least that it is only in the second person and not in the 20 y realish third, in the yocative rather thant nominative, that the ‘ascensus mentis. in Deum’ is achieved (of, 1.13 with IDI. 83.4). In praver only do we stand face to face with the Teacher ‘qui solus interius et principaliter docet’, and without whose constant assistance and light we can learn nothing (See also [I-Il. 180.3 and 4). But no matter what we pray for, any prayer according to St Thomas, of its very nature the worshipful subjection precisely of the mind to God (II-IL83.1); it is this fact that differentiates it from other acts of religion, and so makes it the great safeguard against the godless autonamy of the intellect, the frightful disaster of intellectual pride, the worst and most original sin (II-IL.162, 6, 7 cf. 3d 1). T confess that when I first read this letter I was surprised that St Thomas, in this context of study, laid such emphasis on shaternal charity and Brother John's attitude tovis companions, But one cannot have lived for \venty years in houses of study without 1g t© how great an extent study is selped by satisfactory or hindered by mis- msaged personal relationships. “It is enormously advanced and facilitated where there is the amicitia® of a good community spirit, allowing of free and frank interchange of epinion and mutual criticism of ideas ; it is made very difficult where each student is left in lonely isolation, where that inter change is ‘not done’, called ‘talking shop’,and that eriticism resented. But it is not 2 matter only of understood, consciously directed, collaborative: friewdstep ly ean be still more made or marted 2y thase strange, oxervhelming, absorbing personal attractions which St Thomas here calls ‘nimia familfaritas quae parit contemptum ec retardationis materiam a studio macis subministrat’. Where intellectual develop- ment has been accompanied by no corr ponding emotional education, these involuntary and sometimes devasting emotional storms are particularly to be expected. A whole paper might profitably be devoted to the profound consideration which St ‘Thomas gives, particularly in the Second Part of the Summa, to the emotional and moral problems which peculiarly beset the student; his insistence that it is by immoderate sadness or ‘depression’ even more than by immoderate pleasure that the body is apt to weigh upon the mind and binder study (I-IL37); his analysis of the causes of that sadness, which he finds to lie even more in the privation of sense-pleasure than in the presence to the sense-appetite of what is positively enpleasant (I-1L36.1) ; his treatment of its remedies (I-lf-38) and its moral value when properly understood and used (I-(L.39). Then, in the Secunda Secundae, his treatment of acddie, the besetting temptation of the contemplative and the student, the capital and ceadly sin which consists precisely in the misuse of the az aan er eae iw oa che an ‘acidity’, a disgust or cyuic:sm, in regacd to the things of the mind and spirit, We now call it sloth or laziness, but for St Thomas itis less a failure of erfort than a failure of love. His insistence, therefore, on the especial need for those engaged in intellectual pursuits for Ludus, for playful words and works ; the repose of the senses which comes, not from their starvation, but from their delight (cf1-II. 24.2), which involves the periodic laying aside of attention to study, especially by the enjoyment, but still more by the production, of art (LI-1L.178). A vigorous sense-life is ‘not merely, for the student, a condescending concession to his ‘lower nature’, it is a necessity for his studies themselves. Although ‘in divinis est imaginatio omnino relin~ quenda’?? (In Boeth. de Trin. VI.2), our abstract thought itself becomes a mere game with paper money, concepts corresponding to no real wealth. if it is based upon no real experience of our own. Particularly so in ‘Theology, for sensible symbol and metaphor are the principal medium of God's Self- Revelation (Lis). ‘Only in the last paragraph of his letter does St Phomas deal with methods of study in the strict sense, with purely intellectual procedure. The paragraph is 50 concise, so pithy, that it almost defies translation : ‘Nom respicias a quo, sed quod sane (dicitu), memoriae commenda. Ea quae legis, fac ut emotional sadness mind, and which be a3intelligas, de dubits te certifican t guidguid fotercs in armorinla. mentis repoere satage, Sicut eapions es meds e, tiorate ne quer, Itis very brief, but is extraordinarily