The Philosophy of ST Bonaventure PDF
The Philosophy of ST Bonaventure PDF
The Philosophy of ST Bonaventure PDF
BONAVENTURE
ETIENNE GILSON
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FOREWORD vn
IX
X ST. BONAVENTURE
never achieved before or since. Yet for all our attention, we may
only too easily fail to realize that the philosophic structure of the
Middle Ages was crowned by mysticism, and that alongside all
those intellects who were captivated by the genius of the great
thinkers, numberless living souls were on the watch, seeking an
order of ideas and things capable of satisfying them. We cannot
see the thirteenth century otherwise than gravely falsified, if we
see only the measureless effort of the intellect labouring in the
schools in the service of knowledge and faith, and do not balance
against it the thousands of hidden lives reaching out towards love
in the silence of the cloisters. Rightly seen, the Cistercians gathered
around St. Bernard, the Victorines around Hugh and Richard, the
Franciscans around St. Bonaventure represent the affective life of
the mediaeval West at its most intense and its most beautiful. It
is in the hope of leading friends of mediaeval studies to the realiza
tion of this, that I have undertaken this work; and I should like to
feel certain that the beauty of Beatrice will never again cast into
oblivion the saint who, like St. Bernard, sought in burning charity
the foretaste of the heavenly peace for which he wholly lived.
Such as it is, my attempt rests upon the monumental edition
of the works of St. Bonaventure published between 1882 and 1902
by the Franciscan Fathers of Quaracchi. This edition is not only a
model of its kind in the beauty of its typography, the excellence
of its text, and the sureness of its discernment of the authentic
works-it is also incredibly rich in all that concerns the philosophic
or patristic sources of St. Bonaventure's teaching; the student will
find there masses of material scarcely touched by me and still
awaiting detailed investigation. On the other hand, it seemed to
me that the scholia which accompany it sometimes contain, along
side most valuable historical information, philosophical comments
calculated to conceal the meaning of the doctrine that they propose
to explain. To this admirable edition I owe the text of St. Bona
venture, but it is not often that I accept its interpretation. It is my
duty to say this explicitly at the beginning of his work, not by way
PREFACE XIIl
Chapter Page
PREFACE IX
' 107.
ill. THE EVIDENCE FOR GOD s EXISTENCE
NOTES - - - 45 1
},.'V
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
ST. BONAVENTURE
CHAPTER I
I
THE LIFE OF ST. BONAVENTURE
his skill that St. Bonaventure lived to manhood. In his early child
hood he was stricken with a grave malady which threatened his
life. His mother had the inspiration to entrust him to a more potent
doctor: she invoked St. Francis of Assisi and the child recovered.
Thus he grew into young manhood under the sign of St. Francis
and never took back from him the life that he felt he owed him. 2
It is not known at what precise date St. Bonaventure took the
Franciscan habit. The witnesses are agreed in the statement that he
was still young. 3 and the oldest tradition, which has just been taken
up by a recent historian, places the event in 1243. Some critics,
however, for a variety of reasons, some of them good, prefer the
year 1238. In the absence of any direct evidence, we cannot lay
claim to anything better than more or less well-founded probabil
ities; and this initial uncertainty has unfortunate repercussions on
the important dates which are bound up with the date of his entry
into the Order. 4 Yet it seems that whichever date we accept our
interpretation of his intellectual evolution will not be affected. If, as
is possible, Bonaventure did not enter the Order till 1243, he was
still in time to receive the theological teaching of Alexander of
Hales until the master's death in 1245. This indeed was a fact
absolutely decisive for the future of his thought. We may well
suppose that such a pupil had raised great hopes in the mind of such
a master, and we know what admiration he felt for the quality of
his pupil's soul: tanta bonae indolis honestate pollebat, ut magnus
ille magister, {rater Alexander diceret aliquando de ipso, quod in eo
videbatur Adam non peccasse.5 On his side St. Bonaventure had
found-brought together and arranged in the teaching of his
master-the sum of the philosophical and theological doctrines
whose champion he was in his tum to become. He explicitly calls
himself the continuator of Alexander, 6 and in that act makes his
own a tradition other than that from which St. Thomas was to
draw his inspiration.
