4. Knowledge of a thing in general, not descending into any details, is a very imperfect knowledge, as would be the knowledge of man merely as something that moves. By such knowledge a thing is known potentially only, for details are potentially contained in generalities. But happiness, being a perfect activity and the supreme good of man, must turn upon what is actual and not merely potential.
CHAPTER XXXIX— That Happiness does not consist in the Know- ledge of Qod which is to be had by Demonstration AGAIN there is another knowledge of God, higher than the last men- tioned: this knowledge is acquired by demonstration, by means of which we come nearer to a proper knowledge of Him, since demon- stration removes from Him many attributes, by removal of which the mind discerns God standing apart from other beings. Thus demonstration shows God to be unchangeable, eternal, incorporeal, absolutely simple, one. A proper knowledge of an object is arrived at, not only by affirmations, but also by GOD THE END OF CREATURES negations. Thus as it is proper to man to be a rational animal, so it is proper to him also not to be inanimate or irrational. But between these two modes of proper knowledge there is this difference, that when a proper knowledge of a thing is got by affirmations, we know both what the thing is and how it is distinct from others: but when a proper knowledge of a thing is got by negations, we know that the thing is distinct from other things, but what it is remains unknown. Such is the proper knowledge of God that we have by demonstrations.* But that is not sufficient for the final happiness of man.
1. The individuals of a species arrive at the end and perfedtion of that species for the most part; and natural developments have place always or for the most part, though they fail in a minority of instances through some- thing coming in to mar them. But happiness is the end and perfedtion of the human species, since all men naturally desire it. Happiness then is a common good, possible to accrue to all men, except in cases where an obstacle arises to deprive some of it. But few they are who arrive at this knowledge of God by way of demonstration, on account of the difficulties mentioned above (B. I, Chap. IV). Such scientific knowledge then is not the essence of human happiness.
3. Happiness excludes all misery. But deception and error is a great part of misery. Now in the knowledge of God by demonstration manifold error may be mingled, as is clear in the case of many who have found out some truths about God in that way, and further following their own ideas, in the failure of demonstration, have fallen into many sorts of error. And if any have found truth in the things of God so perfectly by the way of demonstra- tion as that no error has entered their minds, such men certainly have been very few: a rarity of attainment which does not befit happiness, happiness being the common end of all.f 4. Happiness consists in perfect activity. Now for the perfection of the activity of knowledge certainty is required: but the aforesaid knowledge has much of uncertainty.
CHAPTER XL— That Happiness does not consist in the Knowledge of God by Faith HAPPINESS is the perfect adivity of the human intelled (Chap. XXVI). But in the knowledge that is of faith, though there is high perfedtion on the part of the object so apprehended, there is great imperfection on the side of intellect, for intellect does not understand that to which it assents in believing.
2. Final happiness does not consist principally in any act of will (Chap. XXVI). But in the knowledge of faith the will has a leading part: for the understanding assents by faith to the things proposed to it, because it. wills to do so, without being necessarily drawn by the direct evidence of truth.
3. He who believes, yields assent to things proposed to him by another, which himself he does not see: hence the knowledge of faith is more like hearing than seeing. Since then happiness consists in the highest knowledge of God, it cannot consist in the knowledge of faith.
4. Happiness being the last end, all natural desire is thereby appeased. But the knowledge of faith, far from appeasing desire, rather excites it, since every one desires to see that which he believes.
* See B. I, Chap. XIV, note, p. 1 3. tati>qui est communis finis. These words have a bearing t Patet eos Juisse paucissimos, quod nou congruit felki- on another question, the number of the elect.