rich. “Do not mind by rehom a thing is said: but what is said commit to your memory ‘That is the frst admonition, and an essential one if we arc to attain to knowledge 25 distinct from mere belief. The beginner is sorely tempted to be more impressed by the prestige and personality of the texcher or the writer than by the truth of wha: he teaches or writes: it is very much less crouble, but it is fatal to knowledge, to leacring, to real vwisdom-—for this is concerned with the truth that is uttered, never with the personality of the human vehicle. This principle St Thomas himself carried to limitless lengths ; statements or arguments must be accepted or rejected on their own merits, never on the merits of the human spokesman, be he Catholic Christian, Infdal, Turk ot Jew. It is well known what ‘extensive, ‘though never uncritical, use St Thomas made of the work of the infidel Aristotle, of the ‘Moslem Averroes and Avicenna; it is less well known that, in the very first article of the Summa, arguing not about some matter of natural philcsophy but for our need for Divine Revelation itself. St Thomas has appropriated: the arguments, not of some Catholic Doctor, but of the Jewish Rabbi Maimonides. If what is said is true, it is a reflection of the First Truth, of the Divine Fv Ideas, no matter if it is discovered by a pagan (ef. Tet Lryy vad 3): if ieis false, itis not made true by being uttered by’ a pious Catholic. We are to check and verify the utterances even of the Doctors of the Church. ‘They are invaluable witnesses to. the Church’s ancient tradition, and their author- ity provides us with ‘probable arguments’, but ‘our faith rests upon the revelation made to the Apostles and Prophets who wrote the Canonical Books, and not upon any revelation, if such there be, made to other Doctors’ (1.1.8 ad =), Their utterances are weighty; when they seem to be at variance with one another of with ascertained truth, they are to be ‘pie exponendal?®—or, if that is impossible, set aside. In the fluid realm of human conduct, more especially, docility and trust in the greater experience of our elders is particularly required, as an integral part, though by no means the whole, of prudence (IL-IT, 48 and 49). Brother Joha thas sought the authoritative direction of ‘Master Thomas; but now Master Thomas seems to be telling him that what he must attend to is not the reputation of Master ‘Thomas but the truth of what Master ‘Thomas says. For us, still more, there is the danger that the very encoriums and recommendations which Popes and Councils and Congregations and Canons have show- ered upon St Thomas so intimidate us that ‘we come to regard him, not as a Teacher, a Magister in his own sense, but as an oracle a5whose ipwe dit alone settles every question. We cannot be too thankful tha: the highest voices in the Church summon us to the feet of such a teacher, yet the very fact that we are his pupils forbids us all such facile ipsedisitism or to become his yasmen, Because he is our Master and a Christian master, the greatest among us, 2e will be a him that serveth. He will Relp and assist our own minds to think for themselves; he zefuses to ‘ord it over them (ef. Matt, 20. 25, 26). But note how careful St Thomas is. Brother John is to commit what is said to his oemory; he is noz_steaightway to commit his inellect to it. He is not at once to swallow everything that is said ; let him remember it in order to test and examine it, but not at once to assent to it. Suspension of judgment is one of the first things a learner has to learn: we have to leu how 10 entertain ideas without promptly either affirming them or denying them. Here again it is a mater of that difficult business of restraining the mind’s own native impet- uwosity, the natural desire of the reason to be unreasonable, We want to jump to con= clusions before we have reached them: t0 take sides, make # stand, vehemently affirm, or deny before we have considered, examined, tested. proved. Ir is so very much easier to aseent to some slick theory of reality as we should like it to be, than to accept it and study it as God made i. St Thomas 26 continues: ‘Set abot to understand whae you read’. We are not on the path to Wisdom if we read widely but not deeply, without understanding. It is not enough to remember what an author says, we must understand what he means. We must understand what his terms mean to him, and not be deceived by similarities or dissimilarities of mere words. Moreover, we have to remember