Unhappily, mankind seemed doomed never to find the true road without going a long way round; thus the intellect, taking the very worst way of all, went in pursuit of subtilties and cavils, forsaking the beaten track of reason and good sense. At the beginning of the twelfth century the evil had reached to such a height, that to apply a remedy was no slight undertaking; nor is it easy to say how far matters might have gone, nor what evils would have ensued in various ways, had not Providence, who never abandons the care of the moral, any more than of the physical universe, raised up an extraordinary genius, who, rising to an immense height above the men of his age, reduced the chaos to order. Out of the undigested mass, by retrenching here, adding there, classifying and explaining, this man collected a fund of real learning. Persons acquainted with the history of learning at that time will readily understand that I speak of St. Thomas Aquinas. Rightly to appreciate the extraordinary merit of this great Doctor, we must view him in connection with the times and circumstances of which we are treating. Beholding in St. Thomas Aquinas one of the most luminous, most comprehensive, and most penetrating intellects that have ever adorned the human race, we are almost tempted to think that his appearance in the thirteenth century was inopportune; we regret that he did not live in a more recent age, to enter the lists with the most illustrious men of whom modern Europe can boast. But, upon further reflection, we find that the human mind owes so much to him, we see so clearly the reason why his appearance at the time when Europe received his lectures was most opportune, that we have no other feeling left than one of profound admiration of the designs of Providence.
What was the philosophy of his time? Amidst the strange compound of Greek and Arabian philosophy and of Christian ideas, what would have become of dialectics, metaphysics, and morality? We have already seen what sort of fruit began to grow out of such combinations, favored by a degree of ignorance unable to distinguish the real nature of things, and encouraged by pride that pretended to a knowledge of every thing. And yet the evil was only beginning; its further development would have been attended with symptoms still more alarming. Fortunately, this great man appeared; the first touch of his powerful hand advanced learning two or three centuries. He could not root out the evil, but at least he applied a remedy; owing to his indisputable superiority, his method and his learning soon won their way everywhere. He became, as it were, the centre of a grand system, round which all other scholastic writers were forced to revolve; he thus prevented a multitude of errors that without his intervention would have been almost inevitable. He found the schools in a state of complete anarchy; he reduced them to order; and on account of his angelic intellect, and his eminent sanctity, was looked up to as their sublime dictator. This is the view I take of the mission of St. Thomas; it will be viewed in the same light by all those who study his works, and do not content themselves with a hasty perusal of a biographical article respecting him.
Now this man was a Catholic, and the Catholic Church venerates him upon her altars, and I do not see that his mind was shackled by authority in matters of faith; it goes abroad freely amongst all the branches of knowledge; he unites in his person such extensive and profound acquirements as to appear a prodigy for the age in which he lived. We observe in St. Thomas, notwithstanding the purely scholastic method which he adopted, the same characteristic that we discover in all the eminent Catholic writers of the times. He reasons much; but it is easy to see that he does not trust entirely to his reason, but proceeds with that wise diffidence which is an unequivocal sign of real learning. He avails himself of the doctrines of Aristotle; but evidently would have made less use of them, and more of the Fathers, but for his leading idea, which was, to make the philosophy of his time subservient to the defence of religion. The reader must not suppose that his metaphysics and moral philosophy are a congeries of inexplicable enigmas, as a knowledge of the period at which he wrote might lead us to apprehend. Nothing of the kind; and any one who entertains such an idea has evidently not spent much time in the study of his writings. His metaphysical works, it must be acknowledged, make us perfectly acquainted with the dominant ideas of the time; but it is equally undeniable, that in every page we meet with the most luminous passages on the most complicated questions of ideology, ontology, cosmology, and psychology; so much so, that we almost imagine we are reading the works of a philosopher who wrote after the fullest development of the sciences had been attained.