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD 3
teaching the eternity of the world. and perhaps even that very one
ness of the intellectus agens against which they had been invoked.
These were serious problems that brought trouble to the religious
consciences of the time: it is a little naive to imagine that their
solution might depend upon whether a man knew or did not know
Guillaume de Moerbeke' s translations of Aristotle. These trans
lations may have been necessary that the structure so perfectly
achieved by St. Thomas should be possible, but Albertus Magnus
needed only to read Avicenna and Maimonides to conceive the prin
ciple of his reform and bring it into being.10
When St. Bonaventure in his Commentary states quietly but
firmly that Aristotle is a pagan philosopher, whose authority must
not be introduced alongside that of the Fathers into problems of
theology, we must realize that it is a case of two different meta
physical doctrines confronting each other, not of an uncertain doc
trine hesitant and timid in the presence of something it knows not.
Long before battle was joined in the Hexaemeron, he had con
demned the possibility of the eternity of the world,11 at the same
time he insisted on the incapacity of Aristotle-as of every pagan
philosopher-to account for the most immediately evident of phy
sical phenomena, such as the movement of the celestial bodies.12
and he denied altogether his authority in such a question as that
of the duration of incorruptible substances.13 When St. Bonaven
ture was later to argue that light is not an accidental form but a
substantial form we are in the presence not of an ignorance but
of a contradiction of Aristotle14: and by that fact the young
Parisian master ranged himself with the perspectivists of Oxford,
whose mathematical and experimental physics can scarcely be
looked upon as a mere absence of progress.
Whatever be the point of doctrine one considers, the same
conclusion emerges-that if St. Bonaventure's Commentary gives
us the impression of a hesitant Thomism which began right but
never came to completion, it is because we are perpetually judging
it from the point of view of a philosophy which is not his. It is
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD 9
in 1255, that the way of life of the Mendicants was in itself con�
trary to morality and to religion. This time it was not simply the
interests or the amour-propre of the Orders that were threatened,
but their very existence. That is why, in face of the hostility un�
leashed against them by this work, Dominicans and Franciscans
joined for the task of justifying the principles on which their "life"
rested. St. Bonaventure wrote the Quaestiones disputatae de per
fectione evangelica, wherein he established the strict right of every
Christian to renounce absolutely all property, the legitimacy of
the Mendicant life and the right of the Mendicant to withdraw from
manual labour. In these writings, as in all that he was later to
devote to the same problems or to the interpretation of the Fran�
ciscan Rule, St. Bonaventure showed an amazing dialectical virtu�
osity, and a mastery of juridical arguments which made this Theo�
logian of Paris a worthy disciple of the Jurists of Bologna.
Controversies of this sort, in which the strife between the
theologians of the University and the theologians of the Mendicant
Orders grew to such a point as to involve a general conflict be�
tween Seculars and Regulars, were not calculated to facilitate the
reception of St. Bonaventure within the ranks of the Doctors.
However on 5th October, 1256, Alexander IV condemned Guil�
laume's book as iniquitous, execrable, and criminal; on the 17th of
the same month he recommended the Friars Preachers and Friars
Minor to the King of France as perfect servants of Christ; and
on the 23rd he promulgated the conditions to which the guilty
parties had bound themselves under oath to submit. The second
of these conditions was that the University of Paris should im�
mediately receive among its members-and receive explicitly as
Doctors and Masters in Theology-Brother Thomas of Aquin of
the Order of Preachers and Brother Bonaventure of the Order of
Minors.19 The professors at the University, who were the losers in
the matter, carried out the condition with the worst possible grace;
maintaining to the end the corporative principle upon which they
had regulated their actions, they began by claiming that they must
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD 13
to minute details between the Old Testament and the New. His
enterprise then was a kind of scientific demonstration of the in
tegrally figurative character of the Old Testament. But the main
point of interest in his attempt lies not in this systematic working
out of what was after all a traditional idea, but rather in the
hypothesis suggested to him by his comparison. If the Old Testa
ment was thus rigorously the prefiguration of the New, then at the
time when the events related in the Bible were actually happening
the future was already prefigured in the present. Now, if this was
so in the past, it must likewise be so to-day; and just as the study of
symbolic allegory enables us to prove that a mind sufficiently
enlightened could at that time have foreseen the future, so to-day
we may legitimately try to decipher the future beneath the symbols
which at present veil it. The future is certainly prefigured in what
goes before: it is for us to draw it out. The key of the secret cipher
is the Trinity. Joachim reconstructed the world's history following
the distinction of the three Divine Persons: thus he makes the Age
of the Father-which lasts from the Creation to the Incarnation
correspond to the reign of married people and to the literal sense
of the Old Testament; the Age of the Son-lasting from the Incar
nation to 126024-to the reign of the secular clergy and the literal
interpretation of the Gospel; the Age of the Holy Ghost-which
begins in 1260 and is to last to the end of the world-to the reign
of monks and the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture.
