THE THOMIST
A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

EmToRs:

THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PRoVINCE oF ST. JosEPH

Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C.

VoL. X

OCTOBER, 1947

No.4

THE INCONSISTENCY OF JEAN PAUL
SARTRE'S LOGIC

I

F, in view of the public interest which has been centered
about the novels and plays of Jean Paul Sartre by a sensational advertising campaign, we ask ourselves what will
remain--or, indeed, what remains now-of his apparently
subtle and new philosophy, we come to realize that its novelty
has grown old very quickly and that existentialist psychoanalysis disintegrates thought more than it promotes or enriches
it. In order for an idea to retain the attention of the public,
it must be new in a much clearer and more real sense. Moreover, critiques have been written that are considerably subtler
than those found in the analyses and audacities of works that
are subtly paralogical. It would be interesting to gather together these studies that negate the most positive assertions of
a writer whose logic ends up by destroying itself.
An excellent example of this form of critique is the argument
of Pierre Ayraud in his Reflexions 8Ur l' Etrre et le N eant, one of

393

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MAURICE BLONDEL

the essays m Temoignages (Cahiers de la Pierre-qui-Vire,
August 1946). This study begins as follows: "A reading of
l' Etre et le N eant makes one wonder if it is really necessary to
refute Sartre. He has organised his system in such a fashion
that acceptance of the initial premises of the book leads, little
by little, to acceptance of the whole book. To the rejections of
these premises the author will certainly object that it is unfair
to criticize his philosophy on the basis of principles other than
his own. Besides, Sartre is a subtle thinker, indeed, too subtle.
Armed with his existentialist psychoanalysis, he quickly destroys his opponent's thought, reducing it to that game of
mirrors in which the " pour soi " 1 triumphs only to perish more
completely. It has to be said: A philosopher who considers
serious-mindedness the supreme illusion of human consciousness
is a priori not even worthy of criticism. Therefore, we shall not
try to find out whether Sartre is right or wrong, whether he is a
charlatan of genius or a poor fellow caught in the trap of his
own dialectics. We shall try only to prove that his philosophy
constitutes no threat whatsoever to our own basic theses. More
than that, realism correctly understood permits us to perceive
more clearly the hidden flaws in this phenomenological ontology
that is neither ontological nor phenomenological.
How explain the fact that Sartrian existentialism, expressing
itself in a whole series of morbid literary works, was born and
developed in the land of Descartes, although part of it came
to France " in the baggage train of foreigners? " Is it simply a
reaction against the rationalistic and idealistic trends which
too long dominated philosophical thought in the nineteenth and
at the beginning of the twentieth century, cutting that thought
off from reality and life and making it sterile? Must we not
recognize that this noisy explosion of existentialism has emotional roots and arose out of the frightful cataclysm of world
war?
1 Sartre
recognizes two kinds of being, "l'etre pour-soi" and "l'etre en-soi."
The latter is the thick " viscous " impenetrable being of inanimate things and of
man's past. The former is man's present being in which consciousness, "nothingness," and "choice " play the major role.

INCONSISTENCY

OF JEAN PAUL SARTRE's

LOGIC

395

Certainly, philosophy must raise the question of the meaning
of human existence, and all reflection should take into account
the destiny of man himself. Philosophy is not only a scheme of
ideas; it is the establishment of a position with regard to the
Absolute and each one of us, at every moment, irrevocably
stakes infinite values. But we must not allow the abuse of
deadening abstractions to throw us into the sticky subjectivity
of the hard existent, as the exaggerated systematization of
Hegel drove Kierkegaard to clench his fists in a fideism of
despair. Philosophy, which is an understanding of reality, is
not based upon the particular, sunk or "stuck" in itself, nor
upon bloodless generalities. When, with regard to action's
internal springs, I try to describe the interlocking links of action, I never do it as if analysis were sufficient of itself, or as if
description could be gratuitous. There are over-all structures,
supra-individual standards, organic wholes, and intelligible
syntheses. In short, there are regulative and judicative truths
without which we would not realize that physical being constantly becomes stickier, like a homogeneous mass, nor that
consciousness expands like a fullness overflowing, nor, above
all, that the two oppose each other, either painfully to prolong
their separation, or to project themselves, discovering in the
unexpectedness of this leap forward the very essence of freedom
from any value. If phenomenology continues to develop contradictory dialectics, it is because the modern phenomenologists
have revived the divorce between the individual and the universal. They start by making sacrosanct one point of perspective, chosen arbitrarily, and then try to bring all the facets
and values of existence into this perspective, cost what it may.
This is the worst of all abstractions: to seek to reduce to an
identical norm-arbitrarily conceived-the diverse reactions
and needs of human beings which can be integrated only in a
hierarchy of principles and values. If Sartrianism is only true
for M. Sartre, we may say that it is no longer true, even for
him; truth and universality are one.
Once the initial perspective is distorted, the vision of the
whole remains disturbed. What are these notions of "facti-

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MAURICE BLONDEL

tiousness," "utility," "existential choice," and even, of equivocal "transcendence?" The simple statement of a" pure" fact
is unintelligible; the most elementary fact is always in some
degree elaborated so that the penetration of the object by the
subject began long before anyone declared that it was impossible. Similarly, what clear-cut idea are we to understand when
the existentialists, in the mode of pragmatism, speak of the
artificiality of the world? This notion turns back upon its
creators to prove to them that, if the world is relative to their
ability to construct it, far from being enslaved by " mundane:ness," they can dominate " mundaneness " by the absoluteness
of the spirit. As for the idea of " pure choice," identified with
the blind existential urge, it means only an obscure tendency,
radically biological, with utilitarian or hedonistic fruits. If no
coherent science can be worked out concerning existence, and
freedom is conceived without an inwardness that is both demanding and sanctioning, not only does all metaphysics or
morality become impossible, but all reason becomes impossible
too. Finally, what shall we say of the caricature of transcendence that is offered us to designate in tum the exterior position of the existent with regard to himself, his primacy over
nothingness, his very precarious control of the world and his
anomite-like " project " within an illusory freedom. Now here
is the authentic transcendence of the immanent and demanding
Absolute discussed. And, fundamentally, it is logical that this
system which has brought the mind down to the level of the
irrational should bring transcendence down to the level of the
unreal.
From existentialism in the best sense of the word, the idea to
be retained is that a practical and militant philosophy is necessary, since in the question: "What is being?" I am included
and compromised to the point where I can no longer answer
objectively without taking a stand for or against my own
existence. It has been the goal of all philosophical effort to
show that our idea of an act and the act itself are not the same
in philosophy must be given to
thing and that a proper
that which until now seemed impossible to identify in the ex-

INCONSISTENCY

OF JEAN PAUL SARTRE'S

LOGIC

397

treme diversity of the elusive contingency which attends concrete existences. But what can we retain of the negative existentialism? Its psychoanalytical explorations have revealed as
yet unplumbed depths of egoism and perversity in man, rather
than treasures of generosity. Can the existentialists be said to
have enriched our knowledge of humanity by their contribution
of cynical " totalism? " Definitely not, for the truth is always
of the spirit. It disintegrates in descriptive complacency and
the workings of an unhealthy imagination disturbed by animal
cravings. Indeed, I have known this black existentialism so
long, that I am eminently entitled to give my opinion of it. As
early as 1880, the dilettantism then la mode advocated perverse experimentalism, and pessimism, which was widespread,
glorified nothingness. None of this has changed. The modern
existentialists do not really wish to solve the problem of existence; they wish to curb our right to raise the real problem.
That is why they destroy, a priori, any relationship between the
subject and the object, between the subject and himself, between the subject and other subject. But whom will they convince that man lives only for this disgusting "mess" and that
he dies, if one dare say it, to prove the absurdity of life? Why
must the irrational be the favorite food of man's reason, rather
than that which transcends it and fulfills it? Doubtless, because reason can juggle with the unreasonable, while it must
show itself humble before standards that go beyond it. It is
high time that the French spirit and the French mind reaffirmed
their rights to universality and inwardness, instead of allowing
themselves to be deceived by an overly visceral imagination.

a

MAURICE .BLONDEL

Unive'T'sity of Aix,
Aix-en-Provence, France.

THE PLACE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE IN THE
THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS

X

CORDING to Pope Leo XIII, St. Thomas Aquinas was
the leading exegete of Holy Scripture among the
theologians of the Scholastic age. 1 It may therefore be
of interest to study the place the Bible occupies in his works and
in his theological system. The nature of theological science has
always _been much discussed. Even in the time of St. Thomas
there were differences of opinion on this subject/ and after
having rested some centuries, the discussion has been reopened
in modern times with more acuteness and more far-reaching
consequences than before. The school of St. Thomas has always
based its teaching on the explanation of the word "theology";
theology is the knowledge of God, and of created things in so
far as they are related to God. The knowledge of God is a
double one, natural and supernatural, and so there are today
two kinds of theology, natural theology, called theodicy, and
theology strictly so called, which is based on revelation. 3
Although essentially one, because God is one, theology has
been divided into several sub-divisions. This is due to the
ever increasing extension of theological knowledge, as well as
to the different angles from which the fact of revelation may be
considered.
Revelation may be considered as something whose credibility
must be proved and even defined against those who deny it; so
originates the initial phase of theological science, called apologetics, or fundamental theology. Revelation, however, may
also be considered from a speculative standpoint, in as much as
one tries to penetrate it with the aid of speculative human
1 " Thomas Aquinas inter eos habuit palmam," in the Encyclical, Providentissimm
Deus (Enchiridion Biblicum, no. SI).
• Summa Theol., I, q. I, a. 8.
• Ibid., a. I, ad

398

HOLY SCRIPTURE

IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS

899

science. This gives origin to speculative theology, which tends
to be considered by many of its students as the whole of
theology; it deals with the truths of faith as they are found
in the sources of revelation, and it .pursues a threefold aim.
First, and principally, the speculative theologian seeks to
understand and to penetrate into the terms in which the truths
of faith are proposed to him. Secondly, he draws conclusions
from the articles of faith with the aid of human knowledge and
human reasoning. Thirdly, he has to invalidate the arguments
which are brought against the articles of faith by those who
consider those articles absurd.
Besides speculative theology there is also what has been
called positive theology. This does not try to penetrate the
revealed truths, or the terms in which they have been revealed,
by speculative thinking; its task is to indicate the revealed
truth in its sources, and to explain these sources as far as they'
are obscure or not fully understood. Holy Scripture is the word
of God, not in the sense that it is identical with revelation,
but in the sense that it has been inspired by the Holy Ghost
and contains revelation. But although it is God's word," written for our instruction" (Rom. xv, 4), "that the man of God
may be perfoct, prepared unto every good work " (II Tim. iii,
17) , it is not clear to everyone. The Bible ofte., reminds one of
the book with the seven seals of the Revelation of Saint John.
Often its sense is discovered only with difficulty, and not
without the assistance of the Holy Ghost, which may be given
to the individual believer, but which is before all given to the
Church. The exegete tries to determine the sense of Scripture;
he opens the seals of the closed book and tries to make clear
what is obscure. In so doing he may use every human means:
philology, history, anthropology, sociology, etc., but his work
is theological, just as much as it is the work of theology to
penetrate into the revealed truth with the aid of profane
philosophy. The same must be said, with the proper adjustments, of positive theology which has tradition, considered as
a source of revelation, as an object. Besides this, positive the-

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J. VAN DER PLOEG

ology has a defensive function. It defends Holy Scripture
against those who deny its truth. It proves that the articles
of faith which are not contained in the Bible, proceed from
true divine and apostolic tradition.
In the last seventeen years of his life, from his graduation
as a Master of Theology in 1256 until his death in 1273, St.
Thomas wrote commentaries on a number of biblical books:
Isaiah, the Canticles, Lamentations, Jeremiah, Job, the Psalms,
the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistles of St. Paul, and the Gospel
of St. John. To these commentaries must be added the Catena
Aurea or Golden Chain called by St. Thomas himself Glossae
in Quatuor Evangelia. This is not a commentary written by
the saint himself, but one continuous concatenation of texts
of the Fathers, which explain the Gospels. Of all these works,
only the commentary on the Canticles has not come down to
us; the two commentaries on this book ascribed to St. Thomas
and found in some editions of his work are now commonly
considered to be spurious. The material extent of all these
commentaries is as large as that of the Summa, and from this
point of view they occupy an important place among the
theological works of the doctor of the Church.
St. Thomas' commentaries were written, either by his own
hand, or by others who wrote them down during his lectures.
The commentaries on the most difficult books, those of the Old
Testament, were written by himself; most of those on the New
Testament were taken down by his disciples. An exception
must be made for the commentary on the Psalms and the commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul. It seems that St. Thomas
explained the Psalms at the same time as he explained Romans
and I Cor. i-x. The Epistles of St. Paul were considered more
important and more difficult than the Psalms; therefore St.
Thomas himself wrote the commentary on the above mentioned
letters of St. Paul, but had the other ones written by one of
his disciples. The Catena Aurea is wholly the personal work
of St. Thomas.
In many respects the medieval student did not differ from his

HOLY SCRIPTURE

IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS

401

modern colleague; taking good dictation and reproducing the
words of the professor without mistake was not the accomplishment of every student. To take down his orally delivered commentaries, St. Thomas always chose someone whom he thought
to be most capable of the work. During his first stay in Paris,
those thus elected were a certain Peter of Andria, a Dominican,
and a secular cleric whose name is unknown. From 1259 until
his death, his confrere, Reinald of Piperno, who edited the
spiritual heritage of the Master, functioned as his secretary. A
commentary written by the professor himself was called
expositio; one taken down by a disciple was given the name
of lectura. Between the lectura and the expositio of St. Thomas
there is hardly any difference of style, which may be an
indication that he spoke very slowly in his lessons, or even
dictated them. 4
In his other theological works St. Thomas cited a great
number of scripture-texts and has interpreted separately very
many of them, for example, the first chapter of Genesis as
interpreted in the Summa. 5 St. Thomas also dealt with questions of introduction, but he never wrote a treatise on inspiratipn; his opinions on this subject may be gathered especially
from his treatise& on prophecy 6 and from dispersed texts. The
question of the sense of Scripture was dealt with by him
several times. 7 In the beginning of his career as a teacher he
treated the question of the canon, which was no problem in the
middle ages,S although some fathers and doctors followed the
dissentient view of St. Jerome. In his first public lecture, or
principium as it was called in the middle ages, he gives a short
survey of the books of both Old and New Testament. From
the works of St. Jerome he knew the existence of varying texts
of Holy Scripture, and it did not escape him that even the
0. P., Revue Thomiste (I928), 42 fl.
• Summa Theol., I, qq. 45-48.
• Ibid., II-II, qq. I7I-174; Q. D. de Ver., q. 12.
7 Summa Theol., I, q. I, a. 10; Quaes. Quod., VII, aa. 14-16; Q. D. de Pot., q. 4,
a. I; In Epist. ad Galatas, iv, lect. 7.
8 Opusc. 89.
• P. Mandonnet,

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J. VAN DER PLOEG

manuscripts of the Vulgate did not present identical texts. 9
Each of his commentaries is preceded by a short special
introduction.
H we wish to know why St. Thomas wrote commentaries on
Holy Scripture and compiled such a work as the Catena Aurea,
it is necessary to know the method of theological instruction
in the 18th century and even earlier. In the time
St. Thomas
and in the early middle ages, every instruction was given on
the basis of a standard-text. At present every professor is free
in the choice of a handbook, and when he does not find one
which pleases him, he reads or dictates a text of his own. In
the middle ages this liberty did not exist. It was customary
for every faculty to have its own fixed textbook or handbook,
on the basis of which the lectures were delivered and which was
discussed and explained by the professor. In connection with
this text the professor could treat aH kinds of other questions,
as the occasion offered itself. The difficulty of this method was
that there could be no question of an orderly and systematic
treatment of the subject-matter, which caused numerous repetitions in the lecture, disgust for learning and confused ideas for
the
as St. Thomas testifies. 10
At the faculties of theology and at all the schools where
theological instruction was given, i. e. in monasteries and
cathedral-schools, the Bible was already in the early middle
ages the textbook. The professor bore the title of doctor or
magister, or magister sacrae paginae, master of Holy Scripture,
a title which became an academic degree given by the Church
through the authorities to whom she had given a right to confer
it. This title originally conferred a double right, just as it
imposed a double obligation: to preach in the church and to
explain publicly the Holy Writ, two functions and two duties
which were closely connected. Soon a third duty was joined to
the preceding ones, to hold and to lead public disputations, in
• Cf., e. g., In Epist. ad Romanoa i, lect. 6 (Vives edition, XX, 897a); In
Psalmoa, Proemium (Vives edition, XVIll, 280a).
10 Summa Tkeol., ·Prologua.

HOLY SCRIPTURE

IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS

408

which the master always had the last word. This right of the
last word was exercised by him, at least in the 18th century,
in the solemn, public, so called detenninatio or diffinitio of the
magister, who held it the day after the disputation. In this the
objections made against the thesis were considered in order and
refuted by the master, and the disputed question thus settled.
In the principium or inaugural address pronounced by St.
Thomas on the occasion of his graduation as a master of
theology, and which in many manuscripts bears the title of
Commendatio Sacral Scripturae, the newly promoted says:
" the doctors of Holy Scripture must excell by their excellent
conduct in life, to be apt to preach with good success; they
must be illuminated, to be able to instruct well; they must be
well instructed to be able to refute errors in their disputations,
in accordance with the words of the Apostle, who says that the
ecclesiastical authority must be able to admonish with sane
doctrine and to refute adversaries." 11 It is clear that the newly
created master was considered a doctor of Holy Scripture; he
must, first of all, preach Sacred Scripture to the faithful, because
the revelation it contains has been given for the spiritual welfare of all; then he must explain it to those who can penetrate
into its deeper sense, i.e. to the clergy; finally, he must defend
it against those who attack it, or draw false conclusions from it.
The disputations arose from the questions or difficulties put to
a master on the occasion of a lecture on a special text of Scripture. Gradually the disputation disengaged itself from the
normal instruction and became a separated actus scholasticus.
In the 18th century it had in many places become the most
solemn or even most important actus scholasticus, which lasted
several hours and superseded the other lectures of the faculty
which would have been held that day and the following one.
The whole faculty could participate in it, with all the professors,
the lower teachers and the students. It was what has been
11

Optuc. 40.

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J. VAN DER PLOEG

called by Father Mandonnet, whom we follow here, le tournai
des clercs, the tournament of the clerks, 12 who went at one
another, not with arms of iron and steel, but with the doubleedged sword of the spirit.
Very early in the middle ages there appeared comments on
Holy Scripture, first in the form of short glosses between the
lines of the text, the so called glossa interlinearis, later in the
form of more continuous explanations, often citations from the
Fathers, and called glossa ordinaria or marginalia, because it
was written on the margin of the sacred text. A great event
for theological science was the appearance, in the middle of
the 12th century, of the Liber Sententiarum of Peter the Lombard, in which for the first time in history a great number of
the patristic texts were arranged systematically, and not according to the order of the sacred books of the canon. In the
thirteenth century this book was used as a text book, not
supplanting Holy Scripture, but in addition to it and subservient to it. Its purpose was only to help the student to a
better understanding of the richness of Holy Writ. The interpretation of the latter remained the principal duty of the
magister in his own lectures.
Most masters found little satisfaction in delivering lengthy
lectures, especially when the instruction was elementary and
for which there was no remuneration. They shifted a part of
the burden which rested on their shoulders to those of· subordinate teachers, well instructed and talented students, who
aspired to the degree of master. In the time of St. Thomas,
every master at the university of Paris could have two teachers
of this kind who, under his direction, gave the elementary
instruction. Both were called baccalarei or baccalaurei, although only the second had a right to this title. 13 The first
was the so-called biblicus, also called biblicus ordinarius cursor 14
12 P. Mandonnet,
0. P., in S. Thomae Aquinatis Quaestiones Disputatae (Paris:
1925) , p. 8 (Introduction) and elsewhere.
13 For the original meaning of this word, see A. Kleinhans, 0. F. M., in Biblica,
1933, p. 391.
u Mandonnet thinks that the cursor is not to be mistaken for the biblicus. Cf.

HOLY SCRIPTURE

IN THE THEOLOGY

OF ST. THOMAS

405

or baccalaureus biblicus. His duty was to "read" the text of
the Bible to his pupils and to explain it in a few words,
cursorie, that is, without insisting on special questions, on
the basis of the glosses or of parallel biblical texts. AmL.r.5
the Dominicans such a biblicus lectured every day, except on
Sundays and church holidays; he had to finish the whole Bible
in three years. 15 This method of teaching was called legere
bibliam biblice, or textualiter, i.e., explaining only the letter
of the text. It served to instill into the minds of the students
first of all the knowledge of the biblical text; in the middle ages
this took the place of our general and special introduction to
Holy Scripture. Because the method had first been introduced
in Paris and was later imitated everywhere else, it was also
called legere bibliam secundum modum parisiensem (according
to the Paris method.)
After having studied seven years under the direction of
Albert the Great, St. Thomas was appointed baccalareus
biblicus at Paris in 1252; he performed this duty for two years.
He began his first public lecture with the text of the book of
Baruch: " This is the book of the commandments of God; all
who observe them, shall come to life." 16 Of a higher rank was
the baccalareus sententiarum, whose duty it was to read, and to
explain if necessary, the Sententiae of the Lombard. His
instruction was less elementary than that of the biblicus. St.
Thomas was baccalareus sententiarum from 1254 to 1256, when
he was promoted magister.
Above the baccalaurei stood the magister. The best lessonhour of the day was reserved for him, viz. the first hour of the
day, the hour when the spirit is freshest, after the night's rest.
His title of magister sacrae paginae was changed in the first
hal£ of the thirteenth century to magister sacrae theologiae,
except, of course, in conservative England, which because of its
insular character was more or less cut off from the outer world,
Revue Thomiste,
p. 503 ff.; Cardinal Ehrle was not of this opinion; cf. Kleinhans, op. cit., p.
•• For this and the following, see Mandonnet, loc. cit.
16 Baruch, iv, 1; St. Thomas, Opusc. 89.

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J. VAN DER PLOEG

and where the title of magister sacrae paginae was kept at
least a hundred years longer. The change of name was not
without meaning, because it was connected with the influence of
the Sententiae of Peter the Lombard and the rise of a systematic
theology, which began to loosen itself from the text and the
order of the Bible books, but not, of course, from their content.
In spite of the change of name, the interpretation of Scripture
remained the principal task and duty of the master; the textbook of his ordinary lectures was and remained the Bible. This
is absolutely certain and the investigations of Denifle and
Mandonnet have not left the slightest doubt in respect to it. 17
The magister sacrae paginae or theologiae did not explain the
biblical text cursorie, that is, in a few words. He often entered
deeply into its sense and consequences, especially as these
offered difficulties or afforded an opportunity to speculative
considerations. The master delivered none but the biblical
lectures, at least if he was assisted by baccalaurei. If he had
none, he took to himself the reading and explaining of the
Sententiae at hand, or of another famous book.
Because of the growing necessity of combatting false doctrines or opinions, the disputation was often considered more
important than the ordinary lessons, which, therefore, were
suppressed on the days when a master of the faculty led a
disputatio or gave the determinatio which followed it. This
was not a result of a diminished appreciation for Scripture, but
was a pedagogical necessity. The masters of the university
of Paris normally disputed only a few times a year. St. Thomas
had a totally different idea of his duty as a professor and,
probably to erect a barrier against the pernicious Averroism
and the other vicious currents of thought which found many
adherents at the university of Paris and elsewhere, he disputed
two times a week during his last two stays at Paris (1256-59
Cf. P. Mandonnet, "Chronologie des ecrits scripturaires deS. Thomas d'Aquin,"
H. Denifle, "Que! livre
servait de base a l'enseignement des maitres en theologie dans l'universite de Paris,"
Revue Thomiste, 1894, pp. 149-161.
17

Revue Thomiste, 1928 and 1929 (edited also separately);

HOLY SCRIPTURE IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS

407

and 1269-72) , a thing unheard-of in that time. The determinationes included, every week four lessons of Holy Scripture had
to be left out; Mandonnet has calculated that the total number
of these lessons in the whole year was about sixty five, for
there were many holidays and vacations. 18
During his stay in the Pontifical States of central Italy
(1259-1269), St. Thomas conducted a dispute every fortnight,
which brought the average number of his Scripture lessons to
four a week.19 At Naples the Saint conducted no disputations
during the year and few months he spent there at the end
of his life, but he lectured on Holy Scripture about five times a
week.20 The reason for this was most probably the fact that
the university of Naples had not been founded, or approved by,
the ecclesiastical authority, and therefore the theological faculty
had no right to confer degrees, for which the assistance at
disputations would have been necessary. 21 St. Thomas made
up for the lack of disputations, not only by teaching Scripture
every day, which was only his normal duty, but also by fulfilling the first, and too often neglected, task of the magistripreaching. During the whole of Lent, 1278, he sermonized
daily to the students of Naples and the people of the town. 22
The commentaries St. Thomas wrote on different books of
the Bible are nothing but the text of the lectures he delivered
during the time he was magister sacrae paginae, from 1256 to
1278. St. Thomas was an ideal teacher, "the most complete
type of the professor of the middle ages," as Mandonnet has
typified him. 23 He delivered more lectures and disputations
than any other professor of the university of Paris. He took
care also to finish the annual matter of his course in the fixed
Revue Thomiste, 19!l9, pp. 58-:11.; p. 68.
Mandonnet, loc. cit., p. 187.
•• Ibid., p. 185.
21 Ibid., p. 186.
ucf. Mandonnet, Revue Thomiste., 19!!8, p. !!14, as well as the literature quoted
there.
•• " Le type Ie plus complet du professeur au XIII• siecle," Revue Thomist1.
19!!9, p. 489.
18

10

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J. VAN DER PLOEG

time, except when he was transferred, in the midst of the
academic year, from one place to another. So only two, or more
properly three, of his commentaries are incomplete, viz. that on
Jeremiah, which he left unfinished when he was unexpectedly
called to Paris in 1269, and the commentary on the Psalms,
during the writing of which he was surprised by death. He
treated the Psalms and the Epistles of St. Paul at the same
time, and so the commentary on the Epistles is also unfinished.
But because he had already once treated the fourteen Epistles
of St. Paul, Reinald of Piperno, who had written down this
first commentary, combined both texts, making one of them,
omitting the first part of the earlier lectura. 24
It seems that St. Thomas treated first a book of the Old
Testament and then one of the New. At Naples he departed
from this custom and dealt every other day with a book of the
Old and of the New Testament respectively. In his choice of
the biblical books he did not proceed arbitrarily. After his
graduation he chose as lecture-matter the books of Isaiah and
Matthew, which were often treated together in the middle ages.
Of the four Gospels, St. Matthew was the most in favour, while
the prophet Isaiah was considered a precursor of the evangelists,
or almost as one of them, because of his many predictions of
Christ and his work. 25
During his second stay at Paris, ten years later, St. Thomas
chose the Gospel of St. John, in his flight of thoughts the
loftiest and profoundest of the four. Amongst the books of the
Old Testament he chose Job, in which the problem of Providence is discussed in such a thrilling manner. The great
influence of Averroism, which the Saint came to combat, and
which denied the existence of Providence, undoubtedly determined this choice. At Anagni, the place where the papal court
was residing and where the central administration of the
Church was established, St. Thomas explained the Canticles.
•• Revue Thomiste, 1928, pp. 222 ff.
•• Thus already St. Jerome; see St. Thomas, In Isaiam, In Prologum Hieronymi
(Vives edition, XVIII, 670-671).

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409

The bride in the Song of Songs was generally considered to be
a personification of the Church, and this may have influenced
the Saint's choice. Why he has treated Jeremiah is not clear;
perhaps simply because has was the second of the great
Prophets. But it seems to be clear why he has treated the
Psalms and the Epistles of St. Paul, the latter twice. Both
books were the two most used biblical texts, and since the time
of the early Fathers, a great many commentaries had been
written on them.
The Catena Aurea was compiled by St. Thomas at the
request, or the order, of Pope Urban IV, who lived just long
enough to receive the catena on Matthew. Two famous
masters, Gilbert de la Porraye and Peter the Lombard, had
compiled a similar collection of glosses on the Psalms and on the
Epistles of St. Paul. Thomas, who as a true scholar knew that
he was second to none of them, compiled a glossa on the four
Gospels, for which he used a number of works of Greek Fathers
hitherto unknown in the West, and some of which he had had
especially translated for this purpose. This was a time when
great endeavours were afoot for the reunion of the Greek and
Latin Churches, and St .Thomas related his work to the
actuality of the moment. He composed it from obedience, but
it was so dear to him that he continued it and finished it off
even after the death of Adrian. The work soon became famous
and was given the name of " The Golden Chain." It is not
impossible that St. Thomas used the text of it in his lessons,
during the time he was working on it. If so, those lectures
had more the character of the lessons of a baccalareus than of
those of a magister.
The form of the commentaries was prescribed by custom. To
us it may seem somewhat artificial with its many divisions and
subdivisions, but these were deemed necessary in that time,
since the good teacher was he who made good distinctions (qui
bene distinguit, bene docet.) Moreover, St. Thomas knew how
to free himself from the scholastic method of exegesis, as, for
instance, in his adinirable commentary on Job, called by a
2

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J. VAN DER PLOEG

medieval scholar a mirabile opus. 211 The first exegetical rule
of St. Thomas was, apparently, to explain the Bible by the
Bible, and therefore many passages of his exegetical works,
especially of the earlier ones, in which one still tastes the
baccalareus biblicus, consist more of biblical texts than of the
text of the author. And if one considers that a part of these
texts were not written down by St. Thomas himself, but by
others, one cannot but admire the memory of the Saint, and
understand why it was said of him that he knew the whole
Bible by heart.
In comparison with the citations from Holy Scripture, the
Fathers are not cited so often. With regard to the sense of
Scripture, St. Thomas gives first the literal one and then the
" higher," or spiritual sense. In the latter he is rather sober,
when compared with some of his contemporaries. In his commentary on Job he follows only the literal sense, because, so he
informs his readers, there is nothing new to be said on the
spiritual sense since the commentary of Pope Gregory! In his
commentaries he tries to be exact and accurate and to omit
nothing, rightly judging that everything in the sacred text
deserves the full attention of the exegete. It should not be
thought that the great thinker, as a speculative theologian,
gave attention only to that which, in his eyes, was of "theological " importance, that is, of importance for his theological
system. His reverence for the word of God was too great to do
this. As a true exegete, he took notice of the smallest details
'of the text, of the names of persons and places, of the mysterious" titles" (headings) of the Psalms. He would leave nothing
obscure or undiscussed. Thus he was fully what an exegete of
those days and, mutatis mutandis, also of our days should be.
After this historical discussion of the place which the interpretation of the Bible occupied in the theological work of St.
Thomas, the question arises as to the place Holy Scripture
holds in his theological system. St. Thomas deals with this
problem in the first question of his theological handbook, the
•• Thus John of Colonna; cf. Mandonnet, Revue Thomiate, 1928, p. 149.

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IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS

411

Summa. It has been explained above that in the middle ages
the science of theology arose from the interpretation of Holy
Scripture and that its higher form, its scope was to provide
a deeper insight into the Bible's revealed truths. Now it is
very remarkable that St. Thomas, when he speaks in the first
question of the Summa on the nature of theology, uses the terms
sacra doctrina, sacra scriptura, scientia divinitus inspirata,
divina revelatio, apparently indiscriminately. This occurs in
the first article, and again at the end of the second. Holy
Scripture and sacra doctrina are even equalized by the word
seu (sacra scriptura seu doctrina.) Remarkably enough the
word theologia is used only a few times. At the end of the
first article it is said that theology " belongs to sacra doctrina "
(theologia quae ad sacram doctrinam pertinet); this gives the
impression that according to St. Thomas, theology is only a
part of sacra doctrina. But in article seven, " this science,"
viz., the science of which he has been speaking, consequently
sacra doctrina, is called theology: " In this science God is
spoken of, for it is called theologia, quasi sermo de Deo."
Elsewhere St. Thomas is still more explicit, as he says in the
preface of his commentary on St. Paul, when speaking of the
Psalms and the Epistles of the great Apostle: " These writings
contain nearly the whole doctrine of theology." And in the
same preface, written at Naples at the end of his life, he
says: "In the New Testament one reads, after the Gospels, the
doctrine (doctrina) of the apostles."
In the second difficulty, made in article seven, against the
thesis that God is the object of the sacred science, he says:
"all that which is spoken of in a science belongs to the subject
(St. Thomas does not say object, as we do) of it; but in Holy
Scripture much is said of things other than God; therefore
God cannot be the subject of this science." And the answer
runs: " all which is spoken of in Holy Scripture is spoken of
God; the objection, therefore, is worthless." It is clear that
in this argument St. Thomas identifies Holy Scripture and
sacred science. In article eight he asks whether the sacra

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J. VAN DER PLOEG

doctrina is argumentativa or not, which is to ask whether it
reasons, whether it concludes, etc. His answer is that the
sacred doctrine does not argue to prove its principles, that is,
the articles of faith. And somewhat further he continues:
"Holy Scripture, which has no (science) above it, disputes
with him who denies its principles, and argues if ... " etc. In
article nine he answers the question, " Should Holy Scripture
use metaphors? " by saying: ". . . the sacra doctrina must
use metaphors."
It cannot be doubted: Holy Scripture contains, or rather is
sacra doctrina and a science. How is this possible? That one
may call Holy Scripture a doctrine, may readily be understood,
since it teaches us so many things. But for St. Thomas a science
is something else, that is, a cognitio per causas. Can Holy
Scripture be spoken of thus? The answer to this question is
threefold. In the first place, sacra doctrina is a different kind
of science from the profane sciences. These are ultimately
based on human experience, human understanding; theology,.
however, is based on the science which God has from Himself, and this is also the ultimate reason why we believe in
the truth of the Bible, inspired by God, who is Himself nothing
but truth. Secondly, Holy Scripture contains reasonings; St.
Paul, for instance, concludes from the resurrection of Christ
to the resurrection of all men (I Cor. xv, 12.)
But this is no complete answer. St. Thomas asks himself
too, if theology is one single science; the difficulty is obvious,
since theology seems to deal with a great many things which
belong to the realm of other sciences, especially philosophy.
He answers that theology refers all these things to God in
so far as they are revelabilia. The sense of this word is not
immediately clear, but it can be obtained from the context. 27
The object of the common sense (sensus communis), so he
says some lines before, is that which can be perceived by the
a full discussion, cf. E. Gilson, Le Thomisme, Introduction a la philosophie
de S. Thomas d'Aquin, 4th edition (Paris:
Introduction (" Le Revelable "),
pp. 8-40.