that we do not understand a conclusion, and are therefore in no position to affirm or deny it, even by understanding only its terms. A conclusion is understandable only asa conclusion, i, in so far as it follows from its premisses ;" which premisses must in their turn be understood, ‘This is par- ticularly important in reading so logical an author as St Thomas himself. It is some- times quite alarming to read the fantastic interpretations which critics, and even would-be exponents, of St Thomas put upon. his conclusions, simply because they have not troubled to study his own definitions of his terms or to read the conclusions in the light of his premisses. “Here we see the value and importance of the ‘scholastic method’ with its ‘dubia’, its ‘videtur quod non’, ‘sed contra’ and ‘responsio"#; its distinctions, sub-distine- tions and contra-distinctions : the place which should be occupied in our Dominican curriculum of study by the disputation. It is essential to our own intellectual advance ‘ment ; no less essential when, in our mission 27of preaching and teaching, we have to converse with other minds. ‘There are propositions so true that no false tion can be put upon them, so contain no element of truth. The critical discernment of their truth and falsehood is indispensable if we are to learn 5 np less so if we are to teach, 'Verum ‘eet honum intellectus'**; possible for any hi mind, no matter how perverse and etronzous in its opinion, to assent to falsehood except under the guise of, or on account of, some truth ; and if that’ mind is to be sughe, we must be able to perceive the truth which i possesses in order to lead it to the truth which it docs not. The purely negative refutation of error can remove the obstacles to the attzinment of truth; it can never convince that mind of truth (cf. £1.38; In Metaph. VUL.7; 17). As we can only truly Learn by being ted ex notis ad ignota, so we can only teack by being able to help other minds to do the same; and to do that it is essential others already possess, and making use of that to lead them to the truth thsy do not possess, Judgment must be suspenced; we cannot knot if we will not doubl: ‘De dubit te certificans’. ‘Volentibus investigare ver tatem, contingit praeopere, id est, ante opus, bene dubitare, id est bene attingere ad ea 8 quae sunt dubitabilia’® says Se ‘Thomas (commenting on Meraph, Il), For, he explains, the attainment of a truth is like the unravelling of a knot, and you cannot unravel a knot if there is no knot, or if you do not first of all examine it thoroughly ; and the knots which bind the mind are precisely its doubts. Learners who will not first examine the doubts, St Thomas goes on, are like people who do not know where they are going: and people who do not know where they are going will probably never get there, and even if they do they will not know when they have arrived, or whether they ought to go on walking, ‘They are, moreover, like ‘magistrates who will hear only one side of 2 “As nobody can judge a case unless he are inane a hhas to listen to philosophy will be in a berter position to pass judgment if he listens to ail the arguments on both sides’ (.). But doubts are not an end in themselves: they are there to be resolved—in order that Brother John may make himself certain concerning them, The man who patters out all the questions with no concern for the answers, is as far from wisdom and knowledge as the man who patters out all the answers without ever having asked any questions. But we can never know anything if we ask no questions; and I do not mean merely or chieity asking questions of the teacher, or of books, but asking questions of ourselves, of reality, of life, of God. Wonder, said Aristo, 2'the 29mother of wisdom ( Vfetuph. I): where there ig no surprise, no wonder, no inquisitiveness in the face of God and his creatures, there is no conceivable possibility of an immanent growth of kaowledge ; theology and philos- Sehy can be no more than a dead and deadening structure imposed on the mind from without, instead of being a vital inner response to an inner, personal need. If Gurocitas is an intellectual promiscuity, facuriositas is intellectual. frigidity: a positive repression of the mind's natural desire to karow, which can result only. in intellectual sterility. 