MILWAUKEE
MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Aquinas Lecture, 1937

SAINT THOMAS
AND

THE LIFE OF LEARNING
Under the Auspices of the Aristotelian Society
of Marquette University

BY

JOHN F. McCORMICK, S.J.
Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, Chicago

THIRD PRINTING

MILWAUKEE
MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1947

fiïbü ®b$tat
H. B. Ries, censor librorum
St. Francis, Wis., die 19 Martii, 1937

imprimatur ·
®l Samuel A. Stritch
Archlepiscopus Milwaukiensis
Milwaukiae, die 24 Martii, 1937

imprimi Poteet
Chicago, die 18, Martii, 1937
G. A. Fitzgibbons, S.J.
Praep. Prov. Chicagiensis

♦

THE AQUINAS LECTURES
The Aquinas lecture is given annually at
Marquette University under the auspices of
the Aristotelian Society. It was initiated in
1933 by the Rev. George H. Mahowald, S.J.,
head of the department of philosophy, for the
purpose of bringing to Milwaukee outstand­
ing leaders in Thomistic thought in both its
historical and its theoretical aspects.
This year the Aristotelian Society takes
pleasure in presenting the lecture of the Rev.
John F. McCormick, S.J., founder of the
society, former head of the department of
philosophy at Marquette, and present head of
the department of philosophy in Loyola Uni­
versity, Chicago. Father McCormick is the
author of a two volume work on Scholastic
Metaphysics and has contributed many articles
and reviews to The New Scholasticism,
Thought, The Modern Schoolman, The Com­
monweal, and other publications.
Father McCormick died July 12, 1945.

Requiescat in Pace.

St. Thomas and The Life
Of Learning
ROM the time when as a child he wearied
the monks of the abbey of Monte Cassino
with his question, * What is God?” up to the
day when he waved aside his secretary with
the words, ' I can do no more,” and left the
Summa Theologica an unfinished monument
to his genius, St. Thomas had given all his
years to a life of learning, along with what
to him was its necessary complement, the life
of teaching. For he thought it was unfair to
the student and would take from him the
greatest spur to study, if at the end of study
the right to teach was not accorded him; just
as it wOuld be discouraging to the fighting
spirit of the soldier if after the toil of battle
the fruits of victory were withdrawn.1
This life of learning along with his inner
life with God makes up his whole biography.
Not as if these were two lives lived side by
side: the life of learning and the inner life
with God. He would not have deserved to

F

ST. THOMAS AND

be called "the saintliest of the learned and
the most learned of the saints,” unless learn­
ing and holiness made one life in him, in
which there was no discord between study and
prayer, or between the labor of writing and
the repose of contemplation. St. Augustine
had sketched out the plan of such a life when
he wrote:
The charity of truth seeketh a holy leisure ;
the constraint of charity taketh up a just busi­
ness, the business, that is, of the active life.
But if no one imposes this burden upon us, we
are to be at leisure for the reception and the
contemplation of truth. If it is imposed, we
must take it up, because of the constraint of
charity. Yet, not even then must we relinquish
the delight of truth, lest the charm of truth be
withdrawn from us, and the necessity of the
active life bear us down.’

Whether St. Thomas was a bit naive when
he said: "In itself the understanding of truth
is to everyone lovable,”9 there can be no
doubt that it was lovable to him and no doubt
that he sought truth eagerly and with single­

t

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

3

ness of purpose and untiringly. Though he
came of a stock that was turbulent enough,
he had so disciplined his nature in his early
sharp battles for the possession of his soul
that he could bring to the life of learning in
the pursuit of truth the undivided energy of
a strong and clear intellect. John of Salis­
bury quotes4 a recipe for the life of learning
in which the prescriptions are: a humble mind
and eagerness in seeking truth; a life of quiet
with silent study; poverty and a foreign land.
These prescriptions we find fulfilled in the
life of St. Thomas, and conspicuously the
humble mind and eagerness in the quest of
truth. The life of quiet which he found first
among the Benedictines was destined to re­
main his for the most part, and if it was to
be interrupted at times by his family’s ambi­
tion for him, or by the political strife of the
times or by the academic squabbles of the
University of Paris, still the interruptions were
none of his seeking. And early in his student
life he began to be wonderfully sparing in his