HOLY SCRIPTURE IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS

413

senses (the sensibile); this includes the visibile and the audibile.

It seems therefore that the strange word revelabile has been
formed in the same way and indicates the object of sacred
science. The ear does not perceive the audible before there
is sound; thus the revelabile is only the object of sacred science
when there has been revelation, and therefore Sertillanges
translates it as " objet de la revelation." 28 So theology considers everything which is contained in the revealed object.
When we know from revelation that Christ is man, or that man
must serve God, the idea " man " has become the object of
revelation. Therefore St. Thomas analyses it and many other
ideas in order that we might better understand the sense of
the revealed truth. This understanding is, of course, human,
fallible, and not to be identified with faith. It is the product of
theological thinking. But this thinking would not be theological, if it did not find its origin in the revealed truths,
which have been written down for us in Holy Scripture.
Thus we find in Holy Scripture the principles of sacred
doctrine, that is, the articles of faith, which are short summaries of the revealed truths; we find in it argumentations
and reasonings and the refutation of errors. The theologian
continues this work, making use of every human science,
especially philosophy. This makes it clear why, according to
St. Thomas, Holy Scripture, sacred doctrine, revealed science,
and theology are one and are not essentially distinguished.
Holy Scripture and (human) theology are organically tied
together and can never be separated. St. Thomas would
emphatically deny the modern saying of some theologians,
that (literal) biblical exegesis is no theology, and the exegete
of the Bible no theologian.
But to be able to be used in sacra dootrina, the sense of Holy
Scripture must be clearly defined. According to St. Thomas,
and to the medieval theologians commonly, the text of Holy
•• Cf. the French translation of the Summa; Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Sommd
Theologique, Dieu, (Paris:
I,
on p. 80, Father Sertillanges translates
" divinitus revelabilia" by " tout ce que peut reveler Dieu."

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J. VAN DER PLOEG

Scripture may have more than one sense: a literal or historical,
and a spiritual, higher, sense. The doctrine of the plurality
of the senses of the Bible is old and occurs in the Epistles of
St. Paul. From then up to the present time, there is an
uninterrupted chain of " spiritual " interpreters of Scriptures.
Many people do not understand this and think that the
attributing to Scripture of a " spiritual " sense was only a
remarkable or odd use of the ancient Church, taken over from
Alexandrian Judaism. One needs only to read Origen, the
greatest allegorizer of Scripture of all times, and also one of the
greatest Christian scholars, to know that allegorizing was for
him no vain game of the spirit, but the bitter earnestness of
a profound Christian, who had too high an idea of Holy Scripture, of which God was the Author, to admit that the many
commonnesses which occur in it had not a higher, spiritual,
mystic sense, hidden from the eye of the carnal man, but open,
under the light of grace, for the spiritual one. The allegorizing
interpretation of Scripture was in the old Church an attempt
to take the whole Bible, with all its details, into the service of
the preaching of the word of God and of Christian life.
Origen, and the Alexandrians generally, went too far. The
school of Antioch, with Theodore of Mopsuestia and John
Chrysostom as its most prominent representatives, tried to
readjust the exegetical balance by the doctrine of the theoria 29
and the types. The first occurs also in St. Thomas, although
not under the same name. Theodore went too far and in 553,
more than a century after his death, was condemned by an
oecumenical council, at the instance of the Greeks. But the
more moderate doctrine of Antioch stood firm, and at Alexandria the purely allegorical exegesis was gradually pressed
back into the domain of the homiletical, the devotional, whilst
in the dogmatical controversy literal exegesis prevailed.
St. Thomas, in his doctrine on the plurality of senses of
Holy Scripture, is a disciple of Antioch. Practically he distinguishes a double sense of Scripture only, not a fourfold
29

For the sense of this word, see A. Vaccari, S. J., in Biblica, 1920, pp. 3-36.

HOLY SCRIPTURE

IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS

415

sense as others did: a sense of words and one of things, events.
The first is the literal or historical sense, and has been given
to the text by God as well as by the inspired writer; the
latter is the spiritual sense, and has been attached by God,
not to words, but to things, facts, or persons, which became
thus figures, types, of the future. With certainty this sense
can only be known from revelation, that is, from Scripture
itself or from divine Tradition; it may be surmised when there
is a great resemblance between the figures of the Old Testament
and the realities of the New. 80
In so far as it is not explicitly revealed, the spiritual sense
is always uncertain and therefore cannot be used in sacra
doctrina. But by this nothing is lost from the revealed truth,
since, as one reads in the Summa, " Scripture does not contain
in the spiritual sense anything necessary for faith which it does
not clearly teach elsewhere in the literal sense." 81 And in
Quodlibetum (VII, art. 15, ad 3) it is said: "Nothing is taught
mysteriously (occulte) in any place of Scripture which is not
explained clearly elsewhere; therefore, the spiritual explanation
must always be based on the literal."
But is the literal sense itself manifold? St. Augustine in
two texts deemed this possible, and it seems clear that St.
Thomas, who cites the words of the famous doctor and who
deals with the problem three times, 32 did not dare to contradict
this flatly. In one place the opinion of the great doctor of the
old Church is called by him " not incredible " 33 and in the
Summa he calls it " not inconvenient." 34 God, indeed, is the
principal Author of Holy Scripture; He knows better than we
the various senses a word may have, and therefore it is not
impossible that in His Wisdom He has given the words of the
Bible more than one sense. It is possible that the sacred authors
knew this sometimes and, to illustrate this, St. Thomas cites
•• Quaes. Quod., VII, a. 14, ad 4um.
11 Summa Theol., I, q. 1, a. 10, ad 1um.
•• Ibid., a. 10; Quaes. Quod., VII, a. 14, ad 5um; Q. D. de Pot., q. 8, a. 1.
•• Q. D. de Pot., loc. cit.
u Ibid.

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the example of the prophets, who, speaking of figures, also
intended to speak of their ful:filment.85
Sometimes the sacred writers of the Old Testament knew the
prophetic signification of persons or things and made use of this
knowledge in their words or writings. 36 In these cases their
words may have a double literal sense. In the second and
twenty-first Psalms, for instance, David speaks first of himself
when he says: "The princes came together against the Lord
and against his Anointed," or " God, my God, look upon me,
far from my salvation the words of my misdeeds," but he
chiefly intends to speak of the passion of Christ of which his
own passion was but a figure. This is evident because in both
Psalms David says things which can be applied only to Christ,
such as: " The Lord hath said to me: Thou art my son, this
day I have. begotten Thee," or "they have pierced my hands
and my feet; they have numbered all my bones." 87 The last
method of interpretation is wholly that of the school of Antioch
and supposes with the prophets what was called by the Antiochians 6ewpla, which means the beholding of persons or things of
the future in persons or things of the present. 88
St. Thomas gives no other examples of the plurality of the
literal sense, and in the well-known text of De Potentia (IV, I)
he concedes the " non-incredibility" of the opinion of St. Augustine. Here he considers the interpretation of the words of
Moses-" and the earth was waste and empty," that is, whether
he is speaking of " formed " matter or of matter which was
yet to receive its forms in the work of the six days. Both
interpretations are possible, he says, both can be "adapted"
to the text (aptari possunt) . No one has a right to claim a
monopoly for his personal exegesis. In this case, Scripture
uses abstract terms which mean something concrete; two
•• Quaea. Quod., VII, a. 1.
•• Cf. Quaea. Quod., VII, a. 14, ad 5um; In Paalmoa, Proemium (Vives edition,
XVIII, 280b).
•• In Paalmo8, 8'UM locia.
38 In his commentary on the Psalms, Proemium,
St. Thomaa attributes this
opinion to St. Jerome.

HOLY SCRIPTURE IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS

417

concreta are possible, and i£ God had intended both, one could
say that Genesis (i, 1) would have a double literal sense. The.
latter is not a conclusion of St. Thomas, who never says anything of the kind, although he often gives more than one
explanation of difficult texts. From this silence it may be
inferred that in cases like this he did not admit the existence
of more than one literal sense as intended by God or by the
sacred author. In the question of prophecy, there is never a
plurality of totally inadequate literal sense, there is only what
has been called a virtual plurality; in the cases of the second
and twenty-first Psalms, for instance, the historical and the
messianic interpretations are connected as figura and figuratum.
Practically St. Thomas recognized the existence of one, adequate, literal sense.
St. Thomas agrees with this conclusion in the answer he gives
to the difficulty: " When Scripture has more than one sense, it
cannot be used as a basis of argumentation." In this answer one
reads, among other things: "The senses (of Holy Scripture)
are not manifold because one word would have many senses
. . . all the senses are based on one, namely the literal." 39
By ascertaining this and practising it, St. Thomas has maintained the usableness of the sacra doctrina, which would necessarily be endangered if one word, one single expression had
many not adequate or subordinated literal senses.
In connection with what has been said, a difficulty of a
totally different character arises. Reading what St. Thomas
writes on the relation between Scripture and revelation, one
gets the impression that both are put by him on a par, or at
least that he considers Holy Scripture as the only existing
source of revelation. In this he seems not to be alone; a certain
number of texts of Fathers of the Church give the same impression and the reformers of the sixteenth century cited them in
confirmation of their doctrine of the sufficientia Sacrae Scripturae. Moreover, does not St. Thomas say explicitly that all
that is necessary for faith can be read clearly and in the literal
•• Summa Tkeol., I, q. 1, a. 10, ad 1um.

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J. VAN DER PLOEG

sense in the Bible? Is this not the Protestant doctrine of the
perspicuitas of Holy Scripture, and does this not practically
exclude tradition as a source of revelation?
One must concede that St. Thomas rarely mentions tradition
as a separate source of revelation. But this does not mean at
all that he did not know it. A locus classicus used by every
ecclesiastical writer is his commentary on II Thess. (ii, 15.)
Saint Paul wrote: " Brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or by epistle of
ours." In his commentary on this text, St. Thomas remarks:
" So it is clear that much has not been written in the Church
which has been taught by the apostles and which, therefore,
must be observed (servanda) because, according to the judgment of the apostles, it was better to hide much, as Dionysius
says. Therefore the apostle says in I Cor. (xi, 34): The rest
I shall order when I come." 40
St. Thomas refers to the apostolic tradition especially and
principally in the doctrine of the Sacraments. Here he often
cites the above mentioned Dionysius, who was for him a disciple
of the apostles and who, therefore, would be better acquainted
with their doctrine than the later doctors. The form of the
Sacrament of Confirmation, instituted by Christ, is known to us
only from the doctrine of the apostles. 41 In his commentary on
Job, St. Thomas says that the opinion that the devil is a fallen
angel belongs to the tradition of the Church (ecclesiastica
traditio) ,42 thus using explicitly the word "tradition." But in
spite of all this, Holy Scripture was for him by far the principal
source of faith, especially with regard to the more speculative
doctrines. The " necessary " truths of faith, so he says, following St. Augustine, are all clearly formulated in Holy Scripture.
The meaning of this term " necessary truths " is at first not
very obvious. From what has been said above it appears, for
instance, that the form of the Sacrament of Confirmation (the
•• In II Thess. ii, lect. 8 (Vives edition, XXI, 446b).
u Summa Theol., III, q. 72, a. 1, ad I urn; see also q. 74, a. 4, ad I urn.

•• In Job i, lect. 2 (Vives edition, XVIII, 6).

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IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS

419

necessary ceremonies to administer it validly) is not included
in it. For all that, it is in a certain sense necessary to know it.
On the other hand, it seems not to be sufficient to include in
these " necessary truths " only the four principal articles of
faith: existence of God and Providence, Salvation, and the
Trinity, because if only this could be read clearly in Holy
Scripture, it would not be very much. Perhaps St. Thomas
was thinking of the principal symbola/ 3 or perhaps he left to
St. Augustine the determination of the term " necessary."
It should be borne in mind that the Bible, as Holy Writ, as a
book, can easily be consulted, whilst it is often very difficult
to deal with the data of tradition in as much as this does not
appear from the statements of Councils, or from the universally
accepted belief of the Church. This fully accounts for the
general custom of the Fathers and also of St. Thomas of
appealing to Scripture for proof of the truths of faith, or for
proof of their own opinions.
There is one form of tradition, however, on which St.
Thomas often depends, even unconsciously. This is the traditional interpretation of many passages of both Old and New
Testament-interpretations
hallowed by tradition, confirmed
by the verdicts of Councils or Popes. According to St. Thomas
the general Councils of the Church only explain the teaching of
the Scripture to which they appeal. Illuminated by the Spirit
of God they explain to us infallibly the sense of the sacred
text. The Fathers also have interpreted Holy Scripture, but in
this they were not infallible. The idea and the term " unanimous opinion of the Fathers" (unanimis consensus Patrum),
which occurs so often in Catholic theology since the Council of
Trent, is not met with in the works of St. Thomas, who
speaks nevertheless of " the faith of the whole Church," 44
which is much the same idea.
•• In his Expositio super Symbolo Apostolorum (Opusc. 33), St. Thomas repeatedly speaks of " necessary " truths of faith.
u G. Geenen, 0. P., "De Opvatting en houding van den H. Thomas van Aquino
bij het gebruiken der bronnen zijner theo!ogie,"-Bijdragen der Nederlandschl!
Jezuieten, IV (1938), 144.

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This leads to a last question. Has St. Thomas as an exegete
made a good and fair use of Holy Scripture, has he interpreted
it faithfully and has he taken it objectively as a base for his
theological speculations, or has he tried to force upon the
Scripture a sense in accordance with his own views? Has he
tried to shelter in his commentaries, with all their Scholastic
distinctions and subdistinctions, his own Scholastic system,
heavily drenched with the theories of Aristotle instead of with
the spirit of the Gospel? One example out of many! It is well
known that St. Augustine distinguished three kinds of sins: sins
against the neighbor, against God, against oneself. In the text
of the Vulgate, the first verse of the book of Job, it is said that
Job was a simple and upright man, who feared God and kept
from evil. To this St. Thomas applies St. Augustine's threefold
division of sins; he says that the words "Job was an upright
man " mean that he did not sin against the neighbor; " he feared
God" means that he did not sin against God; "he kept from
evil" means that he did not sin against himself. No modern
exegete would borrow from St. Thomas this interpretation, and
rightly so.
One thing is certain. In his exegesis St. Thomas never had
the intention of forcing upon Scripture a sense it does not have.
"We must keep to that which has been written in Scripture,"
he says, " as to an excellent rule of faith, so that we must add
nothing to it, detract nothing, and change nothing by interpreting it badly." 45 After St. Thomas there have been theologians for whom the Scholastic system was (practically) the
principal matter and the interpretation of Scripture a secondary
matter, but such a mentality is far from the mind of St.
Thomas. That he interpreted Scripture in accordance with the
ideas of his time is understandable but for this he is not to be
reproached. In point of fact, every exegete explains Scripture
thus. That he explained it in accordance with the authority
and the common opinion of the Church was his good right. So
far as the clear passages are concerned, which have always been
•• St. Thomas, In De Divinia Nominibua, Chap. II, lect. I.

HOLY SCRIPTURE

IN THE THEOLOGY

OF ST. THOMAS

421

rightly interpreted by tradition, this is self-evident. With
regard to the less clear passages, these must be interpreted as
much as possible under the guidance of the same Spirit which
has inspired them, 46 but this is guaranteed to the Church in
such a manner that everyone has to submit himself to her
judgment. 47
As far as the many Scholastic distinctions are concerned, St.
Thomas, using them as was customary in his time, had no
intention whatsoever of doing violence to the text. To be brief,
let us only examine the example from the commentary on Job.
St. Thomas had inherited from the Fathers a great respect
for Holy Scripture. In it everything is full of sense, nothing
is superfluous. Therefore it could not be without sense, and
without a special sense, that it was said of Job that he kept
from evil, after it had been said that he did not sin against
God and against his neighbor. Could not that be an indication
that sins of Job against himself were meant? Certainly the
inspired writer meant that Job did not sin at all, which, theologically interpreted, included the fact that he did not sin
against himself. We may, therefore, say that the interpretation
of Job (i, 1) by St. Thomas gives something more than the
bare rendering of the ideas of the inspired author; it goes
deeper; it may be called a "theological" rendering.· The
modern exegete would certainly not go so far. As far as the
present case is concerned, he knows better than St. Thomas
that the Orientals have a way of speaking and of writing which
is different from ours, that they are often prolix and that they
like using synonyms and parallel expressions. But can one
reproach St. Thomas for being less fully aware of this than
we are?
Thus the unity of sacred doctrine is perfectly clear with
St. Thomas, and also the highest place Holy Scripture occupies
in it. He did not spend all his time in explaining the letter of
Sacred Scripture, although he did nothing else in his ordinary
lectures after his graduation as a master. But he spent his
•• Quaea. Quod., XII, a. 26.

" Ibid., ill, a. 10.

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J. VAN DER PLOEG

whole life in studying and penetrating its contents. He studied
all the branches of sacred science with equal zeal and interest,
the .. positive " as well as the " speculative." Theology is one
science; it is like a stream whose waters move forward in
various branches; it is like a body with many limbs; all are
necessary for the welfare of the whole and none has the right
to extol itself above others. May the modem theologian and
exegete understand this. Not everyone can be a specialist of
biblical exegesis as it has been developed today, but every
theologian needs to see that his science is always in a permanent, living contact with Holy Scripture, under the penalty of
becoming sterile, or worse. If he does so, he only follows the
example of the great Master.
J. VAN DER PLOEG, 0. P.
Ecole Biblique,
Couvent de St. Etienne,
J eru8alem, Palutine.

THE EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT
ON PSYCHICAL CHARACTERISTICS

M

UCH INTEREST centers to-day in the study of
what modern psychologists call" personality." Hardly
any two of these psychologists agree as to what, precisely, constitutes "personality," but there is a more or less
general agreement among them that it has to do with all the
individual psychical and even physical characteristics which
distinguish one man from another. But since there is no agreement among them as to just what the " characteristics " of man
are, one writer will discuss personality from the viewpoint of
one group of characteristics, another from the viewpoint of an
entirely different or perhaps overlapping group. As Gates says,
the term "personality,"
... is likely to be misleading. It is sometimes used to imply a
specific human trait or a small number of traits. Thus one author
states that personality consists of physical appearance, social attitudes, and intelligence; another that it comprises intellect, character
and temperament; another that it involves intelligence, emotionality, sociability, volition and morality ... The statement that
personality depends upon two or three or some other number of
traits means merely that the author has arbitrarily classified the
whole series of reaction tendencies in two or three or some other
number of groups.•

The difficulty lies not so much in the arbitrariness of the classifications, as in the fact that none of the classifications includes
all the characteristics which pertain to individual differentiation.
Realizing the impossibility of arriving at an adequate knowledge of the individual person by considering only one or two
or three of his characteristics, another group of moderns-physi1 A. I. Gates, Elemtmtary Peyckology (New York, 1928), pp. 518-19.
(By permission of the Macmillan Company, publishers.)

428

LEO M. BOND

cians, psychiatrists, anthropologists, mostly Italian, French,
German and American-has undertaken the study of the individual with a view to determining by accurate empirical observation everything that is knowable about him, the proportions of his body, the structure and function of his organs, the
quality of his mental and emotional reactions, etc. They seem
to be under the impression that once they have catalogued all
the phenomena exhibited by man, they not only will have
accounted for his personality, but will have arrived at a knowledge of everything that can be known with certainty about the
" whole " man, including his very nature. To attempt such a
study, is, to be sure, a great undertaking, and, as might have
been expected, it has not escaped the consequences of the
tendency of specialists to be influenced in their interpretation
of the whole by their particular knowledge of a part, to say
nothing of the basic fallacy upon which such a study rests,
namely, that everything knowable about man and his nature
can be learned from empirical observation alone. However,
these men have taken a step in the right direction, for the very
fact that they attempt to arrive at a knowledge of man as a
" whole " indicates that they have some appreciation of the
fact that man is a whole and functions as a whole and must be
studied from a "whole-making" point of view. But more important than their notions as to what constitutes the " whole "
man is the very valuable data which this group of investigators
has accumulated with regard to the actual observable effects of
organic conditions upon psychical activities, information which
contributes more than a little to a better understanding and
appreciation of a primary psychological question-the bodysoul relationship.
When we speak of these investigators as a " group," we do
not intend to imply that they have, in all instances, been
working in pre-determined or conscious collaboration, with one
specific object in mind, for, although they are all more or less
contemporaries and have undoubtedly been familiar with and
have even used and built upon each other's data and conclusions, their disagreement in terminology and the variance in

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

emphasis which some have placed upon this or that aspect of
the question would indicate that their grouping together is
justifiable only on the basis of a common general viewpoint
and purpose, the study of man as a unit, beginning with his
physiological constitution-particularly
his endocrine glandular
pattern-and arriving ultimately at a knowledge of all his
individual characteristics.
The work of this group, at least as to systematic investigation, may be considered as beginning in 1890 with the founding
by Achille de Giovanni of a school of clinical anthropology in
Padua. The observations reported by de Giovanni as to the
correlation between the morphology of the body and the
individual psychical characteristics aroused considerable interest and became the starting point for a series of further
investigations and studies along the same lines, the most important of which, at least in the Italian School, have been
conducted by Nicola Pende in his institute for the study of the
human individual. In two books: Endocrinologia; Patologia e
Clinica Delle Glandole A Secrezione lnterna, and Le Debolezze
di Constituzione, Pende made a detailed study attempting to
show the correlation between the physique, temperament, and
character of an individual as determined by the interbalance of
the secretions of his endocrine glands. These and two other
books, La Biotipologie Humaine, and Biotipologia Umana ed
Ortogenesi, are considered the outstanding contributions of the
Italian School to the study of what has been recently christened
" Constitutional Psychology," which for the endocrinologists is
practically synonymous with "Endocrine Psychology." Other
important contributors are Le Legge de Correlzazione Morfologia dei Tippa Individuali, by Giacinto Viola, and Endocrinologia, by S. Distefano.
In France, Sigaud, a physician and contemporary of Di
Giovanni, undertook a series of experiments to establish the
correlation between temperament, morphology, and psychical
qualities. He and his followers concluded that temperament
was the primary determinant of morphological and psychical
individual differences. Sigaud expresses his views on tempera3

426

LEO M. BOND

ment in his Traite Clinique de la Digestion, and in a second
work, La Forme Humaine, correlated temperament with the
morphology of the human body. His most outstanding disciple
was Leon MacAuliffe who later, however, departed somewhat
from his master's doctrine on temperament.
In Germany, the most outstanding contribution to the subject was made by Ernst Kretschmer in his Koperbau und
Charackter published first in 1911 in Berlin and since then
many times reprinted and translated into other languages.
Kretschmer was primarily a psychiatrist, but from his observations on the correlation between bodily structure and the two
forms of insanity known as schizophrenia and manic-depression, he evolved a theory of personality which he considered
applicable to normal people also. He too conceived of personality as the total product of bodily constitution, temperament, and character. His classification of morphological types
into " pyknic," " athletic " and " asthenic " (later reduced to
" pyknic " and " leptosome ") , and of psychical types into
" schizothymes " and " cyclothymes " has become famous and
is widely used by psychologists and psychiatrists.
Most of these men are, as we have already noted, primarily
physicians, anthropologists, or psychiatrists, but in the course
of investigation in their various fields, so striking was the correlation observed between physiological states of the human
body and mental and emotional characteristics, that they were
forced, so to speak, into the field of psychology. The physicians
soon realized that a knowledge of their patient's psychical
make-up was a valuable aid in the diagnosis of his physical
maladies; the psychiatrists found that various types of mental
abnormality could be more easily determined through correlated constitutional inadequacies. Interested first in abnormalities of body and mind, these investigators soon inclined to the
view that the distinction between " abnormal " and " normal,"
on the· mental side as well as the physical, was simply a difference of degree, not of kind, so much so that every person by
reason of his own peculiar, individual, constitutional make-up,
had tendencies toward certain types of physical and mental

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

427

abnormality, in such a way that, were he to become sick at all,
it would probably be with definite, predictable diseases, and
were he to become mentally deranged at all, he would develop
a certain type of insanity. Thus the clinical observation of
abnormalities threw much light upon the nature and causes of
the individual physical and psychical differences so obvious
among ordinary normal people.
Many of these investigators were particularly impressed with
the role played by the glands of internal secretion or endocrine
glands-the thyroid, pituitary, adrenals, etc.-in the determination of individual physical and psychical characteristics. Many
of them are convinced that the endocrine glands are the primary
cause of all individual differences; some say "probably," a few,
only "possibly." In America, many medical men specializing
in the study of endocrine glands are becoming more and more
interested in the psychological aspect of the question and are
already using somatic and psychical characteristics as diagnostics in the determination of endocrine disorders. Most of
these physicians are, however, still primarily concerned with
pathologies of the endocrine glands and how to cure them. But
some have become so fascinated by the prospect of a "new
psychology" of the endocrine glands, that they have stepped
out of their clinics long enough to write books about it. Perhaps
the most enthusiastic of this latter group, on the American
front, is Dr. Louis Berman, of New York, who, in his work,
"The Glands Regulating Personality," becomes almost lyrical
in his enthusiasm for the glands of internal secretion as the
" Open Sesame " to all the mysteries of human nature. Another
enthusiastic student of the subject, in America, is Sante N accarati, the American spokesman of Pende and the translator of
his works, who himself has contributed considerably to the
literature on the subject, especially by his articles in various
Journals of Psychology. 2
2 " The Morphological Aspect of Intelligence,"
Archives of Psychology, XLV
(1921). "The Influence of Constitutional Factors on Behavior," Journal of
ExpMimental Psychology, VI (1928), 257. "The Relation of Morphology to
Temperament," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, XIX (1924), 268.

428

LEO M. BOND

These are but a few of the more outstanding proponents of
what might be called the "endocrinal theory of personality"
or, more precisely, the "endocrinal theory of temperament,"
since temperament is for them the basis of personality. They
have, in their writings, dealt with the subject from the" whole·making" point of view. The literature on various and particular phases of the question is inexhaustable.
By profession these men are scientists. They claim to be
concerned with the study of man only from the viewpoint of
the " facts " about him, which, they say, can be determined
only by accurate empirical observation. They deny any intention of entangling themselves in " metaphysics," or concerning
themselves with the " dreams of philosophers." But, despite
their protestations, they do not adhere to their promise of
confining themselves to the microscope, the X-ray, the clinical
couch, and the questionnaire. The temptation to " philosophize" becomes too irresistible. Seeking to explain the individual " as a whole," they soon discover that there are certain
things about man that are obviously a part of the "whole,"
yet which do not show up on the X-ray plates, the process of
his thinking, for instance. So they begin to talk about those
parts of man which they cannot see; they speak of his " mind "
as something somehow distinct from his observable mental
reactions. They observe that their patient does not always
follow the course of action that various visceral pressures and
nervous tensions would indicate that he is inclined to follow;
so they begin to discuss his" will-power," as something different
from his "physical" emotions. All this is against their thesis,
for they started out with the premise that everything knowable
about inan would yield to empirical observation. So they seek
a way out of the dilemma. A loop-hole presents itself in the fact
that there is obviously some sort of close relationship between
a man's organic functions and his psychical reactions. They
observe, for instance, that a pathological decrease in thyroid
secretion is usually accompanied by a dulling of mental acumen,
that an excessive secretion of adrenalin by the adrenal glands
is conducive to increased emotional excitability. They "save

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

429

face " by proclaiming that thinking and willing, are functions
of bodily organs, comparable to digestion, respiration or circulation, but functions which science has not yet advanced sufficiently to clearly analyze and determine. With better X-rays
we will be able to photograph man's thoughts and feelings. We
must look forward confidently to the day when more powerful
microscopes will prove thought to be simply thinned out matter
and the "soul" a mere product, perhaps, of radio-activity.
Some of them maintain, apparently, that even now we have
sufficient evidence to prove the complete materiality of man.
Says Berman:
One of the great achievements of modern science has been the
release of thought from the theological dogma, even now accepted
as gospel truth by hundreds of millions, that the personality consists of the manifestations of a "soul," a reality which is made up
of " spirit," opposed in its nature and activities to " matter," and
consequently to the "body " palpably flesh and blood. In the past
the scientific attitude has done good destructive work and paved
the way for more rational conceptions. Not until quite recently,
however, has it substituted any really satisfactory and useful data
for those it demolished" (i.e. the data of endocrinology) .3

Yet Dr. Berman is an authority on endocrine glands and will be
quoted often in this paper as a reliable source of empirical
endocrine data.
Not all workers in the field have, however, gone to such
extremes as the author of the above quotation. Many admit
the existence in man of some sort of immaterial force, call it
" soul " if you will, somehow distinguishable from his body.
These have altered the propositum somewhat; they do not
intend to formulate a complete explanation of the whole man
from empirical data, but rather to explain as much of the whole
as can be determined by empirical observation. Some too are
restrained from extravagant conclusions by reason, no doubt,
of their belief in a spiritual, immortal soul. Others seem to
8 Louis Berman, "Anthropology
and the Endocrine Glands," Scientific Monthly,
XXI (1925), 2. (By permission of the Editors, The Scientific Monthly.)

480

LEO M. BOND

manifest a sort of groping attitude, as though they realize the
need for solid principles to give support to their data.
Perhaps the majority of the endocrinologists, if they are not
already out and out materialists, at least show a definitely
materialistic trend of mind, with all its ugly consequences.
One reason for this is the fact that the data of endocrinology
is peculiarly susceptible to materialistic interpretation, unless
one is protected by true principles with regard to the nature
of the soul and its powers, the nature of the body-soul union
and the body-soul interdependence, a protection which most
of the endocrine workers lack. It is evident that a knowledge
and acceptance of sound principles would be of inestimable
value to them. It would give a firm basis, direction, and orientation to their work and would render their research easier and
more fruitful.
H some of them do realize the need for such principles, they
do not know where to turn. They are sceptical, because, as
they say, history has shown that philosophies come and go;
principles considered true to-day are discarded tomorrow. If
each succeeding system of thought has been displaced by a
subsequent one, how can any of them be depended upon? Such
an attitude is, of course, based on the false assumption that all
philosophies have been displaced by later ones, whereas only
the false ones have failed to stand the test of time, precisely
because they were false. One might suggest to them, of course,
that the Aristotelian philosophy, for instance, has never been
discarded, but only temporarily forgotten or misinterpreted or
obscured by current false philosophies. Or one might mention
to them the work of St. Thomas in the field of philosophy.
Undoubtedly this would be dismissed as " religious "philosophy.
H some were to become interested, they would probably smile
when they came across some of the medical opinions of Aristotle
and St. Thomas, not adverting to the fact, of course, that these
men were not doctors of medicine but were merely basing their
observations upon the medical opinions of the day, which
though crude and now antiquated, were, nevertheless, the
embryo from which modern medicine has developed, and were,

EFFECT OF BODILY

481

in their broad outlines, not fundamentally different from the
more refined doctrines of modern medical science. Nor do they
realize that those opinions had a basis of truth sufficient for the
rearing upon them of a sturdy edifice of true psychology, which,
with the aid of careful introspection and logical reasoning, can
and has been built up even from the data of common experience and common observation, having no essential need of
the highly precise analyses and superfine calculations of modern
medicine. As a matter of fact, the endocrinal theory of temperament exhibits a very notable fundamental similarity to the
ancient-medieval theory of the " humors " as the chief determinant of individual somatic and psychical characteristics,
and its proven data is particularly compatible with principles
of Aristotelian-Thomistic psychology.
It would seem of value, then, to point out the essential similarity of the psysiological bases upon which the two theories are
built, with a view to establishing their compatibility from the
viewpoint of psychology. This we will attempt to do in this
paper. With this latter objective in mind, however, we will
confine ourselves chiefly to that phase of the question with
which psychology is most concerned, i. e. the influence exerted
by · bodily temperament upon the psychical characteristics,
treating the morphological aspects of the question only insofar
as is necessary for an understanding of the endncrinal theory
as a whole. Since bodily temperament may be considered, in
both theories, as the point of departure for the determination
of psychical differences, such a discussion will involve a step by
step comparison between the two theories as to the nature and
causes of temperament, the division of temperament into
various "types" and the P:Sychical characteristics accompanying each type. We will then attempt to indicate how the principles of Aristotelian-Thomistic psychology render the endocrine
data intelligible.
The importance of such a subject is indicated by two facts:
first, the great progress made in the study and knowledge of
endocrinology in recent years, together with the great interest
aroused as to its future possibilities, and, second, the tragic

LEO M. BOND

trend which the endocrinal theory of personality is taking in
the field of psychology and ethics. As to the first fact, although
endocrinologists admit that comparatively little is yet known
about the function of endocrine glands, enough data has been
established to arouse a feverish excitement as to the influence
which the doctrine of the glands as the determinant of personality will exert upon education, sociology, eugenics, criminology,
and morality. As Jane Stafford says, "With increased knowledge, interest in this subject has grown into a mighty crescendo
till at the present time endocrine research is going on at a
furious pace all over the world and with breath-taking results." 4
As to the second fact, even more "breath-taking" is the
" philosophy " which some of the endocrinologists are spinning
out of their clinical findings. The following quotations are an
example of that strange confusion of fact and fiction which a
lack of sound philosophical principles can beget.
Mind, still regarded by most of mankind as something distinct and
apart from the body, is thus exhibited as but part and parcel of it .
. . . The sense organs of the body mediate the primary mind stuff.
Without internal secretions and a vegetative system there could be
no soul ... The internal secretions mediate the primary soul stuff.
Mind is thus emulsified with body as a matter of cold literal fact.
The soul was once a subtlety of metaphysics. Now, when mind
appears soaked in matter saturated with chemicals like the hormones, therefore woven out of material threads, the independent
entity created out of intangible spirit flies like a ghost at dawn. 5
Behavior may be defined as the resultant of the organism's pressure against the environment's counter pressure until there is a
sufficient reduction of the specifically exciting intravisceral pressure.
Just as water flows to its own level, so will conduct flow to reduce
intravisceral pressure to its own level. A physics of the soul comes
into prospect in which a mathematical analysis will state the process quantitatively in terms of some common unit of pressure.
Not only conduct, but also character, because it is past conduct
repeated, learned, and fixed, will be so statable. For intravisceral
tonus or pressure is not simply or only an acute or passing affair.
'Jane Stafford, The Advance of Science (New York, 1984).
• Louis Berman, M.D., The Glands Regulating Personality (New York, 1980),

p. 201.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

433

There is for it a persistent or average figure, the so-called normal
for it, below which or above which the acute situation will bring it.
Character becomes then a matter of standards in the vegetative
system. Character, indeed, is created by different standard intravisceral pressures of the organism. 6
The poetic genius within him (man), as Blake called it, struggled
on from one dogma concerning his nature to another. Behavior
malignant or beneficial, horrible in its tragedy and pitiable in its
comedy, flowed inevitably on. Witchcraft, trials, and ,the tortures
of the Spanish Inquisition belong among the more mentionable
consequences of some of man's theories about his own nature and its
requirements.
Heretofore the imaginative spirit has had its day in the matter.
And, curiously enough, an obsession to subjugate the natural has
made it exalt the supernatural. . . .
But now for a couple of centuries the critical spirit, which is the
spirit of science, has been invading the affairs of men. Humble but
persistent corrosive of delusion, it has infiltrated the furthest bounds
of ignorance and superstition. It has not dared to assert the supremacy of its fundamental views upon the everyday problems of
human life because it was without concrete means of vindicating
its claims. That lack is now supplied by the growing understanding
of the chemical factors as the controllers and dictators of all the
legion aspects of life.
The profoundest achievement of the biochemist will be the
change his teachings and discoveries will bring about in man's
attitude toward himself. When he comes to realize himself as a
chemical machine that can, within limits, be remodeled, overhauled
and repaired, as an automobile can be, within limits, when he
becomes saturated with the significance of his endocrine-vegetative
system at every turn and move of his life, and when sympathy and
pity informed by knowledge and understanding will come to regulate his relationships with the lowest and most despised of the men,
women, and children about him, the era of the first real civilization
will properly be said to be born.
Morality, as society's code of conduct for its members, will
change in the direction of a greater flexibility with the establishment
of organic differences in human types. 7

All of which is very sad, and makes it clear how much the new
" child of science," endocrinology, is destined to contribute to
the already almost totally materialistic trend of modern
• Ibid., p. 14!!.