7 : ‘Duridguid poteris, in armariolo | mentis reponere, satage, sicut cupiens vas implere, You cannot put anything into 2 cupboard thae is already crammed, a glass which is already full. Not only, St Thomas explains, are belief and opinion not knowledge: they greincompatiblc. It is intrinsically impossible to believe and know the same thing at the Same time and under the same respect (icit.1.3), An opinionated mind will never earn anything; it has no room for know. ledge. If knowledge is to be born, acts of belief and opinion must be suspended ; but ‘once knowiedge has been attained, it must be retained—no longer as a memory, but {in the cupboard of the mind’. Knowledge first comes a5 a momentary act, but it must be allowed to become habitus : a permanent fon in our cupboard which we cam Easily take out and use as occasion demands. 30 Tt thus becomes part of the living structure of our souls: part of an organic whole with s own immanent life. ‘ora te ne quacras—‘Seck not the things that are too high for thee’. The text (froin Ecclus. 5.22) i sometimes quoted 29 an excuse for not studying tbe things of God and of the Spirit at all. [t is not in this sense that it is understood by St Thomas. “The things which are said to be too high for man’, he says (Super Boeth. De Trin. Ut ad 1), ‘are those which exceed his capacity, not those which are by nature of more value than he. For the more a man occupies him self with things of more worth than himself, Provided it be within the limits of bis capacity, the more he will be benefited. Bat should he exceed the measure of his ‘capacity, he will easily fall into error, even should it be in regaed to the mostinsignificant objects.’ Among the most important things that Brother John will have to discover 2s he prog in his studies are precisely these limits of the capacity of the human mind ; what is intelligible to it and what is not and why i is not. In theology, more especially, ‘omnia abeunt in mysterium’- everything dissolves into mystery. He will have to learn just what validity our human ideas and concepts can have and not have in respect to God and the Divine Mysteries. ‘A docta igncrantia, a ‘learned ignorance’, is lone of the most precious results of thorough, scientific study, and it is the very opposite 3of an ignorant ignorance. But it is not only God above who, because of his tranecend- ence, is impervious to the clear compre- hension of the human mind in its earthly condition : there is also the dark enigma of matter beneath, which defies clear intel- ligibility by reason of its very materiality There is also the realm of practical human affairs and conduct which escape meta- physical certitude by reason of their contingence and variability (of, Aristotle's Nie, Eviics 1), Brother John will not really know, will not be reslly wise, until he understands these limitations of the human mind: until he knows what he can and cannot know; what he can know directly, and what only by inferences and analogies, and what is the charaeter and value of these analogies. So St Thomas brings him back to the point at which the letter started: the bridling and directing of the mind's impet- vosity. To sec what is too high for us, to seek oF claim fully to understand what is not fully understandable, is not only bad morals, it makes for bed science; and i is bad morals because it makes for bad science. It is, you may say, 2 discouraging letter to send to a keen young man on che theshoid of his studious career. But St Thomas will pot have us start with any illusions; it is a difficult, exacting, even a dangerous, under- taking. And we have not yet read the letter's conclusion, It runs :— Mlius beati Dominici sequere vestigia, qui 32 retin TEAS lt oa Fromdes, Pores et frarias, utiles ac mirabiles, in tinea Dorsini Subouh, dum vitam comitem habuit, protulit ae produxit. Have, si sectatus fueris, ‘ad id attingere poteris, quadquid ‘affectas. Vale! T can recall few passages in St Thomas's writings more rich and resonant, in spite of its mixture of metaphors. Moreover, I can recall no other passage in which he mentions St Dominic. There are historians who have darkly hinted that St Dominic's original intentions were frustrated by St ‘Thomas and his like, that the Order of Preachers was originally 2 band of simple catechists for simple people, and that the entry of his Friars into the business of the exact scientific study of systematic theology and philosophy, into the disputatious intellectual world of the Schools and the Universities, was an aberration from the primitive simplicity of the Order." Sometimes in our ‘own day the suggestion is heard that such intellectual activity is worse than useless for Dominicans who are