Extraordinary as it all appears to us to-day, this division of
history must have appeared in the eyes of many in the Middle Ages
as highly probable-even, in a way. as bearing rather striking
marks of truth. The principle on which it was founded was not
seriously questioned by any one, and St. Bonaventure himself was
to re-affirm it in the most explicit way. The future is in germ in
the past, and the germs in which it is thus contained are the char
acteristic facts whose interpretation will enable us to foretell the
movement of events to come.25 But others went further: not content
with accepting the principle as a principle, they held that Joachim
16 ST. BONAVENTURE
of Flora had received from the Holy Ghost special assistance in the
working out of the prophecies he deduced from present things. This
was affirmed especially by a friend of St. Bonaventure, Adam de
Marisco, in a letter to Robert Grosseteste: non immerito creditur
divinitus spiritum intellectus in mysteriis propheticis assecutus; and
Dante, whose doctrinal Thomism certainly did not interfere with
his judgment of persons, places him in Paradise besides St. Bona
venture and St. Anselm:
. . . e lucemi da lata
il calavrese abate Gioacchino
di spirito profetico dotato. (Parad., XII, 139- 141)
As it happened the new revelation had the assistance of certain
special circumstances in the Franciscan Order. Joachim in effect
predicted the rise of a new Order, contemplative and spiritual,
whose charge should be to announce the truth to the whole world
and to convert Greeks, Jews and pagans. Many Franciscans seized
this idea with avidity and held that the prediction explicitly
marked them out for this mission.26 It is therefore not surprising
that the doctrine should have gained the adhesion of holy men,
universally respected-in particular the Minister General of the
Order, John of Parma, whom St. Bonaventure had just succeeded.
It is a fact beyond question that he was definitely a partisan of
Joachim of Flora. The express statement of Salimbene, a great
admirer of John of Parma and himself a Joachite, excludes the
theory that he became so only after his resignation.27 Now obvi
ously the open adhesion of the Minister General to apocalyptic
teaching of this sort constituted the gravest danger for the whole
Order. The Franciscans had of necessity to do one of two things:
either take their stand with John of Parma and share the respon
sibility for his heresy, or deny the new doctrine and manifest their
denial to the Church by condemning the man who had been its
adherent.28 The Order chose the second way, John of Parma was
called before a tribunal-presided over naturally by the new Min
ister General-and charged with heresy.
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD 17
of the Rule; but the Minister General was able perfectly to reconcile
the divergent tendencies to be found within the Order, and his long
term of office-unlike those of Elias of Cortona and John of
Parma-ended only by his reception of the Cardinalate.
In 1259 St. Bonaventure was in Italy. Early in the October of
that year, on St. Francis's Mount Alvernia, he wrote the Itinerarium
mentis in Dewn.35 In 1260, back in France, he held his first Gen�
eral Chapter, on the 23rd May, at Narbonne. Here were drawn up
the Constitutiones Narbonenses, upon which we shall frequently
have to draw; here, too, he was asked to write a Life of St. Francis
to put an end to the controversy kept alive in the Order by the
existence of several different and to some extent contradictory lives.
He wrote the Legenda major S. Francisci and the Legenda minor in
126 1, but by way of preparation he went first to Italy, to Assisi,
then again to Mount Alvernia, consulting such of the Saint's first
companions as were still surviving. It seems that the final touches
were not put to these tvvo works till 1263.
