according as the intellectual nature dominated over the emotional, or the
emotions quelled the conscious exercise of reason, yet reached out and
upward from what knowledge and reason had given as a base to spring from.
Thus the mediaeval spirit, variant within its lines of likeness; and of a
piece with it was the field it worked in, which made its range and scope.
Here as well, a saving knowledge of God and the soul was central and chief
among all intellectual interests. None denied this. Augustine, the
universal prototype of the mediaeval mind, had cried, “God and the soul,
these will I know, and these are all.” But wide had been the scope of
_his_ knowledge of God and the soul; and in the centuries which hung upon
his words, wide also was the range of knowledge subsumed under those
capitals. How would one know God and the soul? Might one not know God in
all His universe, in the height and breadth thereof, and backwards and
forwards through the reach of time? Might not one also know the soul in
all its operations, all its queries and desires; would not it and they,
and their activities, make up the complementary side of
knowledge--complementary to the primal object, God, known in His eternity,
in His temporal creation, in His everlasting governance? Wide or narrow
might be the intellectual interests included within a knowledge of God and
the soul. And while many men kept close to the centre and saving _nexus_
of these potentially universal themes, others might become absorbed with
data of the creature-world, or with the manifold actions of the mind of
man, so as to forget to keep all duly ordered and connected with the
central thought.
So the search for knowledge might roam afield. Likewise as to its motive;
practically with many men it was, in itself, a joy and end; although they
might continue to connect this end formally with the salvation of the
soul. Roger Bacon of a surety was such a one. Another was Albertus Magnus.
The laborious culling of twenty tomes of universal knowledge surely had
the joy of knowing as the active motive. And Aquinas too; no one could be
such an acquisitive and reasoning genius, without the love of knowledge in
his soul. Yet Thomas never let this love point untrue to its goal of
research and devotion, to wit, sacred doctrine, theology, the Christian
Faith in its very widest compass, yet in its unity of saving purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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