What has happened to American is not a conspiracy It is worse than that...

http://www.sobran.com/hive/

An old book that will seem a breath of fresh air and give one a new outlook on life; not necessarily a good thing vis a vis the moral quicksand of a  secular America.

https://archive.org/stream/RedDecade_EugeneLyons/Red%20Decade%2C%20The%20-%20Eugene%20Lyons_djvu.txt

Jesus did not have faith

Article 3. Whether in Christ there was faith?

Objection 1. It would seem that there was faith in Christ. For faith is a nobler virtue than the moral virtues, e.g. temperance and liberality. Now these were in Christ, as stated above (Article 2). Much more, therefore, was there faith in Him.

Objection 2. Further, Christ did not teach virtues which He had not Himself, according to Acts 1:1: "Jesus began to do and to teach." But of Christ it is said (Hebrews 12:2) that He is "the author and finisher of our faith." Therefore there was faith in Him before all others.

Objection 3. Further, everything imperfect is excluded from the blessed. But in the blessed there is faith; for on Romans 1:17, "the justice of God is revealed therein from faith to faith," a gloss says: "From the faith of words and hope to the faith of things and sight." Therefore it would seem that in Christ also there was faith, since it implies nothing imperfect.

On the contrary, It is written (Hebrews 11:1): "Faith is the evidence of things that appear not." But there was nothing that did not appear to Christ, according to what Peter said to Him (John 21:17): "Thou knowest all things." Therefore there was no faith in Christ.

I answer that, As was said above (II-II:1:4), the object of faith is a Divine thing not seen. Now the habit of virtue, as every other habit, takes its species from the object. Hence, if we deny that the Divine thing was not seen, we exclude the very essence of faith. Now from the first moment of His conception Christ saw God's Essence fully, as will be made clear (III:34:1. Hence there could be no faith in Him.

Reply to Objection 1. Faith is a nobler virtue than the moral virtues, seeing that it has to do with nobler matter; nevertheless, it implies a certain defect with regard to that matter; and this defect was not in Christ. And hence there could be no faith in Him, although the moral virtues were in Him, since in their nature they imply no defect with regard to their matter.

Reply to Objection 2. The merit of faith consists in this—that man through obedience assents to what things he does not see, according to Romans 1:5: "For obedience to the faith in all nations for His name." Now Christ had most perfect obedience to God, according to Philippians 2:8: "Becoming obedient unto death." And hence He taught nothing pertaining to merit which He did not fulfil more perfectly Himself.

Reply to Objection 3. As a gloss says in the same place, faith is that "whereby such things as are not seen are believed." But faithin things seen is improperly so called, and only after a certain similitude with regard to the certainty and firmness of the assent.

https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4007.htm#article3

Subsists and a degradation of doctrine.

Who is and isn't a Catholic according to Saint Robert Bellarmine:

       “This one and true Church is the assembly of men bound together by the profession of the same Christian faith and the communion of the same sacraments, under the rule of the legitimate pastors, and especially that of the Roman Pontiff, the one Vicar of Christ on earth. From this definition, it is easy to infer which men belong to the Church and which do not belong to it. 

The Roman Catechism on The Catholic Church

First Part Of This Article : "I Believe In The Holy Catholic Church

The Latins, having borrowed the word ecclesia (church) from the Greeks, have transferred it, since the preaching of the Gospel, to sacred things. It becomes necessary, therefore, to explain its meaning.

"Church"

The word ecclesia (church) means a calling forth. But writers afterward used it to signify a meeting or assembly, whether the people gathered together were members of a true or of a false religion. Thus in the Acts it is written of the people of Ephesus that when the town­clerk had appeased a tumultuous assemblage he said: And if you inquire after any other matter, it may be decided in a lawful church. The Ephesians, who were worshippers of Diana, are thus called a lawful church (ecclesia). Nor are the Gentiles only, who knew not God, called a church (ecclesia); by the same name at times are also designated the councils of wicked and impious men. I have hated the church (ecclesiam) of the malignant, says the Prophet, and with the wicked I will not sit.
In common Scripture usage, however, the word was subsequently employed to signify the Christian society only, and the assemblies of the faithful; that is, of those who are called by faith to the light of truth and the knowledge of God, that, having forsaken the darkness of ignorance and error, they may worship the living and true God piously and holily, and serve Him from their whole heart. In a word, The Church, says St. Augustine, consists of the faithful dispersed throughout the world.'

Mysteries Which The Word Church Comprises

In this word are contained important mysteries. For, in the calling forth, which it signifies, we recognise at once the benignity and splendour of divine grace, and we understand that the Church is very unlike all other societies. Other bodies rest on human reason and prudence, but the Church reposes on the wisdom and counsels of God who has called us inwardly by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, who opens the hearts of men; and outwardly, through the labor and ministry of pastors and preachers.

Moreover, the end of this vocation, that is, the knowledge and possession of things eternal will be at once understood if we but remember why the faithful of the Old Law were called a Synagogue, that is, a flock for, as St. Augustine teaches, they were so called, because, like cattle, which are wont to herd together. they looked only to terrestrial and transitory goods. Wherefore, the Christian people are justly called, not a Synagogue, but a Church, because, despising earthly and passing things, they pursue only things heavenly and eternal.

Other Names Given The Church In Scripture

Many names, moreover, which are replete with mysteries, have been used to designate the Christian body. Thus, by the Apostle, it is called the house and edifice of God. If, says he to Timothy, I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth. The Church is called a house, because it is, as it were, one family governed by one father of the family, and enjoying a community of all spiritual goods.

It is also called the flock of the sheep of Christ, of which He is the door and the shepherd. It is called the spouse of Christ. I have espoused you to one husband, says the Apostle to the Corinthians, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ; and to the Ephesians: Husbands love your wives, as Christ also loved the church; and of marriage: This is a great sacrament, but I speak in Christ and in the church.

Finally, the Church is called the body of Christ, as may be seen in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians. Each of these appellations has very great influence in exciting the faithful to prove themselves worthy of the boundless clemency and goodness of God, who chose them to be the people of God.

The Parts of the Church

These things having been explained, it will be necessary to enumerate the several component parts of the Church, and to point out their difference, in order that the faithful may the better comprehend the nature, properties, gifts, and graces of God's beloved Church, and by reason of them unceasingly praise the most holy name of God.

The Church consists principally of two parts, the one called the Church triumphant; the other, the Church militant. The Church triumphant is that most glorious and happy assemblage of blessed spirits, and of those who have triumphed over the world, the flesh, and the iniquity of Satan, and are now exempt and safe from the troubles of this life and enjoy everlasting bliss. The Church militant is the society of all the faithful still dwelling on earth. It is called militant, because it wages eternal war with those implacable enemies, the world, the flesh and the devil.  (Nah, it doesn't do that anymore because that is mean and divisive).

We are not, however, to infer that there are two Churches. The Church triumphant and the Church militant are two constituent parts of one Church; one part going before, and now in the possession of its heavenly country; the other, following every day, until at length, united with our Saviour, it shall repose in endless felicity.

The Members Of The Church Militant

The Church militant is composed of two classes of persons, the good and the bad, both professing the same faith and partaking of the same Sacraments, yet differing in their manner of life and morality.
The good are those who are linked together not only by the profession of the same faith, and the participation of the same Sacraments, but also by the spirit of grace and the bond of charity. Of these St. Paul says: The Lord knoweth who are his. Who they are that compose this class we also may remotely conjecture, but we can by no means pronounce with certainty. Hence Christ the Saviour does not speak of this portion of His Church when He refers us to the Church and commands us to hear and to obey her. As this part of the Church is unknown, how could we ascertain with certainty whose decision to recur to, whose authority to obey?

The Church, therefore, as the Scriptures and the writings of the Saints testify, includes within her fold the good and the bad; and it was in this sense that St. Paul spoke of one body and one spirit. Thus understood, the Church is known and is compared to a city built on a mountain, and visible from every side. As all must yield obedience to her authority, it is necessary that she may­be known by all.