What his political ideas were, we have already seen; were it necessary, and did the nature of the present work permit, I might here produce many fragments from his Treatise on Laws and on Justice, distinguished for such solid principles, such lofty views, so profound a knowledge of the nature of society, that they would occupy an honorable position amongst the best works on legislation written in modern times. His treatises on virtues and vices, whether considered generally, or in detail, exhaust the subject, and defy all subsequent writers to produce a single idea of any importance that has not been already either developed, or at least suggested in them. Above all, his works are remarkable for moderation and extreme reserve in doctrinal expositions, in which respect they are eminently conformable to the spirit of Catholicity; and assuredly if all writers had followed in his footsteps, the field of science would have presented us with an assembly of sages, and would not have been converted into a blood-stained arena for furious combatants. Such is his modesty, that he does not relate a single incident in his life, private or public; from him we hear nothing but the language of enlightened reason, calmly dispensing its treasures: the man, with his fame, his misfortunes, his labors, and all his vain pretensions, with which other writers are wont to weary us, never appears for an instant.[41]
[CHAPTER LXXII.]
ON THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN MIND FROM THE ELEVENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT TIME.
I think I have satisfactorily vindicated the Catholic Church from the reproaches cast upon her by her enemies, for her conduct during the eleventh and twelfth centuries in reference to the development of the human mind. Let us now take a rapid survey of the march of intellect up to our own times, and see what titles Protestantism can produce to the gratitude of the friends of progress in human knowledge.
If I mistake not, the following are the phases through which the human mind has passed, since the revival of learning in the eleventh century. First came the epoch of subtilties, with its heaps of crude erudition; then the age of criticism, with appropriate attempts at grave controversies on the meaning of records and monuments; and finally came the reflecting age, and the inauguration of the philosophical period. The eleventh and succeeding centuries, to the sixteenth, were characterized by a fondness for dialectics and erudite trifles; criticism and controversy formed the distinctive characteristics of the sixteenth, and part of the seventeenth centuries; the philosophical spirit began to prevail towards the middle of the seventeenth, and continued to our own time. Now of what advantage was Protestantism to learning? None; Protestantism found learning already accumulated—this I can easily prove—Erasmus and Louis Vives shone in the time of Luther.
Did Protestantism promote the study of criticism? Yes; just as an epidemic that decimates nations aids the progress of the medicinal art. But we must not suppose that the taste for this kind of literary labor would not have been disseminated without the aid of the pseudo-Reformation. As monuments came to light, as a knowledge of languages became more general, as the public acquired clearer and more correct notions of history, people would naturally set themselves to discriminate between the apocryphal and the authentic. The necessary documents were at hand, and were studied unremittingly; for this was the favorite taste of the epoch. Under such circumstances, how is it possible there should have existed no desire to examine to what author, and to what age, such documents severally belonged; to investigate how far ignorance or dishonesty had falsified them, had taken from, or added to them? On this subject, I need only relate what took place relative to the famous decretals of Isidore Mercator. These decretals had been received, without opposition, during the centuries anterior to the fifteenth, owing to the want of antiquarian and critical research; but the moment that knowledge and facts began to accumulate, the edifice of imposture gave way. As early as the fifteenth century, Cardinal Cusa challenged the authenticity of certain decretals that had been supposed to be anterior to Pope Siricius; and the reflections of the learned Cardinal led the way to other attacks of a similar kind. A serious discussion arose, in which Protestants naturally took part; but it would unquestionably have been engaged in all the same, if Catholic writers had been left entirely to themselves. When the learned came to read the codes of Theodosius and Justinian, the works of antiquity, and collections of ecclesiastical records, they could not possibly fail to observe that the spurious decretals contained sentences and fragments belonging to an era posterior to the time to which they were referred; and when once such doubts had arisen, error was sure to be promptly exposed.
We may say of controversy, what we have just said of criticism. There would have been no want of controversy, even if the unity of the faith had never been violated. In support of this assertion, the recollection of what occurred amongst the different schools of Catholics is quite conclusive. These schools were engaged in controversy amongst themselves, in the presence even of the common opponent: and we may rest assured that, if their attention had not been partially diverted by that enemy, their polemical discussions would have been maintained only with the greater energy and warmth. Protestants have no more the advantage over Catholics, as regards controversy than as regards criticism. However true it be that some of our theologians did not see the necessity of opposing the enemy with arms superior to those taken from the arsenal of Aristotelian philosophy, it is quite certain that a great number of them took up a sufficiently lofty position, and were thoroughly impressed with the importance of the crisis, and urged the introduction of very great modifications into the course of theological studies. Bellarmin, Melchior Cano, Petau, and many others, were no way inferior to the most skilful Protestants, whatever may have been the boasted scientific merits of the defenders of error.