4

ST. THOMAS AND

speech, as William of Toco tells us.5 When
the time came to speak he would show him­
self not lacking in fluency, but in the mean­
time, if the legends of his early student days
are to be trusted, he was unconcerned that his
fellow students should nickname him the
dumb ox, or that his quietness might make
him appear undistinguished in scholastic
achievement. In his eagerness in the pursuit
of truth such things would mean nothing to
him, and since truth rewards those that seek
it sincerely, the reward of his single-minded­
ness seems to have been what the same Wil­
liam of Toco tells us of him: What he grasped
in his reading he always retained.® He fulfilled
in his life even the last two of the prescriptions
quoted by John of Salisbury: poverty, which
he voluntarily chose among the preaching
friars, and the foreign lands to which his religious obedience sent him.
When St. Thomas himself is laying down
the conditions under which knowledge is to
be acquired, he tells us that man arrives at the

t

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

5

knowledge of truth in two ways: First,
through what he receives from another, and
secondly, through what he gets by his own
study. Under what he receives from another
is included what he receives from God and
what he receives from man. For what we re­
ceive from God, prayer, he tells us, is neces­
sary, according to the words of the book of
Wisdom (VII, 7), 1 asked and there came upon
me the spirit of wisdom. For what we receive
from men we must be prepared to give: at­
tentive listening, to learn from the words of
the speaker, and reading, to gather what has
been handed down in writing. But for what
we get in the second way, that is, by our own
study, meditation is required.7
In this outline of a method of learning there
is one item that merits our special notice for
this reason, if for no other, that it is often
omitted in such outlines. This is his recogni­
tion that man learns by what he receives from
God and that to receive from God prayer is
necessary. St. Thomas knows that there can

6

ST. THOMAS AND

be no learning from an outside source unless
there is in the learner an intrinsic principle
of knowledge. This principle is the intellect
and the naturally known principles of knowl­
edge. And this principle is from God.8 If it
has been so often found true that learning
puffeth up, may we not say it is because just
so often the part in learning that men receive
from God has been forgotten? The humble
mind, which the quotation of John of Salis­
bury requires for knowledge, may come at
times from the awareness of the vastness of
the unknown compared to the littleness of
what has been learned, but it has a surer foun­
dation in the consciousness that the light in
which we know is light received from above.
The elder Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote
somewhere that there are one-storey intellects,
two-storey intellects and three-storey intellects
with skylights. All fact collectors, who have
no aim beyond their facts, are one-storey men.
Two-storey men compare, reason, generalize,
using the labors of the fact collectors as well

»"wr' ·■ 1

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

7

as their own. Three-storey men idealize, imag­
ine, predict; their best illumination comes
from above, through the skylight. Now this
division is perhaps purely arbitrary and the
comparison not very significant, except for the
admission that the best intellects are open to
light from above. This was eminently true of
St. Thomas, and it does not detract at all from
his intellectual genius to concede that his best
illumination was from above. But the light
from above comes to those that ask for it.
Hence for St. Thomas the life of learning
would necessarily be united to the life of
prayer. We have among his Opuscula his
Prayer before Study, and from what he asks
in that prayer we may judge his realization of
his dependence on the light that is from
above. Give me, he asks, keenness of under­
standing and the capacity to retain, measure
and ease in learning, sublety in interpreting
and the fluent grace of speech. Set right my
beginning, direct my progress, give complete­
ness to the issue. And if there is any truth in

8

ST. THOMAS AND

the words of a recent writer that,9 "his vast
intellectual achievements are out of the nat­
ural order and appropriate to a miracle,” the
explanation would seem to lie in this, that he
sought for wisdom at its source, and his
prayer was heard.
As a result of what he was by nature and
what he became through study and prayer,
there was conspicuous in the life of learning
as St. Thomas led it a not too common phase
of the philosophic attitude which may per­
haps be described as light without heat. The
love of the immaterial good is intellectual
preference, not emotion. Now St. Thomas
took seriously the implication of the name,
philosopher, and strove to be in reality what
that name made profession of—a lover of
truth. He gave himself to the pursuit of truth
to the extent that his absorption in it elimi­
nated the personal element which is too often
the fruitful source of heat in controversy, even
in the philosophical arena. He could treat his
opponents fairly because he had no personal

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

9

hostility towards them, however much he
might abhor their doctrines. And he had no
personal hostility towards them because it was
truth he loved and not himself. He seemed
not to be concerned about his own reputation
if truth was served. Therefore he could meet
his opponents on the ground of reason and
let the decision fall to the weight of reason.