• Ibid., pp. 827-28.

434

LEO M. BOND

thought, unless it can be saved from itself and put back on the
right track. This is an accomplishment which would necessitate
an acceptance by the endocrinologists of true principles of
philosophy. Perhaps this is too much to be hoped for, at least
until they themselves have learned, by experience, the necessity
for such principles. But at least we can indicate certain points
of contact, and point out certain lines along which the endocrinologists might be approached. That is all this paper
professes to do.

I.

THE NATURE OF TEMPERAMENT

1. The Teaching of the Moderns.

In common parlance, a " temperamental " person is one given
to violent outbursts of emotion on slight provocation. The term
has come to be associated with artists of various kinds, who
are supposed to be emotionally unstable and highly excitable.
Perhaps this popular notion has had some influence upon a
large number of modern psychologists who conceive of temperament as the sum-total of a person's "affective" qualities (the
"affective organization," as Bridges calls it, 8 "emotional traits
and tendencies," according to Gates, 9 or "affective forms of
action which depend on the co-operation of innate affective and
volitional dispositions," according to Meumann) .10
Whether the popular notion of temperament has influenced
the psychologists' conception of it or the psychologists' conception is responsible for the popular notion, both have two
things in common: a placing of the emphasis on the observable
psychical manifestations themselves rather than on any physiological substratum which might underlie these manifestations,
and a confining of the term to emotional qualities, to the exclu8 James W. Bridges, An Outline of Abnormal Psychology (Columbus, 0., 1925),
p. 117.
• A. I. Gates, op. cit., pp. 518-19.
10 A. A. Roback, Psychology of Character (New York, 1927), p. 81. (Quotations
from this work are printed by special permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace
and Company, Inc.)

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

485

sion'-apparently, of intellectual qualities. As to the first point,
such a view certainly represents a departure from the meaning
of the Latin original of the word, temperamentum, which signifies a " mixture in due proportion," " the proper or natural
quality of a thing, when it is not too great, not too cold, etc.,"
which reduces the term as it pertains to the human species to a
physiological disposition. Though it is more or less generally
admitted by the· moderns that individual psychical characteristics are in some way affected by physiological conditions, the
term " temperament " is used by most of them to indicate the
psychic characteristics themselves. This represents, in relation
to the meaning of the Latin original of the word, an inversion of
viewpoint. The proper primary meaning of the English word
"temperament" is still, according to Webster, internal constitution with respect to balance or mixture of qualities or
parts. As to the second point, the moderns' exclusion of intellectual qualities from the realm of influence exerted by temperament is from traditional notions, as we shall see later.
Among the endocrinologists, there is, as already noted, an
agreement that the constituent elements of empiriological personality are morphology, temperament, and character. They
might also be said to agree, in general, that temperament,
properly so-called, is the physiological disposition of the human
body, viewed as the basis of all psychical characteristics, including intellectual, in which view they depart from the notions
of perhaps the majority of modern psychologists.
Pende, for instance, says " it is evident that we have no
reason for making a sharp distinction between temperament
and constitution, the former being simply the dynamic-humoral
aspect of the latter," 11 which places temperament on a physiological level. The following passage might suggest, at first sight,
that he considers temperament as something entirely unrelated
to psychical qualities:
11 Nicola Pende, Constitutional Inadequacies, Translated
from the Italian by
Sante Naccarati (Philadelphia, 1928), p. 25. (Quotations from this work are
printed by special permission of the publishers, Lea & Febiger.)

486

LEO M. BOND

We may graphically represent the constitution as a triangular
pyramid, the base of which encloses the patrimony of the individual's characteristics and the variations occuring during the
evolutionary stages. From the base three faces rise with sides joined
one to another, the morphological, the dynamic-humoral (temperament) and the psychological (character, intelligence). The synthesis of the three faces is the apex of the pyramid, that is the
synthesis of the individual's vital properties, his resistance to his
environment and his complete dynamic output.U
But here he is simply stressing the fact that the term " temperament" applies properly and primarily to the physiological side
of the constitution, but to the physiological side considered as
the determining factor in all the individual psychical characteristics, for he says that the constitution
. . . is governed by what we may term a correlational principle,
according to which the various combinations of organs and organic
fluids and the special relationships or anatomical and functional
correlations between the parts of the body which determine the
different physical and mental constitutions vary according to the
characteristics that are dominant in the inter-organic equilibrium.
Hence the two terms and concepts " constitution " and " temperament" are even now coupled together. The latter is still regarded
as the dominant psycho-physiological note in a given individual,
due to a predominance or deficiency of a function and, especially, of
a humoral state, in the general dynamic balance .... 3
Hence temperament is for him the physiological make-up
viewed from the aspect of its relation to the psychical make-up,
of which it forms the basis. The characteristics considered in
themselves, abstracting from their basis, constitutes the purely
"psychological" side of the constitution, i.e. "character, intelligence," both of which are basically conditioned by the physiological temperament. Thus he does not exclude intellectual
characteristics from the realm of temperament; they are the
effects of temperament, along with all the other psychical
characteristics.
It is also clear how character is intimately connected with the
constitution through the path of temperament.
12

Ibid., p.

18

Ibid., p. 18.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

437

In view of the results of modern psycho-physiological investigation conducted along constitutional lines, we can no longer doubt
that intelligence varies in quality as well as in degree in different
individuals nor that it is related to the general constitution of the
subject .... 14

Kretschmer, at one point in his book Physique and Character
would apparently attach the term "temperament" to the
" psycho- " end of the psycho-physiological apparatus, for he
says:
The temperament. It is as we know certainly from empirical
observation, co-determined by the chemistry of the blood and the
humors of the body. Its physical correlate is the brain-glandular
apparatus. The temperament is that group of mental events which
is correlated with the physical structure .... 15

However, at another point in the same book he admits that he
has not decided at which end it belongs. He calls it a " heuristic " notion, i. e., one yet to be sufficiently investigated.
"And finally the expression ' temperament ' has for us no welldefined meaning, but it is a heuristic notion, the breadth of
whose field of reference we have not yet determined." 16 Nevertheless he proceeds to use the word as though he would indicate
by· it that part of the psycho-physiological apparatus which
influences the psychical qualities, which could be only their
physical correlate, the "physical structure," according to his
above quoted passage. The following quotation will exemplify
this, and make clear the fact that he considers intellectual characteristics also as coming within the influence of temperament,
together with all the other psychical qualities.
The temperament, so far as our empirical investigations go, has a
clear influence on the following psychic qualities: (I) On the psychaesthesia, abnormal sensitivity or insensitivity to psychic stimulation; (2) on the mood-coloring, the pleasure or pain coloring of the
psychic content, particularly on the scale which lies between gay
Ibid., p. 25.
Ernst Kretschmer, Physique and Character, Translated from the German by
W. J. Sprott (London, 1986), p. 2511.
H

15

18

Ibid.

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LEO M. BOND

and sorrowful; (3) on the' psychic tempo, the acceleration or retardation of the psychic processes in general, as regards their particular rhythm (tenaciously holding back, suddenly darting forward,
inhibition, formation of complexes); (4) on the psychomotility; on
the general movement-tempo (mobile or comfortable) as well as
on the special character of psychic activity (lame, stiff, hasty,
vigorous, smooth, rounded, etc.)
In addition it may be empirically established that the forces
which influence all these factors play an important part in the
determination of the types of perception and imagination, in what
is called intelligence or mental disposition. . . Y

His conception of " character " is practically the same as
Pende's, i. e. the sum-total of an individual's psychical qualities
considered in themselves, abstracting from their " bodily correlates " or physiological basis. He would include in character,
however, certain modification brought about in the innate psychical characteristics by such external influences as education,
environment, etc.
The notion of " constitution " is essentially psycho-physical, and
general-biological and has to do with the interrelations of body
and mind. The concept of " character," however, is a purely
psychological one. By " character" we understand the totality of
all possibilities of affective and voluntary reaction of any given
individual, as they come out in the course of his development, that
is to say what he inherits plus the following exogenous factors:
bodily influence, psychic education, milieu, and experience.
By " character " we understand the totality of all possibilities of
affective and voluntary reaction of any given individual, as they
come out in the course of his development, that is to say what he
inherits plus the following exogenous factors: bodily influence,
psychic education, milieu, and experience.
The expression " character " lays the accent on the affective side
of the total personality, without, of course, the intelligence being
separated from it at any given point. The notion of "character"
has a great deal in common with the notion of constitution, namely
such psychic qualities as are inherited; it eliminates, however, the
bodily correlates, which the notion of constitution includes, while
on the other hand it includes exogenous factors, the result of
17

Ibid., pp.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

439

education and environment in particular, as important elements,
which are left out of the notion of constitution.
Outside this exactly defined sphere of reference one can use the
expression " character '' for the general structure of the personality,
without laying any particular stress on the differences between
constitutional factors and those which are exogenously developed. 18

Here again, by eliminating the " bodily correlates " from " character," and yet including them in " constitution," which is
" essentially psychophysical," he leaves no other " field of reference " for temperament but the " bodily correlates " themselves.
This, no doubt, is what Dr. Strauss has in mind when he says,
in the introduction to Aller's "Psychology of Character," "in
my opinion, his (Kretschmer's, great work " Physique and
Character," should rather have been entitled " Temperament
and Character." 19
The French School has done away with all discussions as to
what they mean by " temperament " by simply substituting
for it the term " constitution," constitution being for them the
general physiological condition resulting from the predominance
of some particular system in the organism and serving as a
basis for individual psychical characteristics. As Roback says:
Rostan, following the line of this systematic school to its logical
conclusion, substituted the term " constitution " for that of " temperament " and derived his six kinds of constitutions from the
predominance of the various systems in the economy of the
organism. 20
In emphasizing the predominance of some one physiological
system in the development of the organism as a basis of classification of types, Sigaud of course made no departure from his predecessors in France who had adopted the term " constitution " to
replace the word "temperament" .... 21

There can be no question, then, as to where this school places
the emphasis in the signification of " temperament," namely,
on the physiological basis of psychical characteristics rather
Ibid., pp. fl58-59.
R. Allers, Psychology of Character (New York, 1939), Int.
21 Ibid., p. 89.
20 Roback, op. cit., p. 58,

18
19

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LEO M. BOND

than on the characteristics themselves. Nor do they exclude
intellectual qualities as resultants of this basis, for in describing
the psychical "types" of individuals corresponding to the
various constitutions or temperaments, they include intellectual
as well as affective characteristics.
From all this, then, we might formulate a definition of temperament which would represent, basically, the general notion
of that group of scientists whom we have classified under the
general designation of " endocrinologists," by saying that temperament is the innate, characteristic, physiological structure
and functional disposition of certain bodily organs and tissues,
regarded particularly from the viewpoint of the influence which
such structure and disposition exert upon the characteristic
sensational, emotional, intellectual and volitional reactions of
an individual throughout life, as well as upon his somatic or
morphological characteristics.
We say "innate" rather than "hereditary" structure and
functional disposition, for while the endocrinologists frequently
use the term" hereditary" in a broad sense, geneticists limit it
to those characteristics which an individual receives from his
ancestors at the time of conception, through the chromosomal
genes, whereas " innate " includes various modifications of the
embryonic organs not due to " heredity " in the technical sense
of the word, but resulting rather from intra-uterine influences
such as inadequate or excessive supply of various formative
and nutritive substances by the body of the mother, pre-natal
accidents, disadvantages arising from the simultaneous presence
of other fetuses in the. womb, general intra-uterine environment,
etc., all of which might profoundly influence an individual's
entire physiological and psychical future.
By the word " characteristic," in both places in the definition,
is meant "characteristic of the individual" rather than of the
species, for while it is presupposed that all human beings have
specifically the same physiological and psychical constitutionallowing, of course, in the physiological order, for the differences due to sex-it is generally held that no two individuals
are ever born with exactly the same condition of their physio-

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

441

logical and psychical constitution, not even identical twins,
although they are presumed to have received exactly the same
kind of genes and to have been subject to approximately the
same intra-uterine influences.
Moreover, we say " certain " organs and tissues, for while
there is a growing tendency among modern biologists, psychologists, etc., to consider all the bodily structures as in some way
contributing to psychical characteristics, little evidence has
been produced to show that this is true, whereas the effect of
the condition of such organs as the brain, the nervous system,
the endocrine glands, etc., upon the psychical activities has been
well established.
Under "organs" we include not only the organs themselves
but the fluid media in which many of them are immersed and
which are essential to their normal functioning, as well, of
course, as the fluids contained within some of the organs as an
essential part of them, as, for instance, the spinal fluid of the
nervous system, the interstitial brain fluids, etc. Under "tissues " we include the blood, following many leading medical
authorities. By "sensational" reactions we refer here chiefly
to cognitive reactions of the internal senses, for while the condition of the external sense organs may be considered, to some
degree, as a phase of temperamental disposition, the reactions
of the external senses cannot properly be called " psychical "
until perception takes place, which involves the internal senses.
"
sensational reactions " refers, therefore, chiefly
to an individual's better or worse powers of memory, imagination, common sense, etc.
By characteristic " intellectual " reactions is meant primarily
an individual's innate qualities of intellect, better or worse as
the case may be, insofar as they can be judged from the
quality of its functions. We might also include under characteristic intellectual reactions, the possibly innate aptitude
for particular kinds of mental activity, speculative, practical,
scientific, and artistic, although little is known as to the influence, if any, of physiological dispositions on particular intellectual talents.
4

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LEO M. BOND

Characteristic " volitional " reactions refers chiefly to strength
or weakness of will, tendency of individual wills to choose certain kinds of particular goods in preference to others.
The phrase " throughout life " in the definition is very significant. Innate structural and functional peculiarities of organs
and tissues are more or less only "potential" at the time of
birth, i. e. they are tendencies inherent in the embryonic organs
which destine them for development, under normal conditions,
along certain predetermined lines. The organic modifications
attendant upon the advent of puberty, maturity and senescence
and, in women, of pregnancy, child-birth and menopause, may
be
merely as phases of this normal predetermined
development. But any number of accidental circumstances and
events may come about throughout life which will profoundly
interfere with the normal condition and functioning of the
organism. Physical environment '(food, climate, etc.) , diseases,
accidents, may effect temporary or even permanent changes in
the physiological economy, but only down to the level of and
in proportion to the basic, innate, more or less permanent
organic structure and disposition. Temperament, properly
speaking, is confined to the basic, inborn structure and dispositional qualities of the organism and abstracts from the
temporary or even permanent permutations brought about in
the course of life by accidental circumstances. Strictly, the only
change which temperament undergoes is that connected with
the normal development and decline of the organism throughout
the life span.
The same is true to some extent of the psychical characteristics correlated with the bodily temperament, i. e., they are
only " potentialities " at birth, differing in degree with each
individual born and destined for a normal development along
certain lines, within the limits set by the basic physiology.
Throughout life, these characteristics are subject, even more so,
perhaps, than are the physical organs, to countless changes and
modifications arising from both internal influences such as
pathological changes in the body, personal effort, ·volitional
control, etc., and external influences such as psychical environ-

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

443

ment, education, opportunity, occupation, but again even here
ordinarily only down to the level of and in proportion to the
basic temperament. These changes in the psychical characteristics themselves pertain more to character than to temperament, since character, as the endocrinologists conceive it, is, as
we have seen, the complexus of individual psychical qualities
themselves at any given point in life, resulting from the bodily
temperament plus modifications introduced by both internal
and external influences. Character so considered might be
called psychological character, as distinguished, to some extent,
from moral character. Moral character introduces elements
extraneous to character considered as a purely psychological
entity. It involves the conformity or non-conformity of psychical acts to norms of morality, the cultivation of vices and
virtues, etc., all of which involve partially exogenous influences
brought to bear upon the native psychical characteristics but
which do, nevertheless, affect these characteristics even from a
purely psychological aspect. Thus, moral character, while under
some aspects distinguishable from psychological character, is,
nevertheless, intimately connected with it and, like psychological character, is correlated to some extent with the physiological temperament. A person, for instance, who is especially
prone to incontinence or anger by reason of his characteristic
physiological and psychical make-up will have much more difficulty, and, in the supernatural order, will require more grace, in
practicing the virtues of chastity and meekness than will the
individual who is not so inclined physiologically and psychically.
Also " fixations," " complexes," " inhibitions," etc., to use
modern terminology, resulting from any number of physiological and psychical conditions even in what are considered
normal persons, may exert a very definite influence upon moral
character. In this paper, however, we will confine" character"
to its purely psychological aspect. Moreover when we speak
of the " psychical characteristics of temperament," we refer to
those individual characteristic ways of reacting psychically to
which a person is prone by reason of his bodily temperament,

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LEO M. BOND

without implying, as some of the endocrinologists do, that he
always or of necessity must so react.
We have concluded the definition of temperament with the
phrase " as well as upon his somatic or morphological characteristics," for while we have excluded this aspect of temperament
from our present discussion and have therefore not considered
the endocrinologists' notions of this phase of temperament,
nevertheless it might be said that in general most of them
consider the characteristic morphological structure of an individual as also resulting from his temperamental pattern, i. e.
from the innate structure and functional disposition of certain
organs and tissues, in such a way that individuals endowed with
a particular group of psychical characteristics will generally
have also, they say, a corresponding somatic make-up as to
height, weight, bone structure, etc. This aspect of temperament
has been stressed particularly by Kretschmer. However this
phase of temperament pertains more to medicine and anthropology than to psychology.
Finally, we have said in the definition that temperament is
the physiological disposition " particularly " from the viewpoint
of its effect on the psychical and morphological characteristics,
because the same structure and functional disposition of the
organs and tissues that affects these characteristics also frequently produces tendencies towards certain diseases. Consequently some endocrinologists speak of such tendencies as also
coming from "temperament"; usually, however, the term is
not employed in connection with this aspect of human physiology, but only in relation to psychical characteristics.
Few of the endocrinologists admit all of the distinctions or
use all of the terms we have employed in enumerating psychical
activities. Nevertheless, this is, in scholastic language, fundamentally what they mean in their language.
The possibilities of mutual influence and interplay among all
these reactions of which we have been speaking, involving as
they do the as yet comparatively little known intricacies of the
human body as well as the unfathomed complexities of the
human soul, make it evident that the question of temperament

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

445

is anything but a simple one. It involves matters that have
been perplexing great minds for centuries and only a few of
the greatest minds in history have succeded in unraveling some
of its mysteries.
The most important point with regard to the endocrinologists'
ideas of the nature of temperament is, at the present stage of
our consideration, the fact that they consider temperament as
the physiological basis of all the individual psychical characteristics, including the intellectual, in which they depart from the
views held by perhaps the majority of modern psychologists.
2. The Teaching of Aristotle and St. Thomas.
That Aristotle and St. Thomas considered temperament a
matter of the structure and functional disposition of the bodily
organs themselves, is evident from the fact that they accepted
the theory current in their respective days as to the composition
of human bodies. In the following chapter we will consider this
theory more in detail. Substantially it was this: the human
body was derived, ultimately, from the four inorganic elements
-earth, fire, air, and water. The process was as follows: from
the mixture of the four elements were generated four humorsthe blood, the phlegma or pituita, the bile or cholera, and the
atra-bile or melancholia which were the primary· organic compounds. In the humors the four elements remained only virtually, by reason of their respective qualities, i.e., the coldness
of the earth, the warmth of the fire, the dryness of the air, and
the wetness of the water. In each humor were various combinations of these qualities. The blood was warm and moist; the
phlegma, cold and moist; the bile, warm and dry; the atra-bile,
cold and dry. The four humors combined to form various types
of organic tissue, such as bone, nerve, and muscle; and these
various types of tissue combined to form the particular organs
required by the human body. In the organs, the four qualities
derived from the humors were in more or less of an equilibrium.
The more closely this equilibrium approached perfect evenness,
the better would be the structure and functional disposition of
the bodily organs, and consequently, of the body as a whole.

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LEO M. BOND

Once the body was formed and the organs functioning, the
liver manufactured the four humors from the digested food.22
These were carried by the blood, itself one of the humors, to all
the parts of the body, and were absorbed from the blood stream
by the various organs, for their nutrition. While in the organs
of the human body the equilibrium of the humoral qualities
was, in general, much more even than in the ·bodies of animals,
within the human species the degree of equilibrium varied with
each individual according to the predominance in his cold blood
of one of the four humors, which would affect the equilibrium
in his organs and consequently their structure and functional
disposition, which would thus vary in different individuals.
For the equilibrium of the four humoral qualities in the
bodily organs and the organic disposition resulting therefrom,
the Latin writers used the word complexio, which means, primarily, " a close conjunction, " and secondarily " a habit of
body." They preferred complexio to temperamentum, probably
because it was closer to the Greek. T emperamentum means
primarily "mixture in due proportion" and secondarily, "the
proper or natural quality of a thing when it has its proper
measure," and therefore expresses the same idea contained in
complexio, according to the above described theory. Early English translators of the Latin writers, however, rendered complexio sometimes into "temperament," sometimes into "complexion," but usually into " temperament," when it was a
question of human ·bodies. The same is done by the best
modern translators, e. g. in the English rendition of St. Thomas'
Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles, by the English
Dominicans. In translating passages from Latin works, therefore, we will render complexio as " temperament." For passages
from the two Summas of St. Thomas, we will use the translations of the English Dominicans.
That St. Thomas, following Aristotle, accepted the theory of
physiological composition of bodies described above and conn Hippocrates (B. C. 859?) thought that the blood was produced in the heart;
the phlegma; in the head; the atra-bile, in the spleen; the bile, in the liver. After
Galen (A. D. 200?), the liver was considered the factory of all the humors.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

447

sidered temperament as the disposition of bodily organs, differing with different individuals, can be seen in the following
passages, a few among many:
Whence it is apparent that the whole activity of inferior nature
terminates in man as its most perfect being. For we see that the
operation of nature proceeds gradually from simple elements, by
mixing them, until it arrives at the most perfect kind of mixture
which is in the human body. 23
There is one kind of humidity which has some definite form
according to which it is included among the parts of the body, as
are blood and the other three humors, which nature has ordained
to the members, which are generated from them. 24
To the third objection, I say that just as the elements are on the
way to generating with respect to mixed bodies, since they are their
matter, not however, in such a way that they are always in a state
of transition in the mixed body, so also are the humors in relation
to the members. 25
For touch perceives those things of which it is necessary that the
animal body be composed, namely, heat, cold, moistness and
dryness. 26
Seeing that the temperament is something set up by contrary
qualities as a kind of mean between them, it cannot possibly be a
substantial form; because substance has no contrary, nor is it a
recipient of more or less. 27
A body is not necessary to the intellectual soul by reason of its
intellectual operation considered as such; but on account of the
sensitive power, which requires an organ of equable temperament.
Therefore the intellectual soul had to be united to such a body and
not to a simple element, or to a mixed body in which fire was in
excess; because otherwise there could not be an equability of
temperament. And this body of an equable temperament has a
dignity of its own by reason of its being remote from contraries. 28
This therefore must be the disposition of the body to which the
rational soul is united, namely that it should be of the most even
temperament. 29
For there is a certain natural disposition demanded by the human
species, so that no man can be without it. And this disposition is
natural in respect of the specific nature. But since such a disposition
•• Q. D. De Anima, a. 8.
.. IV Sent., d. xliv, q. I, a. !'l.
•• Ibid.
•• De Anima, loc. cit.

Summa Contra Gentiles, II, bciii.
Summa Theol., I, q. lxxvi, a. 5, ad !'lum.
29 De Anima., loc. cit.

27

28

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LEO M. BOND

has a certain latitude, it happens that different grades of this disposition are becoming to different men in respect of the individual
nature. 30
It is not possible that the diversity of souls be explained in the
same way we explain the different degrees of the angelic nature,
since all the rational souls are of the same species, and do not differ
except numerically. Now all such diversity comes from matter and
therefore since the soul does not contain intrinsically any matter,
it is necessary that the diversity and distinction of souls be caused
by the diversity of their bodies; so that as the temperament of the
body would be more perfect, a more noble soul would be imparted
to it, since everything is received according to the disposition of the
receiver. 31
For mixture, the activity of active and passive qualities is required; and according to the predominance of one or the other,
mixed bodies have a different temperament; which must be said
of the body. 32
To define temperament as the disposition of bodily organs
particularly from the viewpoint of the effect on the individual
psychical and morphological characteristics is somewhat of a
concession to the modern acceptation of the word. The older
writers used the word complexio to signify the disposition of
the organs in themselves without regard to any particular viewpoint. But most frequently, perhaps, it was used in connection
with psychical characteristics. The point of interest is that the
older writers did actually consider complexio as having a determining effect upon the individual psychical characteristics,
and as being the dispositive cause of all such characteristics,
intellectual as well as sensitive. That St. Thomas, following
Aristotle, considered it as such is apparent from the following
passages, again, only a few among many. Later we shall consider some of St. Thomas' ideas as to the effect of particular
types of temperament upon psychical characteristics; here we
will glance at his more general views.
In general, all individual psychical dispositions depended
upon the individual bodily disposition: " . . . the diverse dispositions of men toward the operations of the soul come from
30
31

Summa Theol., I-II, q. li. a. I.
II Sent., d. xxxii, q. II, a. 3.

32

IV Sent., d. xliv, q. II, a. 1.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

449

the diverse disposition of the body." More in particular, the
perfection of the whole sensitive nature depended upon the perfection of the temperament, by the following process of reasoning. Since touch is the foundation of all the other senses, the
perfection of the whole sensitive nature depends upon the
perfection of touch. " While there are many senses, there is one,
however, which is the foundation of the others, namely, touch,
in which the whole sensitive nature principally consists." 84
" Hence from the fact that one has a better sense of touch, it
follows that he has in general a better sensitive nature." 35 But
the perfection of touch depends upon the equability or perfection of temperament. " Goodness of touch depends upon the
equability of the temperament." 36 Therefore the perfection of
the whole sensitive nature depends upon the perfection of
temperament.
The quality of the internal senses depended upon the temperamental disposition of the brain: " . . . for the good quality
of the internal sense faculties such as imagination, memory and
the cogitative power, a good disposition of the brain is necessary." 37 The characteristic affective or emotional tendencies
flowed, on the material side, from the individual temperament:
" . . . by temperament, some are more prone than others to
desire or anger." 38
For they (the passions) are ascribed to the temperament as
causing a disposition, and in respect of that which is material in
the passions, for instance the heat of the blood and the like. 39
And if we consider the nature of the individual, in respect to his
particular temperament, thus anger is more natural than desire;
for the reason that anger is prone to ensue from the natural
tendency to anger, more than desire, or any other passion, is to
ensue from a natural tendency to desire, which tendencies result
from a man's individual temperament. 40
But on the part of the body, in respect of the individual nature,
there are some appetitive habits by way of natural beginnings. For
•• De Memorial et Reminiacentia, lect. 1.

•• Q. D. de Anima, loc. cit.
II De Anima, lect. xix.
•• II Sent., d. xxxii, q. IT, a. s.

86

Q. D. De Anima, lac. cit.
Summa Contra Gentiles, IT, lxiii.
•• Ibid.
•• Summa Theol., I-ll, q. 46, a. 5.
87

38

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LEO M. BOND

some are disposed from their own bodily temperament to chastity
or meekness or suchlikeY
The intellectual qualities characteristic of an individual
depended upon the better or worse dispositions of his internal
senses, which in turn depended upon his individual bodily
temperament:
Experience shows that some understand more profoundly than
do others; as one who carries a conclusion to its first principles and
ultimate causes understands it better than the one who reduces it
only to its proximate causes. 42
The understanding of principles results from man's very nature,
which is equally shared by afl. Nevertheless the truth of principles
is more known to one than to another, according to the greater
capacity of intellect. 43
. . . and the fact that men understand unequally comes from the
diversity of the sensitive faculties from which the species are abstracted; and this likewise comes from the diverse disposition of
bodies. 44
. . . men are observed to be more or less apt for the considerations
of sciences according to the various dispositions of the cogitative
and imaginative powers.
But this aptitude depends on these powers as on remote dispositions, in the same way as it depends on perfection of touch and
bodily
. . . the diversity of temperaments causes a better or less good
faculty of understanding by reason of the faculties from which the
intellect abstracts; which are faculties using corporal organs, as
imagination, memory and the like. 46
... thus because some men have bodies of better disposition, their
souls have a greater power of understanding ... for those in
whom imaginative, cogitative and memorative powers are of better
disposition, are better disposed to understand. 47
. . . and thus, physicians are able to judge of a man's intelligence
from his bodily temperament, as a proximate disposition thereto. 47 "
*'Ibid., q. 51, a. 6.
•• Summa Theol., I, q. 84, a. 7.
•• Ibid., q. 98, a. 1.
"Q. D. De Anima, a. 7.

•• Summa Contra Gentiles, II, lxxiii.
•• Q. D. De Anima, a. 5, ad 2urn.
•• Summa Theol., I, q. 85. a. 7.
41 " Summa Contra Gentiles, III, Ixxxiv.

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451

As to individual volitional characteristics, since according to
St. Thomas the will is simply the appetitive quality of the
intellect, it would follow that volitional qualities would also be
influenced to some degree by the intellectual qualities; hence
also by the sensitive and affective dispositions, hence by the
individual temperament.
Most of the above expressed ideas of St. Thomas were based
upon the doctrines of Aristotle, of which we will see more later.
Hence it is clear that for both Aristotle and St. Thomas
temperament was the innate, characteristic structure and functional disposition of the bodily organs and tissues and that this
disposition, differing in different men, exercised a profound
determining effect upon all the characteristic sensational, emotional, intellectual and volitional qualities of an individual.
That they also considered morphological characteristics as
stemming from the individual temperament follows from their
notions as to the effect of complexio upon the bone structures,
limbs, etc., and passages may be found in their writings dealing
with this aspect of temperament. For the complexus of psychical characteristics considered in themselves, the older writers
used no one word such as "character," but spoke simply of
better or worse powers of imagining, remembering, understanding, different dispositions in the faculties of the soul, etc. It is
evident, then, that the notions as to the nature of temperament
presented in recent years by the endocrinologists are by no
means new " discoveries of science," but merely represent a
return to the fundamental ideas of ancient and medieval
scholars such as Aristotle and St. Thomas, with whom they are,
at least basically, in close accord on this point.

II.

