When Leo XIII. made his recommendation of St. Thomas it was not as one who had merely heard of the works of the great medieval thinker, or knew them only by tradition, or had slightly dipped into them as a dilettante, but as one who had been long familiar with them, who had studied the Angelical Doctor in youth, who had pondered his wisdom in middle age, and resorted again and again to him for guidance in the difficulties of doctrine in maturer years, and the difficulties of morals such as presented themselves in his practical life as a churchman. It was out of the depths of his knowledge of him, that the great Pope, whom all the modern world came to honor so reverently before his death, drew his supreme admiration for St. Thomas and his recognition of the fact that no safer guide in the thorny path of modern Christian apologetics could be followed, than this wonderful genius who first systematized human thought as far as the relations of Creator to creature are considered, in the heyday of medieval scholarship and university teaching.
Those who have their knowledge of scholastic philosophy at second hand, from men who proclaim this period of human development as occupied entirely with fruitless discussion of metaphysical theories, will surely think that they could find nothing of interest for them in St. Thomas's writings. It is true the casual reader may not penetrate far enough into his writing to realize its significance and to appreciate its depth of knowledge, but the serious student finds constant [{276}] details of supreme interest because of their applications to the most up-to-date problems. We venture to quote an example that will show this more or less perfectly according to the special philosophic interest of readers. It is St. Thomas's discussion of the necessity there was for the revelation of the truth of the existence of God. His statement of the reasons why men, occupied with the ordinary affairs of life, would not ordinarily come to this truth unless it were revealed to them, though they actually have the mental capacity to reach it by reason alone, will show how sympathetically the Saint appreciated human conditions as they are.
"If a truth of this nature were left to the sole inquiry of reason, three disadvantages would follow. One is that the knowledge of God would be confined to few. The discovery of truth is the fruit of studious inquiry. From this very many are hindered. Some are hindered by a constitutional unfitness, their natures being ill-disposed to the acquisition of knowledge. They could never arrive by study at the highest grade of human knowledge, which consists in the knowledge of God. Others are hindered by the claims of business and the ties of the management of property. There must be in human society some men devoted to temporal affairs. These could not possibly spend time enough in the learned lessons of speculative inquiry to arrive at the highest point of human inquiry, the knowledge of God. Some again are hindered by sloth. The knowledge of the truths that reason can investigate concerning God presupposes much previous knowledge; indeed almost the entire study of philosophy is directed to the knowledge of God. Hence, of all parts of philosophy that part stands over to be learned last, which consists of metaphysics dealing with (divine things). Thus only with great labour of study is it possible to arrive at the searching out of the aforesaid truth; and this labour few are willing to undergo for sheer love of knowledge.
"Another disadvantage is that such as did arrive at the knowledge or discovery of the aforesaid truth would take a long time over it on account of the profundity of such truth, and the many prerequisites to the study, and also because in youth and early manhood the soul, tossed to and fro on the [{277}] waves of passion, is not fit for the study of such high truth; only in settled age does the soul become prudent and scientific, as the philosopher says. Thus if the only way open to the knowledge of God were the way of reason, the human race would (remain) in thick darkness of ignorance: as the knowledge of God, the best instrument for making men perfect and good, would accrue only to a few after a considerable lapse of time.
"A third disadvantage is that, owing to the infirmity of our judgment and the perturbing force of imagination, there is some admixture of error in most of the investigations of human reason. This would be a reason to many for continuing to doubt even of the most accurate demonstrations, not perceiving the force of the demonstration, and seeing the divers judgments, of divers persons who have the name of being wise men. Besides, in the midst of much demonstrated truth there is sometimes an element of error, not demonstrated but asserted on the strength of some plausible and sophistic reasoning that is taken for a demonstration. And therefore it was necessary for the real truth concerning divine things to be presented to men with fixed certainty by way of faith. Wholesome, therefore, is the arrangement of divine clemency, whereby things even that reason can investigate are commanded to be held on faith, so that all might be easily partakers of the knowledge of God, and that without doubt and error (Book I. cix)."