CHAPTERS XLI-XLV* # "A separately subsistent intelligence," writes St Thomas (Chap. XLI), " by knowing its own es- sence, knows both what is above it and what is below it, particularly if what is above it is also its cause, since the likeness of the cause must be found in the effect. Hence, since God is the cause of all created subsistent intelligences, they, by knowing their own essences, know by some sort of vision (per modum visionis cujusdam) even God Himself: for a thing is known by intellect in a manner of vision, when its likeness exists in intellect: whatever intellect then apprehends a separately subsistent intelligence, and knows the same in its essential nature, sees God in a higher way than is possible by any of the modes of cognition already mentioned." Know an angel, then, or pure spirit, in his essence, and you will thereby have a higher knowledge of God than any that you could attain by any other speculation of science or philosophy. Consequently, if the knowledge of God be happiness, happiness, it seems, will best open to us men, if we can find some method of reading the innermost natures of angels. Alexander of Aphro- disias (Jl. a.d. 200), Avempace (Ibn-Badja, d. 1 138), and Averroes (Ibn-Roschd, d. 1 198), each was quoted in St Thomas's day as the author of a method enabling men to do this, methods which St Thomas elaborately confutes in these chapters. Avempace's plan was to study the speculative sciences, and thence forming abstract generalisations, one higher than the other, — or perhaps he meant (what is by no means the same thing) one fuller of * content ' than the other, — to ascend to the cognition of pure intelli- gence. St Thomas describes the process in scholastic terms, thus: " to extract the quiddity of everything which is not its own quiddity; and if that quiddity has a quiddity, again to abstract the quiddity of that quiddity, till we come to a stand somewhere, arriv- ing by the method of analysis at the knowledge of the quiddity of a being, subsisting apart, which has not another quiddity" (Chap. XLI): which words perhaps need some explanation. " The quiddity of a thing which is not its own quiddity " means then an essence, or essential quality, which is shared by many subjects, and is not all embodied in one subject, con- stituting that subject entirely. Thus prudence is in Cato, and in many others besides. Cato is not all prudence: he is not the embodiment of sheer pru- dence and nothing else. Prudence then in Cato is a quiddity which is not its own quiddity. St Thomas well observes that Avempace's method is Platonic Idealism revived. He adds that, starting as our abstrac- tions must, from sensible objects, we can never attain to a view of the essential nature of a pure spirit. " If by understanding of the natures and quiddities of sensible things, we arrive at an understanding of separately subsistent intelligences, that understanding of such intelligences must be reached through some one of the speculative sciences. But we do not see how this is to be done: for there is no speculative science which teaches concerning any one of the separately subsistent intelligences what it is in essence, but only the fact of its existence " (Chap. XLI). — Averroes, as might have been expected, proceeds upon his favourite notion of the continuatio, or conjunction of the individual mind with the one vast intelligence, active and potential, that is without (B. II, Chap. LX). St Thomas's summary of the Commentator's views ends thus — (it is a very free paraphrase of Averroes's words as they appear in the Latin of the Venice edition of 1574, pp. 186, 187): "This perfect progress towards conjunction with the supreme intelligence comes of zealous study of the speculative sciences, whereby true intellectual notions are acquired, and false opinions are excluded, such opinions lying beyond the line of this progress, like monstrous births outside of the line of the operation of nature. To this advance men help one another by helping one another in the speculative sciences. When then all things now potentially intelligible come to be in us actually understood, then the active intellect will be perfectly conjoined with us as a form, and we shall understand by it perfectly. Hence, since it belongs to the active intellect to understand substances exis- ting apart, we shall then understand those separately subsistent beings as we now understand the notions of speculative science; and this will be man's final happiness, in which man shall be as a god " (Chap. XLIII). If any one used such language in our time, we should understand him to mean by continuation or union with the supreme intelligence, as regards the individual, his instruction up to the level of the science of his age; and as regards the age itself, the maintenance of the level of science reached by the previous generation, and the further raising of that level. But it is not safe to make out an ancient author to have meant exactly what his words would mean, if spoken now. St Thomas gives a reference to the commentary of Averroes on Aristotle, De anima, III, a reference which I have duly followed up. I find that Averroes quotes Alexander and Avempace, disagreeing with them both. St Thomas, I believe, is indebted to Averroes for his knowledge of Alexander and Avempace. Now nowhere in Averroes, nor in either of the two authors whom he quotes, do I find any reference whatever to separate substances per- sonified as thinking intelligences, or angels, — nor, for that matter, in Aristotle either. The discussion had its origin in an unfulfilled promise of Aristotle (De anima, III, vii, 10) to enquire, &pa Iv&excrai r&v /teycflovc; (is it possible for the mind, without being itself separate from extended body, to understand any of the things that are so separated?) To inter- pret ra K€xo>purfxcva to mean 'pure spirits' seems going a long way beyond Aristotle, who probably meant no more than < products of high abstraction': nor did Averroes, commenting on the third book of the De anima, or Alexander, or Avempace, as quoted in that commentary, mean anything more. The transformation of these high abstractions (kex^w^o) into thinking beings, pure spirits, or angels, was, I conjecture, the work of the Neo-Averroists, whom St Thomas encountered at the University of Paris. It is with these Averroists, not with Averroes him- self, that St Thomas mainly contends in these chap- ters. The argument is intricate, the theory which it impugns obsolete, nor is it worth while further to detain the modern reader with the discussion. No man now living expects to 'pick the brains9 of angels, and so find happiness in this life by sharing an angel's natural knowledge of God. Nor did Aver- roes, so far as his comments on the De anima show, dream of anything so absurd.