THE CAUSES OF TEMPERAMENT

In a sense, the above title is, to say the least, a presumptuous
one. If temperament is a matter of the structure and functional
disposition of the organs of the human body as they affect
psychical characteristics, and if by" causes" we have in mind
a complete synthesis of all the material, formal, efficient and

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LEO M. BOND

final causes, to answer adequately the question," What are the
causes of temperament? " would be a feat requiring the combined efforts of all the disciplines of chemistry, biology, anatomy, medicine, philosophy, and, for that matter, theology. If
we restrict the question to its purely chemical and biological
aspect and ask," What is the exact chemical formula of each of
the bodily organs, what are all the functions of each and how
and why and when does each one function? " we would be asking
something about which even these sciences know comparatively
little. If we limit the enquiry still further and ask, "What are
the chief chemical and biological factors in the differentiation
of one individual's physiological and psychical make-up from
that of another?" we are restricting the issue somewhat but
at the same time greatly complicating it by extending our
enquiry to the psychological aspects of the question. But if we
ask this same question, as we must, from the viewpoint of
chemistry, biology and psychology, the answer would have to
be somewhat along these lines: " There are probably many
such factors. Some are fairly demonstrable, others much less
so: some are only suspected and still others perhaps, which are
as yet completely unknown." Of the " fairly demonstrable "
group we might ask, " Which, if any, is the factor that empirical
investigation has indicated as probably the most influential
single physiological faetor in the differentiation of individual
organic dispositions as they affect individual psychical characteristics?" To this question the endocrinologists answersome confidently, some hesitatingly-" The secretions of the
endocrine glands." To the same question, the ancients and
medievalists answered, centuries ago, " The four humors of the
body." A consideration of these respective answers forms the
subject matter of the present discussion and indicates the
sense in which its title is to be taken.
1. The Teaching of the Endocrinologists.
A gland is defined by Wolfe as " an aggregate of cells which
has for its purpose the transformation of substances abstracted
from the surrounding blood or lymph, into specific compounds,

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

458

generally useful in allowing some part of the body to perform
one or more functions adequately." 48
Glands are of two kinds: duct glands, which dispose of the
compounds they have manufactured by pouring them out onto
some body surface by way of a duct; and ductless or endocrine
glands, which deliver their manufactured secretions directly
into the blood stream, or the lymph, which distribute them to
the bodily organs as they are needed. Examples of duct glands
are the sweat glands, secreting perspiration, and the lachrymal
glands, manufacturing tears. The principle ductless or endocrine glands, also called glands of internal secretion (hence
the name " endocrine," from the Greek "endo " (within) , and
"krenein" (to separate), are the pituitary, located on the
undersurface of the brain; the thyroid, situated in the lowermost portion of the anterior neck; the parathyroids, immediately behind and connected with the thyroid; the pancreas, in
the abdomen, close to the posterior wall; the adrenals, just
above the kidneys; and the gonads, in the sexual organs. (These
last, the gonads, in addition to their endocrine function have
also a duct gland function required for reproduction. The
pancreas also elaborates an external secretion, the pancreatic
juice.) There are a number of other glands about whose
classification as " endocrines " authorities disagree, since little
is known about their precise secreting function. Of these we
will see more later. The particular functions of some of the
major endocrine glands we will discuss more in detail. Here we
will simply note some general aspects of their function.
Each endocrine gland elaborates at least one secretion; some,
e. g., the pituitary and the gonads, elaborate several different
secretions. While a particular name has been assigned to most
of the endocrine secretions, the generic name applied to all of
them is " hormone," a term proposed by two English physiologists, Bayless and Starling, in 1902. The term was accepted
by the medical profession as most descriptive of the general
•• William Wolfe, M.D., Endocrinology in Modern Practice (Philadelphia, 1939),
p. 18. (Quotations from this work are printed by special permission of the
publishers, W. B. Saunders Company.)

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LEO M. BOND

function of the endocrine secretions, which is to set in motion
and regulate the functioning of all the cells, tissues, and organs
of the body by stimulating their proper activity here or retarding it there, as necessity demands, thus maintaining a proper
balance or coordination among the functions of all the various
parts of the organism. As Dr. Wolfe says:
In the body the different degrees of life activity and capacity for
work of the various cells can be utilized only if a carefully planned
system of controlling influences accelerates activity here and retards it there thus keeping the machinery running smoothly. It is
true that the individual organs are capable of independent life and
action of their own, as seen in experimentally extirpated tissues.
A human being is not, however, a conglomeration of organs but an
intricate system of interactions between these components, each
supplying certain needs to the others. It is the endocrine glands
which are charged with the task of coordinating the speed with
which every cell in the body performs its duty. These little organs
can sense any change of environment which requires tissue response,
and they react immediately by sending out impulses or hormones
to the appropriate organs whose functions must be accelerated.
The hormone reaches a specific tissue and there assists in the occurranee of certain biochemical or biological phenomena. 49
Thus the hormones, which are themselves chemical compounds,
perform their regulating and balancing function by stimulating
"chemical changes in all the cells of the body." 50
Hence their influence is widespread and dominant. " The
products of each gland are taken up directly by the circulation
and carried to all the parts of the body where they exert specific
influences upon all its structures and most of its functions." 51
" Their effects are so widespread that no organ or even part of
an organ can escape their dominating influence." 52 They "influence the vital and fundamental processes of life such as
reproduction, growth and metabolism." 53
•• Ibid., p. 19.
•• Samuel A. Loewenberg, M.D., Clinical Endocrinology (Philadelphia, 1941),
p. 821. (Quotations from this work are printed by special permission of the
publishers, F. A. Davis Company.)
61 Ibid., p. 19.
"" Wolfe, op. cit., p. 15.
•• Loewenberg, op. cit., p. 18.

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It is chiefly through their control of the metabolic processes
that the hormones affect the structural disposition of the
organs, since it is by reason of metabolic activity that the
various cells, tissues, and organs are enabled to assimilate
properly the nutrient elements essential to their formation and
determinative of their structure and growth, both in utero and
throughout life. It is in the intra-uterine formative stages
that the hormones exert their greatest influence upon the innate
structure of the organs and tissues upon which their whole
physiological future depends to a great extent. As Berman
says:
. . . . . . We know that the endocrines rule over growth and
nutrition, a vast dominion which incorporates every organ and
every tissue. By enhancing or retarding the nutritional changes,
the growth of the organ or tissue is favored or restricted. 54
... undoubtedly they (the endocrine secretions), initiate the
marvelous unfolding of tissues and functions, organs, and faculties
summed up as development or differentiation. 55
In their ensemble, the glands of internal secretion wield a determining influence upon the development of the individual from
his very inception. If his various powers may be conceived of as
an orchestra, they may be said to conduct it from the very beginning of its movements, and to cease only with its termination. From
the moment when the spermatozoon penetrates and fecundates
the ovum, the fate of the future being is settled by their disposition.
The seal of his destiny is soaked with their substance. They act
before he is born as well as after. 56
Every human body starts out as a single cell, the fertilized
ovum, capable of carrying on in itself all the processes necessary
for its continued existence and reproduction. This single cell
divides and becomes two cells; each one of which again divides
into two more cells, and so on. As this process of division and
multiplication continues, the groups of cells
... organize themselves in such a manner that they delegate
certain activities to other cells, assuming in exchange the burden of
•• Berman, op. cit., p. 161.
•• Ibid., pp. 59-60.

18

Ibid., p. 147.

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LEO M. BOND

carrying out other functions for their coworkers. This process of
specialization continues to a greater and greater extent, until all
the cells lose their capacity to carry on certain of the activities
essential to life, but become infinitely more efficient in others. They
lose their capability of independent existence, although potentially
they are still endowed with all the attributes necessary for independent life.57
In this way, the various organs and tissues of the body are
formed from the numerous cell groups and when sufficiently
formed, begin to carry on their own individual functioning.
This process is controlled and influenced to a great extent by
the amount and quality of the nutriment received from the
mother's body by osmosis or absorption through the wall of the
uterus and passed to the embryo through the umbilical cord
by which it is attached to the placenta. The quantity and
quality of the endocrine secretions received by the embryo from
the mother's body exert a dominant influence on the multiplying and group-organizing activities of the cells and upon the
formation of the embryonic organs. Any undue over- or undersupply of any of these secretions has a profound effect upon
the cellular activity and thus upon the structures of the cells
and organs formed thereby, especially upon the formation of
the endocrine glands of the embryo itself. When these latter
have reached the functioning stage, their future has already
been determined to a great extent not only by the predispositions inherited from the parents through the genes, but also by
the amount and quality of the secretions received from the
mother's body after conception. When the first endocrine
glands of the fetus begin to function, they themselves commence
to exercise a determining influence upon the other embryonic
glands, organs, and tissues. It is easy to see here the important
role played by the hormones in the determination of the
peculiar organic structure and functional dispositions characteristic of an individual. It is particularly at this stage that,
according to the endocrinologists, the various physiological
" types " are determined, chiefly by an over- or undersupply of
67

Wolfe, op. cit., pp. 18-19.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

457

one. or more particular hormones, with its resulting effect upon
the physical characteristics of the whole organism. The thyroid,
for instance.
. . . determines the embryonic etchings of the different organs
which in their totality comprise the unique and individual.
Every human being, like every multicellular animal, must first
have existed as a single cell, the impregnated ovum. With the body
and personality of the ovum, the creature is one and continuous,
literally something the single cell has made of itself by subdividing
and differentiating . . . we know that there is an orderly progression of events, a propagation of cells, a forward going arrangement
of chemical reactions that results in expansion and intricate complication of the organism. 58
A vast number of observations gathered by laboratory experimentalists as well as by those naturalists of the abnormal, physicians
in active practice, prove that the construction of the individual
both during development before maturity, and maintenance during
maturity, his constitution, in short, is directed by the endocrine
glands. It is possible now to present an explanation of the individuality of the individual.
To assert that variation is responsible for the individual, that it
is the mechanism which isolates him as a being like none other of
his fellows, not even his parents, brothers and sisters, is merely to
beg the question. What is variation? The internal secretion theory
of certain variants is an explanation that is coherent and comprehensive, based upon concrete and detailed observations. It provides
an adequate interpretation of numberless hereditary gradations and
transitions, blendings and mixtures.
In the pure types, only one gland, either by being present in
great excess above the average, or by being pretty well below the
average, comes to exercise the dominating influence upon the traits
of the organism. As the strongest link in the chain, or as the
weakest, it rules. The others must accommodate themselves to it.
Among them as commanders of growth, development, and normal
function, it holds the balance of power. In every emergency it
stands out by its strength or by its weakness. It thus creates its
own types of man or woman, with attributes and characteristics
peculiar to itself. 59
The endocrine system as a whole is a very complicated affair.
Beside the manifold functions of each gland and each hormone,
•• Berman, op. cit., pp. 59-60.

5

•• Ibid., pp. 148-149.

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LEO M. BOND

there is an intricate interplay between the hormones of one
gland and those of another. Some are synergistic to others,
some antagonistic; some accelerate the activity of others, some
retard it; some compensate for the deficiency of others, etc., so
that an almost infinite number of combinations, " blendings and
mixtures," are possible. Hence while one gland may dominate
an individual's physiology and determine his "type," nevertheless, within each " type " countless degrees and gradations are
possible, even within the range of " normal." Moreover the
" pure types " spoken of by Berman, are actually rarely found.
Most individuals represent a combination of various types, due
most probably to the relative predominance of several glands
in their physiological economy. However, in each individual
there is usually a sufficient predominance of the characteristics
of one type to enable trained observers to determine his position
in the type categories.
The study of the glands of internal secretion, then, has led
the endocrinologists to the conclusion that these glands, taken
as a whole, are in all probability the most influential single
factor in the determination of physiological individuality. That
this physiological individuality is the basis of psychical individuality is a conclusion that has been more or less forced upon
them by observation of the effects produced by the endocrine
secretions on the psychical characteristics. These effects have
been noted especially in endocrine pathologies where an abnormal under- or oversecretion of some particular hormone, due
to congenital malfunction of the gland, gland infection, tumors,
injuries, etc., has been accompanied by notable changes in
psychical qualities. In confirmation of these observations innumerable experiments have been performed on both animals
and human beings, in which injections of hormones, natural or
synthetically manufactured, partial removal or transplantation
of various glands, etc., have been found to produce psychical
effects similar to those noted in endocrine malfunctions. From
these observations in abnormal conditions, the endocrinologists
have been led to the observation of variations in the psychical
characteristics of " normal " individuals, resulting from normal

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459

variations of secretion, for as Berman says, " The difference
between normal and abnormal is only a matter of degree."
Pende thus sums up the general means whereby these empirical data have been accumulated and applied to normal
temperaments.
We shall now briefly point out these various endocrine temperaments, which have been discovered for the most part by the constitutional study of endocrinopathic subjects in the period that preceded the appearance of definite glandular disease and in the period
that followed its apparent clinical cure; also by the study of endocrinopathies whose families have members with all degrees of
functional change of the same endocrine gland as that which is
affected in the patient; by the study of hyperfunctional or hypofunctional symptoms presented by the endocrine glands under
certain physiological conditions of the organism which demand
greater work from certain glands, as happens at puberty, during
pregnancy, in the menstrual cycle and at the menopause, under
which conditions various hypoendocrine or hyperendocrine temperaments are easily revealed. Finally, these different endocrine temperaments are shown by the comparative study of the morphological and functional signs of certain constitutions, with manifestations that can be experimentally and clinically provoked by the
administration of glandular extracts or by the partial functional
suppression of the endocrine glands. 60
We might note, at this point, that one of the most important
media through which the endocrine secretions have been found
to affect the psychical qualities is the nervous system. In other
words, psychical individuality, in many of its phases, has been
found to be closely correlated with the individual, characteristic
structure and functional dispositions of the nervous system in
general, which dispositions, in tum, have been conditioned
largely by the-endocrine glands, both in the formative stages in
the embryo and in the post-natal maintenance, development
and reactivity of the nervous system. From the viewpoint of
function, the tie-up between psychical characteristics and nerves
is due to the fact that most psychical activity is either stimulated by, accompanied by, conditioned by, or in some way
•• Pende, op. cit., p. 2!!8.

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LEO M. BOND

depends upon some form of nervous activity. The tie-up between the nerve activity and the endocrine glands is due to the
fact that the nervous system and the endocrine system are so
intimately correlated as to be inseparable at any functional
moment.
The second fundamental criterion which we must adopt in our
constitutional analysis is that of the functional examination of each
separate apparatus, but most of all, that of the one great apparatus-the neuro-endocrine--which by unanimous consent of all
our best modern constitutionalists serves to establish a vital neurochemical coordination, a neuro-chemical consensus between all the
parts and all that is most characteristic and personal in the
constitution. 61
Both when devising the fundamental problems of endocrinology
in the experimental field, and when studying pathological anatomy
and many endocrinopathies, it was soon observed, and time has
confirmed this notion more and more, that the humoral (i. e. endocrine secretional) correlation cannot be considered as a mechanism independent of the nervous correlation, but must be considered
as parallel to it and more than parallel; they are intimately interwoven for their separation is imposrible at any functional moment. 62
... the secretions of these glands (the endocrines) influence profoundly the activities which are under control of the autonomic
nerves and incidentally also those influenced by the voluntary
nervous system with all its implications. A change in the hormonoautonomic mechanism must have its reciprocal effect upon those
organs or tissues which are controlled by the affected gland and its
related nerve mechanism. 63 It has been said that the sympathetic
nervous system is the keyboard upon which the endocrines play. 64
The most ultra-microscopic activities of the molecules and atoms
in the highest nerve cells and nerve tissues are dominated. The
speed of their chemistry and their associations and thus the speed
of thought are regulated (by the internal secretions) .65

Later we will consider some of the particular psychical characteristics attributed to particular hormones. Here we will
81

Ibid., p. 64.

•• G. Maraiion, M.D., Problemas Actualea de la Doctrina de laa Secrecionea
lnternaa (Madrid, 1922), p. 12.
•• Wolfe, op. cit., pp. 747-48.
•• Ibid., p. 782.

•• Berman, op. cit., p. 200.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

461

simply quote a few of the summary statements of the endocrinologists as to the effect upon these characteristics of the endocrine secretions in general. The terms "mind" and "mental " are often used by them in a broad sense to include all or
most of the psychical functions, intellectual, emotional, imaginative, etc.
It is impossible to review here in detail all the facts accumulated
concerning the influence of the internal secretions upon all the
processes of mind, intellectual and emotional. A volume would not
suffice for their adequate consideration. Reflexes, instincts, habits,
tendencies and emotions are involved in their machinery. The
development and normal functioning of the intellectual and emotional functions are controlled by them. Acuteness of perception,
memory, logical thought, imagination, conception, emotional expression or inhibition and the entire content of consciousness are
influenced by the internal secretions. 66
The most modern study of the relations between the hormones
and the degree of mental development, proves in the most convincing manner the first class regulative influence, that the harmonic pattern exercises upon the formation of what we call character, that is, upon the determinants of the different forms of
feeling, thinking, and acting that characterize different men. 67
In view of the function that the hormones, in collaboration with
the nervous apparatus of the vegetative life, exercise in establishing
the correlations between all the parts of the organism and between
the somatic and psychic aspect of the individual personality, and
hence, in view of the preponderant part which these play in the
determination of the somatic-psychic constitution, we can understand how congenital and hereditary inadequacies and anamolies of
the endocrine system come to occupy a very high place in modern
constitutional pathology. 68
The influence of the endocrine glands upon the rate of all bodily
and mental processes concerns every medical specialist, but more
particularly the neurologist and psychiatrist. Even before a child
is born, its nervous and mental make-up is determined in great part
by the endocrine factors inherited from its parents, which endow it
with normal or abnormal mental power, facility in nervous reaction,
etc. Throughout life, the mind and nervous system remain reflectors
of the state of the endocrine glands ....
S. Distefano, Endocrinologia (Turin, 1929), p. 345.
Pende, op. cit., p. 222.
• 6 Ibid.
67
68

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LEO M. BOND

. . . the degree of emotional stability and the mental and emotional
reaction to the stimuli which bombard each individual .through
every hour of the day are all, to a considerable extent, under
endocrine control.69
Without going into detail, as yet, as to the anatomy of particular glands and the various functions of their respective
secretions, we will give here a few typical instances to illustrate
the way in which the endocrinologists explain how the endocrine
secretions affect psychical activities and determine psychical
characteristics. First in the emotional sphere; and,' in particular,
with regard to fear and anger. When an individual comes in
contact
some strong fear-arousing stimulus, the medulla
section of his adrenal glands immediately increases the output
of its hormone," adrenalin" (sometimes called adrenin). This
increased supply is picked up by the blood stream or the lymph
and quickly carried to various nerve centers, nerve endings, etc.,
throughout the body. The perception by the "associative
memory " of the sensations arising in the various organs and
tissues as they react to this increased supply of adrenalin, constitutes according to Berman, the emotion of fear. Some of the
internal functions affected by the increase of adrenalin are the
blood pressure, heart beat, respiration, etc. The outward manifestations of these organic changes may be paleness, trembling,
twitching of the limbs, quick or gasping breath, twitching of
the lips, etc. Experimentally these same effects can be produced
by intravenous injections of a sufficient amount of adrenalin,
which, by the way, should also produce the emotion of fear, if
Berman's assumption is correct that fear consists wholly in the
perception of bodily changes. Apparently, however, the injected
adrenalin produces only the symptoms of fear, not the emotion
itself. This may be due, in the hypothesis, to a different attitude of the " associative memory " during such experiments.
The various degrees of change in the organs and tissues
affected, and hence, in Berman's hypothesis, in the amount of
fear felt, as well as in its outward manifestations, would depend
•• Wolfe, op. cit., p. 78i.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

468

upon several factors: first, the amount of adrenalin released.
This would depend upon the degree of susceptibility or reactivity of the adrenal glands to a stimulus of given intensity,
which would be relayed to it, through the nervous system, from
the organs involved in the perception of the fear-arousing object. This degree of susceptibility would depend upon the structure and functional disposition of the medulla of the adrenal
gland itself, which would in turn depend upon its congenital
condition, which would again depend to a great extent upon
heredity, the supply of hormones furnished by the parent body,
etc. Hence the degree of susceptibility or proneness to fear and
the amount of fear felt in a given instance would, other things
being equal, vary in different individuals according to the variations in the temperamental disposition of their adrenal glands.
Another factor would be the susceptibility or reactivity of the
other organs and nerves affected to the increased adrenalin
supplied to them. This would depend on their structure and
functional disposition, which would in tum have been conditioned congenitally by various hormones.
Already we have an example of the complexity of interaction
and interrelation in the endocrine system. But this is not all.
An individual's characteristic way of acting when frightened
interconnet!would also depend upon the adrenal glands.
tion between the whole endocrine system is so close that a
change in the rate of secretion .by one gland affects all the
other endocrines by either inhibiting or accelerating their functioning, which results in a disturbance of the equilibrium of the
whole organism. Adrenalin, e. g., disturbs the inter-muscular
equilibrium in such a way as to tense the flexor muscles (the
muscles of flight), and relax the extensor muscles (the muscles
of attack) .70 Hence an individual secreting a large amount of
adrenalin would be more inclined to flee than to attack when
frightened; one secreting only a small amount might be more
or less paralyzed when frightened and hence would be inclined
neither to flight nor fight. However, if the cortex section of
•• Berman, op. cit., p. 210.

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LEO M. BOND

the adrenals pours into the blood enough of its hormone,
" cortin," to overcome the effects of the lack of medulla secretion, the inter-muscular equilibrium is disturbed in the opposite
direction, i.e., for fight rather than flight, and anger results.
" Or if," says Berman, " the cortical section pours in an overwhelming amount of its secretion from the first into the blood,
there will be no fear but anger immediately. Habitually charging and fearless animals, like the bison, bull, tiger, or lion, possibly have relatively larger adrenal glands. Habitually fleeing
and fearful animals, like the rabbit, have a small cortex and a
wide medulla in their adrenals. 71
Courage, as a human trait, says Berman, is closely related to
fear and anger, but involves besides an act of volition. But
even to this he would give an endocrine basis. " Admitting
that without the adrenals such courage would be impossible, the
chief credit for courage must be ascribed to the prepituitary.
It is the proper conjunction of its secretion and that of the
adrenals that probably makes for true courage. A prerequisite
for adequate prepituitary function is a normal secretion of the
interstitial cells of the reproductive glands. Cowardice is said
to be a characteristic of eunuchs." 72 An individual's mental
reaction in emergency would also be influenced by the state of
his adrenal glands, but particularly by the secretional disposition of his thyroid, the gland which empirical observation has
established as being closely related to the speed of thought.
Iodine, the chief constituent of " thyroxin," the thyroid hormone,
. . . has been shown to increase the electric conductivity of the
brain, that is, the rate at which electrons will fly through it. The
thyroid may then be regarded as manipulating the amount of iodine
brought to play upon the brain cells at a particular moment of
danger or exaltation. Adrenalin increases the electric conductivity
of the brain. Nerve impulses, and with them sensations and ideas,
travel faster or flow more quickly through iodinized or adrenalized
brain cells. In dangerous situations we think more rapidly and
keenly, for in emergencies the blood floods the brain with extra
thyroid and adrenal secretions. 73
n

Ibid., p. 210.

71

Ibid., p. !Ul.

u

Ibid., p. !!00.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

465

Here again the degree of brain activity in emergency would be
influenced by the temperament of the adrenal and thyroid
glands, by the degree of reactivity of the brain cells to these
secretions, etc. Individuals with characteristically poor adrenal
or thyroxin secretion might tend to "go blank " in an emergency.
In the intellectual sphere in general, some mental characteristics are attributed to thyroid secretion, others to the secretion
of the frontal lobe of the pituitary, i.e., the prepituitary, which
is quite similar to the thyroid in regard to the effects of its
hormones, one of which has an accelerating effect on the thyroid
itself. Speed of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning
depends to a great extent upon thyroid secretion, says Berman;
accuracy of thought and" cool'dinating ability" depend on the
prepituitary secretion.
There is an element of judgment, in reasoning, as in perception
and memory. And as in the latter, the thyroid determines the
velocity. Quick thinking, as we call it, means good thyroid action,
and slow thinking deficient thyroid action. The other element in
judgment, accuracy, is influenced by the prepituitary. During
adolescence there is a physical growth which consumes most of the
secretion of the prepituitary. After adolescence, after the early
twenties, when physical growth has ceased, the pituitary secretion
seems to sensitize the cells of the brain to mental growth. The
reaction potential of the pituitary, that is, its inherent, latent
ability to supply a maximum of its endocrine for the nerve cells of
the frontal lobes, is a chemical determinant of mental genius. It
makes for the greatest coordination of experience, knowledge, information, tastes, and problems into one harmonious whole. And
curiously, not only does it cause a fusion of intellectual material, it
creates a desire for and a love of such material.
We should expect to find extraordinarily well-developed prepituitary action among eminent philosophers and men of science, and
we do. Adequate action of it is present throughout the range of
normals who evidence sufficiently ripened judgment as they progress through life. The ability to profit by experience, and to make
more and more accurate judgments as one grows older implies at
least a maximum efficiency of it. This maturation is not at all
universal. Even after middle age, after forty and fifty years of
reasoning, some individuals retain the juvenile mind of their youth.
Like the Bourbons, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Their prepituitary insufficiency, often coupled with a postpitui-

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LEO M. BOND

tary excess, and other instabilities and disequilibriums in the endocrine system, render them immature morons, compared with
what might be expected of them for their years. They are people
who are old enough to know better. For the same reasons inhibition
and emotional control are poor in them. 74
To just what extent each individual step in such explanations
has been verified by empirical observation and experiment, is
difficult to say. Not all the endocrinologists would be as willing
as Berman is to assert definitely that particular kinds of intellectual acts can be attributed to particular hormones. However
it is quite generally admitted even outside the school of the
endocrinologists that mental ability in general corresponds to
the characteristic supply of tyroid secretion. Also the general
activity of adrenalin in fear and anger has been quite well
established by physicians and scientists other than those coming
under our classification of "endocrinologists "; for instance
Walter B. Cannon, who summarizes his experiments, observations and conclusions in his book, " Bodily Changes in Pain,
Hunger, Fear and Rage." 75 But whatever validity such conclusions might have in the physiological and phenomenal order, to
give, for instance, the speed of electrons flying through the brain
cells as an adequate and complete explanation of mental ability
is certainly gratuitous and must inevitably lead to materialistic
interpretations of psychical phenomena, unless something more
is known about the nature of the intellect and its functional
relations to the organic brain.
From the above accounts of the part played by the secretions
in emotional and intellectual processes, one might suspect the
relation considered to exist between the endocrine secretions
and "character," which for the endocrinologists, includes, as
we have noted, the modifications brought about in the innate
psychical characteristics by extraneous influences. The number
and kinds of stimuli with which an individual would most
frequently come in contact would depend to a great extent upon
•• Ibid., pp. !ll5-!U6.
•• Walter B. Cannon, M.D., Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage
(New York, 1929).

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

467

his environment, education, etc. From being frequently called
upon to respond to particular kinds of stimuli, the endocrine
glands themselves would become more or less habituated to
reacting along certain lines; some glands would be called upon
more frequently than others and to a greater extent in one
individual than in another, etc., always, however, in proportion
to their native temperamental dispositions. This would have
its repercussions in the entire endocrine system whose characteristic equilibrium would be modified along certain definite
lines. The physiological modifications might result, to some
degree, in corresponding modifications of innate psychical characteristics, but again only down to the level of and in proportion
to the innate, characteristic temperament. The possibility of
countless combinations, interactions, and interrelations in the
entire physio-psychical apparatus takes on a dizzying complexity. However, the most influential factor in the entire
mechanism would ,be the over- or undersecretion characteristic
of the gland most dominant in an individual's physiological
make-up. Says Berman:
A man's nature is chemically his endocrine nature. Primarily,
when he is born, he represents a particular inherited combination
of "different glands of internal secretion. They, constituting the
inventory of his vital stock in trade, start his life. Afterwards food,
the routine of his existence, education, disease, and misfortune, in
short, environment, modify him because they modify his ductless
glands and ·his vegetative apparatus as well as his brain, depressing
some parts and stimulating others, and so rearranging the system.
In particular will he be transformed as the gland is affected which
is the center of the system to which the others adapt and accommodate themselves. The inertia of the system is very great, almost
absolute, and always tends to return. 76
Choices, the psychology of selection of food, color, friends, mates,
amusements also become explicable rationally. For conflicts among
the different components of the vegetative system are continuous
and inevitable. If the pressure within a viscus has been heightened
and persists, that is, is not disturbed by some other associated
factor or instinct, conduct results to lower the pressure to what it
was before the instigator of the tension appeared. But if another
•• Berman, op. cit., p.

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LEO M. BOND

instinct is sparked, or another associated factor comes into play,
another focus of increased pressure within the vegetative system
is created, with another stream of energy flowing to the brain and
demanding an outlet. This clash of instincts, the struggle between
different foci of the vegetative system competing for the possession
of the brain, is a common everyday process in conduct. Which will
win means which will will. And so we have an energetic basis for
volition.
Which will win appears to depend primarily upon the kind of
endocrines that predominate in the make-up of the individual,
secondarily with his education. For it is the endocrines that are
really in conflict when there is a struggle between two instincts.
And if one endocrine system conquers, it must be either because it
is inherently stronger, its secretion potential, that is, the amount of
secretion it can put forth as a maximum is greater (so explaining
the term dominant), or because a past experience has conditioned
it to respond, although the opposing endocrine system does not.
The response of the ductless glands to situations varies with their
congenital capacity, and acquired susceptibility. Capacity is a question of internal chemistry, modifiable by injury, disease, accident,
shock, exhaustion. Susceptibility depends upon the play of the
forces focusing upon them what may be summed up as associations.
In the ability of one endocrine system to inhibit another we have
the germ of the unconscious. Hence the modus operandi of the
repressions and suppressions, compensations, and dissociations,
which may unite to integrate or refuse to integrate, and so disintegrate and deteriorate a personality.
As the personality develops, the vegetative system becomes
susceptible to manifold associates of family, school, church and
society, art, science and religion, and last but not least, sex. All
the different nuances of personality are expressions of a particular
relationship, transitory or permanent, between the endocrines and
the viscera and muscles. Conversely, behavior shows what a person
actually is chemically; that is what endocrine and vegetative factors
predominate in his make-up. 77

Notice here, among other things, how the will, though admitted
to be the deciding factor in the matter of choices and character,
is summarily explained away by being surreptitiously reduced
to a mere phase of the functioning of an individual's dominant
endocrine.
77

Ibid., pp. 208-9.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

469

These, then, are some of the high-lights of the endocrinal
theory as to the causes of temperament, i. e. of the individual
physiological disposition from the viewpoint of its effect on the
psychical characteristics. The main basic features of the whole
theory have been thus summarized by Berman:
I. The life of every individual, in every stage, is dominated
largely by his glands of internal secretion. This is, they, as a complex internal messenger and director system, control organ and
function, conduct and character. The orderliness of human life, in
the sequential march of its episodes, crises, successes and failures,
depends, to a large extent, upon their interactions with each other
and with the environment.
2. One or several of the glands possesses a controlling or superior
influence above that of the others in the physiology of the individual
and so becomes the central gland of his life, its dominant, indeed,
so far as it casts a deciding vote or veto, in its everyday existence
and incidents as well as in its high points, the climaxes and
emergencies.
3. These glandular preponderances. are determining factors in the
personality, creating genius and dullard, weakling and giant, Cavalier and Puritan. All human traits may be analyzed in terms of
them because they are expressions of them.
4. Specific types of personality may be directly associated with
pa:t;"ticular glandular prominences, so that we have the thyroidcentered types, the pituitary-centered types, the adrenal-centered
types, etc. These are the prototypes in their purity most easily
described and recognized.
5. Combinations of these, as well as of other glands-with joint
predominance-occur and indeed form the majority of the populations. The phenomena of varieties may be thus in part explained.
6. Internal secretion traits are inherited. The variations in their
heredity are essentially the structural representation of the resultant
of a parallelogram of forces exerted by each of the parental prepotent glands. If they are of the same type, they may reinforce
each other: if not, inhibitions and compensations will come into
play. Mendelian laws may apply.
7. (Behold!) The process of evolution, as the play of natural
selection upon these variations, becomes comprehensible from a
new standpoint.
8. Certain diseases, and disease tendencies, both acute and constitutional, as well as traits of temperament and character, and
predetermined reactions to certain recurring situations in life, are
rooted in the glandular soils that compose the stuff of the individual.

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LEO M. BOND

9. The unconscious, of which the vegetative apparatus is the
physical basis, leads back to the internal secretions for the profoundest springs of its secrets. . . .
10. Given the internal secretory composition, so to speak, of an
individual-his endocrine formula-and so his intravisceral pressures, one may predict, within limits, his physical and psychic
make-up, the general lines of his life, diseases, tastes, idiosyncrasies
and habits.
11. Within limits if the previous history of an cindividual is
known, his physical appearance may be approximately described,
and his future outlined. (This pertains to the morphological phase
of the theory, which we have not discussed.)
12. Conversely, given the physical and psychic composition of an
individual, and his past history, one may deduce the internal secretion type to which he belongs.78
This theory has been accepted by a large number of modern
psychologists, at least as to its broad fundamental postulates,
if not as to all the particular conclusions to which some of the
endocrinologists would carry it. Most of the objections leveled
against it are based on the assertion that not enough is yet
known about the endocrine glands to warrant such sweeping
conclusions and that the claims of the endocrinologists as to
many of its more detailed features have not been sufficiently
verified by scientific observation and experiment. To this the
endocrinologists say that while much has yet to be learned
about the endocrine glands, what has been definitely established
is sufficient to serve as a basis for their conclusions. As to how
far and to what degree of detail these conclusions can be carried,
the endocrinologists are not all in accord. Kretschmer is probably the most restrained; Berman, the most enthusiastic, though
it must be remembered that Kretschmer was only a pioneer in
the field. In their writings, some of them have a way of so
amalgamating what has been definitely established with what is
only supposition, that it is practically impossible to detect
which is which. In their objections to the theory, some of the
modern psychologists have seen and pointed out the discrepancy
between the material, biological premises and the immaterial,
78

Ibid., pp. 145-47.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

471

psychological conclusions in the explanations of the endocrinologists.
Among modern psychologists of the Thomistic school, the
theory has been looked upon with favor, at least in its basic
outlines, but only as to its validity on the physiological and
phenomenal levels. Fr. Barbado, 0. P., the eminent experimental psychologist and publisher of many works on the subject, made, in 1926, something of a prophecy in regard to the
theory.
In the first place, the discoveries of the anatomical and physiological sciences demonstrate more clearly every day the influence
of the nerve organs on all the psychical functions, and the work
accomplished in recent years on the subject of the internal secretions leads one to hope that scientists will soon discover the decisive influence that such secretions exercise on the morphology of
the organism as well as on the psychical characteristics, and, therefore, it is not being rash to think that endocrinology will furnish
the key to decipher the mystery and the clue to explain the correlations of the organic world with the spiritual. 79
Writing in the "Revue Tomiste," five years later, he bears
witness to at least the partial fulfilment of this prophecy even
at that early date (1981).
It is clearly demonstrated that a large part of the individual
differences, both morphological and psychical, observed in the
human species, depend on the functioning of the endocrine glands;
and since these glands pour their secretions into the blood and the
lymph, we may conclude that the composition of organic humors
exercises a definite influence on the determination of individuating
notes whether psychical or physiological. Thus it is that the condition of one's humors is an indication of the individual human
personality, both in its exterior aspect and from the psychical point
of view, particularly in the affective sector ....
As to the action of the glands of internal secretion on the physical
processes, it may be given as verified, that if not all, at least the
thyroid, the pituitary and the adrenals are, without any doubt,
stimulants of the superior functions, mainly of those pertaining to
the affective zone, in such a way that today, with reason, a great
•• P. M. Barbado, 0. P., "Correlaciones Del Entendimiento con el Organismo,"
La Citmeia Tomista, XXXIII (1926). 180ft.

