88 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



' tain a complete and consistent body of doctrine, in 

 which the statements of Scripture and the physics 

 and metaphysics of Aristotle equally find a place. 

 There are two sources of knowledge, the mysteries 

 of the Christian faith as transmitted by the channels 

 of Scripture, of the Fathers and of Church tradition, 

 and the truths of human reason not the fallible 

 individual reason, but the fount of natural truth of 

 which the chief channels we/e Plato and Aristotle. 

 The two sources cannot be contradictory, since they 

 flow from God as the one source. Hence philosophy 

 and theology must be compatible, and a Summa 



' Theologies should contain the whole of knowledge. 

 Even the highest mysteries of the Trinity and the 

 Incarnation, though they cannot be proved by reason, 

 can be examined and apprehended thereby. Hence 

 these mysteries also are welded into the Thomist 

 system. Throughout, Aquinas' interests are intel- 

 lectual. Perfect beatitude of any created intellectual 

 nature lies in the action of the intelligence directed 

 to the contemplation of God. Faith and revelation 

 are belief in a proposition and a presentment of truth. 

 With this outlook, Thomas proceeds to give an 

 account of the whole of knowledge in mingled terms 

 of Scripture, the Fathers and Aristotle. The existence 

 and attributes of God, of angels and of men are suc- 

 cessively passed in review. The whole of creation 

 is a processio, a going out of all creatures from God ; 

 ideas are prototypal forms existing in the divine mind, 

 and the meaning of individuation is to be sought in 

 the existence of determinate matter. This solution 

 of the old problem of universals involved the obvious 

 difficulty of explaining the individual existence of 