destined to work among simple, unsophisticated souls. Perhaps it is forgotten that the less unsophisticated also have souls. But I think that an even more serious misunderstanding underlies both suggestione—a misunderstanding akin to that which makes us smile when we read the Prologue to the Summa, and find that ‘St'Thomas intended all these vast, thorough- ing, closely-written tomes for the eapecial cht of ‘beginners’, of Christ’s ‘little ones’ 33H / St Thomas was no fool; and it must be seriously questioned whether the burghers and serfs and villeins of the thirteenth century were so vastly more intelligent than their counterparts in the twentieth. But neither was he an intellectual snob; he could not believe that the least of Christ's brethren deserved less than the test. It is a great mistake, I am convinced, to suppose that anything is good enough to be hunded out to the less educated : in my cwn limited experience it is more especially ia trying to deal honestly and understandingly with the Renuine personal problems, doubts and perplexities of the less sophisticated that fone needs to be able to probe matters to rock-bottom. In such cases, more particularly, it does little good if all we can dc is to hand out the foregone conclusions of the modern manuals of ‘potted theology’ without that conviction, or that ability to apply general Principles to concrete cases and needs, which an come only from thinking things out for ‘ourselves and so assimilating them into our ‘own minds. If we are to teach and really help the minds and souls of others, absolute intellectual honesty and candour are the first requisites; we must know what we know, know what we only suspect or believe ‘on human authority, what we believe on Divine authority and what on human authority. We must know also what we do not know, and why we do not know it; and, if it is knowable, how to find it out. 34 orn al SS All this a Thomistic education should give us; it is 1 pedagogy which does 20 violence to our minds, but which assists their own natural growth. The feuits of St Dominic's contemplation were useful to others because they were first good in themselves—utiles’ because first ‘mirabiles’. St Thomas's principles tell us what our resent-day experience so abundantly con firms, that ‘utility’ goods which ate not honest* are not even any use (I.5.6 ad 2). But before the grapes, the fruit in the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts, come the blossoms, and before the blessoms the foliage—"frondes et flores’—and before the foliage the humble, hidden, sheltered growth of the seed in the earth. Its not very exciting being the tiny seed growing secretly; i€ is not very easy to believe that it can ever become a strong, fruitful vine. It is difficult for it to perceive its own growth, and quite impossible for others. It is quite appalling to think of the immense quantities of moisture, light, heat and air which it must aseimilate and transmute into its own vital substance before that can be brought about. So St Thomas concludes by bringing back the mind of Brother John to this idea of humble, hidden beginnings, and gradual immanent growth. But the reward is very great, in fact limitless. ‘If you shall have followed these things you will be able to attain to whatsoever you desire’ The natural desire of the mind for knowledge is 35aussie eta semacntceerere i f voracious, limitless : because itis the desire for the possession of being it is an infinite desize. The une: d, undirected lust of the mind is still more di destructive, more calamitous than the unrestrained, undirected lust of the flesh (cf. Lll.s0.g): and indeed, St.Thomas shows. the former is the cause of the latter (cf. F11.82.3, W-U.175.1 ad 3). *Corcuptio ‘optimi pessima.’ But i cannot be bad in sannot therefore be insatiable, condemned of its nature to frustration; the ‘schlechte Unendlichkeit™' of infinite desize for ever snsatistied (Contra Gentiles U1. 