Lest any one should think the expression 'to pick the brains of angels' a travesty, I quote the Latin of St Thomas: Si igitur per cognitionem inteUec- tiyam, qua est ex phantasmatibus,possit perteuire oTtquh nostrum ad intelligendas substantias separata*, possibik erit quod aUquis in hoc tita intelUgat ipsas substantias separata*, et per consequent videndo ipsas substantias separ\cslo GOD THE END OF CREATURES CHAPTER XINl-That the Soul in this life does not understand itself by itself AN apparent difficulty may be alleged against what has been said from some words of Augustine, which require careful treatment. He says (De Trinitate^ IX, iii): " As the mind gathers knowledge of corporeal things by the senses of the body, so of incorporeal things by itself: therefore it knows itself by itself, because itself is incorporeal." By these words it appears that our mind understands itself by itself, and, understanding itself, under- stands separately subsistent intelligences, or pure spirits, which would militate against what has been shown above. But it is clear that such is not the mind of Augustine. For he says (De Trinitatey X, ix, 12) of the soul seeking knowledge of itself: " Let it not then seek to find (cernere) itself as though it were absent, but let its care be to discern (discernere) itself as it is present: let it not observe itself as though it did not know itself, but let it distinguish itself from that other thing which it has mistaken for itself." Whence he gives us to understand that the soul of itself knows itself as present, but not as distinct from other things; and therefore he says (De Trin. X, x) that some have erred in not distinguishing the soul from things that are different from it. But by the knowledge of a thing in its essence the thing is known as distinct from other things: hence definition, which marks the essence of a thing, distinguishes the thing defined from all other things. Augustine then did not mean that the soul of itself knows its own essence. So then, according to the thought of Augustine, our mind of itself knows itself, inas- much as it knows concerning itself that it exists: for by the very perceiving of itself to act it perceives itself to be. But it acts of itself. Therefore of itself it knows concerning itself that it exists.* 1. But it cannot be said that the soul of itselt knows concerning itself what it essentially is. For a cognitive faculty comes to be actually cognisant by there being in it the object which is known. If the object is in it poten- tially, it knows potentially: if the object is in it actually, it is actually cogni- sant: if in an intermediate way, it is habitually cognisant. But the soul is always present to itself actually, and never potentially or habitually only. If then the soul of itself knows itself by its essence, it must ever have an intel- lectual view of itself, what it essentially is, which clearly is not the case.
2 and 3. If the soul of itself knows itself in its essence, every man, having a soul, knows the essence of the soul: which clearly is not the case, for many rates participant modum ilTtm cognitionis quo substantia This thought he pursues, T>e Trinitate IX, Chapp. iij, separata intelTtgens se btte/figit Deum (Chap. XLI). iv: X, Chapp. iii-x. It makes to his purpose to insist This is the translation: " If then by intellectual on the equality of the soul's knowledge of itself to knowledge, got out of impressions on the phantasy, the soul as known. " When it knows its whole self, any one of us could arrive to understand subsistent and nothing else with itself, then its knowledge is beings existing apart [i.e., pure spirits], it would be equal to itself" (T>e Trin. IX, iv). He frequently possible for one in this life to understand those same repeats that the soul knows its whole self. See pure spirits, and consequently by seeing [in his especially X, iv, 6. St Thomas would explain: The mind's eye] those pure spirits he would share in the soul knows its whole self in existence {quod est)9 but mode of that knowledge whereby a pure spirit, under- not its whole self in essence {quid est): which is true, standing itself, understands God." I need hardly but what St Augustine meant is not so clear. Cf. De remind the reader that St Thomas himself rejects this Trin. X, x, 16: "In no way is a thing rightly said notion, and is, I think, mistaken in attributing it to to be known, while its substance is unknown: where- Averroes. fore, when the mind knows itself, it knows its sub- * St Augustine here, as his manner is, says things stance; and when it is certain of itself it is certain which remain difficult after all explanations given, of its substance." Perhaps we may say that every He finds some analogy to the Blessed Trinity in the mind has some limited certain knowledge as well of human soul thus: "The mind itself and its love and its own existence as of its own substance, but not an knowledge of itself are three things; and these three adequate knowledge of its own substance, else there art one} and when they are perfect, they are equal." would be no bad psychology.
men have j thought the soul to be this or that body, and some have taken it for?a number or harmony.
