The first of the consequences above enumerated was noted by me in this place many years ago; and has been better exhibited for the benefit of science by the illustrious F. Milone in his book entitled, La Scuola di Filosofia Razionale Intitolata a S. Augustino; wherefore I will abstain from considering it any further at present. I will restrict myself on this occasion to taking advantage of the other consequences which follow to a marvel from the ideology, but especially from the genesis of the ideology of St. Augustine. Indeed we have a great number of authors, beginning with the most exalted of all, that is, the seraphic and angelic doctors, and terminating with writers who are still living in Italy, France, and Belgium, who have collected from the Augustinian writings a most extensive list of disputed questions concerning ideology and human knowledge; but, above all, we have two more remarkable collections in the works of those two fathers of the Oratory of France, who are equal to any in learning and merit—Thomassin and Martin.[116] That which may perhaps have something new and original in it, in our own investigation, is the more exact indication of the primitive fountain and source whence these large streams take their issue; that source, namely, from which St. Augustine derived the logical moment of that ideology which he bases, constructs, and amplifies with such great strength; which was the concept, original with him, of that most vast and sublime theory of human cognitions formed by him alone. It appears to me that I have made it clear to all, from those things which have been laid down and the testimonies adduced, that St. Augustine concentrates and hinges the three branches of the natural encyclopædia in one sole principle unfolded in three members: the principle being that of creation; the three members being physics, logic, and ethics; which are respectively the sole cause of existence, the sole light of knowledge, the sole end of virtue. From this every one can see and touch with the hand that St. Augustine found his ideology in the principle of creation, regarded it as a part of the principle of creation, distinguished it from the two extreme cycles, and from the two opposite members of the principle of creation. If any one had denied the ideology of St. Augustine in his time, St. Augustine would have been bound to say that such a person denied the principle of creation; if some one else had vaunted a contrary system of ideology, he would have been bound to judge that system to be contrary to the principle of creation; if any one had demanded from St. Augustine the substantial formula of his ideology, the origin of that ideology, or the proofs of the stability, security, and irrefutable validity of that ideology, he would always have been obliged to answer by appealing to the universal principle established by reason and the Catholic faith, that is, to the principle of creation. Therefore the genesis of the Augustinian ideology, if it had not been already traced out or properly considered before to-day, would be now as clear and certain as the light, and with the eighth book of The City of God, we might predict that it would be immortal.
In scientific themes a twofold labor must be undergone; on the one hand, in ascertaining, and in elucidating on the other, the matters to be treated of; and the one who must apply himself rigorously to one part of this is rarely able at the same time to attend to the other. This is the case with myself; for, having been obliged to point out the seat and position of the Augustinian ideology in that encyclopædic principle which I have above defined, I could not bring forward the second cycle except as implicated and restricted by the other two, the first and third. I am glad to be able now to supply, at least partially, this defect, by alleging one quite peculiar testimony, which, fortunately, leaves in the background the two cycles with which we are not concerned, and brings forward with admirable distinctness the one which specially concerns us in ideology.
"Now, those authors whom we with justice prefer to all others," (says St. Augustine, speaking of the Platonists, Pythagoreans, and others of the best stamp,) "have distinguished those things which are perceived by the mind from those which are attained by the sense; not taking from the senses those things for which they have a capacity, or granting to them what is beyond their capacity. But the light of minds by which all things are learned [see here clearly the second cycle] they affirmed to be God himself, by whom all things were made."
Lumen autem mentium esse dixerunt ad discenda omnia eumdem ipsum Deum a quo facta sunt omnia.[117] The principle of creation, then, in so far regards our rational intelligence as it places on the one hand the sensible perception we have of it, and on the other the intelligence which we have in addition as our great prerogative. Rational cognition comes from the conjunction of intellect with sensibility; and therefore the greater part of the ancient philosophers, grossly taking our cognition for an act tied to a mere sensible perception, and badly mixing up sense with intellect and the sensible with the intelligible, knew little or nothing of the contra-position of the one to the other. Some of them, giving every thing to the sensible, fell into Epicureanism, into materialism, into atheism, denying God, and thus the principle of creation; others, paying attention only to the intelligible, rushed into fatalism and pantheism, denying created substances, and thus again the principle of creation. These are the philosophers whom we Catholics cannot prefer to the others; whom St. Augustine says, non prodest excutere, it is lost time to discuss them. But those, on the contrary, quos merito ceteris anteponimus, began from a fundamental distinction between the intelligible and the sensible, and therefore also between the intelligence and the sensibility; discreverunt ea quæ mente conspiciuntur ab eis quæ sensibus attinguntur; nor did they take away from the senses their proper office and necessary value in the act of defending as their principal aim the intelligence, which is so true that they regarded rational cognition as a sort of marriage, and a true coöperation, of the mind with the senses. If, then, concludes the most glorious father of Catholic philosophy, the best sages of antiquity, and we with them admit and give value to the sensibility, that is necessary in order to maintain the principle of creation, since otherwise all the substances created by God, which are sensible natures, disappear. Likewise if the same sages, and we as much as or even more than they, admit and defend intelligence, this is of equal if not greater necessity, in order to keep the same principle of creation. In fact, with the sensibility alone, non est discere, we can learn nothing, as the brutes, certo nusquam discunt certainly never learn any thing; but only minds endowed with intelligence, who have as a light ad discenda omnia, eumdem ipsum Deum a quo facta sunt omnia—as a light for learning all things, that same God himself who created all things. Since, therefore, by the principle of creation, God is the only light of all minds, so, by denying to minds that divine, creative light, all rational intelligence is denied, and the principle of creation is totally destroyed, just as much as by taking away all substances.