That the Church is composed of the good and the bad we learn from many parables contained in the Gospel. Thus, the kingdom of heaven, that is, the Church militant, is compared to a net cast into the sea, to a field in which tares were sown with the good grain, to a threshing floor on which the grain is mixed up with the chaff, and also to ten virgins, some of whom were wise, and some foolish. And long before, we trace a figure and resemblance of this Church in the ark of Noah, which contained not only clean, but also unclean animals.

But although the Catholic faith uniformly and truly teaches that the good and the bad belong to the Church, yet the same faith declares that the condition of both is very different. The wicked are contained in the Church, as the chaff is mingled with the grain on the threshing floor, or as dead members sometimes remain attached to a living body.

Those Who Are Not Members Of The Church

Hence there are but three classes of persons excluded from the Church's pale: infidels, heretics and schismatics, and excommunicated persons. 

Infidels are outside the Church because they never belonged to, and never knew the Church, and were never made partakers of any of her Sacraments. 

Heretics and schismatics are excluded from the Church, because they have separated from her and belong to her only as deserters belong to the army from which they have deserted. It is not, however, to be denied that they are still subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, inasmuch as they may be called before her tribunals, punished and anathematised. 

Finally, excommunicated persons are not members of the Church, because they have been cut off by her sentence from the number of her children and belong not to her communion until they repent. 

But with regard to the rest, however wicked and evil they may be, it is certain that they still belong to the Church: Of this the faithful are frequently to be reminded, in order to be convinced that, were even the lives of her ministers debased by crime, they are still within the Church, and therefore lose nothing of their power.



The Baltimore Catechism on the church

Q. 489. What is the Church?


A. The Church is the congregation of all those who profess the faith of Christ, partake of the same Sacraments, and are governed by their lawful pastors under one visible Head.


Mystici Corporis:

14. That the Church is a body is frequently asserted in the Sacred Scriptures. "Christ," says the Apostle, "is the Head of the Body of the Church."[13] If the Church is a body, it must be an unbroken unity, according to those words of Paul: "Though many we are one body in Christ."[14] But it is not enough that the Body of the Church should be an unbroken unity; it must also be something definite and perceptible to the senses as Our predecessor of happy memory, Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Satis Cognitum asserts: "the Church is visible because she is a body.[15] Hence they err in a matter of divine truth, who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, a something merely "pneumatological" as they say, by which many Christian communities, though they differ from each other in their profession of faith, are untied by an invisible bond.

15. But a body calls also for a multiplicity of members, which are linked together in such a way as to help one another. And as in the body when one member suffers, all the other members share its pain, and the healthy members come to the assistance of the ailing, so in the Church the individual members do not live for themselves alone, but also help their fellows, and all work in mutual collaboration for the common comfort and for the more perfect building up of the whole Body.

16. Again, as in nature a body is not formed by any haphazard grouping of members but must be constituted of organs, that is of members, that have not the same function and are arranged in due order; so for this reason above all the Church is called a body, that it is constituted by the coalescence of structurally untied parts, and that it has a variety of members reciprocally dependent. It is thus the Apostle describes the Church when he writes: "As in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same office: so we being many are one body in Christ, and everyone members one of another." [16]

17. One must not think, however, that this ordered or "organic" structure of the body of the Church contains only hierarchical elements and with them is complete; or, as an opposite opinion holds, that it is composed only of those who enjoy charismatic gifts - though members gifted with miraculous powers will never be lacking in the Church. That those who exercise sacred power in this Body are its chief members must be maintained uncompromisingly. It is through them, by commission of the Divine Redeemer Himself, that Christ's apostolate as Teacher, King and Priest is to endure. At the same time, when the Fathers of the Church sing the praises of this Mystical Body of Christ, with its ministries, its variety of ranks, its officers, it conditions, its orders, its duties, they are thinking not only of those who have received Holy Orders, but of all those too, who, following the evangelical counsels, pass their lives either actively among men, or hidden in the silence of the cloister, or who aim at combining the active and contemplative life according to their Institute; as also of those who, though living in the world, consecrate themselves wholeheartedly to spiritual or corporal works of mercy, and of those in the state of holy matrimony. Indeed, let this be clearly understood, especially in our days, fathers and mothers of families, those who are godparents through Baptism, and in particular those members of the laity who collaborate with the ecclesiastical hierarchy in spreading the Kingdom of the Divine Redeemer occupy an honorable, if often a lowly, place in the Christian community, and even they under the impulse of God and with His help, can reach the heights of supreme holiness, which, Jesus Christ has promised, will never be wanting to the Church.

18. Now we see that the human body is given the proper means to provide for its own life, health and growth, and for that of all its members. Similarly, the Savior of mankind out of His infinite goodness has provided in a wonderful way for His Mystical Body, endowing it with the Sacraments, so that, as though by an uninterrupted series of graces, its members should be sustained from birth to death, and that generous provision might be made for the social needs of the Church. Through the waters of Baptism those who are born into this world dead in sin are not only born again and made members of the Church, but being stamped with a spiritual seal they become able and fit to receive the other Sacraments. By the chrism of Confirmation, the faithful are given added strength to protect and defend the Church, their Mother, and the faith she has given them. In the Sacrament of Penance a saving medicine is offered for the members of the Church who have fallen into sin, not only to provide for their own health, but to remove from other members of the Mystical Body all danger of contagion, or rather to afford them an incentive to virtue, and the example of a virtuous act.

19. Nor is that all; for in the Holy Eucharist the faithful are nourished and strengthened at the same banquet and by a divine, ineffable bond are united with each other and with the Divine Head of the whole Body. Finally, like a devoted mother, the Church is at the bedside of those who are sick unto death; and if it be not always God's will that by the holy anointing she restore health to the mortal body, nevertheless she administers spiritual medicine to the wounded soul and sends new citizens to heaven - to be her new advocates - who will enjoy forever the happiness of God.

20. For the social needs of the Church Christ has provided in a particular way by the institution of two other Sacraments. Through Matrimony, in which the contracting parties are ministers of grace to each other, provision is made for the external and duly regulated increase of Christian society, and, what is of greater importance, for the correct religious education of the children, without which this Mystical Body would be in grave danger. Through Holy Orders men are set aside and consecrated to God, to offer the Sacrifice of the Eucharistic Victim, to nourish the flock of the faithful with the Bread of Angels and the food of doctrine, to guide them in the way of God's commandments and counsels and to strengthen them with all other supernatural helps.

21. In this connection it must be borne in mind that, as God at the beginning of time endowed man's body with most ample power to subject all creatures to himself, and to increase and multiply and fill the earth, so at the beginning of the Christian era, He supplied the Church with the means necessary to overcome the countless dangers and to fill not only the whole world but the realms of heaven as well.

22. Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. "For in one spirit" says the Apostle, "were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free."[17] As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith.[18] And therefore, if a man refuse to hear the Church, let him be considered - so the Lord commands - as a heathen and a publican. [19] It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit.

++++++++++++++++++++

Well, that seems quite definitive and understandable - especially take note of the bolded red, those outside the Church can not be said to be living the life of its one Divine Spirit - and all was well with this essential definition until the revolutionaries (devotees of the New Theology) came along and effected a revolution within the form of Catholicism during and after Vatican Two.

Thus, Lumen Gentium teaches:

This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, (12*) which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd,(74) and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority,(75) which He erected for all ages as "the pillar and mainstay of the truth".(76) This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him,(13*) although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.

+++++++++++++++

This new supposed definition is not an example of the development of doctrine but, rather, an example of the degradation of doctrine.

Where did the degradation come from and why did the Council refuse to teach what has always been taught about the Catholic Church when it comes to who is and isn't a member of it?

This scholar has the answer to the question as to why the Council did not teach that The Catholic Church IS the Body of Christ but, rather, substituted subsists for is:

What sensible Catholic men can read this and not respond that such a definition is not a development of doctrine but a degradation of doctrine that has led to massive confusion?

The ONE Church could also subsist elsewhere?

The Anglicans would not be required to accept Catholic Doctrine before converting?

Well, that is complete and utter bull shit heresy, plain and simple.

Racists Anonymous

Drunks figured-out they could escape culpability for their behavior by convincing the medical world their deadly sin of gluttony was a disease.