,n^So then, by knowing itself, the soul is led to know concerning separately subsistent intelligences the fact of their existence, but not what they are essen- tially, which would mean understanding their substances. For whereas we know, either by demonstration or by faith, concerning these pure spirits that they are intelligent subsistent beings, in neither way could we gather this knowledge but for the fact that our soul knows from itself the meaning of intelligent being. Hence we must use our knowledge of the intelligence of our own soul as a starting-point for all that we can know of separately subsistent intelligences. But even granting that by speculative sciences we could arrive at a knowledge of the essence of our own soul, it does not follow that we could thereby arrive at a knowledge of all that is knowable about pure spirits; for our intelligence falls far short of the intelligence of a pure spirit. A know- ledge of the essence of our own soul might lead to a knowledge of some re- mote higher genus of pure spirits: but that would not bean understanding of their substances.
CHAPTER XINll-That we cannot in this life see Qod as He essentially is* IF the connatural dependence of our understanding on phantasms prevents us in this life from understanding other pure spirits, much less can we in this life see the divine essence, which transcends all angels. Of this fact the following may also be taken as an indication: the higher our mind is raised to the contemplation of spiritual things, the more it is abstracted from sensible things: but the final terminus to which contemplation can possibly arrive is the divine substance: therefore the mind that sees the divine substance must be totally divorced from bodily senses, either by death or by some rapture. Hence it is said in the person of God: No man shall see me and live (Exod. xxxiii, 20). Whereas in Holy Scripture some are said to have seen God, that must be understood to have been inasmuch as by some vision of the phantasy or corporeal appearance the presence of divine power was shown.
Certain words of Augustine raise a difficulty in this matter. Thus he says (De Trinitate, IX, vii): " In the eternal truth, whence all corporeal creatures are, we see with our mind's eye the form according to which we are, and according to which we execute anything truly and rightly either in ourselves or in corporeal things." Also he says (Confess. I, xxv): "If both of us see that what you say is true, and we both see that what I say is true, where, I pray, do we see it? Neither I in you, nor you in me, but both of us in that un- changeable truth which is above our minds." And to the like effect (De Trin. XII, ii): " It belongs to the higher reason to judge of these bodily things according to aspects (rationes) eternal and everlasting, which certainly would not be unchangeable, were they not above the human mind." But aspects unchangeable and everlasting cannot be elsewhere than in God, since, according to Catholic faith,f God alone is eternal. It seems to follow that we can see God in this life, and that by seeing Him, and aspects of things in Him, we judge of the rest of things. J * Half a century ago, this chapter was quoted t In other words, Ontologism seems to follow, against a school then much in vogue, known among We are carried back to the discussion with Averroes Catholics as Ontologists. (B. II, Chap. LIX sq.) as to the connexion (continuation t Why St Thomas appeals to faith on this point ittisal) of the individual with the universal intellect, appears by B. II, Chap. XXXVIII.
On the other hand it is incredible that in the above words Augustine should mean to assert that in this life we can understand God as He essentially is, seeing that in his book De videndo Deum he says the contrary.* It remains to enquire how in this life we can see that unchangeable truth or those everlasting aspects. That truth is in the soul, Augustine himself confesses:f hence he proves the immortality of the soul from the eternity of truth. But truth is not in the soul alone as God is said to be 'essentially* (per essentiam) in all things; nor as He is by His likeness in all things, inasmuch as everything is called 'true* so far as it approaches to the likeness of God: for from those points of view the soul stands in no better position than other beings: truth then is in the soul in a special manner, inasmuch as the soul knows truth. As then the soul and other beings are called 'true' in their natures, as bearing some likeness to the supreme nature of God, — which is truth itself, as being its own fulness of actual understanding (suum intellectum esse)>\ — so what is known by the soul is manifestly known, inasmuch as there exists in the soul a likeness of that divine truth which God knows. Hence on the text (Ps. xi, 2) truths are diminished from the sons of meny the Gloss [Augustine, Enarrationes in h. 1.] says: "The truth is one, whereby holy souls are illumined: but since there arc many souls, there may be said to be in them many truths, as from one face many images appear in as many mirrors." Though different things are known and believed to be true by different minds, yet there arc some truths in which all men agree, for instance, the primary intuitions of intellect as well specu- lative as practical, because, so far as these go, an image of divine truth comes out universally in the minds of all. As then whatever any mind knows for certain, it knows it by virtue of these intuitions, which are the canons of all judgements, and into which all judgements may be resolved, the mind is said to see all things in the divine truth, or in everlasting aspefts, and to judge of all things according to those aspects. This explanation is confirmed by the wordsof Augustine (Soliloq. I, viii, 15):" Even the truths taught in the schools, which every one, who understands them, unhesitatingly allows to be true, we must believe, could not possibly be understood, were they not lit up by the light of another, what I may call a sun proper to them {nisiab alio quasi sole suo illustrantur)." He says then that the theories of science are seen in the divine truth as visible objects are seen in the light of the sun: but certainly such objects are not seen in the very body of the sun, but by the light which is a likeness of the solar brightness, remaining in the air and similar bodies. From these words then of Augustine it cannot be gathered that God is seen in His substance in this life, but only as in a mirror, which the Apostle also confesses of the knowledge of this life, saying (1 Cor. xiii, 12): We see now as in a glass darkly.