But perhaps some one of you, considering that St. Augustine had been instructed in the Platonic doctrine, as we read in the Summa of Aquinas, will remain doubtful whether the genesis which I have traced out is not that of the Platonic or Pythagorean ideology, whichever we may choose to call it, rather than of the Augustinian. I think that I have in the preceding portion of this dissertation cited from the original texts enough of St. Augustine's own expressions, which always revert to these constant formulas, qui nobiscum sentiunt, quos merito ceteris anteponimus, to render it certainly and for ever incontestable that in these passages it is St. Augustine who cum istis sentit; it is he who hos ceteris anteponit; and by consequence he it is who embraces, explains, and defends the Platonic ideology, amending it where it sins, and supplying to it what it lacks. But, conceding that there is a difficulty here in our way, corroborated by an expression of the angelic doctor, I wish it to be noted distinctly that I do not resolve it principally by alleging any solitary expression whatever of the angel of the schools himself, but by a series of formulæ as distinctly marked in their significance as they are harmoniously located in the structure of his thought and of his boundless learning. Whenever there shall be for the first time produced a copious and well-arranged history of our philosophy, we shall see among other things relating to that most glorious Aquinas, a fact which gives lustre to his works, and is a memorable one in human philosophy; and the fact, which is one completely manifest and palpable, is this, that while he pays so little deference to the Platonic philosophy, while he habitually interprets the ideas of Plato only in the sense ascribed to them by Aristotle and other philosophers, the most hostile to him; while, consequently, he does not notice the Platonic ideology except to reject and confute it, he nevertheless gives us to understand, and professes a hundred times, that he has nothing to oppose to the ideology of St. Augustine; that he agrees that it is not the secondary truths which serve as the rule of our judgments, but rather the one only and primary truth which is the divine light and God himself; that he agrees that our soul is an image of God principally by the intelligence which we possess, into which the light of that first and one truth falling produces there an image of the intelligible things, as like as possible in the spiritual order to that figure which bodies cast upon a mirror by virtue of the exterior material light; that he agrees that our intellect is like wax which receives the impression of the primary truth as if from a seal; that he agrees that those universals from which metaphysics works under the form of principles, mathematics under the form of axioms, morals under the form of unchangeable, imperishable laws, these universals, (questi generali,) I say, and nothing else, St. Thomas admits to be eternal, in the eternal light of the eternal truth, which is the light of the divine intelligence.[118] Is there any great need of certifying that these formulæ to which St. Thomas agrees are not a single one of them taken from Aristotle, but are without exception taken from St. Augustine himself? Therefore St. Thomas, who had to treat the ideology of Plato, as it was presented to him, as absurd, sustains and honors as much as we could wish the Augustinian ideology; that is to say, he makes Augustinian and not Platonic the ideology of the eighth book of The City of God.[119]
What should hinder us from passing for an instant to those other books altogether similar to this one, Of the Trinity, Of the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, and the Confessions? The last five books of The Trinity are, indeed, a complete ideology which for novelty, sublimity, insight, and scientific force cannot be equalled in the whole range of human science. I will cite only one passage, however, which amid so many others is especially noteworthy, that one, namely, in which Augustine protects and defends, (who would believe it?) against Plato himself, that ideology which is nowadays called Platonic. Here it may be seen in express words.
"Plato, that noble philosopher, ... related that a certain boy who was asked some questions, I know not precisely what, in geometry, answered like a person extremely skilled in that branch of study; whence he attempted to prove that the souls of men have lived here before they were in their present bodies.... But we ought rather to believe that the nature of the intellectual mind was so created that, being naturally coördinated by the Creator to intelligible things, it sees them in a certain incorporeal light sui generis, in the same way that the bodily eye sees those things which are circumjacent to it in this corporeal light for which it has been created with a natural capacity and congruity."[120]
This passage being only an incident in connection with the whole context, we find him saying a little above that this incorporeal light is nothing else than the truth; that these intelligible things are the eternal reasons, and a little below, that this light and these things are "something eternal and unchangeable;" that our soul is made naturally in the image of God, inasmuch as "it can use reason and intelligence to know and form a conception of God," and as noted in another place, "although the mind is not of the same nature with God, nevertheless the image of that nature which is more perfect than any other must be sought and found in that part of our nature which is more perfect than any other."[121]
Joining together and recapitulating all this in the Confessions, he says in formal terms:
"Behold how much I have wandered about in my memory seeking thee, O Lord! and I have not found thee outside of it; ... for where I have found the truth, there I have found my God, the truth itself."[122]