Druggies figured-out they could escape culpability for their behavior by convincing the medical world their deadly sin of gluttony was a disease.

Fornicators figured-out they could escape culpability for their behavior by convincing the medical world their deadly sin of lust was a disease.

Why are racists so slow to figure-out what they must do to escape culpability?

Racism is a disease and one ought not be criticised, punished or fired for a genetic predisposition to certain behaviors; that is to say, racists are victims of a disease as much as any other ordinary drunk, doper or fornicator.

If one wants to mount a moral stage and confess to the world that he is a racist or if he wants to take a knee before the Black Looting and Marxist (BLM) Gang and confess his putative sins have at it.

But remember while public confession is good for the polls, you are not responsible for your racist thoughts because you have a disease. Your genetic make-up is such that those thoughts you are having are not controllable unless you enter R.A. and begin treatment for your disease.

Racist Anonymous Groups (RAGs) will soon be forming once the next meeting of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manualists (The committee of the malign) identify your disease (ok, virtually nothing in any DSM is a disease; it is just a bunch of observable symptoms of social freaks noticed by putative doctors) as a legitimate disease.

Just like those who actualise the deadly sin of gluttony (Drunks and Dopers) and just like those who actualise the deadly sin of Lust (Fornicators/Sex addicts) it is only a matter of time before the genetic victims of racism are accorded the respect of suffering from a medical condition and not seen as weak men who surrendered to concupiscence.

Racist Anonymous Groups (RAGS) will help steer genetic victims towards a rich and rewarding life (RAGS to RICHES; Racist Inclinations Completely Hexed so Emotionally Stabilised)  by the consumption of massive amounts of coffee and doughnuts and repeatedly bellyaching about your parents, church and/or crummy spouse. 

O, and you'll have to successfully complete some dozen or so steps before you are healed, receive a token of appreciation every six months or so from the Medical Maoists and you may have to send Jesse Jackson some flowers and/or Jheri Curl along with a big smiley face with a Yuge "Sorry" caption.

One wonders when a real disease, like cancer, will be successfully treated by a CA Anonymous group and control the symptoms if not cure it?

ABS reached out to Angela Davis for a comment for today's post. Ms. Davis, a hero of the 1960s commie good whites, who was a professor in the History of Consciousness in the Feminist Studies Department  at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said:  WHITEY SUCKS!!!!

The Holy Holocaust. School for the soul

Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year

The Apostle and Doctor of the Gentiles here goes on, forming to the Christian life the new recruits, whom his own voice and that of his fellow-apostles, dispersed as they are throughout the world, are every day leading, by hundreds, to the fount of salvation. Although the Church is all attention to the events which are preparing for Judea, yet is she full of maternal solicitude for the great work of the training those children whom she has given to her divine Spouse. While Israel is obstinate in his fatal refusal to accept the Messiah, another family is growing up in his place; and by its docility, richly repays our Lord for all the rebellion and slights offered him by the children he had first made his chosen ones. They were the ancient people, and are jealous of others being now called to the same privilege. The contradictions of which Christ complains in the Psalm, are anything but over; and yet, thanks to the Church, the Man-God is already the Head of the Gentiles.

Admirable is the fruitfulness of the Bride; for, wonderful is the power of sanctification which she is using all through the world of various nations. Scarcely has she sprung into her beauteous existence, than she offers to her Lord and her King a new empire, consolidated in unity of love; she presents him with a generation that is all pure in the intelligence and practice of every virtue.

 It is quite true that the Holy Ghost acts directly on the souls of the newly baptized; but there is something else to be considered in the divine plan. It is this: the Word having been made flesh, and having taken to himself a Bride (which is the visible Church on earth), whom he has made his associate in the work of man’s salvation—he has willed that the invisible operation of the divine Spirit, who proceeds from him (the Word) shall not be in its normal state, unless there be added to it the extrinsic cooperation and intervention of this his Bride. Not only is the Church the depository of those all-potent formulas and mysterious rites which change man’s heart into a new soil, cleaning it from thorns and weeds, making it able to produce a hundred-fold—but she also sows the seed of the divine husbandman into that same soil, by her countless modes of teaching the Truth. To the Holy Ghost, indeed, a magnificent share is due of that fecundity and that social life of the Church; still her portion of work is exquisite; it deals with the elect taken as individuals, and consists especially in getting them to profit of the divine energies of the Sacraments which she administers, and in developing the germs of salvation which her teaching plants in their souls.

How important, then, and sublime will ever be that mission which is confided to those men who are set over particular churches, as teachers or directors of souls; they represent, to these isolated congregations, the common Mother of all the Faithful, for in her name, they really provide for the Holy Spirit those elements upon whom he is to make his all-powerful action felt. For that very same reason, woe to those times when the dispensers of the divine word, having themselves naught but halved or false principles, give but weak shriveled seed to the souls entrusted to them! The Holy Ghost is not bound to supply their insufficiency; ordinarily speaking, he will not supply it, for such is not the way established by Christ for the sanctification of the members of his Church.

The common Mother, however, has a supplementary aid for such of her children, as may be thus treated—it is her Liturgy. There they will find not only the holy Sacrifice which will support them, and the graces of the Sacrament of love which will nourish spiritual life within them,—but moreover, the surest rule of conduct, and the sublimest teachings of every virtue. Such souls as these have perhaps got the idea that the poor subjective system they have made for themselves is the royal road to perfection; but if they be of an earnest good will, desirous to find the best way, God will, some happy day, lead them to find, and finding, to appreciate the inexhaustible and divinely given treasures of the Church’s Liturgy; possessing and enriching themselves with these, they will soon put aside what the Prophet Isaias terms bread without strength, and water without power. The same Prophet would thus urge them in the Church’s name, to what is best: All ye that thirst, come to the waters! And ye that have no money, make haste, buy and eat. Come ye! buy wine and milk, without money, and without any price. Why spend ye money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which doth not satisfy you? Hearken diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and your soul shall be delighted in fatness! 

And truly, there is a fact which should rouse, both to attention and gratitude, any Christian who longs to be enlightened as to the best way of getting to heaven: this fact is that the Church herself has made a selection, for our reading, from the treasury of the Scriptures and, in her Missal, which she puts into our hands, she has inserted practical teachings from the same divine Books, which she knew were best suited to the wants of her children. A Christian who is humbly and devoutly assiduous in the study of this admirable book of the Liturgy will abound in spiritual knowledge. His guide will say to him, and with a well-grounded assurance: This is the way! walk in it! And go not aside, neither to the right, nor to the left! We have no need to wonder at all this; for in the guidance of souls, the Church is far superior to the most learned Doctors and to the greatest Saints—all of whom were humble disciples in her school.

But it must be The Holy Holocaust of Tradition and not the impoverished Lil' Licit Liturgy if one is to be led to Heaven

The Temple in Jerusalem

From the 8th Sunday after Pentecost, Dom Gueranger:

In the Middle Ages, this Sunday was called, the sixth and last Sunday after the Natalis of the Apostles (that is, the Feast of St. Peter); it was, indeed, the last, for the years when Easter had been kept was late in April as was possible; but, it was only the first after that Feast of St. Peter, when Easter immediately followed the spring equinox.

We have already noticed the variable character of this last portion of the liturgical cycle, which was the result of Easter’s being kept on a different day each year; and that, in consequence of this variation, this week might be either the second of the reading from the Sapiential Books, or, what was of more frequent occurrence, the Books of Kings were still providing the Lessons for the divine Office. In this latter case, it is the ancient Temple raised by Solomon, the King of Peace, to the glory of Jehovah, that engages the Church’s attention today. We shall find, that the portions of the Mass, which are chanted on this Sunday, are closely connected with the Lessons read in last night’s Office.

Let us, then, turn our reverential thoughts once more to this splendid monument of the ancient Covenant. The Church is now going through that month, which immediately preceded the events so momentous to Jerusalem; she would do honor, today, to the glorious and divine past which prepared her own present. Let us, like her, enter into the feelings of the first Christians, who were Juda’s own children; they had been told of the impending destruction foretold by the Prophets; and an order from God bade them depart from Jerusalem. What a solemn moment that was, when the little flock of the elect,—the only ones in whom was kept up the faith of Abraham and the knowledge of the destinies of the Hebrew people,—had just begun their emigration, and looked back on the city of their fathers, to take a last farewell! 

