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ideas, or Aristotle in reason and science. It was not so. On some points, even
from the most monotonously modern standpoint, Catholicism was centuries
ahead of Platonism or Aristotelianism. We can see it still, for instance, in the
tiresome tenacity of Astrology. On that matter the philosophers were all in favour
of superstition; and the saints and all such superstitious people were against
superstition. But even the great saints found it difficult to get disentangled from
this superstition. Two points were always put by those suspicious of the
Aristotelianism of Aquinas; and they sound to us now very quaint and comic,
taken together. One was the view that the stars are personal beings, governing
our lives: the other the great general theory that men have one mind between
them; a view obviously opposed to immortality; that is, to individuality. Both linger
among the Moderns: so strong is still the tyranny of the Ancients. Astrology
sprawls over the Sunday papers, and the other doctrine has its hundredth form in
what is called Communism: or the Soul of the Hive.
For on one preliminary point, this position must not be misunderstood. When we
praise the practical value of the Aristotelian Revolution, and the originality of
Aquinas in leading it, we do not mean that the Scholastic philosophers before
him had not been philosophers, or had not been highly philosophical, or had not
been in touch with ancient philosophy. In so far as there was ever a bad break in
philosophical history, it was not before St. Thomas, or at the beginning of
medieval history; it was after St. Thomas and at the beginning of modern history.
The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from Pythagoras and Plato
was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the sack of Rome, the
triumph of Attila or all the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. It was only lost
after the introduction of printing, the discovery of America, the founding of the
Royal Society and all the enlightenment of the Renaissance and the modern
world. It was there, if anywhere, that there was lost or impatiently snapped the
long thin delicate thread that had descended from distant antiquity; the thread of
that unusual human hobby; the habit of thinking. This is proved by the fact that
the printed books of this later period largely had to wait for the eighteenth
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century, or the end of the seventeenth century, to find even the names of the new
philosophers; who were at the best a new kind of philosophers. But the decline of
the Empire, the Dark Ages and the early Middle Ages, though too much tempted
to neglect what was opposed to Platonic philosophy, had never neglected
philosophy. In that sense St. Thomas, like most other very original men, has a
long and clear pedigree. He himself is constantly referring back to the authorities
from St. Augustine to St. Anselm, and from St. Anselm to St. Albert, and even
when he differs, he also defers.
A very learned Anglican once said to me, not perhaps without a touch of tartness,
"I can't understand why everybody talks as if Thomas Aquinas were the
beginning of the Scholastic philosophy. I could understand their saying he was
the end of it." Whether or no the comment was meant to be tart, we may be sure
that the reply of St. Thomas would have been perfectly urbane. And indeed it
would be easy to answer with a certain placidity, that in his Thomist language the
end of a thing does not mean its destruction, but its fulfilment. No Thomist will
complain, if Thomism is the end of our philosophy, in the sense in which God is
the end of our existence. For that does not mean that we cease to exist, but that
we become as perennial as the philosophia perennis. Putting this claim on one
side, however, it is important to remember that my distinguished interlocutor was
perfectly right, in that there had been whole dynasties of doctrinal philosophers
before Aquinas, leading up to the day of the great revolt of the Aristotelians. Nor
was even that revolt a thing entirely abrupt and unforeseen. An able writer in the
Dublin Review not long ago pointed out that in some respects the whole nature of
metaphysics had advanced a long way since Aristotle, by the time it came to
Aquinas. And that it is no disrespect to the primitive and gigantic genius of the
Stagirite to say that in some respects he was really but a rude and rough founder
of philosophy, compared with some of the subsequent subtleties of medievalism;
that the Greek gave a few grand hints which the Scholastics developed into the
most delicate fine shades. This may be an overstatement, but there is a truth in
it. Anyhow, it is certain that even in Aristotelian philosophy, let alone Platonic
philosophy, there was already a tradition of highly intelligent interpretation. If that
delicacy afterwards degenerated into hair-splitting, it was none the less delicate
hair-splitting; and work requiring very scientific tools.
What made the Aristotelian Revolution really revolutionary was the fact that it
was really religious. It is the fact, so fundamental that I thought it well to lay it
down in the first few pages of this book; that the revolt was largely a revolt of the
most Christian elements in Christendom. St. Thomas, every bit as much as St.
Francis, felt subconsciously that the hold of his people was slipping on the solid
Catholic doctrine and discipline, worn smooth by more than a thousand years of
routine; and that the Faith needed to be shown under a new light and dealt with
from another angle. But he had no motive except the desire to make it popular for
the salvation of the people. It was true, broadly speaking, that for some time past
it had been too Platonist to be popular. It needed something like the shrewd and
homely touch of Aristotle to turn it again into a religion of common sense. Both
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the motive and the method are illustrated in the war of Aquinas against the
Augustinians.
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