In the course of this year St. Bonaventure went to Rome, then
to Padua, where he was present on the 8th April, 1263, at the
exhumation of St. Anthony's bones. On the 20th May, in that
same year, he presided at Pisa over the second General Chapter,
which was marked by an intense movement of devotion to Our
Lady: 36 several decisions then made by St. Bonaventure bore the
mark of this prevailing spirit. In the same Chapter his two Lives
of St. Francis were presented to the Friars of the Order and ap�
proved by them.
From 1263 to 1265 there are absolutely no documents concern�
ing St. Bonaventure: on the other hand, an important event took
place during this latter year. By a Bull, dated from Perugia the
24th November, 1265, Pope Clement IV named him Archbishop
of York. The nomination to so important a charge, though accom�
panied by the most flattering words of praise from the Pope, did
not move St. Bonaventure; he was unwilling to let himself be "de�
tached from his duties as "Minister General. " Wherefore he went
20 ST. BONAVENTURE
at once to the Pope. and after the strongest appeals he obtained the
Pope's permission to stay on in the charge entrusted to him.37
Back in Paris, St. Bonaventure held his third General Chapter
in the following year. Here were instituted the public disputations
given by students of the Order, disputations which for several
centuries were to accompany every General Chapter. At the same
gathering it was also decided that all Lives of St. Francis save those
written by St. Bonaventure were to be destroyed wherever they
might be found. This resolution, though not ordered by St. Bona
venture as Clareno asserts, was undoubtedly approved by him.
Very naturally such a decision was condemned without mercy
by the Spirituals of the thirteenth century and almost as severely
by the historians of the twentieth. Yet I think there is no point in
loading the Chapter with the responsibility. by way of clearing St.
Bonaventure. Such an attitude, altogether beyond the compre
hension of men of the modem historical habit, came much more
naturally at that period and in the special circumstances in which
St. Bonaventure found himself. He had not written his Life of St.
Francis as a party work; therefore he did not consider that by this
work he was deciding in favour of one of the tendencies to be seen
in the Order and against the others. On the contrary. he believed
that, having taken all possible precautions and himself examined the
witnesses most worthy of credence, he had produced a faithful
image of St. Francis, one that might recreate harmony among
divided minds and make it impossible for the person of the Saint
that living symbol of love-to become a cause of disunion within
his own family. Holding all this, he naturally considered that
whatever might be in Lives of St. Francis other than his was either
superfluous or false; why then leave them in being? What purpose
·would be served by his work. if the accounts it was meant to re
place had continued to circulate freely and foment discord in the
bosom of the Order? St. Bonaventure was so far removed from
the mentality of the modem historian that he has not even set
down the Life of St. Francis in chronological order; the task he set
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD 21
therefore He is the one remedy against the three evils at that time
rending the scholastic world of Paris-praesumptio sensuwm, et dis
sensio sentelttiarum et desperatio inveniendi verum: the pride that
makes men abound in their own sense and invent new doctrines;
the doctrinal dissensions which result from this pride and range
school against school within the bosom of Christianity; the despair
of finding truth which leads the Averroists to juxtapose, without
reconciling, the truth of the faith and the opposite conclusions of
philosophy. Ne desperemus, maxime cum ipse velit et sciat et possit
nos docere.5 1 There is in this phrase a warm and understanding
compassion, such as we rarely come upon in all this Averroist
controversy, for souls in torment, many of them undoubtedly sin
cere and suffering from their inability to harmonize their reason
with their faith. Others may try to coerce these souls by forcing
upon them the dilemma of the double truth; better inspired, St.
Bonaventure feels that they believe but that they do not comprehend
and are in despair at their incomprehension. There is no better
psychologist than kindness.
St. Bonaventure's lectures De
decem donis Spiritus Sancti, which
certainly come before the Hexaemeron ( 1273) and probably after
the Collationes de decem praeceptis (1267-68) , must be practically
contemporary with the controversy between Siger and St. Thomas.