Though the human mind represents the likeness of God more closely than lower creatures, still such knowledge of God as can be gathered from the human mind does not transcend that kind of knowledge which is borrowed from sensible objects, since the soul knows her own essential nature by under- standing the nature of things of sense (Chap. XLVI).§ Hence neither by this # Ep. 147 ad PauTtnam, viii, 20: "No one can believe your own reasons, believe the voice of truth: see the face of God and live: that is to say, no one liv- she cries out that she dwells in you and is immortal." ing in this life can see Him as He is." t Plato might perhaps have said to axrrb Kaffi avro t 'Unlike Averroes, who places it in a separate \xf>9 avroi) vtyorjaOcu. potential intellect,' was the thought in St Thomas's $ The human soul knows herself only by observmind. The quotation referred to is Soliloq. II, xix, 33: ing herself intellectually at work: and the connatural "This is a convincing proof that truth is also in our material upon which the human understanding goes mind...Therefore the soul is immortal. Do at last to work is some object of sense.
method can God be known in any higher way than as the cause is known by the effect.* CHAPTER XLVIII-That the Final Happiness of Man is not in this Life t IF then human happiness does not consist in the knowledge of God, whereby He is commonly known by all or most men according to some vague estimate, nor again in the knowledge of God whereby He is known demonstratively in speculative science, nor in the knowledge of God whereby He is known by faith, as has been shown above (Chapp. XXXVIII-XL); if again it is impossible in this life to arrive at a higher knowledge of God so as to know Him in His essence, or to understand other pure spirits, and thereby attain to a nearer knowledge of God (Chapp. XLI-XLVI); and still final happiness must be placed in some knowledge of God (Ch. XXXVII); it follows that it is impossible for the final happiness of man to be in this life.
2. The last end of man bounds his natural desire, so that, when that is reached, nothing further is sought: for if there is still a tendency to some- thing else, the end of rest is not yet gained. But that cannot be in this life: for the more one understands, the more is the desire of understanding, natural to all men, increased. J 3. When one gains happiness, he gains also stability and rest. All have this idea of happiness, that it involves stability as a necessary condition: hence the philosopher says that we do not take man for a chameleon.§ But in this life there is no stability: for however happy a man be called, sicknesses and misfortunes may always happen to debar him from that activity, whatever it is, wherein happiness consists.
4. If seems unfitting and irrational that the period of development should be great and the period of duration small: for it would follow that nature for the greater part of its time went without its final perfection. Hence we see that animals that live for a short time take a short time in arriving at maturity. But if human happiness consists in perfect activity according to perfect virtue, whether intellectual or moral, such happiness cannot accrue to man till after a long lapse of time; and this is especially apparent in speculative activity, in which the happiness of man is ultimately placed. For scarcely in extreme age can a man arrive a perfect view of scientific truth ||; and then for the most part there is little of human life left.
5. That is the perfect good of happiness, which is absolutely free from admixture of evil, as that is perfect whiteness, which is absolutely unmingled * The method referred to is the study of God in II Terjectam speculationem seientiarum, in the thirthe soul, the favourite method of modern times, now teenth century! In the last age of human progress will known as the ' method of immanence.' the wisest have arrived at anything like a 'perfect view t The conclusion of this chapter marks the point of scientific truth?' There are many perturbing forces where St Thomas deliberately and expressly leaves to interfere with the steady progress as well of the race behind him, not only Alexander and Averroes, but as of the individual: — infidelity, which will not be Aristotle. taught of (jod> and so wastes its powers after the fashion t It may be urged that better than rest in the per- of an un tractable schoolboy: sloth and timidity on the ectly understood would be a perpetual progress in part of those who hold the talent of faith, wrapping it understanding. But God in heaven never is perfectly in a napkin instead of trafficking with it: wars and con- understood, or comprehended, by the Blessed. Cf. vulsions of civil society. At the same time, war rouses Chap. LXXII, n. 8. a nation; and the pressure of infidel criticism may and