25, i), That is indeed the ‘poena damni' of hell, But divine crave comes to meet che infinite yearning of nature: the infinite all-devouring Eros is met, as it only can be by the gracious self-giving of the Infinite in Agape. ‘Then alone con our nteliect know even as itis known, no longer in aenigmate,™ in the stow tedious business of collecting and collating sense-experience, the search for ‘media demonstrationis’, 24 it face to fave” (of. L.Cor.13. :2), But even in this world, ‘dum vitam comitem habemus’, there i, if we only restrain and irect our impetiosity by true ‘studiositas’, the natural light of reason imparted by the God who ‘teaches within’. If we surrender further to the operations of the Grace of the Spirit, not oniy actively earning’ but receptively ‘underaci: divine things, there is the assistance of the 36 ‘sapida scientia'®® of his Gifts to ilfumine both the mysteries of faith and the mysteries of nature (f.1.6 ad 5). Master Thomas is not one to make rash, groundless promises. ‘Ad id attingere poteris, Guidquid affeceas. Vale!" NoTEs +The printed editions of this letter difer in several periculars> the Latin text which we here offer is frankly a composite version, wih Ro claim to eriueal accumes, thouyn baved mailp on the version edited by thc late PrP. Mondonae, OP." (8. Phomaedipomaris Opuscela” Orman Vol IV, p. $355 Pars. Ugh. “the ermlacon which ste presenc atermpts to condet Retr in English the sense which seome most probable in she qenord contest of the lence, SHtanlly doubiful': ie those works whose authenticity is not completely established, but sonceming which there i ile reason for doube And alihouth Iam. busied about mary raiters, Ihave taken care to reply to fou 90 300 8 oppornanity offered, test f chould fil the equent of your charity! *'Hlaving read wour leer Ihave four therein & mumerous multtede of points, concern vhichlsour ehacty requites fe rly mihia four days) ‘Lest be lacking in eespect to your charity, athowsh Lom busied about mang mamters “Ie would have been ctser for me vo Feply had it pleased you to write the ressons on account of which these said points are ether asserted or sacked” Such, Reverend Fsther, exe the replice whic, they occur to me at peesent, shoul be Made" fo ‘the point which "pou kave seats Pha may at ele binds of the competence of theology.” ‘But wat sy Profesional oe in no way required of ee fas 7* Deggmne a duty to me by reason of your command.” Noe only because of the content of the lever, but also because Se Thomas adazsoes Brother John in she secood person singular. Ia all bis ‘other levers he uses the second person plural, as Seems 1 bave beea sceady usual in the 13th Genuary wen aderening superiors of equals. Ri references ia the text we o the Summa Thealogiea unless otherwise sated. By sering forth signs... helps». « By setting forth the order of premisses to One man is said to teach ancther in so far 12s he expounds to the other, by moans of signs, the process of reuoning which he has himself arsed by ‘is own natural reasen, ia such a Nay thar dhe nazuml reason of the pupil, by Eicins of these signs ser forth to him, end using them asa Sort of instrument, araing to imowiedge Of whee fad bora unimown to him” Recalling the opcnmg words of Aristotle's Metaphysics? “By “their very nature all men desire imowledge.” "The body weighs down upon the soul” 6 “The soul is the form of the body’, ie, the fnminsio vin prigciple. whereby living "and ‘ongunie bodies aze diferentated frum non-living mares. "The Jocutorium’; the place for speaking, or pasour’- 3 Who slone teaches svthin mun, and 23 the 35 Respeetiully interpreted. ie uber, seme att got 30%, “but on. ier band? and ‘reply’—the formulas used throughout the Summa, following ‘the normal procedure of scholastic disputations, S¢"The Thue is the Good of the intellect” Those who wish to discover the truth, should previously, ic., before they set to work, doubt well, chat is co’ say they should examine thoroughly’ what can be doubted” (conceraing poi ae ue) a "These historians have in fact been choroughly efuted on historical grounds by P. Mandonnet and his editors im choir Saint Dominique, # ‘Honestam’—what is good in itelf. The ‘bad infinity’ of Hegel |The suffering of loss of God, infinite because ivemediable loss of the Infinite, and comespond= ing to the aversion from God in mortal sin contrasted with the ‘poeas seasua’, the positive Sa zi a Eee, of i sature fine ruling from the BAIR schemas to the Greamue ie the sia MoThrough @ glass in a dark manner’ (Douai vesiion). "Means of proof’ ie, middle wems in Se, hops ecivnion of ‘aplenc, taning! of hing nd of inewindge (eb ‘Blackfriars, Jan. 1943, p. 13). 7 39:Nikil Obscat : Robertus H. Nicholson, Pi.D., D. Imprimatir : YE Joseph Archiepiscopus Birmingamiensie, Birmingamiae, die 2a oprilis, eno 1947. THE AQUINAS PAPERS ~ Rapers ‘read to. the Aquinas’ Lendoa.-.8 Somplie Iss of tides Seton requests: jo tar. Histosican “Convene Pracosormrcar.Woras of Sr.Ts “Aquinas by David Knowles’ Ehret ing te Shean by Fransen, SJ." -0 * Tas: Timwiocr oF 2 rie Dae,