They took the road to the east; it led towards the Jordan, beyond which, God had provided a refuge for the remnant of Israel. They halted on the incline of Mount Olivet, whence they had a full view of Jerusalem; in a few moments, that hill would be between them and the City. Not quite forty years before, the Man-God had sat himself down on that same spot, taking his own last look at the City and her Temple. Jerusalem was seen, in all her magnificence, from this portion of the Mount, which afterwards would be visited and venerated by our Christian pilgrims. 

The City had long since recovered from its ruins; and had, at the time we are speaking of, been enlarged by the princes of the Herodian family, so favorably looked on by the Romans. Never, in any previous period of her history, had Jerusalem been so perfect and so beautiful, as she then was, when our fugitives were gazing upon her. There was not, as yet, the slightest outward indication that she was the City accursed of God. 

There, as a queen in her strength and power, she was throned amidst the mountains of which the Psalmist had sung, her towers and palaces seemed as though they were her crown. Within the triple inclosure of the walls built by her latest kings, she enchased those three hills, the grandest, not only of Judea, but of the whole world: first, there was Sion, with her unparalleled memories; then, Golgotha, that had not yet been honored with the Holy Sepulcher, and which, nevertheless, was even then attracting to herself the Roman legions, who were to wreak vengeance on this guilty land; and lastly, Moriah, the sacred mount of the old world, on whose summit was raised that unrivalled Temple, which gave Jerusalem to be the queen of all the Cities of the East, for, as such, even the Gentiles acknowledged her.

“At sun-rise, when, in the distance, there appeared the sanctuary, towering upwards of a hundred cubits above the two rows of porticos which formed its double enclosure; when the sun cast his morning rays on that façade of gold and white marble; when there glittered the thousand gilded spires which mounted from its roof;—it seemed,” says Josephus, “that it was a hill capped with snow, which gradually shone, and reddened, with the morning beams. The eye was dazzled, the soul was amazed, religion was roused within the beholder, and even the pagans fell down prostrate.” 

Yes, when the Pagan came hither, either for conquest or for curiosity,—if he ever returned, it was as a pilgrim. Full of holy sentiments, he ascended the hill; and, having reached the summit, he entered, by the golden gate, into the gorgeous galleries, which formed the outward inclosure of the Temple. In the Court of the Gentiles, he met with men from every country; his soul was struck by the holiness of a place, where he felt that there were preserved, in all purity, the ancient religious traditions of the human race; and, he being profane, stood afar off, assisting at the celebrations of the Hebrew worship, such as God had commanded it to be, that is, with all the magnificence of a divine ritual. The white column of smoke from the burning victims rose up before him as earth’s homage to God, its creator and savior; from the inner courts, there fell on his ear the harmony of the sacred chants, carrying as they did to heaven, both the ardent prayer of those ages of expectation, and the inspired expression of the world’s hope; and when, from the midst of the levite choirs and the countless priests who were busy in their ministry of sacrifice and praise, the High Priest, with his golden crown on his head, came forth holding the censer in his hand, and entering, himself alone, within the mysterious veil which curtained off the Holy of Holies,—the stranger, though he had but a glimpse of all those splendid symbols of religion, yet confessed himself overpowered, and acknowledged the incomparable greatness of that invisible Deity, whose majesty made all the vain idols of the Gentiles seem to him paltry and foolish pretenses. 

The princes of Asia, and the greatest kings considered it an honor to be permitted to contribute, both by personal gifts of their own making, and by sums taken from the national treasuries, towards defraying the expenses of the holy place. The Roman Generals, and the Cæsars themselves, kept up the traditions of Cyrus and Alexander in this respect. Augustus ordered that, every day, a bull and two lambs should be presented, in his name, to the Jewish priests, and be immolated on Jehovah’s altar, for the well-being of the empire (Philo, Legatio); his successors insisted on the practice being continued; and Josephus tells us that the beginning of the war was attributable to the sacrificers refusing any longer to accept the imperial offerings.

But, if the majesty of the Temple thus impressed the very pagans right up to its last days, there were reasons for an intensity of veneration and love on the part of a faithful Jew, which he alone could realize. He was the inheritor of the submissive faith of the Patriarchs; as such, he was well aware that the prophetic privileges of his fatherland were but an announcement to the whole world, that it was one day to be blessed with the more real and lasting benefits of which he, the Jew, possessed but a figure; he quite understood, that the hour had come when the children of God would not confine their worship within the narrow limits of one mountain or one city; he knew that God’s true temple was then actually being built up on every hill of the Gentile world; and that, in its immensity, it took in all those countries of the earth, into which the Blood that flowed first from Calvary had won its way. 

And yet, we can easily understand what a sharp pang of anguish thrilled through his patriot heart, now that God was about to consummate, before the astonished universe, the terrible consumption of the ungrateful people, whom he had chosen for his portion, his inheritance. Whose is there, that would not share in the grief of these holy ones of Jacob, few in number as the ears of corn gathered by the gleaner, and now bidding an eternal farewell to that holy, but now accursed, City? These true Israelites might well weep; they were leaving forever, leaving to devastation and ruin, their homes, their country, and, dearest of all, that Temple, which, for ages, had sanctified the glory of Israel, which, for ages, had sanctified the glory of Israel, and gave Juda the right and title to be the noblest of the nations of the earth.

There was something even beyond all this: it was, that their dear Jerusalem had been the scene of the grandest mysteries of the law of grace. Was it not in yonder Temple, that, as the Prophets expressed it, God had manifested the Angel of the Testament, and given Peace? The honor of that Temple is no longer the exclusive right of an isolated people; for the Desired of all nations, by his going into it, has brought it a grander glory, than all the ages of expectation and prophecy have imparted.

 It was under the shadow of those walls, that Mary,—she that was to be the future Seat of Wisdom Eternal,—prepared within her soul and body a more august sanctuary for the divine Word, than was that, whose cedared and golden wainscoting made it so exquisite a shelter for the infant maiden. Yes, it was there that, when but three years old, Mary joyously mounted up the fifteen steps which separated the Court of women from the Eastern-Gate, offering to God the pure homage of her immaculate heart. Here, then, on the summit of Moriah, began, in the person of their Queen, the long line of consecrated virgins, who, to the end of time, will come offering, after Her, their love to the King. 

There, also, the new Priesthood found its type and model in the divine Mother’s presenting, in that holy Temple, the world’s Victim, Jesus, the new-born Child of her chaste womb. In that same dwelling, made by the hands of men; in those halls where sat the Doctors, Eternal Wisdom, too, seated himself under the form of a child of twelve, instructing the very Teachers of the Law by his sublime questions and divine answers. Every one of those Courts had seen the Word Incarnate giving forth treasures of goodness, power, and heavenly doctrine. One of those porticos was the favorite one where Jesus used to walk, and the infant Church made it the place of its early assemblies.

Truly, then, this Temple is holy with a holiness possessed by no other spot on earth; it is holy for the Jew of Sinaï; it is holy for the Christian, be he Jew or Gentile, for here he finds that the Law ends, because here are verified all its figures. With good reason, did our Mother the Church, in her Office for this night, repeat the words which were spoken by God to Solomon: I have sanctified this House which thou hast built, to put my name there for ever; and mine eyes and my heart shall be always there.

How, then, is it that dark forebodings are come terrifying the watchmen of the Holy Mount? Strange apparitions, fearful noises, have deprived the sacred edifice of that calm and peace which become the House of the Lord. At the feast of Pentecost, the priests, who were fulfilling their ministry, have heard in the Holy place a commotion like that of a mighty multitude, and many voices crying out together: “Let us go hence!” On another occasion, at midnight, the heavy brazen gate which closed the sanctuary on the eastern side, and which took twenty men to move it, has opened of itself. O Temple, O Temple, let us say it, with them that witnessed these threatening prodigies, why are thou thus troubled? why workest thou thine own destruction? Alas! we know what awaits thee! The Prophet Zacharias foretold it, when he said: Open thy gates, O Libanus, and let fire devour thy cedars!