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LEO M. BOND

importance is given to the character variables as a diagnostic of the
humoral temperament. The influence of the thyroid upon the
cognitive processes is decisively demonstrated. 80
For our present purposes, the main things to be noted about
the theory are these: that physiological and psychical individuality is determined, on the material side, by secretions
manufactured in certain glands, from the digested food, and
poured immediately into the blood stream or lymph, by which
they are distributed to all the parts of the body and from which
each organ withdraws what is necessary for its nutrition and
functional efficiency; that a balance is thus maintained in the
structure and functional dispositions of each organ and of the
body organism as a whole, an equilibrium which has its counterpart in the psychical characteristics, and that predominance
of one or more of these secretions in the blood stream determines
an individual's physiological and psychical type and is thus
responsible for his individual characteristics. These are fundamental postulates of the theory.
2. The Teaching of the Ancients and Medievalists.

We have seen, in a summary way, how, according to the
ancient and medieval theory, the humors
the structure and functional dispositions of organs and tissues characteristic of an individual and how through the medium of this
physiological individuality they exerted a determining influence
upon the individual psychical characteristics. Here we will
glance at some of the details involved in this process, with a
view to showing the striking similarity they bear, at least in
fundamental points, to the modus operandi attributed by the
endocrinologists to the endocrine secretions in the determination of this twofold correlated physiological and psychical individuality. A treatment of this kind must not in any way be
interpreted as an attempt to defend, at least in their details,
the scientific doctrines of the ancients and medievalists. That
would be absurd. Theirs was definitely a pre-scientific age, in
80

Barbado, 0. P., "La Physionomie," Revue Thomiste, XXXVI (1931), p. 335.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

478

the sense in which "science" is taken today, and subsequent
discovery has proved the falseness of many of their more specific
doctrines as to the causes of physiological structure. They had
practically no knowledge of chemistry as we know it today and
only a very crude notion of biology. Nevertheless from observation of the effects of what we know today to be chemical composition and activity in the human body, they arrived, with
remarkable insight, at some fundamental notions of physiological functions which modern science, with all its paraphenalia,
has been able to do little more than build upon, amplify, correct
as to detail and place on a more solid scientific footing. If some
of these older scholars had had at their disposal the accumulated knowledge of centuries and the means of precise analysis
that the moderns have fallen heir to, we venture to say that
they would have solved many of the problems over which
modern scientists are still splitting their heads. With regard to
the matters that we are presently discussing, the particular
ancients and medievalists from whom we will quote in the
following pages-for the most part, Aristotle, St. Albert the
Great and St. Thomas-were not, we must emphasize again,
ex professo doctors of medicine, but depended for much of their
knowledge of biology, anatomy, etc., upon the theories offered
to them by medical experts of their era, theories which the
medical profession itself considered sufficiently verified to serve
as a. basis for medical therapy. But meagre aud inaccurate in
details as was this proferred knowledge, it was yet sufficiently
sound in general principles to enable men like Aristotle, St.
Albert, and St. Thomas to build upon it a sound psychological
doctrine as to the body-soul relationship.
The ultimate purpose, then, in pointing out the following
similarities between the humors and the hormones as causes of
physiological and psychical individuality is, as we have stated,
to stress the fact that men like Aristotle, St. Albert, and St.
Thomas had a sufficient knowledge of physiological principles
upon which to construct a solid and impregnable psychology,
the full significance of which the moderns have been unable
even to grasp much less improve upon and which they would
6

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LEO M, BOND

yet disdain on the grounds that it was not built upon a knowledge of reality.
To begin, therefore, with the hormones and humors themselves, the hormones are chemical compounds " of various types
and of varying degrees of complexity. Some are simple organic
compounds and can be manufactured synthetically, others are
quite complex protein-like bodies." 81 As to their exact chemical
composition, not too much is known. Only a comparatively
few of the hormones have yet been sufficiently isolated to make
chemical analysis possible. Of these only a few have been reduced to more or less accurate chemical formulae. The exact
composition of even those hormones whose chemistry is sufficiently known to permit synthetic manufacture, is still open to
question, as the endocrinologists admit, since the effects of these
synthetic products have not always been found to be exactly
parallel to those of the natural secretion. Thyroxin, the thyroid
hormone, is one of those whose composition is best known, but
the formula of even this hormone is given by Dr. Loewenberg
as only approximately CnH1o04NI4.82
These chemically composed hormones act on the various
organs and tissues with which they come in contact, to set up
chemical reactions and effect chemical changes. One of the
most easily observable effects of their chemical activity is the
production of such sensible qualities as heat, or a lack of it, in
the affected organs. With regard to the thyroid and adrenals,
for instance, Berman says:
If one wished to synthesize the two sets of observations, one
would say that the thyroid augmented the acid and heat in the cells,
the adrenal cortex diminished them and differences between individuals in these respects, with far-reaching consequences for all their
well-being, would be the outcome of the thyroid-adrenal cortex
ratio in them. 83

The ancients and medievalists, observing such effects of their
" humors " as increased or decreased heat production in the
81 Matthew
Steel, Biological and Clinical Chemistry (Philadelphia,
13-14.
•• Bennan, op. cit., p. 76.
•• Loewen berg, op. cit., p. 239.

1937), pp.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

475

organs, and not being able to submit humors to chemical
analysis, naturally concluded that they must be mixed bodies,
composed, like other mixed bodies, of those things which were
known to produce primarily heat and coolness, viz., fire and
earth, and that the different degrees of temperature observed in
the various organs and tissues were due to particular combinations in them of their component humors, the combinations
differing in different organs of the same body and in the organs
of different individual bodies. The same conclusions were drawn
from the degree of dryness and wetness observed in various
organs, namely, that these qualities were caused by the proportional mixture of their component humors, with their characteristic proportional content of the chief dryness or wetness
producing elements, air and water. They had no way of knowing that the various proportions of heat, cold, dryness, and
moisture observed in the body were due, not to various combinations of fire, earth, air and water, but to various combinations of some of the very same chemicals that are known today
to enter into the composition of fire, earth, air, and water, and
to be responsible for their characteristic heat, coolness, dryness,
and moistness, viz., hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, etc.
Had they been able to carry their observations one step further
back by means of chemical analysis of the blood, they would
have discovered this fact. The hormones, therefore, are composed bodies whose qualities result from various combinations
of chemical elements; the humors were also composed bodies
whose qualities resulted from various combinations of what
were then thought to be elements, but which are known today
to be not chemical elements, but various combinations of chemical elements. Modern chemists can hardly afford to scoff at
this ignorance of the older scholars, when they themselves are
now beginning to suspect that what they have long considered
as chemical elements are in reality only combinations of simpler
substances.
The hormones are produced from the digested food, in the
endocrine glands, whose distinctive and characteristic feature
is that they distribute their products throughout the body by

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LEO M. BOND

emptying them directly into the blood stream instead of dispatching them through particular ducts. As mentioned before,
Hippocrates, the Greek physician of the fourth and third centuries, B. C., considered the blood as being produced in the
heart, the phlegma in the head, the atra-bile in the spleen and
the bile in the liver. Galen, the Graeco-Roman physician of the
first and second centuries, A. D., taught that all four humors
were produced in the liver, and his doctrine became the standard one throughout the early and middle centuries of the
Christian Era, in fact until comparatively recent times. St.
Albert the Great (1198-1280) thus describes the manner in
which the four humors were thought to be produced and distributed throughout the body, according to the Galenic theory:
The digestion of food takes place in the stomach after the liquids
we drink have mixed with the foodstuff. This mixture is necessary
the whole mass a juice might be formed which will
so that
slide and flow through the veins of the liver. After digestion the
stomach absorbs some of the juice, and some it dispatches through
the veins to the liver, and the rest it sends through the portal vein
to the intestines from which the liver draws the juice through the
mesenteric veins. The vesenteric veins are narrow strong veins
running throughout the intestines: and through these veins the
juice passes smoothly until it disperses into the capillary veins
which are in every part of the liver: nor would it ever be able to
pass through such small vessels, unless it were made fluent by the
liquids we drink. But the capillary veins which are interspersed
through the whole body of the liver, join in the thick part of the
liver, and there they form a large vein and in this a boiling down
process (of the juice) takes place, and that happens which happens
when any mixed juice is greatly heated. Some of it rises to the top
as a foam, and this is the material of the natural cholera; and some
of it sinks to the bottom as heavy earth-like substance, and this is
the material of the melancholia; and some of it becomes thin and
pure, and this is the matter of, the blood and some of it remains as
a semi-watery liquid, and this is the matter of the phlegma. All
these humors then are produced in the bulky portion of the liver
under the influence of the heat coming from the heart ... and
then the large vein which connects the heart with the thick section
of the liver, divides in this section into two main branches, one of
which extends to the upper parts of the body and the other downward and through these veins the blood (carrying the other three

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

477

humors with it) is carried to the members, oozing out at all the
vein terminals: and when it thus oozes out it is absorbed by the
members and nourishes them. It is evident then that a humor is a
humid fluent body prepared by a boiling down process for the
nourishment of the members. For a humor supplies the nutriment
to the bloody or phlegmatic or choleric or melancholic contents of
the members, i. e., since the members themselves are composed of
humors, their humoral components receive their nourishment from
corresponding humors. 84

The thing which strikes one most in this passage is the fact
that the liver in which the humors were produced was thought
of as a gland of internal secretion, an endocrine gland in every
sense of the word, since it manufactured its secretions from the
digested food and dispatched them directly via the blood stream
to all the organs, which needed them for their maintenance and
operation. The liver, then, bore a close resemblance in its characteristic functions to what are now called the endocrine glands,
and its products, the humors, were closely allied in their general
activity and purpose to what we now call hormones. Certainly,
as we know today, no one gland produces all the hormones, nor
are there only four kinds of hormones, nor is the activity of the
hormones as simple as that ascribed to the humors; nevertheless
the basic features, the general principles are there, and the
humoral system can be rightly considered as a sort of simplified
prototype of the endocrine system.
Curiously enough, the whole modern notion of glands of
internal secretions as distinct from those of external secretion,
had its origin in observations of the activity of the liver. In
1855, a French physician, Claude Bernard, after much observation and experimentation, concluded that the liver added
sugar to the blood on its way to the heart. " Extraction of the
liver then revealed the presence in it of a form of starch, an
animal starch, which Bernard called glycogen, the sugar maker.
The origin of the sugar added to the blood on its way from the
liver to the heart was thus settled. Bernard went on to hail
glycogen and the sugar derivable as the internal secretions of
•• Albert the Great, De Animalibus, XII, t. 1, cap. 6.

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LEO M. BOND

the liver, and to erect, and then drive home, a theory of internal
secretions and their importance in the body economy." 85 It
has since developed, however, that the liberation of sugar from
the glycogen in the liver is not a function of the liver itself but
is due to the action of adrenalin, a hormone of the adrenal
glands situated above the kidneys. However, the fact remains
that as late as 1855 scientists were still making mistakes as to
the precise activity of the liver, though they were partially
correct in their observations. Bernard was right at least as
to the place where the blood sugar is elaborated and as to the
substance from which it is elaborated if not as to the manner
of its elaboration, and it was this observation that opened up
a whole new line of thought in modern medicine. This is a
significant thought when one is inclined to ridicule the value
of the empirical observations of the older scientists. Even more
significant is the fact that endocrinologists are returning today
to the idea of the liver as having important endocrine activity
along with its other activities. In fact Berman claims that " it
has been demonstrated" to produce at least two hormones, to
which, however, no names have yet been given.
It is a curious fact that the liver, which inspired Claude Bernard
to invent the words, " internal secretion," for a long time failed
to be even listed as one of the major endocrine glands. Certain
discoveries of the last few years have, however, restored it to its
pristine position, and it has been demonstrated to be the source of
at least two hormones which are of the greatest importance in
maintaining the normal equilibrium of the body. It may contain
many others. 86

We have noted that the general function of the hormones is
primarily to regulate the functioning of all the cells, tissues,
and organs of the body by stimulating or retarding their
activity as necessity demands and thus to maintain a proper
balance and coordination among the functions of all the various
parts of the organism. One of the most important phases of
their function and one through which they exert perhaps their
•• Berman, op. cit., p. 116.

•• Ibid.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

479

greatest influence in the determination of physiological individuality is their regulation of metabolism by determining the
speed and efficiency with which the· various cells, tissues, and
organs assimilate the nourishment delivered to them in the
blood stream for their sustenance and functional efficiency. In
the embryo, before the individual's own endocrines are completely formed, this is accomplished in regard to the cell growth,
multiplication, and differentiation, largely by the hormones received from the parent body, and in the fetal stages by the
functioning of some of the individual's own endocrine glands.
From the fetal stage on, development depends to a great extent
upon the type of blood, as to hormonal content, with which the
various cells, tissues, and organs come in contact.
The humors were considered to produce practically the same
effects on organ formation and metabolism, though in a simpler
and more direct way by entering directly into the composition
of the tissues and organs and later by supplying them directly
with their nutriment. In the prenatal period, organ formation
and differentiation was accomplished by three successive stages
of composition, that namely, of the humors, the " similar
members " and the organs. The " similar members " were for
the older scientists the various kinds of tissue, nerve, bone, etc.,
from the combinations of which the different " official members"
or organs were formed, though they sometimes used the general
term "members" to designate both similar and official members. This process of composition is summarized by Albert the
Great in the following quotation. The things here said of
animal bodies in general, he considers as applying to the human
body also " inasmuch as man is the most dignified of animals
and has more perfect members as to number and figure, than
any of the others." 87
First therefore, we may say, that in animal bodies there are
three compositions. And the first of these is called " commixture "
which results from the mutual alteration of the four elements and
their qualities by their reduction to a mixture by means of their
87

Albert the Great, op. cit., I, t. I, cap. I.

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LEO M. BOND

primary active and passive qualities, their forms having disappeared
in the process; which mixture has differences and grades according
to the difference of the animal bodies. But this mixture of elements
continues to undergo alteration until the four humors are formed
from it, which are the blood, the phlegma, and both biles, the red
(cholera) and the black (melancholia).
The second composition pertains to temperament and is accomplished by the transmutation of the humors, producing from
this humoral transmutation the similar members: and therefore this
operation terminates with the formation of the similar members.
The third composition is the formation of the official member
(organ) from the similar members, and the constitution of the
whole body from the similar and official members: which compositions, although they appear to be two compositions are really only
one: since the similar members are not altered as to their forms in
the composition of the official member: and the official members
have the same mode of composition in the constitution of the whole
body.
The first of these compositions are prior in time and generation,
the second is next and the third is the last. 88
Before the formation and functioning of the liver, the humors
entering into the composition of the similar members were,
presumably, those derived from the parent body, as in the
case of the hormones.
In the third stage of composition, that is. the composition of
the organs from the similar members, some of the similar
members determined the structure of the organs, others were
concerned with its operation:
. . . some of the members are as the material of the organic
member: since each organic member is sustained by and composed
of them, namely from bones, flesh and nerves and the like; in such
a way that certain of the similar members are adapted to the
substance of the organs, and others to its operation. 89
Hence the structure and functional dispositions of the organs,
i. e. their temperament, would depend upon the temperament
of the similar members. But the temperament of all the
members, both similar and official, depended upon the type of
nutriment they received, whether in utero or postnatally, "for
•• Ibid., XII, t. 1, cap. 4.

88

Ibid., cap. 2.

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EFFECT OF BODILY

in general every member is assimilated in its natural temperament to its nutriment." 90 All nutriment was furnished by the
blood, hence the type of nutriment received would depend upon
the type of blood with which the members came in contact,
which would in turn depend not only upon the blood itself but
to a great extent upon the quantity and quality of the other
humors contained in and carried by the blood stream. Any
excess of one or more humors in the blood would affect all the
members by disturbing their metabolic processes, which would
affect, for better or for worse, their structural and functional
dispositions or temperament. " The most potent factor in determining the good disposition of the members is the blood." 91
And if it (the blood) should incline toward the phlegma (i.e.
by reason of an excessive phlegma content) it becomes watery: hut
if to the red bile (cholera), it becomes somewhat turbid: and if to
the black bile (melancholia) it becomes fetid and it undergoes many
other variations (of these states) from the admixture of these
humors. 92
... humors are the nutriment for the similar members which compose the organs: for all the members receive their increase from
humors. . .. But these humors have some superfluities which
conduce to an improvement or deterioration of the temperament, as
in the blood there are various differences when one blood is compared to another; since some blood is thinner, and some
and
some purer, some more turbid and some warmer (depending upon
the proportional mixture of other humors in it) .93
The hormones, as we have noted, set up and maintain a
balance in the functioning of the whole organism. They accomplish this, proximately, by regulating the functional speed
and determining the functional efficiency of each organ in
relation to the functioning of the whole body and, remotely, by
their influence on the structure of the organs both in their
formative stage and later as to their development and maintenance. Any excess or defect will upset the general organic
balance. The resulting numerous variations in the grades of
" normal " departure from perfect balance are the bases of
80

81

Ibid., cap. 4.
Ibid., cap.

m, t. 2.
•• Ibid., XII, t. I, cap. 2.

ea Ibid.,

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LEO M. BOND

physiological individuality, and the general over-aU predominance of one or more kinds of hormones in the entire system
determines the various " types " of individuality.
The humors also regulated the functional balance necessary
for the efficient operation of the organism as a whole. Balance
in the whole organism depended upon the efficiency with which
each organ performed its function. This efficiency depended
upon the good structure and functional dispositions of the
organs. Good disposition of the organs was a question of proper
balance in each of the humoral qualities, heat, cold, moistness
and dryness, which depended in turn upon the proper
of humors in the organs themselves and in the blood stream
from which they were fed. Proper balance in each organ was
not a question of absolute equilibrium between all the four
qualities, but of a proportional balance of qualities that was
fitting for the individual organ according to the part it had to
play in the functioning of the whole organism. A predominance
of heat was required in some of the organs, of coolness in others,
of dryness in others, etc. If the proper relative predominance
of a quality was maintained in each organ, the organs would
function properly and a more or less perfect equilibrium would
result in the structure and functioning of the organism as a
whole. Any upset in the proportional balance proper to an
organ resulted in an upset of the equilibrium of the whole
organism. We will give a few of the many passages from St.
Albert dealing with these matters:
. . . a man is not well balanced unless each member which is in
him has that disposition which it ought to have according to the
demands of his equilibrium, though considered in itself, it (the
organ) may not be evenly balanced: for such inequality reduces the
whole to equality. For the heart is very warm: but this is required
for the reduction of the other (organs) to equality. 94
The seventh mode (of equilibrium) is in the members according
to which mode each member according to its species has its own
proper quality, whence we say that the bone should be drier than
the other members, and the brain should be more humid, and likewise with the others. 95
"Ibid.

•• Ibid.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

483

. it (this equilibrium) has a latitude and a mean, when, namely,
the member is in the best disposition in which it is able to be.96
The proportional balance proper to each organ according to
its function in the organism as a whole depended upon the
humors. This proportional balance in each organ was not, as
we have said, an even balance, but a balance characteristic of
the organ itself, which in most organs was actually an imbalance,i. e. in relation to an absolute equilibrium. In the realm
of heat and cold, this imbalance was called " intemperance."
And intemperance in general comes about in two ways, without
matter, i.e. through the quality alone, or with matter, which is
some humor. Without matter, as when something is greatly altered
by something hot or cold, in such a way that only the quality is
augmented in it, as things become warm near a fire, or cold near
ice. But with matter, of a humor, something is called intemperate
in two ways: for either that matter which causes the intemperance
(i.e. the humor) penetrates into the member or it is contained in
the veins and nerves. Among the intemperate organs the hottest in
the body is the heart. 97

If the equality of the general temperament proper to each individual was upset within a certain range, the result would be a
better or worse, although still " normal," general condition.
If the upset was too great, the individual's general condition
and his " life " would be abnormal or pathological.
But beside the aforesaid modes there is an equality of temperament which is proper to the individual according to which he is able
to live and if this equality is upset the temperament becomes
unbalanced: and this also has a certain latitude and two terms:
and the mean is the equality according to which the life proper to
himself is best: and if the equality departs a little from this, his
life is good, not best: and it can depart so much that it will be
unbalanced and bad. 98
The variations of temperament within the range of " good "
would determine normal types of physiological individuality.
The " perfect man " would be one whose general temperament
was in perfect equilibrium. But such equilibrium rarely, if
•• Ibid., cap. 4.

•• Ibid.

•• Ibid., cap. 4.

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LEO M. BOND

ever, existed. According to the degree in which an individual
approached or departed from this perfect norm, he would have a
better or worse temperament.
But the first mode of equality, which is according to the nature
of the species in comparison with other species, has a latitude,
insofar as all individuals of one species have the same (specific)
equality. But there is a state which some individual might attain
most absolutely and in the highest degree and other states consist
in degrees of approach to that state. Therefore the most absolute
mode of equality and the mode of this latitude pertains to the
second mode of equality, as if we would say that some man possessed the greatest equality and the most absolute which is possible
to the species and nature of man. This man says Aristotle in " First
Philosophy " would be the norm of measuring all other men in
that he would exhaust the possibilities of the human species, and
others would participate in these possibilities according to their
approach to him. Rarely, however, is perfect equilibrium of this
kind found because such a man would have to have in all his
members .the most perfect disposition and balance of which his
nature is capable. 99

The predominance of one humor in the whole system was the
basis of various types of individual temperament:
. . . temperament is the quality resulting in animal bodies from the
quality of contrary activities according to which the qualities themselves are altered by each other. 100
However it must be known that every man has his own individual
temperament. 101
There is a diversity among men due to the fact that the
(individual) nature of some follows the cholera more, and that of
others, the other humors. 102

These, then, are a few of the points of similarity observable
between the humors and the hormones as to their nature, production, function, and effects upon the human organism as well
as to their influence in the determination of physiological
individuality. They have, besides, many other points of similarity too numerous to discuss here. Now such similarities are
•• Ibid.
Albert the Great, op. cit.,
101 Ibid., cap. !e.

100

t. 1, cap. 4.
101 Ibid., IT, t. 2, cap. s.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

485

too close and too numerous to be merely accidental; they must
arise from the fact that the chemical substances now known as
" hormones " were known, at least as to their effects, to the
ancients and medievalists and were given by them the general
designation of " humors," a name, by the way, which is still
applied to the endocrine secretions by some of the moderns.
The fact that the older scientists arrived at their deductions
as to the nature and functions of the " humors " by concluding
from the effects observed that the causes must be something
like this, in no way invalidates their conclusions, at least as to
the general nature of those causes. Their limited knowledge of
biology, anatomy, and chemistry made it impossible for them to
conduct a more accurate and scientific investigation of the
physiological entities whose effects they observed, nevertheless
they were able to arrive at certain basic notions about them
which are quite in line with what modern science now claims to
have established. As a matter of fact, much of the data about
the hormones presented by the endocrinologists today and
purported to have been culled from "scientific" observations,
represent mere conclusions drawn from the observation of
various disease symptoms, etc. The comparatively few hormones that have been isolated and chemically analyzed are by
no means sufficient to explain the elaborate mechanism offunction and effect attributed by the endocrinologists to the endocrine system " in toto," nor do their experiments with hormone injections, partial removal of glands, etc., by any means
always prove what they are supposed to. The fact that the
ancients and medievalists were never able to analyze chemically
nor produce synthetically what they called " humors " does not
prove that their deductions were something dreamed up out of
the blue with no empirical facts as their basis. Their conclusions were based on empirical observation, albeit of a less
specialized kind than is possible today.
As to psychical characteristics, the ancients and medievalists
arrived at the same general conclusion as have the endocrinologists, namely,
psychical individuality was based upon
physiological individuality. Here they had not much less to

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LEO M. BOND

go on than have the endocrinologists, for the data of psychical
phenomena is more easily observable by common observation,
experience, and introspection than are those of the intricate
body chemistry. The principle thing that modern psychometrics has proved is the fact that they prove very little more
than common observation can prove and, frequently, considerably less. The endocrinologists base most of their conclusions
as to the relation of hormones to psychical characteristics upon
the observance of changes in psychical qualities accompanying
various sensible changes in organic dispositions known or
thought to be caused by under- or oversecretion of the endocrine glands. This type of observation was open to and was in
fact widely used by the ancients and medievalists. Like the
endocrinologists, they too attributed these psychical changes
ultimately to that which they considered as causing the said
bodily changes and diseases, namely the humors. The fact that
this ultimate basis has since been proved to be hormones instead
of humors is of little importance in the field of psychology.
The significant thing is that the older scholars recognize the
fact that psychical qualities are determined to a large extent by
organic dispositions. And, more important still, is the fact that
they, unlike the endocrinologists, realized that the explanation
of this fact does not lie wholly in the organs themselves, as
we shall see later.
We have noted how the endocrinologists consider the nervous
system as one of the most important organic media through
which the hormones affect psychical qualities. The ancients and
medievalists had the same idea, at least with regard to the
sensitive psychical qualities, even though their knowledge of the
nervous system was very rudimentary.
We say, therefore, that a nerve is a viscous substance, directed
from the brain through the body, that through it sensation and
motion might be given to the body. For the principle utility of the
nerve, which is substantial to it is that through it as an organic
medium, the whole body should receive the power of sensing and
moving.103
108

Ibid., I, t. fl, cap. 18.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

487

Since the nerves were one of the " similar members " entering
into the composition of organs, their structure and functional
dispositions were, like those of all tissues and organs, largely
dependent upon the humors. The nerves in the skin, for
instance, were maintained in a temperate disposition by reason
of the blood with which they came in contact: " ... the cause
of the temperance of the skin is that the nerve tissue which is
interwoven in the skin, is tempered by the blood .... " 104
But a more proximate and important medium through which
the humors influenced the psychical characteristics were those
unique inventions of the ancients and medievalists, the " vital
or animal spirits," which were sort of rarified forms of the
humors and acted as carriers for the distribution of the various
powers of the soul to the appropriate organs of the body;" very
thin vapors," says St. Thomas, " through which the powers of
the soul are dispersed throughout the parts of the body." 105
The " spirits " were generated at high temperature from the
blood in the heart, whence they passed through the veins to
the ventricles of the brain which served as a kind of store house
where the spirits underwent a " cooling " process due to the
coolness and humidity of the brain tissues, and whence they
were dispatched throughout the body as bearers of the soul's
powers. They accompanied the blood to all the parts of the
body, and being products of the blood humors, their qualities
varied according to the humoral content of an individual's
blood. Slow-moving blood, heavy with the melancholia, produced slow-moving, cloudy spirits; clear, fast-moving blood,
rich in cholera, produced speedy and clear spirits, all of which
qualities were reflected in the individual's psychical characteristics due to the various effects of different kinds of spirits upon
the organs through which the soul's powers were exercised. Just
how the spirits functioned in some of the phychical activities we
will see shortly. While the nerves were important as an organic
medium of sensation, it was the spirits that acted as "go-betweens " between the brain and the nerve tissues in various parts
of the body. Fantastic as all this sounds to modern ears, it is
10 '

Ibid., XII, t. 1, cap. 4.

100

I Sent., d. x, q. I, a. 4.

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LEO M. BOND

not at all unlikely that the postulation of "spirits " by the older
scientists resulted from their observation of phenomena which
are attributed today to that mysterious telegraph system
whereby messages are relayed along the nerve tracts by means
of a succession of nerve impulses.
As we did with regard to the endocrinologists, we will give
here a few quotations from the older writers expressive of their
notions as to the effect of humors, through the medium of
spirits and organs, upon the psychical characteristics in general.
It must be remembered that the quality of the blood resulted
from its characteristic humoral content as did also the qualities
of the spirits generated from and accompanying the blood.
"Fibers" or" fibrin" (fibrae) was a form of the earthy humor
in the blood, i. e. the melancholia. The " watery " element was
due to the phlegma. To begin with Aristotle:
Some animals ... have a keener mind than others, not because of
the coldness of their blood but rather because of its thinness and purity, neither of which elements are found in earthy blood: for those
whose humors are lighter and purer have a more mobile sensibility
... those animals are more timid whose blood is very watery ...
and so those whose heart is of this temperament are more prone
to fear. Those whose blood is rich in thick fibrin, have a more
earthy temperament, and habitually become angry, and are prone
to rage. The nature of the blood is the cause of many modifications that are found in the characteristics and sensibility of
animals. 106

Concerning Galen's notions, Roback says:
In this way Galen was able to assign a definite cause for each of
the four outstanding types of individuals in the preponderance of
the so-called bodily humors. The sanguine person, always full of
enthusiasm, was said to owe his temperament to the strength of his
blood, the melancholic's sadness was supposed to be due to the
over-functioning of the black bile, the choleric's irritability was
attributed to the predominance of the yellow bile in the body,
while the phlegmatic person's apparent slowness and apathy were
traced to the influence of the phlegm. 107

Says Moses Maimonides (1135-IQOQ A. D.):
106
107

De Partibus Animalium, IT, cap. 4 (ed: Didot, pp. 285-86).
Roback, op. cit., p. 11.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

489

For instance, a man whose natural constitution inclines towards
dryness, whose brain matter is clear and not overloaded with
fluids, finds it much easier to learn, remember, and understand
things than the phlegmatic man whose brain is encumbered with
a great deal of humidity. 108

And St. Albert the Great:
Since the structure and disposition of the members are generated
and nurtured by the blood, it follows that inclinations to the passions may be kn6wn to some degree from the disposition of the
organs. 109
Loxus was not so wrong when he said that the blood was the
seat of the soul, if it is understood that the soul is there not in
respect of its essence, but in respect to the inclinations of its affections; for the spirits, which are the vehicles of its powers, are
generated from the humor of the blood; and it cannot happen that
something that is carried does not follow in many respects the
movements of the carrier. For we say that the melancholies are
sad and grave, that they suffer from terroristic images and that
they are held in this condition by the gravity, frigidity, and horror
of the melancholic blood; for images received in a horrid mind
become terroristic.
We see that those having a sanguine temperament, because of the
subtility, clarity and temperate condition of the blood, have precisely opposite affections. The cholerics are prone to anger and
fervor, and in this condition apprehend fiery representations due
to their light and fervid blood. And that is why we define passions
in connection with the blood and say that anger is the affluence of
blood against the heart. 110
Moreover intellect in man and the estimative power in other
animals are more refined and better, and less refined and worse
according to the
of the blood and of the humor which
takes the place of blood (i.e. in bloodless animals), not indeed
because of coolness of the blood, but because of its greater or less
thinness and clarity. Earth lacks subtility and clarity, wherefore
those having an earthy blood (melancholies) are duller and slower
in concepts and operations of the soul. For an animal having a
more refined and purer natural humor, has a better sensibility.m

And St. Thomas:
108

Moses Maimonides, Eight Chapters of Ethics (quoted by Roback, op. cit.,

p. 43).
109
100

Albert the Great, op. cit., I, t. 2, cap. I.
111 Ibid., Xll, t. 2, cap. I.
Ibid.

7

490

LEO M. BOND

But the subject of delectation and of all the passions of the soul
is the animal spirit which is the proximate instrument of the soul
in the operations which are exercised through the body. But for
the spirit to be apt for delectation, two things are required, namely
due quantity, and due quality. Due quantity refers to an abundance
of spirits, for two reasons. First because a spirit abundant in
quantity, abounds also in power. Secondly, because since for the
passion of delectation there is required a dilation of the heart and
the spirits, dilation cannot take place when the spirits are few,
because nature constricts them and confines them to their source.
But when the spirits are many, nature is able to retain some in
their source and still pour them out in abundance for dilation.
Due quality depends upon three things. First, that (the spirit)
be of a moderate temperature. Second, that the spirit be clear and
not cloudy; and therefore melancholies, in whom the spirits are
earthy and obscure, are prone to sadness. Third, that its substance
be midway between thickness and thinness. For if it is excessively
thick or excessive thin, it is not adapted to delectation, because it
is not easily dilatable. The greater therefore is the disposition to
joy or sadness on the part of the material cause, the less is required
on the part of the formal cause, and vice versa: and therefore some
individuals become joyful or sad on slight provocation, but others
only on great provocation.U 2

This last quotation from St. Thomas gives us some idea of
the notions of the older scholars as to how the humors and
spirits functioned in relation to joy and sadness and how proneness to these passions depended upon the humoral disposition
of the blood. We will now glance at their theories as to humoral
function in fear and anger, as compared to the endocrinologists'
ideas of hormonal function in these same passions. We have
noted how, according to the endocrinal theory, fear causes a
release of adrenalin by the medulla section of the adrenal
glands, which results in an increased blood pressure, heart beat,
nerve excitation, etc. The perception by the associative
memory of these various bodily changes constitutes according
to Berman, the emotion of fear. It would seem from this that
the greater the release of adrenalin, the greater would be the
fear. But it seems that the reverse is true, for apparently the
11 "

IV Sent., d. xlix, q. 3, a. 2.

491

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

sensations in the organs, perceived by the associative memory,
are due not simply to stimulation but to the proportion which
exists between the amount of stimulation demanded by the
organs in a fear-arousing situation and that which is actually
supplied. If the heart, nerves, muscles, etc., cannot respond
adequately to a situation by reason of an insufficiency of material stimulants, the individual will be incapable of fight or flight
and hence his fear will be greater. As Berman says:
In the facing of crises, the adrenal functions as the gland of
combat. And indeed, as I have mentioned, the more combative and
pugnacious an animal, the more adrenal it has, while the timid and
meek and weak have less. Of the two animals, if in one the heart
should begin to beat more strongly, the blood pressure to rise, the
blood to flow more rapidly through the attacking instruments ....
while the other experiences none of these, the former will be the
victor in fight or flight.113
Moreover, fear produces coolness in some parts of the body
because the blood has a tendency to withdraw from the outer
parts of the body and concentrate around the muscles and the
organs which must be conditioned for fight or flight.
The blood, that primary medium of life, the precious fluid that is
everything, must all or nearly: all be sent to the firing line, the battle
trenches, the brain and muscles, now or never. So the blood is
drafted from the non-essential industries-from the skin where it
serves normally to regulate the heat.U 4
This withdrawal cause coldness in the extremities, which becomes even more pronounced in persons whose adrenals are
habitually insufficient.
There results (from exhaustion of the reserve supply of adrenalin) a condition of temporary or chronic adrenal insufficiency,
supposedly an insufficient function of the gland as a whole. In
persons so afflicted there appears a fatibability, a sensitiveness to
cold, cold hands and feet. 115
The inadequate response of the organs involved in fear would
be due to an insufficient supply of adrenalin released into the
118

Berman, op.

p. 79.

