"If you

don't care

down a book at random and presented it. what book it is that you are so good as to give me," said Mr. Curzon, "let me take one which pleases me;" and so saying, he took down a splendidly illuminated folio of the Bulgarian Gospels. "I could hardly believe I was awake when the guide. gave it into my hands." Before leaving he asked the privilege of buying another volume, but they insisted on his taking it without any charge. ("Monasteries of the East.") In the same way Boccaccio, when searching for manuscripts, visited the convent of Monte Casino. He asked to see the famous library, and was told to go up stairs; that he would find it open. And indeed it was unprotected even by a door. "It was in a deplorable state. There were books without bindings, and sadder still, bindings without books. For the book-worms of the convent had of late occupied themselves in erasing the ancient writing from the parchments, and converting them into Psalters, breviaries, and texts, worn as amulets, which were worth more... to sell." (Lattell's Living Age, vol. cxiv.)

The statement is made by Gibbon and repeated by others, that of the Latin writers not many have perished whose loss we need greatly deplore. Of the poets, historians, and orators we have undoubtedly examples, but only examples; and from these we have already seen how large a portion is missing. In the single case of Tacitus we have noticed how great is the loss. The portion of his history which we have closes with the ascent of Vespasian to the throne; so that he tells us nothing of the reign of Titus, "the delight of mankind, and Domitian has escaped the vengeance of the historian's pen." In the Annals, Caligula is equally fortunate. The full and exhaustive account of the reign of Tiberius closes with the sixth book. The following books are missing until the eleventh, where we enter upon a portion of the reign of Claudius. In these cases, at least, time seems to have dealt kindly with the monsters of antiquity, and to have buried in oblivion a large part of the most truthful record of their lives that was ever written. And yet in the light of the evidence which this sketch affords, we may reëcho Gibbon's feeling of surprise that so much of antiquity has come down to us. The ignorance, the idleness, the prejudice, of the monkish guardians of these

treasures did almost as much as man could do to destroy the Greek and Latin classics. Had our possession of any of these volumes depended upon one or perhaps even a score of manuscripts, it is highly questionable whether it could have survived the ruin of the dark ages. Undoubtedly more has been destroyed than has survived. But surely enough has been left to enrich the world of letters; to furnish models to the historian, the poet, and the orator; to add to our sources of refinement and pleasure; and, in fine, to become, what Cicero said of books in general, "the food of youth, the delight of old age, the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity, a delight at home and no hindrance abroad; companions by night, in traveling, or in the country."

ARTICLE VI.-ST. THOMAS AQUINAS: OR SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY IN MODERN THEOLOGY.

A SPECIAL prominence is given at this time to the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas by two recent encyclicals of the Pope, who calls the priests of the Roman Catholic Church to its study, and recommends its use in the interpretation and defense of the Roman faith. The Pope at the same time exalts Aquinas as the patron of all Catholic academies, lyceums, and schools, and officially stamps his philosophy as the philosophy of Catholicism.

The study of any writer, no matter how worthless his thoughts, by so many men, no matter how valueless their investigations, makes him an object of great importance to the public. Especially is this so when the persons thus required to study him have large interests to control and the education of many youth to direct.

In the thirteenth century, with the dawning of that light which was to slowly brighten into the Reformation, a movement was made by three great minds to reconcile science and religion: Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus; so that Thomas Aquinas stands historically in the centre of a grand trio, who, more than anybody since St. Augustine and before Calvin, moulded theology. This reconciliation was harder then than in our day, because religion at that time included all the medieval theology, with its accretion of fabulous legends, which have been largely eliminated by the Reformation. It was also easier than in our day, in as much as science then included little more than the works of Aristotle and his commentators, and so offered less with which religion had to be reconciled.

Albertus Magnus commenced this work of reconciliation by systematizing the whole works of Aristotle, according to the Arabian commentators, with a view to accommodate them to the essential dogmas of religion. Thomas Aquinas, coming after him, systematized the whole of Christian theology with a

view to accommodate it to Aristotle. Duns Scotus, coming next, made the application, and, in the spirit of Kant, criticized both, in the course of which he gave up all Christian doctrine as incapable of rational proof, and demanded that it be received on authority, which authority should also compel obedience; at which point the attempted reconciliation practically ended, to be succeeded by the subjection of science until the Renaissance of the sixteenth century.

The age of Aquinas was the culminating of a long period of reconciliation. From Aristotle to Bacon there was a comparative blank in philosophy. The thinkers, few and feeble, did little but try to harmonize the systems of a livelier age-the Græco-Roman Age. Christianity, which had in this time sprung up and swept over the western world, was the chief interest. It was accepted by all and so had to be reconciled with whatever was held by any. Though unlike any of the previous systems, it yet had to be shown in unity with all of them. It thus had to be reconciled with Judaism, with Paganism, and with "Philosophy." In reconciling it with Judaism it was attempted to harmonize the Old and New Testaments, and to explain the rejection of the ceremonies and sacrifices, as well as of the laws of Moses, by the theory of their fulfillment in Christianity, or of the merging and superseding of the provisional in the permanent. In reconciling it with Paganism there was a compromise, or combination, known as Catholicism, in which the idolatry, or image worship, of the Pagans, together with their divinities and ceremonies, were preserved under other names and associations. In reconciling Christianity with philosophy there was a combination, first with Platonism, or rather Neo-Platonism, in a mystic theosophy concerning the Logos, the Trinity, and the soul in relation with the divine mind, and afterward, on the superseding of Platonism by Aristotelianism, with the latter in a logical system of nature and its supernatural relations; at which point the great trio of which I have spoken appeared on the scene.

With the fall of Platonism, which dominated the earlier part of the Christian era, theology became largely eliminated from science. Reconciliation, consisting thenceforth in harmonizing theology with Aristotle's philosophy, which had almost nothing

to do with theology (being mostly physics, logic, rhetoric, music, and the like), was mainly found in the separation of philosophy and religion. By allowing each a particular sphere, on which the other was not allowed to encroach, a reconciliation became more easy, or, at least, conflicts less necessary.

About the same time there was also a marked tendency to distinguish between the known and the unknown, and to separate the latter from science to be received on authority. This again made reconciliation more easy. By excluding so many topics from scientific discussion, and ceasing in a measure to determine the indeterminable, the issues on which conflicts could arise became materially reduced. It is difficult enough. to reconcile the known; but when the unknown and unknowable had also to be reconciled with it, it was hopelessly perplexing. Reconciliation from this time forward consisted mainly in showing that there is nothing in science contradictory to what may possibly be true outside of our knowledge; namely, in those things which are accepted on faith, the substantial proposition of which reconciliation is, that we do not know that there is anything in what we do know that contradicts what we do not know.

We say, accordingly, that the age of St. Thomas Aquinas was an age of culminating reconciliations. Men reconciled God with himself in a perfected system of the Trinity; they reconciled God with man in the Atonement; the idea with the thing in Realism; philosophy and religion in Scholasticism; and church and state in the Papacy.

They wrought out, through great struggles, a unity in things, as a result of all this reconciliation; a unity of nations in the Holy Roman Empire, of churches in the Holy Roman Catholic Church, of science in the Scholastic Philosophy, and of theology in the Summa Theologiæ, which was the crowning work of St. Thomas Aquinas, and the capstone of the whole fabric of reconciliation.

It

It was an age which ended a long period of commentating, as preparatory to this-commentating on Scripture, commentating on Aristotle, commentating on tradition and dogma. was an age of explaining things, or of getting our knowledge into unity. Aquinas was the most perfect embodiment of this