Now the errors of the Averroists are explicitly examined in the
eighth lecture, whose subject is the gift of understanding. Against
their three principal errors St. Bonaventure sets Christ as cause
of being, ground of knowledge, and order of life. 5 2 But the criticism
he here directs against the errors of the Averroists is obviously
closely linked with the general problem of human knowledge. The
fourth of these lectures, dealing with the gift of knowledge, contains
a stern criticism of every philosophy which would claim to be self
sufficient, and we shall later examine its content in greater detail53 ;
the place of Christian philosophy is tending to be fixed definitely
benveen sheer faith and theology properly so called; in other words
the plan of the Hexaemeron is beginning to take shape.
28 ST. BONAVENTURE
thought was fixed from the very beginning as to its general orienta�
tion and its essential theses: but it never ceased to develop and grow
in richness. The Commentary on the Sentences contained, virtually
or actually, all the ultimate lines along which his thought was to
develop: the continuity of its evolution is thus beyond question,
but the reality of this evolution is not less so. In proportion as he
saw the new doctrine of Albert and Thomas developing before his
eyes, he attained to a deeper consciousness of what was character�
istic and specific in the tradition for which he stood: his Augus�
tinianism plunged its foundations deeper and more solidly as the
threat against it grew. On the other hand-and perhaps this is
the primary fact about it-the Commentary had been the work of a
free and powerful mind, yet of a mind working in the atmosphere
of a school. according to the procedure of the school and upon
the texts given to it. It is probably true to say that if we had
nothing of his save this Commentary we should not even have
suspected how much his thought contained that was profoundly
original and even unique. To discover this it is necessary to tum
to those works which are later in time than his University life.
When he became General of the Order he remained in contact
with a centre of intense philosophical life-the University of
Paris-while at the same time he broke out of the routine of the
schools which would have held him bound to the cycle of philos�
ophical and theological commentation. And his office, just as it
withdrew him from the school, plunged him into the very heart of
the Franciscan Order, setting before his eyes and offering to his
daily meditation material as living and rich in its totally different
way as the writings of Peter Lombard or the texts of Aristotle. There
was now imposed upon him the duty of commenting no longer
upon a book but upon a whole life-the Franciscan life as it then
flourished about him, a life whose spirit he was forced to penetrate
even more deeply by the duty of guiding the Order for long years
through the heats of many controversies between the different
factions.
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD 33
IT. COMMENTARIES
V. PREACHING
sine glosa. "67 These words are the source of the tradition of the
Spirituals. and of all those who held that for the Franciscan Order
evolution (of whatever sort) and decadence were synonymous.
Brother Leo, Brother Giles, John of Panna allowed no other Rules
for the Order than the Regula and the Testamentum, and the slogan
of these champions of the primitive ideal was always to be sine
glosa, sine glosa!68
On the other hand, it cannot be disputed that from the point
of view of the Church herself, to whom alone the Franciscan friars
were bound in obedience, the true Rule was neither the first Regula
nor the Testamentum. but the second rule or Regula Bullata. This
was drawn up in 1223 under the prudent inspiration of Cardinal
Hugolin. then Bishop of Ostia, later Pope Gregory IX; it was
confirmed by Honorius III on the 29th November of the same year.
Between the Regula Bullata, the official and definitive charter of the
Order, and the first Rule of St. Francis, the differences at first sight
seen trifling. But they modified the strongest and strictest prescrip
tions of the First Rule in such a way as to prepare for the further
evolution of the Franciscan Order. Did St. Francis realize what
was taking place? When he accepted the Regula Bullata of 1223,
did he see clearly that the new text would inevitably give rise to
interpretations and glosses? Did he sacrifice his own conception
of the Order to that of Cardinal Hugolin? One might think so. if
the Testamentum had not come precisely to recall the exact and
authentic sense of the Rule. St. Francis, bewildered by the develop
ment of his work. yet remained faithful to his original ideal.
Yet it is true that, if we consider the situation of a Franciscan
friar at the moment when St. Bonaventure took over the direction
of the Order, two different interpretations existed for his choice.
I am not thinking of the attitude of those bad religious who acted as
though non-observance of the rule was one way of interpreting it.
It is true that disorders arose in certain communities. that there
were Franciscans leading a life unworthy of the habit they wore.