God,—has he forgotten his promises of infinite goodness! No: but let us think upon the terrible and just warning, which he added to the promise he made to Solomon, when he had finished building the temple: But if ye and your children, revolting shall turn away from following me, and will not keep my commandments and my ceremonies which I have set before you, I will take away Israel from the face of the land, which I have given them; and the Temple which I have sanctified to my name, I will cast out of my sight; and Israel shall be a proverb, and a by-word among all people. And this houseshall be made an example; every one that shall pass by it, shall be astonished, and shall hiss, and say: “Why hath the Lord done thus to this land, and to this house?”

O Christian soul! thou, that by the grace of God, art become a temple more magnificent, more beloved in his eyes, than that of Jerusalem, take a lesson from these divine chastisements; and reflect on the words of the Most High, as recorded by Ezechiel: The justice of the just shall not deliver him, in what day soever he shall sin … Yea, if I shall say to the just, that he shall surely live, and he, trusting in his justice, commit iniquity,—all his justices shall be forgotten, and, in his iniquity, which he hath committed, in the same shall he die.

The evolution of souls? (3)

Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa, volume 1

CHAPTER XV -- THE MIND OF THE LORD OF THE WORLD
(Q. 84-89)

1. The puzzle of heights and depths.
    (a) Natures bases for mystery of knowledge.
    (b) Pertinence of the problem of knowledge.

2. Modernity and the problem:
    (a) History of the modern view.
    (b) Position of the moderns.

3. The defense of knowledge.

4. The nature of knowledge:
    (a) Its characteristics: immaterial, immutable, universal, necessary.
    (b) Its source:
 (1) Negatively.
 (2) Positively from sensible things.
    (c) Its manner and medium:
 (1) Abstraction
 (2) The results of abstraction -- the intelligible species.
    (d) The order of knowledge.
    (e) The accuracy of knowledge.

5. The objects of knowledge:
    (a) In the sensible world.
    (b) In the soul.
    (c) Above the soul.

6. Knowledge in separated souls:
    (a) Distinction from earthly knowledge.
    (b) Objects of this knowledge.

Conclusion:
  1. The shock of the problem.
  2. Significance of the answer:
    (a) Relative to the universe.
    (b) Relative to human action.
    (c) Relative to participation in divinity.

CHAPTER XV
THE MIND OF THE LORD OF THE WORLD
(Q. 84-89) The puzzle of heights and depths
MOUNTAIN climbing and deep-sea diving appeal to only a sporting few among men. There is a considerable danger in each, increased, perhaps, by the hint each carries of the tragic character of extreme height or depth to the human individual. 

He knows if he goes down deep enough he will be crushed by outside pressure; and if he goes up high enough he may suffocate from lack of oxygen before he explodes from lack of outside pressure, but suffocation is small comfort. Indeed, it is probably the element of comfort rather than the fear of danger that keeps most men on the prosaic level of smooth earth. Whatever can be said of the thrill of heights and depths neither can compare in sheer comfort with a sleepy street on a summer evening or a soft chair and a warm fire on a wintry night.

The most comfort-loving man cannot dodge all heights and depths; but he can dislike them wherever he meets them. Usually that dislike is prompt and unmistakable. Even though we have stepped into an express elevator of our own free will, its almost instantaneous plunge down thirty stories leaves us with a sense of incredulousness and blurred fright. It is not so much a matter of danger or discomfort as it is that we have simply come down too fast; we are not built on the express model, we labor up step by step and come down even more cautiously. Our minds work that way, our wills work that way and, as far as we can arrange it, all the details of life follow the same pattern. Put our arrangements are by no means sufficient to cover the whole span of life. With no warning whatsoever, we look into the eyes of another and suddenly realize there has been a mutual plunging into the depths of a human soul: we are numbed and stumble away in a kind of dazed unbelief.

 Genius may labor over stubborn material for hours on end, then suddenly there is a Hashing insight that sends the mind into the heights like a frightened angel scurrying home; even genius is slightly dazed, incredulous, though its disbelief be hidden in a competent silence.

If we look down from the heights through the window of a speeding plane, railroads, ships, cities and forests look like toys; they can hardly be real -- again that note of dazed disbelief. If you can picture a man getting that same view without moving a foot off the ground, you have some idea of his incredulousness before the fact of his own knowledge. His mind puts him off to one side of the universe, or above it, giving him a plane passenger's view of the whole as if he were no part of it. Without any warning, that human mind plunges past the surface of men and things down to the very depths to reveal, not something about men and things, but men and things themselves; and in a fraction of time that defies analysis with an absence of intervening steps that jars us out of our apathetic plodding. 

It is no wonder that this thing of knowledge has been a prime problem for philosophers from the beginning; it is no wonder that they have approached the problem in a somewhat sour humor, irritated, almost angry at the speed, the mystery, the heights and depths of it.

Nature's bases for mystery of knowledge

Moreover, the problem has an immediate and crucial interest for every individual. For if it is true that appetite must follow knowledge, then it is precisely because of this mysterious, far sweeping, universal knowledge of man that human appetite surpasses that of the animals. It is because man can search the heights and the depths that he can be satisfied only by the supreme good. It is, then, the universal, abstract knowledge of man that is the immediate source and explanation of his freedom in the face of limited, imperfect goods; it is this distinctly human knowledge that gives him dominance over the physical world and himself; it is this that ultimately explains the responsibilities of human life, the possibilities of personal success and failure, of victory and defeat, of moral life and its ultimates of heaven and hell as being within reach of human activity. 

In a word, it is because man has a distinctly human knowledge that he has distinctly human desires and so distinctly human acts; that human life lies on a plane just below the angels and far above the brute world of matter. This, then, is no mere academic problem, this problem of knowledge; it is not to be shrugged off but to be painstakingly investigated.

Modernity and the problem:

History of the modern view

It is not strange that the philosophy of our day has lost no share of the universal interest in the problem of knowledge. What is surprising is that the activity of modern philosophy should be centered chiefly in denying the humanity of man's knowledge rather than in trying to explain it. But the fact is plain. This opposition to the humanity of man's knowledge is one of the chief grounds for the rejection of the scholastic answer to the problem -- the so-called naive notion of the scholastics that the knowledge of man exceeds the content of sense knowledge yet takes its rise from the senses and the sensible world. 

The moderns have rejected one or the other of these two elements or the conjunction of the two. one school will insist that the world of sense is a world of illusions, it is the mind that we are projecting and playing with when we play the game of knowing the world about us; the other completely disregards intellectual activity, or tries to, reducing such activity to the world of the sensible, automatic, blind, instinctive forces. In this way the heights and the depths, the mystery and speed and all the rest are done away with by the simple expedient of blowing up the sensible world or of strangling the mind of men; quite a high price to pay for the comfort of level territory.

Position of the moderns

The technique of escape from the problem of knowledge is by no means new. It was tried when philosophy was young and many a time since; still the world goes on and the minds of men go on. But a man who is trying to run away is not to be discouraged by previous failures; inevitably the technique would be tried again. The modern attempt can trace its intellectual roots to the beginning of the modern era when Descartes assumed his artificial chasm between the mind and the world of reality, an assumption that forced him to build the fantastic bridge of totally unwarranted parallelism. A fantastic bridge to span an assumed chasm seems fair enough; but men took it seriously.

Kant gave this assumption a philosophical flavor by apparently justifying it, when, with typical modern clumsiness, he rushed to the "rescue" of the humanity of man's knowledge against the positivistic attacks of Locke, Berkely and Hume. The rescue was effected by murdering the victim. 

Kant proceeded by assuming that what is not given formally in experience comes wholly from the mind; such an unqualified statement as "sugar is sweet" is obviously not given formally in experience for all sugar cannot be experientially tested for its sweetness, so the statement must take its rise wholly from the mind. Both of these elements of Kant's original assumption were then developed independently to their logical conclusion of naturalism and idealism. The problem of knowledge was escaped again by the same technique of denying or disregarding one or the other of its constituent elements, the world or the mind. Still there were the stubborn facts remaining unexplained: both the world and the mind refused to be snubbed.