He himself has given us a picture of his
own attitude towards controversy in what he
tells us in his commentary on the De Caelo
et Mundo.10 We are to set forth the stand of
our opponent and refute it and give our rea­
sons for the other side. When we have done
this, he tells us, we are less likely to condemn
another’s view without reason, as some have
done, he adds, out of dislike for their adver­
saries. But such dislike seems to him most
unbecoming in a philosopher who sets himself
up as a searcher after the truth. To judge
obectively in matters of opinion we must
keep free from hostility to the persons whose

WM*

10

ST. THOMAS AND

opinions we oppose. Rather we must be like
arbitrators and investigators of both sides.
But even for him it was hard at times to
avoid all heat when the errors to be refuted
were especially exasperating. In the Summa™
he allowed himself the use of the superlative
stultissime to characterize David of Dinant
in his identification of God with prime mat­
ter. Such show of emotion was most unusual
with him, but here we must admit the epithet
was deserved. Then there is more than a hint
at sarcasm in his words aimed at those who
thought they had established the impossibil­
ity of eternal creation: "So those who have
so subtly established this impossibility are the
only men and wisdom began with them.”12
And his challenge to the Averroists to answer
his refutation of their error shows that his
usual restraint was not due entirely to good
nature, but that there was fighting blood in
the stock from which he came. "This is what I
have written to overthrow the aforesaid error,
not by means of documents of revelation,

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

11

but by the reasons and the text of the Philos­
opher. But if anyone, priding himself on his
science, falsely so called, wishes to say any­
thing against what I have written, let him not
speak in corners, nor before boys who are un­
able to judge in difficult matters. But let him
come into the open against this writing of
mine if he dares. He will find [as antagonists]
not only me who am the least of all, but many
others who are lovers of truth.”13 There is a
bit of heat here, but plenty of excuse for it,
since he thinks error in regard to the intellect
which nature has given us to avoid error and
find truth, is more than ordinarily unbecom­
ing (indecentior
There is something of the personal note
here too. Otherwise it is most unusual for
him to make use of the first personal pro­
noun, except in those opuscula which are an­
swers to requests for his opinions. I can think
of only one other place in which the personal
note is admitted. It is in the beginning of the
Contra Gentiles,15 but here it is without heat.

V

12

ST. THOMAS AND

He is telling us how, relying on the divine
goodness, he is about to take upon himself the
office of the wise man, however much this
may surpass his powers, and is going to set
forth the truth of the Catholic faith according
to the measure of his ability.
But as we go on studying the life of learn­
ing as exemplified in the person of St.
Thomas, we can hardly escape the growing
conviction that this is not the life of learning
as it is understood today. There is an un­
bridgeable difference between the mind of St.
Thomas and the typically modern mind. This
difference, I think, rests on the divergence of
their respective conceptions of what the life
of learning is and what it is for. For the mod­
ern mind learning is the path to the attain­
ment of truth, and the end of the path is
knowledge. For St. Thomas, though learning
is still the path to the attainment of truth,
the end of the path is wisdom. And thus both
St. Thomas and the typical modern can be
dedicated to the life of learning,, but. the out-

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

13

come of the dedication will be entirely differ­
ent in each case. The modern mind stops at
the way-station; St. Thomas goes on to the
terminus.
Perhaps we can see this difference in the
things that would be considered most worth
while to know according to St. Thomas and
according to our modern man of learning. I
do not think it is libeling the modern man of
learning to say that, since the establishment in
the days of Thomas Huxley of the dictator­
ship of what the modern calls science, those
things only are thought worth while objects
of serious pursuit as knowledge which are
amenable to the methods of science. These
are the things that are measurable and can be
submitted to the laboratory test. Such are, of
course, material things. Now these things are
many and diverse. And since science, whether
in the sense of St. Thomas or in the modern
sense does not aim any further than that
which is the ultimate end in some genus of
the knowable, and since there are many gen-

BSS8B·

14

ST. THOMAS AND

era of the knowable and therefore many ends,
there will be many sciences.18 If the end of
the path to truth is science, then, there will
be no unity of truth. I wonder if this is not
the typical modern intellectual climate: many
truths, but no Truth.
But to St. Thomas the things worth while
knowing are the higher things, and in his
mind the higher things are divine things. For
since the perfection of man is in union with
God, man should employ his intellect in con­
templation and his reason in inquiring into
divine truth.17 And even though there may
be more certainty in the sciences which have
for their subject-matter less honorable things,
still a little knowledge of the more honorable
things is better, even when less certain, of less
noble things.18 For the human intellect de­
sires more and loves and delights in the
knowledge of divine things, however little we
may be able to grasp of them, than in perfect
knowledge of lower things.1’