1"

Ibid.

110

Ibid., p. 81.

492

LEO M. BOND

blood stream. Hence a person whose supply of adrenalin was
characteristically inadequate, due principally to innate defective disposition of his adrenal glands, would be more prone to
fear; i. e. he would experience fright on slight provocation due
to the failure of his adrenals to supply the organs with sufficient
hormones to enable them to react adequately to the feararousing stimulus. Moreover, in such a case, fear would be
more intense and would last longer than in the case of one
whose adrenalin release was adequate to meet the situation .
•
Proneness to fear is a common symptom in pathologies resulting
from hypofunction of the adrenals.
In the humoral theory, proneness to fear was also attributed
to the insufficiency of a humor in the blood, namely, the melancholia, though in a somewhat different manner. A lack of this
thick earthy element would result in the blood being too watery
and thus easily cqngealable by the cooling effect of fear. This
would result in an insufficient production of spirits in the heart,
with a resulting inability of the organs to meet the situation,
an inability to
the evil, an inclination to run away, or,
if the fright was sufficient, a paralysis, shaking of the knees,
etc., all of which would increase the fear and make it last
longer. To quote Aristotle again: " . . . those animals are more
timid whose blood is very watery: for water is congealed by
cold: and for this reason also animals lacking blood are more
timid than animals with blood . . . and when terrified they
remain motionless." 116
St. Albert's teaching on the subject is as follows:
Animals whose natural humor is very watery and capable of being
quickly cooled, are of greater temerity, since fear cools the body on
account of the transit of the blood and heat and spirit. If then the
humor is congealed, the heat to dissolve it does not quickly return;
therefore such animals remain frightened and motionless for a long
time. Hence the animal whose heart is of such a temperament, that
is, could and watery, suffers frequently from any slight cause a
paroxysm of fear. For cold water is quickly congealed; wherefore an
118

Loc. cit.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

498

animal without blood has greater fear than one with blood, so that
such animals become motionless when frightened. 111
St. Thomas says on the matter:
As to the appetitive movement of the soul, fear implies a certain
contraction, the reason of which is that fear arises from the imagination of some threatening evil which is difficult to repel. But that a
thing is difficult to repel is due to lack of power . . . and the
weaker the power is, the fewer the things to which it extends.
Wherefore from the very imagination that causes fear there ensues
a certain contraction in the appetite. It is in resemblance to this
contraction, which pertains to the appetite of the soul, that in fear
a similar contraction of heat and vital spirits towards the inner
parts takes place in regard to the body .118
As the Philosopher (Aristotle) says (De Problem., xxvii, 3),
although in those who fear, the vital spirits recede from the outer
to the inner parts of the body, yet the movement of vital spirits is
not the same in those who are angry and those who are afraid. For
in those who are angry, by reason of the heat and subtlety of the
vital spirits, which result from the craving for vengeance, the inward
movement has an upward direction. Wherefore the vital spirits and
heat concentrate around the heart, the result being that an angry
man is quick and brave in attacking. But in those who are afraid,
on account of the condensation caused by the cold, the vital spirits
have a downward movement, the said cold being due to the imagined lack of power. Consequently the heat and vital spirits
abandon the heart instead of concentrating around it, the result
being that a man who is afraid is not quick to attack, but is more
inclined to run away.119
. . . in fear there takes place a certain contraction from the outward
to the inner parts of the body, the result being that the outer parts
become cold. For this reason trembling is occasioned in these parts,
being caused by the lack of power in controlling the members,
which lack of power is due to the want of heat, which is the instrument whereby the soul moves those members. 120
In fear, heat abandons the heart, with a downward movement:
hence in those who are afraid the heart especially trembles, as also
those members which are connected with the breast where the heart
resides. Hence those who fear tremble especially in their speech,
on account of the tracheal artery being near the heart. The lower
n• Op. cit., XII, t. 2, cap. 1.
118 Summa Theol., I-II, q. 44, a. 1.

110

Ibid., ad 1.

uo Ibid., a. S.

494

LEO M. BOND

lip too, and the lower jaw tremble, through their connection with
the heart, which explains the chattering of the teeth. For the same
reason the arms and hands tremble, or else because the aforesaid
members are more mobile. For which reason the knees tremble in
those who are afraid. 121
On the part of the bodily instruments, fear, considered in itself,
is always apt to hinder exterior action, on account of the outward
members being deprived, though fear, of their heat. 122
With regard to anger, we noted that Berman attributes
proneness to this passion to the ability of the cortex section of
the adrenals to secrete a sufficient amount of its hormone,
"cortin," to offset the inadequate supply of adrenalin by the
medulla section. If, when an animal is subjected to some feararousing stimulus, his adrenal cortex releases an abundance of
cortin, his extensor muscles-the muscles of attack-become
tense, his blood pressure, heart beat, nerve impulses, etc., are
sufficiently accelerated to enable him to repel the threatened
evil and instead of protracted fear and an inclination to escape,
there is produced anger and an impulse to face and overcome
the threatening evil, which would be characteristic, as he mentions, of such animals as bulls, lions, etc. This produces a particular type of anger, a sudden, vehement anger, lasting only
long enough to repel the evil. Another type of anger, a slowly
mounting, but strong and long enduring one, is attributed, as
we shall see later, to other hormones.
In the humoral theory, this quick, vehement anger was attributed to an excess of cholera; more slowly rising, longer lasting anger was due to an excess of the melancholia in the blood
as represented by the presence in the blood of small fibrous
particles of melancholia which underwent in anger a gradual
heating up process and a correspondingly slow cooling off process. When heated, these fibers stimulated the blood and the
heart and caused an increased production of warm spirits with a
corresponding rise and intensification of anger. As Aristotle
says:
111

Ibid., ad 8.

12 "

Ibid., a. 4.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

495

Those animals whose blood is rich in fibrin, (melancholia) have
a more earthy temperament, and habitually become angry and are
prone to fury. Anger produces heat, but solids, once they are
heated, give off more heat than do liquids. The fibrin is solid and
earthy, and so acts as a sort of foment in the blood, and it causes a
heating up of the blood by anger, whence it comes about that bulls
and boars are wrathful and are prone to rage.l23
Albert says on this subject:
Sometimes, moreover, there are in the blood of some animals
small hair-like bodies (fibrin) dispersed through the blood and
these animals have an earthy blood, which when it is heated, holds
the heat for a long time. Therefore these animals are very prone
to anger, and retain their anger a long time, for anger moves the
heat because of the desire for revenge, in which the heart is enlarged,
giving off heat and blood and spirits. Such· blood remains hot a
long while because earthy material holds heat longer than does the
humidity of water. The fibrous earthy bodies which are in the
blood of such animals, become in times of anger like coals of fire;
this is the reason for the common saying, that the bull and the
boar are animals exceedingly prone ·to anger, and they become
confused and wild when angry because they have many such fibrous
bodies in their blood. 124
St. Thomas describes the quick, effervescent
due to the cholera:

type of anger

Now the impulse to passion may arise either from its quickness,
as in choleric persons or from its vehemence, as in the melancholic,
who on account of their earthy temperament are most vehemently
aroused. 125
... a man is prone to become angry because of his choleric temperament, and the cholera moves more swiftly than any other
humor; for it is like fire.126
Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 16) that anger is fervour of
the blood around the heart, resulting from an exhalation of the
cholera. And because the movement of anger is not one of recoil,
which corresponds to the action of cold, but one of prosecution
'"" Loc. cit.
cit., XII, t. 2, cap. 1.

1 .. Op.
10 "
118

Summa Theol., 11-11, q. 156, a. 1, ad 2.
Ibid., 1-11, q. 46, a. 5.

496

LEO M. BOND

which corresponds to the action of heat, the result is that the
movement of anger produces fervour of the blood and vital spirits
around the heart, which is the instrument of the soul's passions.
And hence it is that, on account of the heart being disturbed by
anger, those chiefly who are angry betray signs thereof in their
outer members. For as Gregory says (Moral, v. 80) the heart that
is inflamed with the stings of its own anger beats quick, the body
trembles, the tongue stammers, the countenance takes fire, the
eyes grow fierce, they tha.t are well known are not recognized.127
There are, naturally, many differences in detail between the
precise manner of functioning ascribed to the hormones in the
physiology of the passions and that attributed to humors, but
in fundamental notions, the likenesses are substantial and striking: e. g. the nature of the blood as the chief determinant of
inclinations to passions, due, in the endocrinal theory, to its
hormonal content, in the humoral theory to its humoral content;
the physiological functions through the medium of which both
hormones and humors are considered to exert their influence on
the passions, viz., blood pressure, heart action, muscle tension,
nerve excitation, etc.: and in a general way, the manner in
which the hormones and humors function in this mediation;
the notion of physiological speed and heat and expansion in the
" warm " passions such as anger, and lack of heat, contraction,
etc., in the" cold" passions like fear.
With regard to the actual manner of functioning of the hormones in intellectual activity, the endocrinologists are, as we
have seen, very vague. They know from observation that
greater or less mental ability, speed of mental reaction, etc., are
in
way dependent upon and correlated with over- or
undersecretion of such hormones as thyroxin and adrenalin,
but as to just how or why this is so, only a few of them even
venture an explanation. Berman, as already noted, would attribute the intensification of mental activity in dangerous situations to an increased electrical conductivity of the brain cells,
brought about by an increase in thyroxin and adrenalin secretion, which would result in an increase of speed with which the
111

Ibid., q ..48, a. ft.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

497

electrons would fly through the cells, from which would result
in turn an increased speed in sensation and ideas. As to the
functioning of the pituitary secretions in determining such mental qualities as soundness and accuracy of judgment, ability to
coordinate knowledge, etc., he is silent. He simply states the
fact, presumably arrived at by observation of mental phenomena accompanying hypo- or hyperfunction of the pituitary.
Actually, little more is known than the fact that under- or
oversecretion of certain hormones creates some· sort of disposition in the chemistry of the brain which influences the quality
and type of mental reactions. 'Jrhe ancients and medievalists
knew this much and some of them, a good deal more besides.
For Aristotle and his followers, the data which the mind used
in forming its concepts were tihe sensible images impressed
upon the internal sense organs of memory, imagination, etc.,
from which they were abstracte<l by the active intellect. Better
or worse intellectual ability was dependent, at least externally,
upon the quality and quantity of the images presented to it,
which were in turn dependent to a great extent upon the better
or worse disposition of the internal sense organs themselves.
In general, this disposition was reducible to a greater or less
sensitivity of the internal sense organs, a sign of which was
a greater or less sensitivity of touch. The disposition of sensitivity would be influenced by and be dependent upon everything that entered into the structure and function of the internal
sense organs, the humors, the similar members, the nerve construction and function, the blood supply, etc., with the humors
as the basic determinants of all. A predominance of one or
another of the humors in the organ or in the blood upon which
it depended for its maintenance and function, would have its
effects upon the image-forming activity of memory, imagination,
etc., and consequently upon the quality and quantity of images
produced, which would have profound effects upon the quantity
and quality of the intellectual concepts, their clarity or obscurity, stability or instability, etc., and upon the speed of
mental reaction and mental ability in general. Different types
of mentality would depend upon predominance of particular

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LEO M. BOND

humors in the blood and in the brain organ itself. To requote
St. Albert:
But intellect in man and the estimative power in other animals
are purer and better, and more impure and worse according to the
dispositions of the blood, not by reason of the coldness of the blood,
but on account of its greater or less thinness and clarity. But earth
does not have thinness or clarity, wherefore those having a very
earthy blood are duller and slower in their conceptions and operations of the soul. An animal whose natural humor is thinner and
purer, has a better sensibility because goodness of ·sense apprehension . . . is not caused by a hot or cold, but rather by a thin
or clear or gross or obscure natural humor.l28
Nevertheless, a certain kind of melancholia, one not too dry and
more easily mobile, due to an admixture of humidity, begot,
through the spirits; a deeper, steadier type of mentality:
But in men also this humor has different degrees: for if it is not
very dry . . . it will produce many steady and strong spirits.
Wherefore men possessing such spirits have firm concepts and very
well ordered ideas, and they are studious and endowed with the
highest virtues. 129
St. Thomas, commenting on Aristotle, also attributed firmness
of phantasmal impressions to the melancholia: " and this occurs
especially in melancholies, who are greatly moved by their
phantasms: because, on account of their earthy nature, the
impressions of the phantasms are more firm in them." 180 This
would explain why some men, though slower in their mental
reaction, nevertheless retain their knowledge longer because of
the deep impression eventually made on their memories:
. . . but as frequently happens, those men remember better, who
are slow to understand and learn . . . and the reason
that
different dispositions of men towards the operations of the soul
come from diverse dispositions of body. But we see that in corporal
Albert the Great, op. cit., XII, t. 2, cap. 1.
Ibid., II, t. 2, cap. S.
••• De Memoria et Reminiscentia, lect. VIII (ed: Pirotta, p. 189).

108

120

EFFECT OF BODILY -TEMPERAMENT

499

things, those which receive an impression slowly and with difficulty
retain it well . . . but those which receive it easily do not retain it
well . . . And, since to remember is nothing else but to preserve
well that which is once received, hence it is, that those who are
slow to receive, retain well what they have received, which is to
remember well. But those who receive easily, also frequently lose
easily.131
All of which indicates that these authors had at least a fundamental notion of the relation between brain chemistry and types
of mental reaction, and we might venture to say that their
explanations of this interrelation, even from the physiological
standpoint, is hardly less satisfactory than is that of the endocrinologists. Over and above the fact of such an interrelation,
precisely how and why such and such a chemical disposition in
the brain organ should produce such and such a mentality, the
moderns have been able to determine little more than did the
ancients and medievalists. St. Thomas, for instance, in saying
that " to a good disposition of the internal senses, such as
imagination and memory, and cogitative power, a good disposition of the brain is necessary," 132 is summing up practically all
that modern science has been able to definitely prove about the
effect of brain disposition upon the intellect and is, besides,
indicating the very point upon which the whole explanation of
this correlation must eventually rest-in which he far surpasses
the moderns. Commenting on the last quoted passage of St.
Thomas, Fr. Barbado says that the term" disposition" is
. . . a word of generic signification which embraces the modern
concepts of cortical architecture, neural connections, cell structure
and chemical composition, since all these things contribute to the
better disposition of the cerebral elements .... It has been abundantly demonstrated that, according to the Angelic Doctor, there
must of necessity exist a correlation between the weight and quality
of the cerebral organs and the perfection of their respective functions of imagination, memory, etc., and this correlation must be
positive and as perfect as that which always exists between the
181

Ibid., Iect. I (ed: Pirotta, p. 107).

m Q. D. De Anima, a. 8.

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LEO M. BOND

cause and the effect. But not stopping here, the Saint, uniting this
law with his doctrine on the genesis of understanding, concludes
that there must also exist a correlation between the quality of the
intellectual operations and the perfection of the cerebral organs.183
To sum up very briefly, then, the points of similarity, considered in this chapter, between the humoral and the endocrinal
theories of physiological and psychical individuality, we might
say that the humors were as much " endocrine secretions," i. e.
products of a gland of internal secretion (the liver), as are the
hormones. They, like the hormones, were dominant factors in
the determination of the structure and functional dispositions
of bodily organs characteristic of an individual, both in the
fm-mative stage, in utero, and throughout life. Too, through
the medium of the blood, nervous system and other organs, they
influenced the psychical activities, as do the hormones, in such
a way as to be chiefly responsible, at least materially, for all the
individual differences in psychical characteristics so obvious
among men. The manner in which they exerted this influence
was, in a general, basic way, very similar to that in which the
hormones are today thought to exercise their influence. We will
consider further points of similarity between the two theories,
i. e., in regard to the classifications of various temperaments
and the assigning of particular psychical characteristic to each
" type " of individual. But even thus far in our discussion we
have enough evidence to more than justify the following statement of Roback, made as early as 1927, before many of the
postulates of the endocrinologists had been verified by adequate
experimentation:
From Humors to Hormones! It is one of those curios of cultural
destiny that after so many migrations and transformations, the
doctrine of humors should, like a colossal ballad or rondo extending
over twenty-five centuries, hark back to the beginning when all
explanations cente;red around the fluids of the body. The original
theory, now concluding its cycle in the almost universally r.eceived
opinion of today that the secretions of the endocrine glands,
181 Barbado, 0. P., "Correlaciones Del Entendimiento Con el Organismo," La
Ciencia TomiBta,
(19fl6), 191-92.

EFFECT OF BODILY TEMPERAMENT

501

injecting into the blood hormones of various sorts, are of vital importance in the organization of a given temperament, provides at
present much food for thought, even if the thinking, without the
indispensable experiments back of it, must necessarily remain of the
groping kind:
What if the 9ld terms are no longer used in discussion of the
effects of the ductless secretions, the " manes " of Hippocrates and
Galen [and, we might add, of Aristotle, St. Albert, and St. Thomas]
can still point with triumph to their speculative child a:nd say their
"I told you so.184

LEo M. BoND, O.P.
OoUege uf Mt. St. Joaeph,
Mt. St.Joaepk, Ohio.

(To be concluded.)·

... Roback, op. cit., pp. 101, 102.

BOOK REVIEWS
The Idea of Perfection in the Western World. By MARTIN Foss. Princeton:
with index.
Princeton University Press, 1946. Pp.
This slender volume deserves greatest consideration. It is destined, the
author states in his preface, to " clear the way, by means of criticism, for
a more elaborate and constructive approach," to be published under the
title Symbol and Metaphor. The present book is undoubtedly the work of
a scholar who has given much thought, of no small originality, to the
problems he discusses, and who also has endeavored to do justice to his
predecessors, even though he believes them to have held false opinions.
Sometimes, however, it seems that he has failed to grasp the true meaning
of the ideas he opposes, as will become evident in the analysis of his
theory.
The main thesis of the book is that the notion of perfection, as developed
by Greek speculative thought and incorporated into Christian faith and
philosophy, is a mistaken one. It consists, the author feels, in relating
perfection to end, hence viewing it under a quantitative category, defining
it as the progress towards a definite state which then is assumed to be
perfect. The starting point of the whole argument is given early: " Perfection is the conformity of a reality to its concept." (p. 8) That is to
say, the adequation of a thing to the idea we have of it, is what we call
perfection. The statement raises some doubt: adequacy to the " concept "?
or, adequacy to the " nature "? When our " idea " proves to be erroneousas wen· it may be-then our judgment of perfection, on the prior premise,
is false also. If, however, the adequation is between a thing and its nature,
whether or not this be known wholly, the situation is different. It seems
that the author fails to distinguish between these two fundamental notions,
that of the concept as it may exist in this or that mind (or even in all
minds within a definite setting) on the one hand, and the nature or essence
of a thing on the other. The view taken leads further to the assumption
that perfection " will occur most whenever a thing has been constructed
after the model of the concept." Here one senses another equivocation.
The " concept " in accordance with which we construct a thing is not the
same as the concept which stands, as a true universal, for the nature of a
being. One might submit also that a thing may be eventually superior to
the idea we had of it previously. We may have felt, too, that there could
not be beauty greater than that which we knew, and then discovered a
degree of the beautiful the like of which we could never have imagined.
Our idea of perfed beauty will change, and the adequation does not start

502

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503

with the idea but with the object experienced. Similar instance may occur
with tools; the one we thought perfect may appear as rather imperfect
when a new instrument is put at our disposal. Unfortunately, the author
does not consider such facts which are, after all, rather obvious.
Mr. Foss stresses the relation of " end " and perfection, identifying end
with purpose. Such identification is, of course, in many instances absolutely
right; that it is universally justified is questionable. To be sure, we read
in Aristotle that the end is the essence of perfection, obviously because no
change can exist once the end is attained; and, perfection is as well a
process, or progress, and a state to be achieved thereby. In one sense, an
end is indeed a purpose, provided this purpose be not envisioned as contained in a " plan "; so, we may speak of man being the " end " of all other
beings in the material universe. But this does not mean that man is the
perfection of the other beings, although they are " because of him " (Summa
Theologica I, q. 65, a. 2 c.). To identify simply, without any further
qualification, end, purpose, and perfection does not appear justified. Yet,
it is this identification which furnishes the basis for the author's argument.
Insofar as end and perfection are related, perfection is that which defines
end, not vice versa.
Since, following the author's view, perfection means the attainment of
an end, this notion gave rise to a fatal hypostatization. Our aims are
limited, and hence perfection is the more attainable the more limited is the
end. Limitation makes possible " completeness and perfection." This
notion loses its meaning, we are told, when applied to Being, as in Parmenides, because Being is "a most imperfect and empty concept." We
need not defend the Eleatic philosopher. Here too, however, it seems that
the concept, as in the mind, is substituted for that it names in reality. If
the concept of being is empty of explicit content, it refers implicitly to the
greatest wealth of content; again there seems to be a confusion of the
concept in mente and the universal nature.
The author is, perhaps, most unfortunate in his discussion of Scholastic
doctrine. Some of his arguments are patently false. He criticizes Christianity for having made God into " a thing, an object." In quoting St.
Anselm's formula he italizes the id and the maius, suggesting thus that St.
Anselm conceived of God as a neuter, a mere thing. However, this formula
is inevitable within the framework of the Latin language. Numen is neuter
also, as is vulgus, and plebs is of the feminine gender; does this suggest
that Romans conceived of the plebs as a female? and a female who is
also neuter when called vulgus? It seems, also, that the author does not
do justice to the argumentum ex gradibus; it does not prove that God is
the perfect God because there are degrees of perfection, but that such
degrees cannot be conceived as possible if there is not a highest, absolute
perfection. Similarly, if the summum bonum is "the last content of

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BOOK REVIEWS

purpose," it is so not because it is a "highly desired object"; it is rather
the latter because it is the highest perfection. Nor is it true that the
desired object is God as one among other things; the Augustinian distinction between things to be used, e. g., possessed, and to be enjoyed (usus
vs. fruitio) should suffice as a warning for such a misinterpretation. The
object of desire is the vision of God; but never can man " possess " God
as he may possess a thing. One cannot read Aquinas in the light of
Descartes, who indeed did not care to differentiate the meanings of thing
(res) and gave rise to quite disastrous confusions.
There is misunderstanding also, on the part of the author, of the statement that in God there is no real relation to the world (Summa Theologica
I, q. 13, 7 c) . To understand this message rightly it must be considered
that a " real relation " is an accident, and so as such cannot be in God.
(In fact, many writers overlook the twofold sense of relation in Scholastic
philosophy: that it is logical in one, but ontological in another sense, in
which latter it is listed as one of the accidents. Were it not of the real
order, it could never have become a topic of metaphysics as it has been
since the time of Aristotle; and, not only in strict Aristotelian but in other
systems, e. g., Gilbertus Porretanus' Liber de sex principiis.) The same
passage in St. Thomas becomes the source of another and even more serious
misinterpretation. St. Thomas, it may be recalled, there uses the illustration
of a column being to the right of an animal as clarifying the notion of
a relation that is merely of reason; i. e., to be at the right is not a property
of the column, but a relation existing only for the mind viewing the relative
positions of column and animal. The author, however, thinks that Aquinas
likens God to a " lifeless column." (p. 55) No medieval writer could have
thought of so doing; and no one who is acquainted with the spirit of
Christian philosophy can possibly imagine that anyone of the Scholastics
might have conceived of such an idea.
Aristotle " clarified and systematized into a logical and metaphysical
principle " the old desire for a unity of being and thinking by means of
the " metaphysical principle of identity " in virtue of which the aim and
its object become one in God. In Christian philosophy the " frenzy of
identity knows no limits": "all perfections are one, essence and existence
are one (Mr. Foss refers to Aquinas and Descartes; why not to St. Augustine?), the possible and actual (Cusanus), even God and the world."
For this latter, rather amazing statement, there is no reference besides
the two names of Duns Scotus and Cusanus. There is no need to point
out that such an identity was held by neither (for Cusanus, cf. P. Rotta:
Il Cardinale Nicolo Cusano, Milan, 1928) .
The second chapter on Christian philosophy starts with the remark that
the expression " a perfect God " is almost unknown in the Old Testament,
and that a very erroneous conception has crept into Christian speculation

BOOK REVIEWS

505

because of the false rendering of a Hebrew word already present in the
Septuagint; where the latter has doxa, usually translated as glory or honor,
the original has kabod, meaning "force, will, heart, or soul." (p. 26) The
Greek, says the author, had little understanding of an inner life and of a
creative personality, which is certainly true although in Hellenistic times
some such understanding developed. Perhaps, however, the author overrates the influence of Greek thought and terminology in Patristic writings.
,It can hardly be claimed that St. Augustine, for example, had no understanding of creativity or personality. It is to be further noted that the
author has nothing to say on the correlate of the notion of God's honor
and glory, namely the obligations which flow therefrom and determine much
of the speculation concerning human nature and perfection.
From the author's general position there follows necessarily his rejection
of any "degrees of perfection": "this comparative use of the term ...
is by no means justifiable." (p. 39) Response can be made that the
notion here criticized is closely related to a metaphysic which, probably,
Mr. Foss is also unwilling to accept, namely that of a "hierarchy of
being," maintaining that as being so also its perfection is different on
each of the existential levels. In the light of such a view it is not correct
to say that St. Anselm envisions divine perfection as one " relative to the
human mind." It is not sufficiently recognized (and in this the author
is not alone)· that the argument of St. Anselm rests on the supposition of
one and only one all-prevading order, so that the ordo cogitandi is actually
the same-qua ordo-as the ordo essendi. Hence, it is not the human mind
to which God's perfection is relative but that part of the universal order
of which mind, in thinking, becomes not only aware but participant. The
utmost perfection is id quo nihil maius potest cogitari because the order
of thought (not of thinking as a mental performance) reveals, be it howsoever indistinctly, a supreme being and supreme perfection. St. Anselm
does not claim that reason can reach an adequate knowledge of God; it
is quite characteristic of his way of thought that he uses the expression
cogitare ad Deum.
Two notions seem to be insufficiently considered or, when considered,
incorrectly interpreted. One is that of potency and act; the other is
that of analogy. Because of a faulty notion of the latter, the author arrives
at the statement that tefii?.S like " omniscience " are incompatible with the
idea of the Absolute or Unconditioned, since " all " is a limited quantity
and it is a " degradation for the Divine to be restricted to power and
knowledge of merely all." (p. 34) But, if " all " be taken as an analogical
term, this difficulty disappears. Only so long as "all" signifies completeness
on the level of contingent being does the statement hold. The author also
overlooks the fact that the term " individual " is likewise analogical, and
that it connotes different natures when asserted of an atom or of God, of

8

506

BOOK REVIEWS

a stone or of a human person. Nor, as he claims, is individuality in
Thomism a " mere quantitative difference "; such quantitative differences
can be predicated only of beings of the same existential level, and
individuality affirms the more of uniqueness the higher in the scale of
being the individual stands. The notion of haecceitas was not needed, as
the author believes, " to emphasize the uniqueness of the individual." This
idea was given as soon as it was realized, in the light of Christian faith,
that every human soul, and hence person, owes its existence to an
individual creative act of God. With the recognition of creationism and
the abandonment of traducianism, the uniqueness of the human individual
was definitely assured. This was the more true after St. Thomas had
stressed the unity of substantial forms and clarified the theory of the
one rational soul as the only substantial form in the human being.
Another concept which seems to require interpretation differing from that
of the author is the notion of whole and part. One must understand that
a " part " is such only so long as it remains within the context of the
whole; this is particularly true of organisms, and there the more so the
higher the organization. A part separated from the whole where it
" organically " belongs, is no longer a part in the true sense of the term.
Mr. Foss might have found in St. Thomas the determination of the
individual as the indivisum in se, and even the indivisible, since we are
told that an organ severed from the body is no longer, in strict parlance,
" this organ "; an eye taken out of the head is not an eye in the same
sense as it is within the integral whole; it is as little an eye as the corpse
is the person who died. The part separated from the whole ought to be
called no longer a part, but a " fragment." However, the author takes
no account of these notions, whether found expressly in St. Thomas or
derived from the principles of his philosophy.
On the other hand, Mr. Foss makes many statements which are quite
correct, although he is inclined rather to view them as corrections of
Scholastic ideas; in truth, they are contained within Scholastic teaching.
Nor is the difference in these fundamentals as great between St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas, or the latter and Scotus, or the philosophers and
Master Eckehart, as the author believes.
The author's own notion of the " naught," rather closely related to the
formulae in Pseudo-Dionysius, Erigena, Eckhart and others, is based
first on the realization that many negations have in truth a very positive
sense; as innocence and infinity. One might consider here the principle, of
Aristotelian origin, that what is in se the first may be, and often is, second
quoad nos; our experience is of the finite, and hence we cannot but start
from there, in spite of our realization that the finite is, if one may say so,
only the degeneration of the infinite. So also the simple is, in some manner,
the negation of .the manifold which makes up the bulk, or perhaps all,

BOOK REVIEWS

507

of our experience. "The simple ... is what we call 'Force.'" (p. 51)
Force is not cause, not even first cause. (The author refers here to
Phaedrus 245 C, D; but there Plato does not speak of force nor of cause.
He speaks of that which moves itself as the "fount and origin "-archeand this has to be ungenerated. _But, arche is not cause, at least not
efficient cause.)
Because to the author the naught appears not as negation, he is able
to equate the naught with some sort of being; although this is saying
too much, for he rather sides with Dionysius and Eriugena. But he also
views the naught as a necessary " counterpart " of a complete world;
creation is strictly ex nihilo: "it is the naught out of which the all not
only bursts, but which also links and ties it together.'' (p. 54)
In regard to creation, however, the author holds that it were impossible
if the possible is excluded from God. The possible and the actual do not
stand in a relation of contrast and mutual exclusion; they " are united
in potentiality " in force and creation. It is conceivable that the author
here falls prey to a confusion which has brought forth many pseudo-problems
and errors, that namely of the poaaibile logicum and potentia. (Cf. A.
Faust: Der Moglichkeitagedanke, Heidelberg, 1931, especially volume II.)
The third chapter develops the author's own conception, first in regard
to perfection in art; which notion had been eliminated, so we are told,
from aesthetics by Kant, and, indeed, has no place there. Kant's notion
of the sublime reveals that " the depth of art is a beyond to the world
of ends and perfections.'' Here the close relation the author establishes
between end and perfection becomes especially disturbing. Art has been
recognized before as having no immediate relation to ends as goals of
striving. If Kant spoke of the intereaaeloae Wohlegefallen, complacency
without interest, i.e., without personal desire being attached to the
beautiful object, his idea had been anticipated when St. Thomas characterized the beautiful as that wherein appetition comes to a rest. But,
whether one envisions the beautiful or the sublime, it is evident that both
are goods or values. Now values exist in degrees; but their gradation is
very different from that of mensurable quantities. They are graded not
by the " distance " from a zero point, the goodness of the degree zero (it
is enough to mention such a notion to realize its inner falsity), but they
are " measured " against an ideal or absolute goodness which, indeed, is
never experienced, and nonetheless is somehow back of all our evaluations.
This fullness of value is neither a " completeness " nor an " end "; it is, if
one is to use the author's expression, a " beyond," separated from all
possible experience by an unbridgeable gulf, and nonetheless the pivotal
point on which hinges the whole "world of goodness." The author, however, has failed consistently to consider the import of the notion of value
on that of perfection.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Mr. Foss' remarks on art are, for the rest, very interesting and often
very much to the point. He is right in placing emphasis on the fact of
" stylization " and denying the name of art to any accurate copy of the
real. He has also stimulating ideas on such a thing as the " frame." (Here
he might have consulted with advantage the study on the same topic by
Georg Simmel, in his Philosophie der Kunst, Potsdam, 19flfl.) In art there
is a " transcendence of the modest object beyond its limits," and this is
what is called expression, in which "the manifoldness and perfect independence of things disappear in a simplicity which is simple because it
overcomes this manifoldness." (p. 69) Nowadays, the problem of expression
is disregarded and replaced by that of symbol: " A limited entity standing
for another limited entity." However, this idea of symbor is questionable;
at least, medival symbolism has held different views, and has eventually
seen in the visible thing and the whole universe, in man and in spirit, a
"symbol " of the infinite. (Cf. this reviewer's study on " Microcosm,"
Traditio, 1944, II.) But one may well agree with the author that in rontemporary writings there is great confusion and some misunderstanding of
the essence of symbol. Mr. Foss' statement that "man is an expression
of the infinite" (p. 74), would have been quite acceptable to just those
thinkers whom he criticises most, the Schoolmen and medieval symbolists.
We shall also agree with the author's evaluation of Kantian "formalistic"
ethics and with his emphasizing an ethics of love, which is " not a fixed
duty, not an end which waits for its fulfilment." (p. 86) "Love sees always
beyond, is always on the way to more and better." But, is this so novel
an
as the author seems to feel? One might easily refer to passages in
many a Scholastic, including St. Thomas, by way of corroboration. Finally,
welcome must be accorded the praise of " service," as " surrender . . .
for an infinity of life, for a will, a personality." (p. 88)
Summarizing his views, the author states that " wherever the idea of
perfection emerges . . . we may be sure that the rational concept of end
and ·purpose is at work." (p. 95 ff.) These notions are placed together with
completeness and totality; they " receive their justification in a limited
field . . . by that which is beyond them and therefore is apt to draw the
limits." We shall readily subscribe to this statement; it is the infinite which
" limits " the finite, the eternal which provides, if one may say so, the
frame for the temporal. But, it does not become evident, at least not to
this reviewer, that the author has proven his point, viz., that the applicability per analogiam of perfection to the illimited, infinite, "super-essential " is illegitimate. It is not evident that perfection and purpose are linked
so inseparably together as the author claims. Perhaps a more penetrating
analysis of the several significations of Telos or finis could contribute to
further clarification.
Even this long discussion does not do justice to Mr. Foss' work. It is

BOOK REVIEWS

509

of a highly challenging nature; it arouses reflections on problems one often
fails to consider; it is a scholarly achievemt:nt of definite eminence. If
one cannot agree either with the general thesis or with many of the particular statements, one nevertheless profits by studying the author's ideas,
which surely do not lack originality. Mr. Foss teaches philosophy at
Haverford College. He is sure to be a stimulating teacher. And, all our
objections notwithstanding, we ought to recognize philosophical seriousness
and originality wherever we find them.
RuDOLF ALLERS
Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.