Coming down closer to our own day, Bergson made a polite gesture towards intellect as he stabbed it in the back by his contention that the intellect was not an instrument of valid knowledge and reality was so fluid a thing that it could not be known without being stopped in its flow and so falsified. The result was that we had neither a worth-while mind nor a world with which we could come into contact. The intellect of man was not a valid investigator of the world of reality; it was a falsifier, a maker of useful (not true) concepts whose whole purpose was action. 

William James accepted the Bergsonian gesture with open arms, developed his Pragmatism (or disregard of truth in favor of utility), thus turning a valid scientific method of inquiry into an immensely popular and thoroughly worthless system of philosophy.

Today we reap the fruits of this wild sowing. For it is our age that has come sharply up against the express attempt at a thorough invalidation of the intellect and its activity or even a downright denial of the existence of the intellect. That means that we are heed with a denial of human knowledge, with all the consequences of such a denial for philosophy, science, human activity and human life. We are the victims of a modern "rescue" of men by modern "champions" of man's humanity.

The defense of knowledge

In an earlier chapter, it was shown that the Church had been forced to come to the rescue of the humanity of the very nature of man and to defend the freedom of human action. The same is true of man's knowledge. Just as the Church insisted that man was human, not animal, not angelic, not divine; just as she insisted he was master of his own actions, not the slave of blind forces within or without himself; so she insists on the humanity of his knowledge, the validity of his intellects.

 Man's knowledge is not the mere sense knowledge of the animals, it is not the innately perfect knowledge of the angels, it is not the sum total of all knowledge as is God's; it is the knowledge proportionate to human nature, to a spiritual soul informing a material body -- a rational knowledge taking its rise from the senses and the world of the senses.

The nature of knowledge

In this matter, the difference between these two, both claiming championship of man, is that the one not only admits the existence of the spiritual, it sees the spiritual, not as something extraordinary, not as supernatural, but as an integral part of the natural order; the other, impressed by the vividness, the size, the multiplicity and the constancy of the sensible world and sense impressions, cannot tear its eyes away from this fascinating part of nature and so can see nothing else.

 The nature of man is a startling thing in the universe; it is a fusion of the material and the spiritual, the link binding together the spiritual and material world. But man is not, from that fact, a supernatural creature, a freak in nature, an upstart that must be reduced to a lower level. His knowledge, too, is a startling thing, taking its rise in the physical world and reaching to spiritual heights that far surpass anything in the world beneath man; but it is not, from that fact, an unnatural, preternatural or supernatural phenomenon, it is not to be treated as necessarily an illusion or an absurd paradox that defies understanding. It is entirely natural; and quite naturally it possesses such spiritual characteristics as immateriality, immutability, universality and necessity.

Its characteristics: immaterial, immutable, universal, necessary.

A man's knowledge of a stone, a tree or another man immediately leaps far ahead of the particular notes of this stone, this tree or this man and presents the knower with a concept that is universally valid, one true of all stones, another true of all trees, another true of all men. It is coin of the realm of truth that is accepted even in eternity. It is not only universal, it is as necessarily stable as the natures of those things known, because it is precisely those natures that are known. As long as a circle cannot have its nature changed and still be a circle, as long as man remains man, that is, as long as the essences of things cannot be falsified, this knowledge remains immutable.

That knowledge exists in a spiritual soul, in the immaterial faculty of intellect, in the only way in which it can exist there; that is, freed from the limitations of matter. It outstrips the contingency, the changeableness, the singularity of the physical world, taking on the characteristics of the spiritual world, yet faithfully representing the world with which it brings a man into immediate contact. 

There is indeed truth in the concepts of wetness, of beauty and of humanity; though it is not wetness but wet things, not beauty but beautiful things, not humanity but humans that have physical existence in the sensible world.

Its source: Negatively

Yet, in spite of its decidedly spiritual nature, it is a serious error to trace this knowledge to any but a source proportionate to that composite nature that is man's. Certainly we do not know things, as God does, by simply looking at ourselves, knowing our own essence. A concentrated and exclusive study of ourselves may teach us some surprising things, but the number of things it will not teach us is positively staggering; and, if we continue this one-sided study long enough, we shall end up by not even knowing ourselves. We are men, not gods. 

We could know all things in our own souls only if the things existed there beforehand to be known. They do exist in God, the divine exemplar, the model to which all things were made. We have only the norm proper to our nature, the substantial form which is our spiritual soul; it has the capacity to receive unlimited forms of other things by way of knowledge, but only the capacity. A savage of Tierra del Fuego can search his soul from now until doomsday, go into a very trance of introspection, and never come up with the knowledge of an automobile. In other words, we cannot know all things by simply knowing ourselves because we are not the cause of all things.

To a man whom the Lord has delivered up to study, the story of Catherine of Siena receiving profound knowledge through a miraculous infusion of ideas has an appeal that may well be tinged with envy. Not an hour of study went into her knowledge, no single difficulty kept her mind in turmoil for weeks, no book wore down her eyes, no error shook her judgment. Think of it! 

But do not think of it as the ordinary mode of acquiring human knowledge; that is the way the angels get their knowledge and men are not angels. It hardly seems necessary to argue the point, yet some men have been captivated by the joyous ease of innate ideas and argued that so men knew the world. If this were true, we would never be potential knowers for we would have our knowledge from the beginning. Then, too, there would be the insurmountable difficulty facing us, namely, that men born blind cannot know color and men born deaf cannot know sound. It might also be pointed out as somewhat strange that all men should forget all they naturally know.

Positively -- from sensible things

Our knowledge does not come pouring into our heads from some outside source such as Plato's separated ideas. Any teacher will testify that nothing can be poured into a student's head, nor even hammered in; the student has to reach out and feed his own mind. As a matter of fact, in such an hypothesis there would be no excuse whatever For man having a body; it would be at best an obstacle and at worst a prison, rather than the essential constituent of his very nature.

Its manner and medium

The strongest argument against these dreams of easy human knowledge is the facts which clearly indicate that our knowledge takes its rise from sensible things. The apprenticeship of childhood is an absolute requirement for the mastery of adult knowledge. The sensible world acts upon our senses giving rise to that sense knowledge we have in common with the animals, writing its permanent record in the phantasms or images of the imagination. So far sense knowledge carries us and no farther. It is the gay knowledge of children, full of vivid colors, rippling sounds, swift movement, delicious odors and lingering tastes with none of the animal's fear to tone down its gaiety.

Abstraction

From this highest level of sense knowledge, intellectual knowledge takes its rise. That transition from the sensible to the intellectual, however, is not made simple by saying it quickly; it represents difficulties that have been too much for many a philosopher. For the phantasm is sensible, particular, concrete; moreover, no sensible thing can act on a spiritual substance, cannot bump it, squeeze it, tickle its fancy, or take it by the throat. How, then, explain the immaterial, universal, necessary concept in the spiritual intellect coming from such a sources.

Admittedly men start off with their minds a blank page; such knowledge as we have, short of a miracle, must take its rise from the senses. It is also unquestionably true that everything in the world of experience is singular and concrete, not universal; while our knowledge is obviously universal. Yet St. Thomas denies that the universals are wholly from the mind, as Kant would have it. That denial is precisely the refusal to admit an identification of "what is not given formally in experience" with "wholly of the mind." 

Much that we know is not given formally in experience, such a prosaic thing, for example, as the sweetness of sugar; but this does not make it wholly a product of mind. The universality of man's knowledge has some root in the concrete, singular world of experience.

The specific nature of this dog is the same as that of another dog or, indeed, of all dogs. It is precisely the common nature enjoyed by all dogs which makes this creature a dog and not a horse. In technical language, this means that the specific nature, or essence, of the concrete thing is negatively universal. The scholastics called this ratio or absentia; let us use a word with which we are now familiar and call it a form. It is differentiated in each dog by individual elements, the elements that contribute the "thisness" of the particular dog. This form of a sensible thing cannot exist in the physical world without individuating elements supplied by matter -- a fact that experience forces on our mind; we are not chased by a universal dog or introduced to universal human nature. But it is evident that the specific form itself is not averse to universality; it does, as a matter of fact, exist in many dogs at the same time.