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

15

This is such a far remove from the attitude
of the modern mind that we find ourselves in
an entirely different intellectual atmosphere.
For the modern mind appears to have lost
sight of what Aristotle had said, that each
thing is mostly that which is principal in it,
and that man is mostly intellect, because in­
tellect is that which is principal in him. And
so it may be slow to grasp with St. Thomas
that to be devoted to the intellectual contem­
plation of truth is to have reached happiness
so far as happiness can be reached in this
life.20
But in what he thinks the life of learning
is for, St. Thomas is, if anything, further re­
moved from the modern mind. Men speak
nowadays of adding to the sum of human
knowledge as a worthy goal for such a life,
without much specific regard for what the
addition to human knowledge is, beyond a
certain liberation of the human spirit, which
the increase of knowledge is believed, per­
haps too optimistically, to achieve. The boast

16

ST. THOMAS AND

of our intellectual progress is that it has freed
man from superstition. But in putting off an
error you do not necessarily put on truth. In­
tellectual progress ought to be measured, not
just by what we have been led out of, but
especially by what we have been led into. Is
the modern mind at ease in the belief that the
end of the life of learning is agnosticism?
Ignoramus et ignorabimus is but a lame and
impotent conclusion for the heroism of untir­
ing research.
St. Thomas on his part is in no doubt about
what the life of learning is for. It is to be di­
rected towards the knowledge of God as the
ultimate happiness of man. The study of
creatures is the study of the works of God,
and should lead to a fuller recognition of the
wisdom of God, a greater reverence for. the
power of God, and a greater love for the
goodness of God as manifested in the uni­
verse. And the same study of creatures, too,
can safeguard us against errors regarding the
nature of God, which ignorance of the nature

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

17

of creatures may easily lead into. It is ignor­
ance of the nature of creatures that makes
men idolaters and plunges them into super­
stition. And therefore right knowledge of
creatures is of high importance, because right
knowledge of God depends upon it.21
St
Thomas, too, believes that advance in knowl­
edge liberates the spirit of man when it leads
him out of ignorance into the possession of
that truth which is the origin of every truth
because it is the principle of all things and the
final end of all.22 And this is wisdom, to set
all things in order with reference to the final
end of all. And here alone, in wisdom, do we
find the unity of truth.
Learning, then, as intellectual knowledge,
must take the second place to wisdom, and
that is where St. Thomas puts it. Yet he
never seeks to disparage learning, but speaks
of it always as good and desirable.23 All sci­
ence is good, he tells us, and not only good,
but also honorable. It is good because it is
the perfection of man as such. But among

ST. THOMAS AND

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

things that are good, some are praiseworthy,
because they are useful for an end but others
are honorable, because they are for them­
selves; for we pay honor to ends. In the case
of the sciences, some are practical, some spec­
ulative; the practical being for the sake of
something to be done; the speculative for
themselves. Hence the speculative sciences
are good and honorable, but the practical sci­
ences are praiseworthy only.24 Yet knowl­
edge, good as it is in itself, may be evil acci­
dentally because of consequences flowing
from it, as when man grows proud of his
knowledge or uses it to do wrong.23 And it is
better for us not to know evil things and tri­
fling things, if such knowledge occupies the
mind to the exclusion of better things, or in­
clines the will to evil.2®
And thus because there may be evil in
knowledge, even though only accidentally,
the desire to know, which St. Thomas follow­
ing Aristotle says is natural to all men, needs
to be moderated. Knowledge of truth is in­

deed the good of man. Still man’s highest
good is not found in the knowledge of any
and every truth, but in the perfect knowledge
of the highest truth. And so there may be
evil in the knowledge of some truths, because
that knowledge is not properly regulated with
reference to the knowledge of the highest
truth.27 The desire to know all, without re­
gard to the suitableness of what we learn to
the one truth that is the ultimate end, is what
St. Thomas calls the vice of curiosity.28 And
in showing how this vice may be incurred he
quotes a passage from St. Augustine which
could easily be applied to other times than St.
Augustine’s own: "There are,’’ he says, "some
who giving up the pursuit of virtue and not
knowing what God is or how great is the maj­
esty of that nature which always remains the
same, think they have accomplished some­
thing great, when with the utmost curiosity
and intensity they have inquired into this
bodily mass which we call the world. Hence
such great pride is begotten in them that they