Logic for the Millions. By A. E. MANDER. Philosophical Library, New
York. 1947. Pp. xi, 206 with index. $3.00.
Basic Logic. By RAYMOND J. McCALL, PH. D. Barnes and Noble, Inc.,
New York. 1947. Pp. x, 193.
The appearance of two new books on logic, both of which follow more
or less the traditional discipline of Aristotle, is a stimulus for the Thomist
to consider the present condition of this basic subject. Challenged by a socalled mathematical logic, the Aristotelian- Thomistic mode faces the choice
of oblivion before the modem fad for symbols and semantics, or a
resurgence to its former and rightful position of training the minds of
scientific, philosophic, and theological thinkers. What is needed is a
careful evaluation of the current method of teaching the Stagirite's
Organon. If these two new books serve this purpose, although neither had
such an end even remotely in view, their publication may well mean the
return to the true logic of Aristotle and St. Thomas, and not the continued
acceptance of some manualist's capsule-size edition of it, with the ingredients, at that, badly mixed.
Logic for the Millions, the first book to be considered, is the latest
attempt to put rationality on a mass scale into an irrational age. " Thinking is skilled work," observes the author in the Foreword. A. E. Mander is
no man to minimize the fact that ability to reason clearly and logically
demands constant practice and unremitting effort. Whether Dr. Mander's
popularizing will result in correct thinking is the point first to be noted.
To those who never took a course in logic and must rely on whatever
natural skill they have acquired, Logic for the Millions will have its
worthwhile features. Dr. Mander has pages of excellent practical advice
to aid in better and clearer thinking. He devotes a section, for example,
to what he accurately calls " coloured terms." These terms " not only
embody some meaning about the quality or thing referred to ... but also

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suggest our own personal attitude towards it" (pp. 15, 16.) Since such
coloring is characteristic of so many of our modern magazines and newspapers, whose adjectives are as important as their nouns, alertness to this
subtle type of writing would be a major benefit for the mass of people. The
need
defining one's terms, safeguards against false reasoning and shoddy
argumentation, a superior treatment of deductive reasoning these are
some of the other useful observations made by the author. Unfortunately,
they are too occasional and lose value in the general tenor of the book.
For those who have studied the Aristotelian- Thomistic logic and know
philosophic foundations of this great school of thought, Dr. Mander's
book is a combination of logic, psychology, and epistemology, none of which
is always treated accurately. The very ease with which this work can be
read might deceive one into passing it along as a harmless little volume
possessing eonsiderable good material. Closer examination will show that,
although it does have some merits, the book has other less noble qualities.
To the untrained mind, even for Catholics not imbued with a strong and
living faith, Logic for the Millions could have the disasterous effect of
blasting any belief in God out of the mind of the reader.
Eight times (on pages 23-24, 28, 37, 95, 123, 132, 176) Dr. Mander uses
illustrations of faulty reasoning which all conclude to disbelief in the supernatural. The accumulative effect of these examples is to leave the reader
with the impression that one would have to be most illogical to accept a
supernatural statement. The author's innuendos are neither ingenious nor
original, but for a new audience of readers they can be devastating.
First he takes an old theological argument that attempts to prove the
existence of God. There is no doubt that the proof is invalid. He pushes
this point further in his example under "Arguing in a Circle." It is the
familiar objection: " The existence of a personal God is proved by the
Bible; and the authority of the Bible must, of course, be accepted because
it was inspired by God." In his third illustration Professor Mander presents the case of two children, one a Roman Catholic and the other a
Presbyterian. Each is switched from its proper home shortly after birth.
The author then argues that the children would grow to manhood with
beliefs exactly opposite to those they now hold. The title of the chapter
in which this occurs is " Groundless Beliefs." The rest of the illustrations
proceed in a similar manner and need not be paraded here.
In general, Dr. Mander's approach and the doctrine that he propounds
under the name of logic are the perfect exemplification of the so-called
modem " scientific mind." It is the type of intellect that wants all its
knowledge measured either directly by sense-perception or at least indirectly by returning to the senses as a check. Yet at the same time, the
author subscribes to that false and contradictory maxim that ·" seeing is
believing," instead of realizing that seeing is knowing. Thus Dr. Mander

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has great difficulty when he cannot verify first hand some item of knowledge. This causes him in the third section of his book, " What May We
Believe?" (p. 49), to set down four rules by which to test one's beliefs.
Three of them are merely a question of common sense and are safeguards
dictated by prudence. Briefly they maintain that the person whose
authority is being accepted must be identified, recognized, and unbiased.
The other rule holds that, normally, the authority should be living. The
reason for this qualification is traceable to Dr. Mander's constant, and
almost exclusive, concern with the contingent. For him it truly follows that
all knowledge is progressive and what was true a century ago is probably
false today. While this is often correct in questions of the physical sciences,
it is amazing that the author should group all philosophical truths in the
same shifting sand. He thus ignores the great contributions to thinking
made in the past. Only the modems are to be believed because they have
the past plus their own age of enlightenment.
Later in his work, A. E. Mander does speak of universal principles.
They are limited to such harmless statements as " All fish are coldblooded" (p. 158.) Fortunately, one can trace the genesis of his intellectual
myopia in the pages of his book. For the first dozen or more pages, with
one exception which will be treated later, Dr. Mander proceeds felicitously
enough. Then he comes to his treatment of " Abstract Terms " and hits his
first snag. It is necessary to quote the author at length: "An abstract
term is the name of some QUALITY, STATE, or CONDITION of a
thing; or some ACTION or PROCESS; or some RELATION between
things.
For example "Length," "Poverty," "Courage," "Love,"
" Beauty," "Life," " Thought," "Pain," "Memory," "Intelligence,"
"Will," "Consciousness," "Personality," "Health," "Evolution." If the
reader will work through the examples given above, he will recognize that
not one of them
anything that can be said to exist-that is, to
exist in the sense that it is a quality, state, process, etc., of something"
(p. 19.) Dr. Mander has confused an accident with an abstract term. For
the Thomist the abstract term indicates the form outside of its matter.
" White," a predicable accident, is a concrete term, while " whiteness," on
the other hand, is an abstract term. Aristotle has treated this point in the
fifth chapter of the Categories
The error of Professor Mander is
basic to his understanding of logic, not to mention metaphysics. His failure
to make a clear-cut distinction between an abstract and a concrete term
leads him less than twenty pages later (pp. 40-1) to reduce all propositions
to the whim of time and change. Once again, all the examples given here
are of contingent facts, this time taken from scientific knowledge or social
convention. Thus his examples are verified, but Dr. Mander has remained
on the periphery of truth never ascending to the heights of universal
verities. He concludes his illustrations with the remark: " Propositions

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which are accepted blindly, without question, on the grounds of mere
assumption or dogma, need to be frankly recognized as such. Progress in
human thought seems to consist mainly in getting rid of such ideas." As
is so often the case with this type of writing, there is enough truth in the
statements to make them attractive, but the fundament of error has been
laid and upon it built the straw house of a false philosophy.
The author spends considerable time in examining the causes of prejudices. This treatment is frankly psychological. Even when it is accurate,
the work is vitiated by such a principle as: "Putting it broadly, we should
always suspect any of our opinions when we recognize that our happiness
depends, directly or indirectly, upon our continuing to hold them-when
we might lose anything, material or otherwise, by changing our opinion "
(p. 43.) Hence, he might have added, one should suspect the Faith, and
husband and wife ought mutually to be suspicious of one another. By
employing such an operating principle of action, the universal doubt of
Descartes becomes child's play.
Granting the objectivity of reality, Dr. Mander treats the problem of
knowledge in a manner which shows how close he can come to the truth
of the facts and yet still manage to miss the point. He wants all knowledge
verified by sense perception either directly or indirectly, as was mentioned
before. Instead of finally admitting that seeing is knowing, the author
shows signs of Kantian idealism when he writes: ". . . I believe that I
have now a pen in my hand-a belief which corresponds directly to a
Beliefs of this kind, he continues, require no
perceived fact " (p.
reasoning. Apparently they are intuitive. Later he corrects this statement (p. 78) when he quotes John Stuart Mill on perception by the
senses and the judgment of reason. All of which leaves the reader a
trifle confused on just what the author himself does hold.
Touching upon the subject of theories (p. 139), Dr. Mander comes
right into the Aristotelian school using almost verbatim the very words
of the Stagirite as found in the first book of the Posterior Analytics,
chapter four (73a
In constructing his own theory of demonstration,
Aristotle sets forth the principle of dici de omni. Dr. Mender uses it, but
here again limits his application to the contingent, the thing Aristotle is
trying to avoid since there is no demonstration properly speaking of the
contingent. Perhaps further investigation into the Aristotelian-Thomistic
school would enable Dr. Mander to make the jump which could tum his
book into one of great profit for all.
The warning of what one could expect from Logic for the Millions comes
in the initial rule set down by the author. "The first essential to clear
thinking (and speaking) is the ability to 'see' the point-to recognize
what exactly is the point in question-and then to stick to that point
until it has been dealt with." Certainly this is a basic rule and a prime

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513

principle to good clear writing, accurate thinking, and successful speaking.
It corresponds to setting up an aim and proposition in sermon writing.
The only difficulty is that such a principle will be the effect of a good course
in logic and cannot be set down as something with which the pupil immediately begins. Perhaps Dr. Mander had in mind " quick wit " or solertia
which Aristotle explains in the concluding chapter of the first book of the
Posterior Analytics.
Considered from the point of view of popularization, Logic for the
Millions has achieved success. The style is light. Technical terminology
has been skillfully avoided. The weakness of the book lies in the fact that
the author has not adhered to his subject but has violated his own rules by
wandering in and out of logic, both docens and utens, by exposing his
ideas of the psychology involved in reasoning, and at times by going into
epistemology. Had he defined logic, remained faithful to his matter, eliminated his thrusts at the supernatural, his book might have hit the mark. As
it stands one might well apply one of Dr. Mander's own rules on " unfinished
Terms." These are terms that need further explanation in order to make
clear precisely what they mean. The book bears the title, Logic for the
Millions. Of what, we might ask.
The book concludes with an appendix on causation and determinacy. The
ultimate conclusion of the author is the only one possible in keeping with his
mode of reasoning and procedure. He says in effect that, whatever the
explanation of Man, the Universe, Life, and Evolution if we keep plugging
away at it we shall finally attain some " ' explanation ' of it all."
Dr. Raymond J. McCall has less ambitious ideas than Dr. A. E. Mander
about the number of readers that his book will reach. He has written a
volume on the fundamental principles of formal deductive reasoning and
entitled it Basic Logic. In his preface he informs the reader that " the
present work is intended to form the basis of an introductory course of
one semester in logic." Dr. McCall is a professor in the department of
philosophy at St. John's University, Brooklyn, and as an experienced
teacher can offer his book without apology.
Frankly based on the classic volume of Jacques Maritain's An Introduc·
tion to Logic, Dr. McCall sets forth the traditional doctrine of Aristotle
and St. Thomas on what is now called " formal logic." A brief but enlightening Preface points out the source of current confusion in the field
of logic, namely, the unhappy blending of material and formal logic by
Christian Wolff and his futile attempt, in following Leibniz, to reduce
the genera of logic to mathematical classes.
In his Introduction, Dr. McCall proceeds as a true logician. He defines
his terms and gives the background, nature, and further distinctions concerning logic which alone can make the subject clear to the reader or pupil.
The book itself has three main divisions: Simple Apprehension and Term;

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Judgment and Proposition; Deduction and the Syllogism. In each instance,
the treatment is orderly, concise, and accurate. The author inserts any
necessary information on the psychological process of ratiocination that is
absolutely needed for understanding the text. Beyond this he does not go.
Dr. McCall has set up the end in view of his writing and never loses
sight of it.
Dr. McCall makes a clear-cut distinction between natural logic and
acquired or scientific logic. "If we would think philosophically, we must
first become proficient logicians" (p. 3.) Having stressed the importance
of his subject, he definitely limits the field of operation for this book.
It is concerned with the most elementary and basic division of logic, that
is, formal deductive logic. The difference between induction and deduction
is explained; and with a comparative study between the mental act and
its verbal expression, Dr. McCall is ready to proceed into the text proper.
In thus composing his introduction he has followed the time honored
principle and practice of the Scholastic, namely: in one's introduction make
the reader benevolent by showing the utility of the subject; make him
docile by exposing the order and distinction of the science; and make him
attentive by attesting to the difficult of the tract.
The body of the book is a superb handling of the subject-matter under
consideration. Dr. McCall has written one of the best college text books
on formal logic in English. He maintains interest throughout the contents
of his volume by supplying original examples and even at times successfully
using dashes of wit. The judicious use of carefully worked out schemas
or the clear reproduction of traditional ones, makes his book most appealing.
His treatment of the various types of propositions and a neat digression
(taken from Maritain's observations) on the value of Euler's circles as
diagrams for explaining predication add much to the book. Although an
index is lacking, this can easily be supplied in later editions. The volume
concludes with helpful. exercises in logic. These will serve to make the
student aware of how much or how little he has comprehended of the
section read. All in all Basic Logic is an unique achievement in text books
for logic.
Yet one would be false to the true Thomistic teaching to allow praise so
great a range as to exclude some friendly criticism. Further, it is evident
from Dr. McCall's preface that he is a genuine student of philosophy and
desirous of a correct presentation of his subject matter. In composing his
text book, the author has adhered to the rather unhappy distinction of
logic into formal and material. This system has been perpetuated by the
manualists, if not invented by them. According to this perversion of
Aristotle, Formal Logic sets out to consider the three acts of the mind,
that is, simple apprehension, judgment, and reasoning. Had the interpreters of Aristotle preserved his doctrine intact, Formal Logic would

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515

include all of the Organon except the Topics and the book on Sophistical
Refutations. Instead, these pedagogical experts managed to strip logic of
the Categories and the Posterior Analytics, at the latter of which all logic
is aimed, while they inserted too many notions from psychology for student
minds not yet ready to receive them.
Into Material or Major Logic were tossed the Categories and the
Posterior Analytics. Since colleges never seem to get beyond introducing
the student to logic, Catholic seats of learning and those others that still
follow Aristotle turn out philosophers who never see any of the v.-orking
principles for a demonstrative argument. Hence the sterility of minds
trained in the once dauntless system of Aristotle and St. Thomas. We h:we
here one of the fundamental causes for the disdain with which the V'aditional logic is regarded. Those trained in the ancient discipline do not
appreciate it, since they have not really seen it. Moderns reject it without
considering it or else misuse it. Both would be justified if the philosopl1y
of Aristotle and its later development had no application to life. A system
of thought that is impractical has no more value than a stove which does
not cook food.
The over-emphasis given to Formal Logic, or more precisely that part of
Aristotle's logic treated in the Prior Analytics, has made the Stagirite's
system seem like nothing more than a book of mental exercises. It should
be treated, one concludes, as arithmatic and has worth to the college
student only as a way to get credits. As far as its use goes, probably
the only thing the pupil retains is that one of the modes of the syllogism
is called " Barbara."
Yet the fact of the matter is that this division of logic, whatever may
have been the good intentions of its originators, is contrary to the
Thomistic tradition. Perhaps if more students of this system obtained
their information from direct sources the fact would be shockingly evident.
St. Thomas' mind on the subject can be found in the first lecture of his
commentary on Aristotle's Perihermenias. After pointing out that logic,
as the rational science, deals with those things which pertain to the three
operations of reason, he continues: " Of those therefore which pertain to
the first operation of the intellect, that is, of those which are conceived
by simple understanding, Aristotle determines in the book of the Predica.
ments. . . . And hence according to the mentioned order of the three
operations, the book of the Predicaments is ordered to the book of Perihermenias, which is ordered to the Prior Analytics and the following." St.
Thomas repeats this opinion in the opening lecture of his commentary
on the Posterior Analytics. Cardinal Cajetan was also of the same mind
and emphatically so. He writes in the Prologue to his commentary on
Aristotle's Categories: "The order of this work among other logical ones
is that there ought to be given to it first place absolutely .... " Finally,

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there can be advanced the testimony of John of St. Thomas in his work
entitled Questiones Disputandae. This famous commentator advances many
arguments in favor of the order proposed by Aristotle. However, they
would be too long to quote here.
Just one example of the lack of logic in the present method of teaching
the discipline will be cited. In Formal Logic the student is taught the
opposition of propositions which necessarily includes notions on contrariety and contradiction. If the pupil has difficulty on this point in
logic, and he does, cannot the fault be traced to the fact that this topic
of opposition is treated in the Categories which, under the present system,
will not be touched until Material Logic is reached, if it is reached? With
no moorings to cling to, the doctrine of opposition of propositions is a
pure memory task. Actually it should reenforce the material learned from
the Categories.
All this is unfortunate enough, but there also exists the most amazing
confusion between logic and psychology that one could imagine possible.
This is clear to anyone who has checked manuals written in the last fifty
years. Half the time one wonders what the authors considered to be the
formal object of logic since they wander, as does A. E. Mander, from
logic t.o psychology to epistemology and back occasionally to logic to begin
the cycle anew. Such divergence from the Thomistic teaching can also
prove embarrassing. When one considers that men, who do not profess
explicit allegiance to the Angelic Doctor but are recognized as genuine
Aristotelians, maintain the distinction between logic and the other branches
of philosophy, he may begin to wonder whether St. Thomas did not himself
change Aristotle. Morris Cohen and Ernest Nagel in their An Introduction
to Logic and Scientific Method mince no words in making evident their
position. Repeatedly they deny any identification of logic with psychology.
Those who would remain faithful to the Aristotelian-Thomistic logic in this
regard could profit much by their example.
The way to teach logic then is to return to the Organon of Aristotle.
The Greek was a good teacher. Attempts to improve on his mode of
procedure have resulted in the sad state of affairs in which we now see
his logic-frowned upon, considered an heirloom of Medieval Scholasticism.
Following the leadership of Aristotle, logic should be taught in this way:
first there would be a treatment based on the Categories. Cajetan
maintains in his commentary on this book that its doctrine is not only
necessary to logic as a part of it, but also that without it the other sciences
and doctrines cannot be explained. Next wouid come the Perihermenias
and the Prior Analytics. Dr. McCall's excellent volume would supply
very well here. Having come this far, the next item, and let it be always
emphasized, would be the whole purpose of logic, namely, the Posterior
Analytics. This is the doctrine proper on demonstration. Finally, by way

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517

of completion, would be considered the Topics which is concerned mainly
with Dialectics, and lastly the work on Sophistical, Refutations. For the
latter two, Dr. Mander's book would afford some valuable matter and serve
ultimately as a model for a book that would put rationality into this
irrational and irreverent age. In this way, logic will regain its old vitality
and become a real force in shaping the world. Logic will thus help to lead
man to the Logos Who is the beginning and the end.
RAYMOND SMITH, O.P.
Dominican H OU8e of Studiu.
Waahington, D. C.

Lions under the Throne. By CHARLES P. CURTIS, JR. Boston. Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1947. Pp. 377, with index. $3.50.
When the Constitution of the United States created three co-ordinate
branches of government, it expected one of them, the judiciary, to occupy
the position of guardians of the law: lions, but lions under the throne.
This is the thesis advanced by Charles P. Curtis, Jr., in a volume which
takes its title from Francis Bacon's" Essay on Judicature." An explanation
of the title, badly needed by the sorely tried reader, is given on page 165.
the whole legal philosophy of Mr. Curtis is presented in two
On page
sentences. Both of these pages deserve specific mention, because they
contain words of clarity shining by contrast with vast stretches of the
remainder of the book.
Since its appearance in the spring, Curtis' book has been generally
hailed as a real achievement, a valuable study of the Supreme Court.
This, in fact, is what its sub-title claims that it is. It is almost impossible
to understand how any reviewer, no matter how superficially familiar with
the achievements or the history of the Court, could give an unqualifiedly
favorable judgment on a book as crowded with grave defects as this is.
There are errors of fact and errors of inference; strange and unintelligible
grammatical expressions are used; arguments are advanced on both sides of
questions, and there is no evidence that the author realizes his inconsistency,
or would attempt to resolve it if he did become aware of it. It should be
plain that the volume is inaccurate, inadequate, and to a great extent
pernicious. Its worthier features, however, should be mentioned before a
detailed consideration of less worthy ones is undertaken.
There are occasions on which quick references need to be made to the
factual background of certain leading cases decided by the Supreme Court.
For those occasions, Lions under the Throne contain short and usually
accurate summaries of this kind of material; they should prove serviceable

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for occasions on which extensive research into case histories is not essential.
For the period before the Civil War, there is very little discussion of cases,
largely because Curtis' purpose is to show how the Court has changed its
interpretations since 1865,. Following that date, however, and employing
much the same procedure as that which might be used for a series of
informal lectures on subjects connected with the Constitution, he explores
the hundred or more decisions which he believes are particularly significant.
}'or his examination of pertinent facts behind the decisions, for his listing
of biographical details concerning the Justices who have occupied positions
on the Court during the last quarter-century, and for his inclusion of the
Constitution of the United States as an appendix to his study, Mr. Curtis
is to be congratulated. No other features of his book contain so much
merit, and it is particularly to be note<;! that his flippant manner in the
preface, bibliography, and notes lessens considerably the value of each.
Curtis treats the whole post-Civil War history of the Court as does
a guide touring the Supreme Court building. Any visitor to Washington is
expected to view this building, and to tour its halls and apartments under
the care of a guide who points out special features of each part of the
premises. His stories are fascinatingly colorful; one 1succeeds the other so
rapidly that the visitor is either enthralled or stupefied, according to his
temperament. Questions asked by his fellow tourists are most accommodatingly answered, usually with a wealth of additional biographical or historical material. The visitor is usually well satisfied-unless he returns for
a second or a third visit. Then he finds the same procedure repeated in
the same manner and with the same details-but these are not always
applied to the same persons or places. The guides are so accommodating
that they will apply the anecdotes wherever they believe their audience
will find them most appealing. Curtis treats the Court in this manner;
it seems never to matter to him that he has just applied to one case or
one Justice a remark for which he now has a new application. He refers
slightingly to the seductiveness of the cliche, but he uses it wherever it
suits him, and whatever it is.
The comparison between Curtis and a guide to the Supreme Court
building is ineluctable. Both really deal with non-essentials; in both, there
is the same mingling of important facts with irrelevant details, the same
almost desperate effort to breathe life into what each obviously conceives
as a dry-as-dust legal atmosphere. Perhaps the only corrective to this
attitude can be applied by the Court itself, which is surely badly served
by such bungling, self-appointed apologists as Curtis. What is added to
a discussion of the Schechter case, for example, by saying that Mr. Justice
Stone looked pleased as the Court assembled, perhaps because of the
cherry blossoms outside? There is certainly no new light thrown on the
decision by this remark, but a great deal is cast upon Curtis' knowledge

BOOK REVIEWS

519

of botanical phenomena. On the date given, there could have been no
cherry blossoms anywhere in Washington, and particularly not around
the court. Again we read that Mrs. Hughes appeared in the courtroom on
12 April 1937. Only the bare statement is made, and what significance
her presence had, if any, is left to the reader's imagination. In the same
way, Curtis remarks that, in the Jones and Laughlin case, McReynolds
spoke extemporaneously and in a loud voice. Unless he makes this ob!!ervation for the purpose of showing McReynolds in an unfavorable light, a
quite logical inference, there is again no reason that Curtis might not
better have allowed the Supreme Court guides to do their own work.
The fact, however, that he adopts this attitude is indicative of a fault
which goes much deeper than superficiality of treatment. Throughout
his study, Curtis seems to have a real contempt for his reader, and this
merely because he is a reader. It is as though the author descended from
his own Olympian heights to explain matters of great importance to small,
ill-educated minds, for whom he must couch his wisdom in simplified
concepts, appealing by their simplicity and color to assumed juvenility.
All of these features are sufficiently deplorable in a purportedly serious
study of an institution like the Supreme Court; even more objectionable
is the attitude underlying such an approach. While occasionally the author
gives evidence of really sound judgment, as when he remarks that: " You
do not have to be a lawyer to recognize the necessity of having a sound
and independent system of courts and justices," (Page 290) his meaning
is far from being lucid and irrefutable. What Curtis means by a sound
and independent system would not secure universal agreement. No Justice
is really sound and independent, he contends, if his thinking is conceptual
(here one might confusedly inquire what else it could be), and for this
reason he declares that only Holmes had a true understanding of the
Court's function.
Marshall, to give just one example of Curtis' thought, was far from
being sound and independent. To prove his contention that Marshall was
far from being the able jurist he is generally considered, the author
examines the famous decision in the case of M'Culloch v. Maryland. He
asserts that Marshall deliberately ignored the provision of the Maryland
law which declared that state banks were to be taxed as well as national
banks, and that Marshall's decision, which came to be the controlling one
in the whole field of national taxation, was dictated purely by his concept
of what ought to be the relation of national and state governments.
Putting aside the surely debatable question of Marshall's right to proceed
in this manner, we may inquire into the concept which dominates Curtis'
mind. His description of the Maryland statute is exceedingly inaccurate,
and his account of the decision is therefore grossly unfair to Marshall.
The Maryland law in question provided that all banks not chartered by

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the state be taxed; obviously there was only one such bank, that instrumentality of the national government whose constitutional existence Marshall upheld. It would seem that the Maryland statute was one of the
earliest examples of classification: viz., that legal device of artificially
grouping corporate entities in a state for the purpose of taxation or other
legislative action. But Mr. Curtis' apparent ignorance of this basic
principle of jurisprudence called classification is far less disconcerting
than his approbation of a deliberate distortion of the Chief Justice's words.
After explaining what he conceives to be Marshall's false position in
this tax case, Curtis quotes the eminent Chief Justice's words to the
effect that " the power to tax involves the power to destroy " (Page 206.)
Two pages later he reproduces a portion of a Holmes opinion in which the
latter declares that Marshall said the taxing power is the power to destroy.
Curtis not only does not correct Holmes's very serious distortion of
Marshall's words, he makes them the foundation of his own attack upon
the whole approach of the Court to the matter of taxation. Nothing could
be more illustrative of the methods used by Curtis and Holmes, nor of
the validity of many of their conclusions.
Another legal concept which seems to be beyond Curtis' understanding
is that by which the Court has declared that it alone can determine the
question of separability: viz., that property of a statute which makes its
parts susceptible of separate consideration and separable constitutionality.
Curtis fails to see that, in declaring the invalidity of NRA legislation,
the Court did not say that that separability provisions in an act would be
ignored upon judicial presentation; on the contrary, the Court declared
that it would have to weigh such provisions just as it weighs any other
provisions of a statute. If parts of the act are separable when measured
against the Constitution, the Court will so declare; otherwise, the whole
act stands or falls together. Denial of separability does not necessarily
condemn an act; it may operate equally well to sustain it. What is
mystifying to any reader here is that Curtis would allow Congress to be
the sole judge of the validity of any other type or portion of legislation.
Here again there is evidence of his desire to have satisfaction both ways,
just as long as it is he who is satisfied.
He exemplifies this tendency when he refers (pages 114-115) to Hughes
as " the wisest of our elder statesmen," and charges by innuendo (pages
126-7) that Hughes joined the majority in the Butler case simply to avoid
another 5-4 decision. Either his opinion of elder statesmen is so poor that
he sees nothing incompatible between his characterization and Hughes'
action, or his opinion of Hughes suffered a marked diminution within a few
pages. There is always the strong probability, of course, that Hughes
actually voted with the majority because he agreed with it on principle.
Mr. Curtis condemns principles out-of-hand.

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521

It is this objection of the use of any principle or set of principles
which makes Mr. Curtis' book so dangerous, and so bewildering. Not even
in his own words, that the Court used the " right objection for the wrong
reason," can he be justified. His book, rather, is a series of objections,
often badly chosen, for no reason at all, for pure caprice. Case after
case is cited, and condemned, for no other reason than that Mr. Curtis feels
that it is bad. Since he dislikes principles so wholeheartedly, is it possible
to find some one standard on which he bases his position? There is such
a standard, but it takes assiduous search to discover it, and when discovered, it is found to be tantalizingly amorphous.
On the first page of his study, the author remarks that "Continuity
with the past is a necessity, but, as Holmes said, not a duty." This is
as logical as saying that a heart is its beats; for whom is continuity a
necessity, if for no one it is a duty? Evidently Curtis does not really
mean this, for he says (page 17) , " If the Court cannot help but choose,
it must prefer the Constitution." The Court, then, has a duty to perform,
a consideration of legislation with some standard of the past. This must
be the Constitution-but only, says Curtis, when no other standard can
be used. What sort of argument is this, and how meanly does it beg the
question of what the Court has sworn and been empowered to do?
Clearer light is cast on Mr. Curtis' views by his statement (page 21):
" A statute when it is enacted is only a project. Until it is put into
operation, who knows how it will work? " Who, indeed, but does inability
to prophesy concerning the efficiency of its operation justify anyone in
continuing: "Not until then is it itself, an operation which can be observed
and appraised." It is a temptation too strong to be resrsted to say that, by
Mr. Curtis' statement, the Supreme Court offered him no material for
observation during the recesses when decisions are written. Only when
the Court speaks is it the Court; only when Curtis writes on the Court
is he a person competent to write on the Court. But the last half of that
observation is too obviously false to need further consideration.
It would be strange, in any ordinarily scholarly work on constitutional
law, to find a statement that this is really not law at all. Yet Curtis
blithely tosses off such a remark (page 56), in a sort of parenthesis to his
discussion of stare decisis. After more than a hundred pages devoted to
sentiments of this description, Curtis finally brings out into the open
the man whose legal philosophy, if such it may be called with propriety,
has influenced him. This is Mr. Justice 'Holmes, whose laughter would
have rung from the skies, we are told, if he had heard Roberts' opinion
that " The motive of Congress is irrelevant to the validity of the legislation." Curtis himself enjoys tremendously the exquisite ridiculousness of
considering a statute by any other standard than that of expediency; on
this occasron he thinks that only the motive of Congress should be

9

BOOK REVIEWS

considered. There are other occasions where Congress requires a searching
investigation of its motives, and needs to be treated with suspicion of an
extreme kind. How is one to determine which it should be in a given
instance? By consulting popular demand or even better, by examining
Curtis' views on popular demand.
Finally, tired of obscuring his thesis with vague expressions, Curtis
openly declares (page 233) , " So the question is, Is your abstraction
useful? Does it get you anywhere you can stand on? Does the result
make sense? ... John Dewey has given us the philosophy that we
should adopt here." Thirty pages farther into this theme, he quotes
Holmes with approval as having stated that the best test of truth is its
power to get accepted. If the reception accorded this book is any criterion,
then it is surely a true book in every, sense of the word. One cannot
help noticing, however, that the means by which Curtis arrives at his
statements is the very one he criticizes so severely in others. He assumes
as correct a standard by which he seeks to measure all Court activity. The
conceptualism he decries is one he must assume, even though in inverted
fashion, before he can arrive at the conclusions he advances.
This conceptualism, in turn, since it is based on Holmes' theories
of sociological jurisprudence, enables him to apotheosize Holmes, and
to say of his dissent in Meyers v. Nebraska that it is "the necessary
approach to the whole of our immense problem." It is a mere detail that
Holmes' dissent emphasizes the alleged right of a State to ignore the
rights of parents over the education of their children, and that this
attitude is praised in almost the same breath which finds Curtis extolling
Holmes' advocacy of individual rights. Consistency matters not at all,
providing only Holmes is upheld as the champion of the democratic process.
To exemplify the conclusions he comes to concerning this process, he
formulates two rules for the Court: " Where the democratic process is
not working, and the statute in question is not its result, the Court is
free to make up its own mind without the exercise of any 1elf-restraint ";
(page 327) ". . . where the democratic process is itself attacked, the
Court should exercise less than no restraint." (page 328) To make his
meaning crystalline, he concludes: " The function of the Court, then,
includes philosophy as well as law and statesmanship. Not, you will understand, the practice of metaphysics-the more sparingly they do that the
better-but the function which Whitehead gave philosophy. 'I hold,'
he said, ' that philosophy is the critic of abstraction.' "
Both Whitehead and Curtis convict themselves out of their own mouths,
for how can one assume the position of critic without first finding and
fixing the position? The Court, if it followed Curtis' views, would
always abandon any hope of discovering immutable laws above those made
by human legislatures; it would abolish its belief in fundamental human

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528

rights; it would measure statutes only by the state of public need-but
no matter what Curtis does, he cannot make the Court do anything but
measure and weigh. The remorseless weight of every human legal system
is far too great for Curtis' strength to overturn, and even as he concludes
his argument for no standards he must admit that standards are necessary.
The sub-title of his study, then, ought to appear with quotation marks
around it. It is an inchoate, incoherent, inaccurate mass of facts, errors,
opinions, surmises, and prejudices. Holmes' mantle has surely not fallen
on Curtis' shoulders, despite the latter's idolatry of Holmes, for the
Justice could never have been guilty of such supreme contempt of his
Ieaders as would have allowed him to perpetrate such solecisms as these:
"Being a lawyer myself, you must allow me to cite authority. (Page 2)
" The fact is, when we come upon an ambiguity, we must take it to be
deliberate. Of course it may have been negligent." (Page S) " The
judicial process is a part of the operation by which the law is fitted into the
rest of law." (Page 7) "Who drives fat oxen must themselves be fat."
(Page 58) ". . . so long as that spirit could keep its feet." (Page 153)
". . . it was needless and therefore futile. If it had not been, it would
have been necessary." (Page 185) He destroys a clever argument on the
texture of decisions by a confused analogy of the opinions which are
included in the decisions with isomers, which Webster could tell him arc
not mixtures, but compounds.
In the last analysis, perhaps no one could summarize more neally
than the really distinguished constitutional historian, Andrew Cunningham
McLaughlin, the pitiful position into which Curtis, long engaged in publi<'
and semi-public functions, has placed himself by publishing this book:
" Men occupying the position of statesmen ·were free from the encumbrance
of information concerning elementary principles of law and order."
SISTER MARIE CAROLYN,

0. P.

Catholic University of America,
W aahington, D. C.