To have this form in its universality, then, means no more than to have it without the individual elements matter has given it; the universal form does exist fundamentally in things. Can it be unearthed in some way from particularity, from the "thisness" of the concrete things. This is the work of the intellect, by the process of abstraction, to make formally universal what was only fundamentally or potentially so.

Since scholasticism has been put in the stocks, this process has become famous; it is one of the missiles most frequently hurled at the hapless scholastic head. All rumors to the contrary, it is not a surgical operation cutting apart the individual and universal elements; it is not a matter of slapping a universal tag on a patently concrete thing at our own subjective pleasure or necessity.

Abstraction is in no sense a separation; it is simply a distinct consideration of the form to the disregard of the particularity of this thing, somewhat as a man might regard the redness of an apple without consideration of its sweetness, or the softness of soap-suds without regard to their taste. It is the same trick mathematics uses in considering quantity without regard to beauty; or that art uses in considering beauty without regard to the mathematician's quantity. Obviously the scholastics have taken out no patent on the process.

We have a faculty of intellect, called the active intellect, whose sole work is to throw light on the sensible image or phantasm to make the universal stand out from the particular as a spot-light makes one girl stand out from a chorus. This light, focused on the specific nature in the phantasm, enables the intellect to concentrate on its proper objects the universal nature of the thing, to the disregard of the particularizing elements of it.

The results of abstraction -- the intelligible species

The result of this distinct consideration, or this process of abstraction, is the intelligible species or form, representing the essence, ratio or form. More strictly, it is certainly not the universal nature existing in the mind in the same way as it exists outside; but it is the same nature existing in the mind in a different way. Whereas in the concrete thing, the dog, for instance, it exists physically, in the mind it exists intentionally; whereas in the dog it was only fundamentally universal, potentially intelligible, in the mind it is formally universal and actually intelligible.

The intelligible species or form is not a sheer luxury; it is indispensable for distinctly human knowledge. This concrete thing is certainly singular and our knowledge is just as certainly universal. If this concrete thing is ever to be known intellectually, it must be made actually universal, actually intelligible. Without such a universalization, the possible intellect (our other intellectual faculty) cannot produce the positive act of knowledge. 

Let us put it this way. Precisely because the possible intellect is capable of knowing all things, it is not determined to any one, just as the eye, because it is capable of seeing all colors, is not determined to any one. Without such determination there can be no knowledge, just as without some color there can be no sight. The determination of the intellect is by the intelligible species or form. Just as the form or essence gave the universal nature in the physical order resulting in the concrete dog, so it gives the universal nature in the intellectual order resulting in our knowledge of the dog. We might see the whole picture as a double sharing in the ideas of God: physically, in the order of existence, and intentionally, in the order of knowledge.

A common mistake that has turned many a philosopher against scholasticism centers upon the intelligible species. The notion has somehow got around that the scholastic is never in contact with the world: he knows an intelligible species, an idea, but not the world of reality. As a matter of fact, the intelligible species is not the object known; rather it is that by which we know the thing. It is not the object but the medium; just as light is not that which is seen but that by which color is seen, so the intelligible species is not that which is known but that by which a thing is known. We can, in fact, sail serenely through life without ever suspecting that we have a species, and be none the worse for it; but if we have no suspicion of possessing knowledge, we cannot sail through life, we shall have to be towed. It is only by the reflective, that is, the philosophic, consideration that we advert to the presence of species at all.

Nor does this make our knowledge exclusively universal, barring us forever from an intellectual knowledge of singular things. The direct object of our knowledge is the universal; the singular is no less an object, but it is seen indirectly, as we might see something from the corner of our eye without looking at it directly. It is, in fact, quite impossible for us to make use of any one of these intelligible species without adverting to the phantasm from which it was abstracted; so that in using any one we must indirectly, obliquely, consider the singular from which it arose. It is by direct intellectual knowledge that I know "man"; but it is also the fruit of intellectual operation that enables me to say "John Smith is a man." The knowledge of the concrete individual "Smith" is intellectual, but indirectly so.

There is no chasm between the intellect and the sensible world; rather there is identity. To know is, in a sense, to become the thing known; it is to have ones own form physically and the forms of the known things intentionally. Knowledge is a vital action, not a mere passive reception or an automatic response. It is a union so intimate that we cannot so much as consider our act of knowledge without considering the object known; we do not know the act of our intellect knowing, but the act of the intellect knowing something.

The order of knowledge

As it starts off on the long, hard road of knowledge, the baby knows a puppy long before it recognizes the genus brute; for the first things we know are singular things, not universals. Sense knowledge must come first, furnishing the material for intellectual knowledge; and sense knowledge is of particular, singular things. Really, the infant has some vague, blurred knowledge of things at rest, things in motion and things colored, before it begins to play with the puppy.

 It passes from the mere potentiality of knowledge to actual knowledge; the medium between those two extremes is imperfect or confused knowledge. Thus a man standing on a hill and peering down a long road will first see something approaching; then he will be able to distinguish it as some animal, then as some man and finally he will recognize the individual traveller. The process is the same if considered from the angle of the time element; the child will distinguish a man from other animals before it distinguishes one man from another. In the intellectual order, the same holds true: first we get the more general notion; and only as knowledge gets more perfect does it become less general.

Our progress is necessarily slow, step by step, because the door of our minds will not admit more than one intelligible species at a time; some one or the other may contain many interrelated notions, as one mirror may reflect a roomful of people, but the intellect can no more be actualized by different forms at the same time than a man can run in different directions at once. If we were to store this consideration of intellectual knowledge right here, we Would not have gone beyond what the scholastics call "simple apprehension," that is, the knowledge of things immediately perceived through intelligible species.

Of course we cannot stop here; this is only the first of three steps. First we grasp the essences of things; then we compare these forms one with another, tack on or deny certain properties, accidents, habits, circumstances, a process that is called judgment, the fertile field of everyday mistakes; finally, a comparison of judgments gives us the act which has given its name to our type of intellectuality the act of reasoning and it is here that philosophers are weighed and, not infrequently, found wanting.

The accuracy of knowledge

Until we get past the simple apprehension of the essences of things, there is no chance for error in our knowledge. The healthy intellect can no more make a mistake about the essences of things than a healthy eye can about color or a healthy ear about sound. The essences of things are the proper object of the intellect, the reason for which it exists; it is made precisely to know them.

Error in judgment and reasoning is not only possible, it is a fairly common fact. At least, many people, other than ourselves, frequently make mistakes. Judgment and reasoning involve composition or division; we can and do put the wrong things together or refuse to put the right things together. There is truth in the concept of a grumbler, as there is truth in the concept of man; but it may, in this particular case, be totally unjust to judge that this man is a grumbler in other words, we cannot make a mistake about the essences of things but we can be mistaken about the properties, the accidents and the circumstances of this or that essence.

 The bases of our mistakes in judgment are much the same as the lapses of our mistakes in conclusions, though the principles from which we argue be correct; that is, we make the comparison too quickly, without consideration, without grounds for such a union, or through prejudice rather than on evidence, and so on.

Some men do make more mistakes than others, if for no other reason than because some men do not understand as well as others. It is not merely a matter of better physical equipment, more apt organs of sense, keener imaginations and better memory; but because of a distinct difference in the quality of the intellect itself. We can improve our minds. But no bit of magic can change them from the tabloid class into the intellect of an Aristotle or a Thomas Aquinas.

The objects of knowledge

The field of knowledge thrown open by intellectual activity seems almost limitless in comparison with the feeble knowledge enjoyed by the animals. If we keep our eyes fixed on the brutes, we might be able to persuade our selves that there is no knowledge superior to our own. The fact is. however, that human knowledge has its limits; rather than approach the question from this deflating angle, let us inquire just what we do know.

In the sensible world

As we have seen, we know particular things indirectly with an intellectual knowledge, by a kind of reflection on the phantasm of the imagination. We know necessary things, like first principles, laws of the physical world; and contingent things, like grandmothers, and school days. We can even know some future things, like eclipses or next week's blizzard; but we know these things, not in themselves, but in their causes as a man knows there is trouble in the offing from the scowl on his wife's face. As for future things like a laugh, a sin, a yes or a no, they can only be guessed at by us at a great risk of having our guess turn out wrong. To see in themselves the future things that proceed from Free causes is not the prerogative of men but of God.