18

19

ST. THOMAS AND

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

seem to themselves to be already dwelling in
the skies about which they so often dispute.”29
Is not this again typical of the modern in­
tellectual climate: minute knowledge about
things in nature, and agnosticism about God ?
Because it is possible for us then to desire
knowledge to our own hurt, there is need to
moderate the natural desire to know. Man is
not perfecting himself by mere indiscriminate
learning, but only by attaining knowledge
that is ordained to the first truth. The poet
was not wrong who said,

mind is the desire to know, which of itself
knows no limitation, but needs to be held in
check according to the necessary moderation
of virtue. On the side of the body is the in­
clination to shirk the labor of search after
knowledge and this slackness must be keyed
up to the tension that is demanded for a
properly regulated pursuit of truth.31
Then only do we find in knowledge the
perfection of our nature when our desire to
know is rightly tempered. And it is rightly
tempered only when in giving it scope the
knowledge which is sought after is at the
same time evaluated in the light of the su­
preme truth which is the ultimate end of life.
St. Thomas will not set the seal of approval
on a life of learning as if learning were its
own end. For him life itself would be without
unity and, as it were, at loose ends if there
could be many independent ends for human
activity. Only the life of learning that seeks
truth with wisdom as its end would measure
up to what he demands. For it is only of wis­

20

Knowledge is as food and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite.

Nor was St. Thomas wrong when he found
room among the moral virtues subordinated
to temperance for a special virtue which he
called studiousness and which is concerned
with the moderation of this desire to know.’0
But because of the complexity of human na­
ture the exercise of this virtue meets with a
conflict of inclinations. On the part of the

21

22

ST. THOMAS AND

dom that he speaks with unqualified approval,
telling us that,
Among all human pursuits the study of
wisdom is more perfect, more sublime, more
useful and more pleasant. More perfect it is
because in as much as a man gives himself to
the pursuit of wisdom, in so much has he
already won some part in true beatitude ; hence
the Wise man says, Blessed is the man that
shall continue in wisdom (Eccli. XIV, 22). It is
more sublime, because through it before all
else man approaches to the similitude of the
divine which has made all things in wisdom
(Ps. CIII, 24). And hence, since similitude is
a cause of love, the study of wisdom especially
joins man in friendship to God. For this rea­
son it is said in the book of Wisdom, that
wisdom is an infinite treasure to men, which
they that use become the friends of God
(VII, 24). And it is more useful, because
through wisdom itself is the way to the king­
dom of immortality: The desire of wisdom
bringeth to the everlasting kingdom (Wisdom
VI, 21). And it is more pleasant, because her
conversation hath no bitterness, nor her com-

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

23

pony any tediousness, hut joy and gladness
(Wisdom VIII, 16)”

And in following wisdom he finds new
meaning in the name and the profession of
the philosopher, realizing what St. Augustine
had said: "If Wisdom is God . . . then is the
true philosopher the lover of God.”33

' WH

~

ST. THOMAS AND

24

THE LIFE OF LEARNING

NOTES
1. Contra Impugnantes Dei Cultum et Religionem,
c. 2.
2.

De Civitate Dei, XIX, 19.

3.

Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 15, a. 1, ad 3.

4.

Policraticus, VII, 13-

5.

Vita, III.

6.
7.

Vita, VII, 42.

Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 180, a. 3, ad 4.

8.

Contra Gentiles, II, cap. 75.

9. George G. Leckie: Concerning Being and Es­
sence by St. Thomas, preface, xv (Appleton-Cen­
tury Co. 1937).

10.

In de Caelo et Mundo, I, xxii, 5.

11. Summa Theologica, I, q. 3, a. 7.
12. De Aeternitate Mundi contra Murmurantes.
13. De Unitate Intellectus contra Averroistas (end) .
14. De Unitate Intellectus contra Averroistas (be­
ginning).
15. Contra Gentiles, I, cap. 2.
16. Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 57, a. 2.
17. In Boethium de Trinitate, q. 2, a. 1.
18. In I de Anima, lect. 1.

19.

Contra Gentiles, III, cap. 25.

20.

In X Ethic., lect. 10.

21.
22.

Contra Gentiles, II, cap. 2 and 3.
Contra Gentiles, I, 1.

25

23. Sumina Tl.eologica, II-II, q. 167, a. 1; I-II, q.
29, a. 5.
24.

In 1 de Anima. lect. 1.

25.

26.
27.
28.

Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 167, a. 1.
Summa Theologica. I, q. 22, a. 3 ad 3.
Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 167, a. 1, and ad 1.
Ibid.

29.
30.
31.
32.
33.

De Moribus Ecclesiae, III, 21.
Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 166, a. 2.
Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 166, a. 2, ad 3·
Contra Gentiles, I, cap. 2.
De Cit itate Dei, VIII, 1.