The Theory of Human Culture. By JAMES FEIBLEMAN. New York: Duell,
Sloan and Pearce, 1946. Pp. 868, with index. $5.00.

"This book marks the attempt to establish the principles of sociology,
understood as the science of culture, by employing ontology as an instrument of analysis and discovery." (p. xiii) .The sociologist may be pleased
or vexed to have his science defined as that of culture; he should look with
favor on any attempt to point out the ontological bases of sociology. There
is up.doubtedly too little consideration given to the metaphysical roots of

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BOOK REVIEWS

the subject of sociology in the maze of statistics and other experimental
data in modem sociological studies. This is not to deny the solid contributions of even some heterodox sociologists, but only to insist that sociological hypotheses based on experimental findings only, without regard for
the ontological bases, lack scientific stability.
Dr. Feibleman, however, in seeking to establish sociology as a science,
is impressed with the instrumental rather than ultimate character of
ontology. For him, "the ideal condition of knowledge ... is knowledge
cast in the form of mathematical knowledge; equations and text." (p. 845)
Metaphysics operates toward that objective in providing the categories
and general propositions effective of the organization of the field necessary
antecedently to its mathematization. Hence, the logical function rather
than the ontal status of the subject matters of metaphysics receives the
greater emphasis. This is consonant with Dr. Feibleman's own ontology.
Eschewing the panrelativism of Dewey and asserting the need of absolutes,
he affirms relations themselves as "fixed functions," "rates of change,"
the " invariant between variables." (pp. 833, 348) The familiar naturalistic
reliance upon the " method of science " yields the equally familiar location
of metaphysics as hypotheses or " posulate-sets " within the theoretical
phase of that method. (p. 335)
It is in this latter sense that Dr. Feibleman employs ontology as "an
instrument of analysis and discovery." The study of culture properly
begins with the study of the individual since culture embraces a certain
area which includes man and his world. The principles of interaction and
continuity, celebrated in instrumentalist circles, allow at once of isolation
of the individualistic elements and transition to the wider ranges of the
cosmic and social. Human nature is defined in terms of the drives toward
feeding, breeding, and inquiry, and the empirical levels of the physical,
chemical, biological, psychological and social, upon the pertinence of which
Dr. J. H. Randall, Jr. has recently cast doubt, are discriminated. Each
drive and each level is possessed of its own conditions of origin, being
and sustaining which might be described as its proper ontology, conscious
and unconscious (a doctrine which renders the term itself at least ambiguous.) On the social level particularly may be discerned that "subconsciously accepted belief of the majority of the members of a social group
respecting the ultimate nature of reality " which is denominated " the
implicit dominant ontology." (p. 75) By its means the culture of a period
or a people is organized and integrated. Viewed as a logical hypothesis
it should provide a key to analysis, a ground for criticism, a pole, initial
and terminal, for change, and, of gravest import, a basis for measurement.
(p. 847)
Dr. Feibleman's impliCit and explicit dominant ontology enforces the
limitations of his contribution. He adopts the behavioristic inversion of

BOOK REVIEWS

525

the relationship between thought and language and corroborates it only
with the usual analogies between animal and human behavior. "The
extent to which the individual is a social product is indeed astonishing.
The human individual would not be human were it not for the social
milieu . . . Association with others makes language and consequently
abstract thought and other cultural achievements possible, and these in
turn make the animal individual into the human individual." (p. 6)
Insistence upon individual and social development in this subjectiveobjective view of the dual nature of man gives an aura of fashionable
existentialism and precludes the discernment of finality and subordination
in nature. The most that can be hoped for, and all that Dr. Feibleman
envisages, is the establishment of coordinates mathematically expressed
(p. 349) The attainment of this objective is, in turn, dependent upon an
assumed determinism excluding free will in man.
The "implicit dominant ontology," perhaps precisely as implicit, is
the attitude to reality, whether of a smooth muscle or of a society, taken
in its bare and uncolored sense. To this, on the level of society, is added
the ethos or quality which colors the subjective view of reality. Where
the ontology is the extensity, the ethos is the intensity of the cultural
integration. (pp. 48-66, 346) Not only is the parity of feeling and
reasoning maintained, (p. 22) but the ultimacy of human motivation is
emphatically asserted. (p. 334) Voluntarism is hence an overt rather than
submerged trait of Dr. Feibleman's thought. (Dr. Dewey's instrumentalism
maintains a specious intellectualism in avoiding for the most part explicitation of this aspect.) Under the circumstances, the expression of
ontology and ethos is aptly named "myth." The juxtaposition of determinism and voluntarism has ever afforded an interesting project in
reconciliation. Dr. Feibleman essays the task with a distinction between
" the logical order of being or possibility and the historical order of
existence or actuality." (pp. xii, 22) The tychism resurrected by Peirce
provides nomenclature if not explanation for the contingt:ncy of the latter,
whereas the former gives ground to the effort toward quantification.
Together they restrain Dr. Feibleman, except for the imaginative construction of hypothetical generalizations, to the empirical data of positivistic science.
In organizing the mass of empirical detail that the various " social
sciences" have unearthed in the past century, Dr. Feibleman's use of
ontology even as a logical device provides illuminating observations and
interesting analogies. A similar procedure was followed by Dr. Northrup
in his popular The Meeting of East and West. Some shrewd analyses
mark the studies of the Baiga culture, aspects of the Chinese and Muslim
civilizations, and the continuity of the culture of the United States. The
effect of the diverse reactions to Hume's skepticism by continental Europe

526

BOOK REVIEWS

and by England was also noted by Dr. Northrup. In this part of the
study, Dr. Feibleman divides types of culture into seven classes, four of
which are classified as "early" and three as "advanced."
The most
advanced is the " ultra-scientific." The religious is the highest of the eafly
stages while the atheistic is the lowest of the advanced. Inasmuch as Dr.
Feibleman recognizes the ontological implications of the notion of deity as
a cosmic viewpoint, (p. 74) his acceptance of atheism as an advance over
theism may seem curious; particularly, since he asserts "the highest function of society is performed by religion." (p. 101)
Explanation can be found in the fundamental agreement of Dr. Feibleman's teaching with that of Professors Sterling Lamprecht and Sidney
Hook, differing from them, as they from each other, only in the language
adopted. Dr. Lamprecht, abstracting from the etymology of the term,
accepts theology as an integrated world view. Dr. Hook forthrightly
denies God as an unproven existence and decries the assumption of the
name as denotative of any reality susceptible of other and more pertinent
description. Dr. Feibleman negates a " science of theology " as impossible
because " the view from outside the whole of being which would be
necessary in order to analyze being as a whole" (p. 101) is impossible.
His reason is that given by Dr. Hook as frustrating the whole enterprise
of " metaphysics " and a summation of Dr. Lamprecht's rejection of the
proofs for the existence of a transcendent God. Yet each exalts religion
(as a feeling, not an institution) in paying reverence to the cosmic forces
which sustain human activity. From the enthronement of the goddess of
reason upon the altar of Notre Dame through the "religion of science"
of Comte, naturalism, even of the "new" variety, cannot forbear to
culminate in a theology nor foreswear the religious instinct of man. The
linguistic variations are nevertheless confusing to the unwary reader.
In common with many twentieth century thinkers Dr. Feibleman orientates his contribution about the focus of value. In the tradition of Scheler,
Husser!, Aloys MUller and, particularly, Nicholai Hartmann, he maintains
the objective validity of universals and values " independent of minds and
other actual things." (pp. xii,
The Platonic character of this type
of extreme objectivism has been frequently cited; that its contemporary
appearance is symptomatic of increasing awareness of the inadequacy of the
naturalistic account of the cosmos has not been so often noted. Axiologic
realism, in Dr. Feibleman's hands, becomes a compromise between a
philosophy of Being and one of Becoming. It fails in so far as it assigns to
the former a status of possibility rather than actuality and hence confuses
both logic and metaphysics with dialectics. (pp.
ff.) The step to
an ultimate grounding of reality in actuality, made by Plato, Augustine
and Berkeley, is prohibited Dr. Feibleman by his naturalism and relativism.
The actualization of Being becomes eventual. (p. 840)

BOOK REVIEWS

527

The manifestation of considerable insight into the sources of current
philosophic frustration together with acceptance of the teachings which
perpetuate that dissipation of speculative power give to The Theory of
Human Culture an appearance of unreconciled electicism. The implications
attendant upon the recognition of the reality of essence are left undeveloped; the consequences radicated in essential as distinguished from
accidental differentiation are denied; the contrived universals produced
by dialectical concern with the contingent are given parity with, if not
superiority over, the necessary natures reality reveals. The familiar theses
of naturalism are rendered inevitable: the denial of a transcendent, personal God, and of the spirituality of the soul, the affirmation of the self-.
sufficiency of nature, the exclusive ·reliance .upon the " method of science."
Yet, Dr. Feibleman perceives that the organic whole is more than the
sum of its parts (p. 4), that the historicist is an incomplete account of
the nature of things (p. 9), that change is not to be explained by change
(p. 834) . More strange, perhaps, is his equalization of inquiry with the
processes of digestion and generation, a favorite reduction of the behaviorists and instrumentalists, while rejecting the attainment of control as the
sole function of thought. (p. 327)
In terms of Aristotelianism, the book is characterized by continuous
reaching toward the speculative science ·of the Stagirite's "First Philosophy," the while blocking every avenue to true metaphysics that reason
discloses. In terms of Thomism, the profession of belief in truths and
values which constitute an order of being independent of mundane
actuality and experience and in principles eternal and immutable beyond
the conditions of change (p. 298) are a reaching for God, the while denying Him. The accusation leveled. against an outstanding anthropologist is
apropos: he contructed metaphors and then proceeded as though the
metaphors were realities. The Theory of Human Culture is a study of
reality as seen through dialectic metaphor and its principal fault is that
it never returns from the metaphor.
B. u. FAY, 0. P.
Aquinaa College,

Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Theology and Sanity. By F. J. SHEED. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1946.
Pp. 417, with index. $3.00.

In his introduction to " A History of Science " Sir William Dampier says
that " if we are to see life steadily and see it whole we need not only
science ... we need the apprehension of a sacred mystery." To tell us
about the realities of this sacred mystery Mr. Sheed has written a book,

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BOOK REVIEWS

a
desperately-needed book about reality from the standpoint of
Catholic faith. It is his contention that " sanity means living mentally in
the real world"; for this one must know, if not in full detail, at least the
minimum of truths which make up the essential outline of that reality. It
is plain to him as it must be to us that one who pilots a plane by the aid
of an automobile map only, just does not possess the sufficient knowledge
and data of the earth that he needs for such a task. Given the ordinary
circumstances of flying, involving awareness of cubic as well as surface
measurements, he must fail and be lost. The barest minimum of truth must
include a core of theology, for some of the reality of the real world is
knowable only by revelation. Mr. Sheed's concern is for the intellect not
the will, as he says, he is concerned " ••vt with sanctity but with sanity."
Knowledge is the work of the intellect; to give that mimimum of knowledge for living mentally in the real world, this book is dedicated.
Any priest who teaches adults or near-adults Catholic philosophy or
Catholic theology quickly becomes aware of the totally inadequate notions
that are his students' summary of the matters of Catholic faith. All too
often he finds it difficult for them to recollect even the simple catechism
formula which they have learned in their childhood and which is pertinent
and applicable to the occasion of his query and their answer. It becomes
evident that there is a tremendous hiatus of mental development relative
to the things of faith. Much of what they learned was, to a great extent,
a memory task; any meaning value was necessarily restricted by circumstances of age and the dominance of the imagination. Truly the faith deals
with mystery but there seems to have been little more than a futile attempt
on the part of the child to conjure up some phantasm to cover the mystery.
Because of the sheer inadequacy of the image, the child shrugged off the
whole field of religious truth, walled off and sealed his mind against any
further consideration, satisfied for the time being that these were, after
all, matters of religion and the world held so many things much more
attractive and satisfactory from the point of view of that powerful and
useful and interesting faculty, his imagination.
This state of mind is likely to endure and become more marked with the
increase of age and education. An integration of knowledge derived from
the positive and natural spheres makes its appearance unsupported by
the necessary higher integration that should flow from the fields of religion
and theology. Too often there arises a spurious conflict which would never
arise had mental development in the realm of theology kept pace with
the natural disciplines. The result is a form of spiritual malnutrition;
external observance of religious practices makes up the religious life of
many people. Spiritual activity is often looked upon as a chore, dictated
by the remnants of childhood habit an '. custom rather than inspired and
enlivened by a keen appreciation and evaluation that should characterize

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529

the vigorous life of theologically informed and theologically developed
minds.
Unless we are to consider the prodigious concern and the incalculable
labor of the Church in her Councils and in the formulation of her
dogmatic decrees just an empty exercise devoid of any purpose, we must
conclude that the Church understands that mental development is an
inherent tendency in humanity, rJ.d that she must provide the proper
intellectual food, the presentation of divine truth for the nourishment,
support, and direction of man's mind. She knows that unless we see, to
the best of our ability, the universe as she sees it, we run the risk of
not seeing it at all, or at best, " c having not so much Catholic minds as
worldly minds with Catholic patches."
How much the defection from Catholic faith can be attributed to the
sheer ignorance of its doctrine arising from total or only partial unawareness and misunderstanding, only God can know. Yet, theology is the due
inheritance of all the children of the Church, not only in their infant and
childhood years but throughout the unfolding and developing of their
lives. It is their right and their desperate need if sanity is to prevail.
It is the maturing mind that will particularly benefit from Mr. Sheed's
book. Relying almost t>xclusivel., upon the principal " loci theologici,"
Sacred Scripture and the dogmatic definitions of the Church, he coordinates
the essential truths of the Catholic Faith under the three-fold heading of
God, Creation, Oneself. The exposition of Dogma and Moral is very simply
unified, yet Mr. Sheed's treatment of detail is exquisite. He teaches but
does not fatigue. He makes no promises of explaining away mystery, or
of freeing the reader from any mental effort, but he does very emphatically
help the willing reader to see more clearly the light and beauty and the
wonder of the revelation of God.
This reviewer was especially impressed by the first two sections. It
seems to him that the recession in the third section from the very high
standard of the first two parts stems principally from the magnitude of the
task undertaken by the author. The very extensiveness of the virtues and
gifts of the Holy Ghost is apt to impair the unity and simplicity of
exposition and also occasion more opportunities for statements not in
keeping with the Thomistic tradition which Mr. Sheed implicitly reveres.
Precisely because of our intense admiration for and express commendation
of this work and me'l"ely to clarify and not to criticize, a few observations
are in order. Defining goodness (p. 100), Mr. Sheed seems to impose some
form of creation as absolutely incumbent upon divinity by using the words
"spread outwards." He infers in an illustration (p. 159) that Adam and
Eve by reason of the fall lost their freedom of will, in face of passion; yet
he takes pains in the following paragraph to assert that freedom. He says
that " with Faith there enters the soul the whole of our supernatural

530

BOOK REVIEWS

equipment
" (p. 355) , rather than with sanctifying grace. He places
Temperance and Fortitude (p. 360) in the will rather than in the concupiscible and irascible appetites. In discussing law (p. 369) , it becomes a
matter of will, not reason, and generally throughout this section there is
a looseness of expression implying Voluntarism though the explanations
invariably are couched in terms of reason and intellect. There is definite
contradiction in countenancing the co-existence of a natural habit of sin
with the supernatural habits of grace and virtue in one and the same
faculty (p. 394.) Finally, the virtue of chastity (p. 400) is identified with
mere physical virginity.
Even with these reservations we most heartily recomme11d " Theology
and Sanity " not only to priests and seminarians but to all who are looking
for an illuminating exposition of central Catholic thought above the simple
level of the Catechism.
CLEMENT KEARNEY,

Dominican House of Studies.

Washington, D. C.

0. P.

BRIEF NOTICES
Eve and the Gryphon. By GERALD VANN, O.P. Oxford: Blackfriars Publications, 1946. Pp. 71. 6/-.
The Gryphon is defined as a fabulous creature half lion, half eagle. In
these conferences given by Father Vann, 0. P. to St. Joan's Alliance, Oxford,
on the vocation of woman in the modern world, the inspiration that
women must be to men is brought forth with this underlying current that
while " the lips are the lips of a woman, the smile is the smile of Christ."
In other words, a woman's vocation as a wife and a mother, is to lead men
to Christ. Through prayer and detachment women must learn to love the
world in God and desire to serve it. They must fulfill in themselves the
vocation of tears for if they have the heart of Christ they will have the
compassion of Christ.
Four conferences are contained in this brief but most provocative study.
Through St. Catherine of Sienna women can learn of prayer, detachment,
and what it means to have the heart of Christ. Through St. Monica they
learn the secret of tears and compassion. The Mother of God will tell
them of the vocation of Motherhood, and Eve who turned things to herself
through selfishness will tell the modern woman that she must turn things to
Christ, that her eyes must be fastened on the Gryphon, Christ, Who in
loving the world died for it.
No woman, eager to fulfill her role as wife and mother, can read these
talks of Father Vann without being moved to the sublimity of her vocation.
The lay apostolate will open up to her the necessity of a detachment whereby the more she loves God the more will she love others because the more
will she share in God's love of others. False love will be stripped away
and in the true love of others, because of the love of God, women will
achieve their vocation.
Our contemporary world in seeking the emancipation of women has been
led into strange and erroneous interpretations of the role married women
must play in life. This book is an exhilarating breath of the role theology
plays not with the facts of married life but with the theological principles
of marriage. It contains a vital spiritual message and uplift for all married
women.

The Meaning of Existence. By CHARLES DUELL KEAN. New York: Harper,
1947. Pp. 222, with index. $3.00.
This work, which the author acknowledges to be written in the tradition
of Kierkegaard, is an appeal for the reconstruction of the modern world

531

532

BRIEF NOTICES

through a return to the meaning of existence exemplified in the Gospels.
The factors in such a reconstruction, according to the author, are on three
levels: history, intellect, and existence.
History, where man meets nature and his fellow-men, is taken as it
" properly refers to the institutional nature of human affairs." (p. 38)
Here man finds himself a servant, formed by fate and responding by
necessity. The intellect attempts to transcend history by the categories of
memory, anticipation, critical judgment, and creativity. But in the end,
the struggle to dominate history only overlays it with intellectual categories
that, like Kantian forms, do not meet historical r-<tlity on its own level
and never resolve historical problems. Hence, the third category, that of
existence, comes into play as a bid for peace.
Existence is the mystery of tragedy, anxiety, death, and guilt which,
seeks final solution in religion. The essence of religion is faith which,
as might be expected from a Kierkegaardian, is related to action by an
almost Lutheran link. Ineffable, existence can only be approached by
myth-as unhappy a term here as it is in Jaspers to an orthodox reader
but consistent with a Kierkegaardian ontology. "Myth," says Kean," is the
description of man's existence in terms of a story related to history but
oriented toward eternity." (p. 155) The Christian myth is humanly reconstructive, the author adds, not because it eliminates the sense of tragedy
but deepens it by its challenges, questions, oppressions, by its promises
of only limited and momentary success.
The chief criticism of this book is its inductive character which extends
to the borderland where psychology must be completed by ethics and where
original sin, a fact which only a theologian and not an inductive philosopher
can explore, begins to make its appearance. Kierkegaard and his existentialist descendants of our day are at one with the discursive scientist in his
view of being as inert, when they begin, as they do, with a form of the
cogito and attempt to think outward, by a type of induction, toward the
universal. In such a procedure, of course, the universal and transcendent
realities are undiscoverable. If the measure of being and value is the
existence of the cogitator, then the ultimates must remain in utter existential darkness and the intellect can enlighten only obliqutly and as
a myth.
The author, using his inductive approach, seems to conceive of religion
psychologically, as satisfying man's needs, instead of as a body of truth
to which the intellect assents, however it may be moved. As an intellectual
act of assent, faith is not on the same level with guilt, works, and
reconstruction but shows the guilt redeemed, the works necessary, and the
reconstruction efficacious. The Christian philosopher of history is not
Kierkegaard but Augustine.

BRIEF NOTICES

588

Het Spiritualistisck Existentialisme van Louis Lavelle. By B. M. I, DELFGAAUW. Amsterdam: N. V. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij,
1947. Pp. 137, with index.
De J. P. Sarte a L. Lavelle. By GoNZAGUE True. Paris:
Pp. 220.

Tissot, 1946.

The Delfgaauw volume is the first full-dress exposition and criticism
of Lavelle's thought to make its appearance. Written by a scholastic, the
book is enhanced by a summary, in French, of its contents, Lavelle's statement on the author's criticism, and the correspondence between Lavelle
and Delfgaauw on problems which the book raised.
Delfgaauw's opinion, like that of Lavelle's eariler critics, is that a
pantheistic universe results from the " univocity " of being. The author's
judgment may be challenged in view of Lavelle's constant insistence that
God could not give man being without giving him liberty, i.e., independence.
The exterior world, a form in which God (le Tout) appears to us, is by
its very character of given-ness a type of imitation of God rather than
God himself.
Lavelle's counter-statement is interesting as a clarification of the terms
existence and being, as used in his present vocabulary, a clarification that
is achieved to an even greater extent in Lavelle's most recent book,
L'Introduction
!'Ontologie.
True, writing from the viewpoint of a moralist, has provided a comparative sketch of two of the three leading currents in contemporary French
thought. Sartre's world, the product of what the author aptly dubs " mental
acrobatics," is presented as a yacuum, dominated by nothing-ness and
allowing only of despair. Lavelle's universe is a plenum, where the greatness of man, a participator in God's own interiority, is the seal of his joy
and his optimism. The difference between Sartre and Lavelle is the
difference between being and nothingness.

a

BOOKS RECEIVED
Allan, D. M., The Realm of Personality. Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury,
1947. Pp.
with index.
Anderson, M., Off Broadway. New York: William Sloane Associates, 1947.
Pp. 91.
Baykov, A., The Development of the Soviet Economic System. New York:
Macmillan, 1947. Pp. 530, with index. $6.00.
Bryson, L., Finkelstein, L., Maciver, R., Approaches to Group Understanding. New York: Harper, 1947. Pp. 883, with index. $5.00.
Carnap, R., Meaning and Necessity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1947. Pp.
with index. $5.00.
Claus Schedl, U., Die Psalmen. Wein: Herder, 1946. Pp.
Dempf, A., Die Krisis des Fortschrittsglaubens. Wein: Herder, 1947. Pp.
40. S 3, S fr. 1.80.
Di Palo, L. Q., L'Altro Mondo. Padua: Casa Editrice Cedam, 1947. Pp.
776. L. 1500.
Dodge, G. H., The Political Theory of the Huguenots of the Dispersion.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1947. Pp.
with index.
$3.50.
Farrell, J. T., Literature and Morality. New York: Vanguard Press, 1947.
Pp.
$3.00.
Fausset, H., Poets and Pundits. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947.
Pp. 319. $3.50.
Fergusson, H., People and Power. New York: Morrow, 1947. Pp.
$3.00.
Garrigou-Lagrange, R., La Synthese Thomiste. Paris: Desch!e de Brouwer,
1947. Pp. 739, with bibliography.
Garrigou-Lagrange, R., The Three Ages of the Interior Life. St. Louis:
Herder, 1947. Pp. 517, with index. $5.00.
Garrigou-Lagrange, R., De Christo Salvatore. Turin: Berruti, 1945. Pp.
549, with index.
Hacker, T. M., The Shaping of American Tradition. New York: Columbia
vol.). $7.50.
University Press, 1947. Pp.
Hammond, R., The Philosophy of Alfarabi and its Influence on Medieval
Thought. Cynthiana, Ky.: Hobson Book Press, 1947. Pp. 55 .. $1.50.
Harriman, P. L., Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Philosophical
Library, 1947. Pp. 364. $5.00.
Heagney, H. J., Good Stories. St. Nazianz, Wis.: Salvatorian Press, 1947.
Pp.
Hippolyte de Rome, Commentaire sur Daniel. (Texte grec, introduction de

534

BOOKS RECEIVED

535

B. Bardy, traduction de M. Lefevre. Collection" Sources Chretiennes,"
14) Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1947. Pp. 402, with index. Fr. 450.
Hocking, W. E., Freedom of the Press. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1947. Pp. 252, with index. $3.00.
Kennedy, H. A. S., Mrs. Eddy. San Francisco: Farallon Press, 1947. Pp.
521, with index. $5.50.
Klein, L. R., The Keynesian Revolution. New. York: Macmillan, 1947.
Pp. 226, with index. $3.50.
Labourdette, M., Nicolas, M., Bruckberger, R., Dialogue Theologique.
Montpellier, France: Causse, Graille et Castelnau, 1947. Pp. 151.
Lewis, C. 1., An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. La Salle, lll.: Open
Court, 1947. Pp. 588, with index. $6.00.
Lottin, 0., Principes de Morale. Louvain: Editions du Mont Cesar, 1947.
Tome 1: "Expose systematique."' Pp. 344. 225 fr. belges. Tome II:
Complements de doctrine et d'histoire." Pp. 277. 175 fr. belges.
Manser, G., Angewandtes Naturrecht. Freiburg, Switzerland: Paulusverlag,
1947. Pp. 182. Fr. 5.
Masnovo, A., Da Guglielmo d'Auvergne aS. Tommaso d'Aquino. Milan:
Societa Editrice "Vita e Pensiero," 1945-46. Pp. 547. (3 vols.)
Murphy, L., Silver Glade. St. Nazianz, Wis.: Salvatorian Press, 1947. Pp.
256.
Nautin, P., Je crois l'Esprit saint dans la sainte Eglise pour la resurrection de la chair. (Collection "Unam Sanctam," 17.) Paris: Editions
du Cerf, 1947. Pp. 69. Fr. 90.
Norborg, C., Operation Moscow. New York: Dutton, 1947. Pp. 319.

a

$3.50.

Nutting, W. D., Reclamation of Independence. Nevada City, Calif.: Berliner and Lanigan, 1947. Pp. 198. $3.00.
·
Pope, L. (ed.), Labor's Relation to Church and Community. New York:
Harper, 1947. Pp. 190, with index. $2.50.
Rea, J. E., The Common Priesthood of the Members of the Mystical Body.
Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1947. Pp. 251, with index. $3.50.
Reichenbach, H., Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: Macmillan,
1947. Pp. 457, with index. $5.00.
Rhine, J. B., The .Reach of the Mind. New York: William Sloane Associates, 1947. Pp. 234, with index. $3.50.
Rice, F., The Wisdom of God. New York: Declan McMullen, 1947. Pp.
116. $1.75.
Romanell, P., Croce versus Gentile. New York: Vanni, 1946. Pp. 74. $2.00.
Rommen, H. A., The Natural Law. St. Louis: Harder, 1947. Pp. 299, with
index. $4.00.
Sartre, J., The Age of Reason. New York: Knopf, 1947. Pp. 397. $3.00.
Sartre, J., Existentialism. New York: Philosophical Library, 1947. Pp. 92,
with index. $2.75.

536

BOOKS RECEIVED

Scheeben, M. J., Mariology. (Vol. II.) St. Louis: Herder, 1947. Pp. 287,
with index. $3.00.
Silverman, H. L., Philosophy: its significance in contemporary civilization.
Boston: Bruce Humphries, 1947. Pp. 46. $2.00.
Simpson, C. A., Revelation and Response in the Old Testament. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1947. Pp. 206, with index. $2.50.
Sorokin, P. A., Society, Culture, and Personality. New York: Harper, 1947.
Pp. 742, with index. $5.00.
Taft, C. P., Why I am for the Church. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1947.
Pp. 103. $2.25.
Tsanoff, R. A., Ethics. New York: Harper, 1947. Pp. 399, with index.
$3.50.
Vann, G., Saint Thomas Aquinas. New York: Benziger, 1947. Pp. 212.
$3.00.
Volken, L., Der Glaube bei Emil Brunner. Freiburg, Switzerland: Paulusverlag, 1947. Pp. 241.
Vonier, A., L'Esprit et l'Epouse. (Traduction de Limal et Laine. Coiiection " Unam Sanctam," 16.) Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1947. Pp. 217.
Fr. 150.
Weldon, T. D., States and Morals. New York: Whittlesey House, 1947.
Pp. 312, with index. $3.00.
Wilson, A., Pardon and Peace. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1947. Pp.
257. $2.50.

INDICES OF VOLUME X (1947)
INDEX OF AUTHORS
PAGE

ALLERs, R. Review of Prevoir et Savoir, by Y. Simon
fl6fl
---. Review of Religion of a Scientist, by G. Fechner
267
---. Review of The Idea of Perfection in the Western World, by
M. Foss
502
BLONDEL, M. The Inconsistency of Jean Paul Sartre's Logic
393
BoND, L. M. The Effect of Bodily Temperament on Psychical Characteristics (Part I)
423
CoNLON, W. M. The Certitude of Hope .
75, flfl6
CoNSIDINE, J. S. Review of The Origins of Christian Supernaturalism,
by S. J. Case .
349
DoNLAN, T. C. The Beauty of God
185
FARRELL, W. Twentieth Century Apostle
133
FAY, B. U. Review of The Theory of Human Culture, by James
523
Feibleman .
GILLIS, J. R. The Case for Confirmation
159
HENNESSY, T. E. D. The Fatherhood of the Priest
fl71
HEss, M. W. Language and Sense Perception
56
---. Review of Signs, Language and Behavior, by Charles Morris fl65
KEARNEY, J. C. Review of Theology and Sanity, by F. Sheed
527
KERR, W. Review of Meaning and Truth in the Arts, by J. Hospers 365
MARIE CAROLYN, SISTER, 0. P. Review of Marxism and the Demo125
cratic Tradition, by A. Landy .
---. Review of Lions Under the Throne, by C. Curtis, Jr.
517
McGUINESS, I. Review of The Existence of God, by E. G. Jay and
Does God Exist? by A. t. Taylor .
379
---. Review of Cicero in i "'e Courtroom of St. Thomas Aquinas,
by E. K. Rand
120
334
McNicHOLL, A. J. Sacramental 'ignification .
MuN-oz, H. The International Community According to Francis de
Vitoria .
I
OESTERLE, J. A. Review of The Myth of the State, by E. Cassirer
394
RYAN, J. K. Review of Spinoza, Portrait of a Spiritual Hero, by
R. Kayser
382
SMITH, R. Review of Logic for the Millions, by A. E. Mander; Basic
Logic, by R. J. McCall .
509
SMITH, V. Review of The Meeting of East and West, by F. S. C.
Northrop
253

537

538

INDICES

OF VOLUME

X

(1947)

PAGE
Toward a Philosophy of Physical Instruments
307
Review of An Introduction to Peirce's Philosophy, by J.
Feibleman .
371
VAN DER PLOEG, J. The Place of Holy. Scripture in the Theology of
St. Thomas
398

---.
---.

INDEX OF ARTICLES
Apostle, Twentieth Century --. W. FARRELL .
133
Beauty, The -- of God. T. C. DoNLAN
185
Bodily Temperament, The Effect of -- oli Psychical Characteristics.
L. M. BoND
423
Case, The -- For Confirmation. J. R. GILLIS
159
Certitude, The-- of Hope. W. M. CoNLON
75,226
Confirmation, The Case for --. J. R. GILLIS
159
Fatherhood, The -- of the Priest. T. HENNESSY
271
God, The Beauty of--. T. C. DoNLAN
185
Holy Scripture, The Place of -- in the Theology of St. Thomas.
J. VAN DER PLOEG
398
Hope, the Certitude of --. W. M. CoNLON
75,226
Instruments, Toward a Philosophy of Physical --. V. SMITH
307
International Community, The-- According to Francis de Vitoria.
H.Mu:Noz .
1
Language and Sense Perception. M. H. HEss
56
Logic, The Inconsistency of Jean Paul Sartre's --. M. BLONDEL 393
Philosophy of Physical Instruments, Towards a --. v. SMITH
307
Priest, The Fatherhood of --. T. HENNESSY
271
Psychical Characteristics, The Effect of Bodily Temperament on --.
L. M. BoND
423
St. Thomas, The Place of Holy Scripture in the Theology of --.
J. VAN DER PLOEG
398
334
Sacramental Signification. A. J. McNICHOLL
393
Sartre's, The Inconsistency of Jean Paul-- Logic. M. BLONDEL
Sense Perception, Sacramental--.
A. J. McNICHOLL
334
Theology of St. Thomas, The Place of Holy Scripture in --. J. VAN
DER PLOEG .
398
Twentieth Century Apostle. W. FARRELL
133
Vi tori:>, Francis de, International Community According to --. H.
Mu:Noz .
1

INDICES OF VOLUME X

(1947)

539

INDEX OF BOOK REVIEWS
CASE, S. J. The Origins of Christian Supernaturalism (J. S. Considine)
CASsiRER, E. The Myth of the State (J. Oesterle)
CURTIS, C. P. Lions Under the Throne (Sr. M. Carolyn)
FECHNER, G. Religion of a Scientist (R. Allers)
FEIBLEMAN, J. An Introduction to Peirce's Philosophy (V. Smith)
--. The Theory of Human Culture (B. U. Fay)
Foss, M. The Idea of Perfection in the Western World (R. Allers)
HosPERS, J. Meaning and Truth in the Arts (W. Kerr)
JAY, E. G. The Existence of God (1. McGuiness)
KAYSER, R. Spinoza, Portrait of a Spiritual Hero (J. K. Ryan)
LANDY, R. Marxism and the Democratic Tradition (Sr. M. Carolyn)
MANDER, A. E. Logic for the Millions (R. Smith)
MoRRIS, C. Signa, Language and Behavior (W. H. Hess)
McCALL, R. J. Basic Logic (R. Smith)
NoRTHROP, F. S.C. The Meeting of Eaat and West (V. Smith)
RAND, E. K. Cicero in the Courtroom of St. Tkomaa Aquinas
(1. McGUINNEss)
SHEED, F. J. Theology and Sanity (J. C. Kearney)
SIMoN, Y. Prevoir et Savoir (R. Allers) .
TAYLOR, A. E. Does God Exist? (1. McGuiness)

END OF VoLUME X

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855
517
267
871
528
502
865
879
882
125
509
265
509
258
120
527
262
879