In the soul

We can know our own soul, its nature and faculties, not by meeting them on the street or by abstracting them from ourselves, but from the acts they produce. The acts, for instance, of the intellect and will are known by reflection: we know that we know by considering the act of knowing something; we know that we will by considering the act of willing something. This reflexive power is our special gift, a gift proper to intellectual nature alone; we are the only ones who can stand aside and look at ourselves and our acts critically, with an almost disinterested objectivity, as an angel might look at the earth.

Above the soul

Things above us, like the angels and God, because they are completely free of all material are evidently not the proportionate, natural, direct objects of our knowledge. There is no point to our standing on tiptoe trying to snatch them into our minds directly; we must be satisfied to learn about them the long, hard way, by reasoning up from the material world we know so well. In this way we can know them, not comprehensively, not directly but, as in the case of God, by tracing His effects for the clues they give us as to His nature, stripping off the imperfections of the created world to get a glimpse of the uncreated, attributing all perfection to the one possible source of that perfection. This was, in fact, the procedure we followed in the very beginning of this book in treating the nature of God.

Briefly, then, the direct object of human knowledge is the essences of things abstracted from singular, concrete things. From this basis, all judgment and reasoning proceed.

For a complete survey of the problem of knowledge there still remains the question of knowledge after death, for the soul of man does not die and it is precisely in the soul of man that his knowledge is centered. 

Separated from the body by death, the soul has lost its medium for investigation of the physical world, indeed of contact with that physical world. The helplessness of the soul seems even more striking when we remember that we cannot make use of a single intelligible species without referring to the phantasms of the imagination; and, of course, these phantasms cease to exist with death.

Still, this separated soul is the same soul with exactly the same nature it had before death, retaining possession of all the intelligible species amassed during life; it is consequently a rational soul, proceeding on the path of knowledge by that process of comparison which is judgment arid reasoning. To deprive an artist of color or a musician of all sound would be not nearly so tragic as to leave such a soul in a blank oblivion after death; it would be the most despairing, most frustrated of creatures. But how can it know?

Knowledge in separated souls

The answer to the difficulty is to be found in the fundamental truth that the mode of activity is determined by the mode of existence; thus the form of material things, when it enjoys a physical mode of existence, acts as the substantial form of a concrete thing, but when it enjoys an intentional mode of existence in the mind of man, it acts as the intelligible form of the intellect, causing knowledge. The separated soul has a different mode of existence than it enjoyed on earth; it exists without the body. consequently, it should have a different mode of knowledge that, while not supernatural, is yet not the natural mode of knowledge of the soul when it is actually informing the body.

Distinction from earthly knowledge

The mode of existence the separated soul has is that proper to such separated spiritual substances as the angels. It therefore knows not only by the species gathered in life, using them as the angels use their concepts, but also by new species infused by God. Not that this new way of knowledge elevates the soul to a more perfect knowledge; in fact, this knowledge is inferior to that which was had and used by reference to the material part of man. The separated soul is like a little boy wearing his father's clothes, or a street peddler sitting in on a conference of European diplomats. This soul is sporting its big brother's mode of knowledge and is not quite capable of handling it.

The angels understand through fewer and more universal species, and quite perfectly; the soul, confronted by such a species, is like a man, totally ignorant of philosophy, forced to use the metaphysical principles of St. Thomas. He sees something in them, can make some use of them; but nothing like what St. Thomas could see in them and do with them. But precisely because these species are such angelic things, coming directly from God, they have the advantage of doing away with the necessity of physical contact with the sensible world, of being totally independent of distance, free of the necessity of reference to the phantasms of the imagination.

Objects of this knowledge

In that state of separation from the body, the souls know other souls, just as the angels do. They have some knowledge of all natural things, but rather a vague, confused knowledge; whereas the angels, with the same kind of species, have a perfect knowledge of all natural things. This confused character of the separated souls' knowledge -- due to the species being too big for them -- also limits their knowledge of particular things to a blurred vision, as though their intellects could not quite focus. 

Evidently more determination must be had than is to be found in the species themselves if a clear, distinct knowledge of particular things is to be enjoyed; there must be some other force focusing the intellect to the point where the details stand out clearly, such a force, for instance, as some preceding knowledge, some bond of interest, of love, of natural inclination to this particular thing, or a special ordination of God.

As a result, souls separated from their proper bodies have no natural knowledge of what goes on on earth, They can know particular things clearly only through the determinations we have just mentioned; and such determinations cannot do away with the fact of separation from the physical world and the souls' lack of natural contact with it. That the curtain which hides the doings of men might be drawn aside momentarily by a miracle is of course possible; that the blessed in heaven have a clear knowledge of the drama of earth supernaturally, through the essence of God, is quite true. But naturally speaking this is impossible to the soul after death.

Looking out over the vista of human knowledge, we can understand something of the dazed unbelief, the frightened incredulity of modern philosophers. The thing is a distinct shock; it goes up too high, down too deep. and with a speed that jars us out of the plodding pace of the material world. It is even a little irritating in its mysterious intangibility. The temptation is to sulk a little, like a man who sees something that simply cannot have happened but nonetheless does; he will not quite admit it, though he cannot deny it without admitting to himself that he is stubbornly fighting the facts.

Conclusion: The shock of the problem

The shock of human knowledge falls principally on the man who has focused all his attention on one part of the universe and made it impossible for himself to see the smooth harmony of the whole. He has studied the material side so expertly and intensely that he eventually becomes convinced that nothing else exists or can exist. 

It is almost too much to ask him to see the light of intellectuality as a great sun with rays streaming from it, for such a figure demands a view of the whole of the universe, not merely a part of it. Thus, in the very center, all things are understood by the one flaming sun itself, God knowing through His own essence; as we get further away from that center, the light becomes dimmer, less penetrating. The angels understand through a few of these powerful rays, and perfectly; man, as the rays get dimmer, needs many to light the way and then only imperfectly: finally, on the level of brute and inanimate creation, the light dies out altogether and things must be steered through the darkness by the hand of God.

To take the same universal view from the other side, we see the creatures which work towards their perfection and that of the universe without knowledge of their own, but solely through the impress of the knowledge of God. Up a step we have the animals seeking their limited ends through a particular knowledge of the senses which precludes freedom; man stretches forth to his infinite goal through the universal knowledge of intellect, seeing the goal and each step towards it, but laboriously, step by step, with many an error; the angels dart to the same infinite goal easily, naturally, perfectly with a complete and infallible knowledge; God Himself is that goal, knowing Himself, possessing Himself by His very essence.

Significance of the answer: Relative to the universe

No, man s intellectual knowledge is not a freak in a physical universe; it is but another strip in the film unfolding the beauty and perfection of God, a corner of a blueprint which fits perfectly into the universal plan of the divine architect, a link in the chain that binds the meanest of creatures to the absolute perfection of God. Intellectual knowledge is not a freak but a demand of the humanity of man, the rightful trappings of his state as lord of the physical world, sharer in divine providence with the divine ability of looking ahead, considering his goals, providing for himself and for others in that kingdom.

Relative to human action

This human knowledge, because it is so intimately a part of man himself, is an indispensable condition for human activity, intellectual or otherwise. Without that universal, necessary, immaterial knowledge, the physical sciences, philosophy and the arts are impossibilities; without that knowledge of absolute, universal truth there can be no freedom, no morality, no striving for heaven, no ultimate union with God for eternity. Only the possessors of intellectuality survive the inevitable death which stalks the physical universe. Only those who can know the wide stretches of the immaterial can taste eternal life With its eternal vision; all else must pass.

Relative to participation in divinity

It is only those who defend that intellectuality of man who can be counted among the friends of man and of truth; for only these are ready to face facts and to take up the burdens and privileges of humanity. Only those who accept the guidance of that intellectual beacon are worthy of the humanity which has been given them, only these take their place in the divine plans, and hold a valid claim to the title that belongs to man -- the lord of the world.