A still more striking example of Thomas's eminently sympathetic discussion of a most difficult problem, is to be found in his treatment of the question of the Resurrection of the Body. The doctrine that men will rise again on the last day with the same bodies that they had while here on earth, has been a stumbling block for the faith of a great many persons from the beginning of Christianity. In recent times the discovery of the indestructibility of matter, far from lessening the skeptical elements in this problem as might have been anticipated, has rather emphasized them. While the material of which man's body was composed is never destroyed, it is broken up largely into its original elements and is used over and over again in many natural processes, and even enters into the composition of other men's bodies during the long succeeding generations. Here is a problem upon which it would [{278}] ordinarily be presumed at once, that a philosophic writer of the Thirteenth Century could throw no possible light. We venture to say, however, that the following passage which we quote from an article on St. Thomas in a recent copy of the Dublin Review, represents the best possible solution of the problem, even in the face of all our modern advance in science.
"What does not bar numerical unity in a man while he lives on uninterruptedly (writes St. Thomas), clearly can be no bar to the identity of the arisen man with the man that was. In a man's body, while he lives, there are not always the same parts in respect of matter but only in respect of species. In respect of matter there is a flux and reflux of parts. Still that fact does not bar the man's numerical unity from the beginning to the end of his life. The form and species of the several parts continue throughout life, but the matter of the parts is dissolved by the natural heat, and new matter accrues through nourishment. Yet the man is not numerically different by the difference of his component parts at different ages, although it is true that the material composition of the man at one stage of his life is not his material composition at another. Addition is made from without to the stature of a boy without prejudice to his identity, for the boy and the adult are numerically the same man."
In a word, Aquinas says that we recognize that the body of the boy and of the man are the same though they are composed of quite different material. With this in mind the problem of the Resurrection takes on quite a new aspect from what it held before. What we would call attention to, however, is not so much the matter of the argument as the mode of it. It is essentially modern in every respect. Not only does Thomas know that the body changes completely during the course of years, but he knows that the agent by which the matter of the parts is dissolved is "the natural heat," while "new matter accrues through nourishment." The passage contains a marvelous anticipation of present-day physiology as well as a distinct contribution to Christian apologetics. This coordination of science and theology, though usually thought to be lacking among scholastic philosophers, is constantly typical of their mode of thought and discussion, and this example, far from [{279}] being exceptional, is genuinely representative of them, as all serious students of scholasticism know.
Perhaps the last thing for which the ordinary person would expect to find a great modern teacher recommending the reading of St. Thomas would be to find therein the proper doctrine with regard to liberty and the remedies for our modern social evils. Those who will recall, however, how well the generations of the Thirteenth Century faced social problems even more serious than ours—for the common people had no rights at all [at] the beginning of the century, yet secured them with such satisfaction as to lay the foundation of the modern history of liberty—will realize that the intellectual men of the time must have had a much better grasp of the principles underlying such problems, than would otherwise be imagined. As a matter of fact, St. Thomas's treatment of Society, its rights and duties, and the mutual relationship between it and the individual, is one of the triumphs of his wonderful work in ethics. It is no wonder, then, that the great Pope of the end of the Nineteenth Century, whose encyclicals showed that he understood very thoroughly these social evils of our time, recognized their tendencies and appreciated their danger, recommended as a remedy for them the reading of St. Thomas. Pope Leo said:
"Domestic and civil society, even, which, as all see, is exposed to great danger from the plague of perverse opinions, would certainly enjoy a far more peaceful and a securer existence if more wholesome doctrine were taught in the academies and schools—one more in conformity with the teaching of the Church, such as is contained in the works of Thomas Aquinas.
"For the teachings of Thomas on the true meaning of liberty—which at this time is running into license—on the divine origin of all authority, on laws and their force, on the paternal and just rule of princes, on obedience to the higher powers, on mutual charity one towards another—on all of these and kindred subjects, have very great and invincible force to overturn those principles of the new order which are well known to be dangerous to the peaceful order of things and to public safety."
For this great Pope, however, there was no greater teacher of any of the serious philosophical, ethical and theological problems than this Saint of the Thirteenth Century. His position in the matter would only seem exaggerated to those who do not appreciate Pope Leo's marvelous practical intelligence, and Saint Thomas's exhaustive treatment of most of the questions that have always been uppermost in the minds of men. While, with characteristic humility, he considered himself scarcely more than a commentator on Aristotle, his natural genius was eminently original and he added much more of his own than what he took from his master. There can be no doubt that his was one of the most gifted minds in all humanity's history and that for profundity of intelligence he deserves to be classed with Plato and Aristotle, as his great disciple Dante is placed between Homer and Shakespeare. Those who know St. Thomas the best, and have spent their lives in the study of him, not only cordially welcomed but ardently applauded Pope Leo's commendation of him, and considered that lofty as was his praise there was not a word they would have changed even in such a laudatory passage as the following: