SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY 



nity in their monastic retreats during nearly a thou- 

 sand years for the true study of nature and of the 

 works of God, it seems almost incomprehensible that 

 absolutely nothing was done by them. The thoughts 

 of the wisest men were paralyzed by the conviction 

 that when God said, " Let us make man in our image 

 and likeness," * the mind of man was the subject 

 of the likeness, even more so than the body ; there- 

 fore, to study the intellect and its faculties was to 

 learn to know the Creative Reason, the Intellectus 

 Agens, of Aristotle : truly, if knowable, the noblest 

 study for mankind ! But the lapse of 2300 years 

 from the days of early Greece had taught men nothing ! 

 To such minds Matter, as presented to the senses, 

 offered only that which was base and degrading. 

 With most men still lingered vestiges of the Gnostic 

 belief that, for its bare existence even, a Demiurgos 

 was needed, since it was insulting to the Absolute, 

 the Unconditioned Being to imagine Him to come 

 into contact with the material of this impure earth, 

 even by creating it. 



If the thought which men have spent upon the ul- 

 timate nature of the universals and of their relation to 

 the Absolute had been devoted to observing the tan- 

 gible world around them ; if they had studied the 



* " Faciemus hominum ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram." 

 Vulgate. Gen. 1, 27. 



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