But with regard to these there was complete unanimity within the
38 ST. BONAVENTURE
not with the powerful and the learned but with the humble and
the simple; and, following out the parallel, he had seen learned and
illustrious doctors corning to it. Herein precisely lies the distinction
between the works of God, which cannot but progress, and the
works of man, which cannot but decay. The d e v e l o p m e n t o f
the Order constituted for him the unmistakable mark by which the
works of Christ may be known.69
That is why, far from feeling scruples as to the legitimacy
of studies, St. Bonaventure considered that he had entered the
Franciscan Order in what Providence had designed to be the era
of the Doctors, and we may add that on this point he could never
have found himself faced with serious difficulties. That problem
was already settled: the whole Order realized the necessity of
developing theological studies. It is very difficult, on this matter as
on others, to isolate the personality of St. Francis from the Francis
can Movement as a whole; and no one can feel sure of describing
exactly the state of mind of the founder concerning the utility of
theological knowledge. In none of the texts he has left us can we
find either a condemnation of studies or any explicit approval of
their development.70 What is absolutely certain is that he himself
had no thought of them at all, either for himself or for his first
companions, at the time when he conceived the idea of the "life"
that he was to lead and to preach. He gave himself out for a
simple ignorant man: 71 in fact, he could read, speak Proven<;:al.
but not correctly, and understand the Latin of the Scriptures-but
this last rather by way of divination than translation. To urge that
in the end he possessed abundance of theological knowledge, be
cause he surprised theologians by the profundity of his interpreta
tions of Scripture, so far from being an argument in favour of the
thesis is in fact its death blow. All the companions of his early
years did in fact insist upon the admirable profundity of his inter
pretations of Scripture precisely to establish not that his learning
was extensive, but that a saint has no need of learning. Besides it
was received doctrine, recalled by St. Peter Damian, that the act
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD 41
had no other duty than to celebrate Mass and pray for the living
and the dead according to the rite of the Holy Roman Church;
he therefore conceded that they might possess the books necessary
for the exercise of this function, but he absolutely denied them
all others; and it is not clear how the brothers could have studied
dogmatic theology with no other resources than a breviary and a
psalter.80 The pursuit of learning was always considered by St.
Francis as practically indistinguishable from pride. In the Regula
Bullata the rule prohibiting laymen from learning to read comes
immediately after the exhortation to be on guard against all pride
and every earthly care, and the harshest words uttered by St.
Francis against learning were uttered to convince the brothers ut
nemo superbiat, sed glorietur in cruce Domini. 81 There is therefore
no need to appeal to the evidence of the first disciples to prove
that St. Francis always considered learning as more dangerous than
useful. and that he desired its acquisition neither for himself nor
for the brothers who might enter his Order. 82
Yet it would be agreed that between a Rule given out by St.
Francis at a time when the Order contained no more than eleven
brothers-almost all of them laymen83- and the application of
this same Rule to several thousands of clerics, there would of ne
cessity be a considerable difference. It is the interior drama of
St. Francis's life that he himself never saw it. Celano tells us that
it was precisely because he saw that his disciples were growing
so numerous that he wrote for himself, for his eleven brothers, and
for all those who were to come, the First Rule confirmed by Inno
cent III. The Testamentum proves that the experiences of the years
that followed did not undeceive him: he resigned himself to it but
never accepted it. When he abandoned the government of an Order
which was already slipping from his hands, the problem of studies
had already been answered in a sense that he had not foreseen; his
personal influence, profound as it was, had not prevailed against
the pressure of facts and the influence of Cardinal Hugolin. Under
the driving force of Elias of Cortona, who was in this no more
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD 43
forbade the spread of any new writing outside the Order unless
it had been examined either by the Minister General or the Minister
Provincial and the defmitors; they forbade the teaching of private
opinions contrary to faith and morals or even contrary to the
common teaching of the Masters of the Order.97 But there is no
precise regulation concerning the object or the order or the extent
of studies. The various Franciscan houses conformed to the usages
of the University alongside which they were founded, especially
those of Paris and Oxford. St. Bonaventure recognized his inability
either to prescribe or forbid a priori this or that line of philosophic
research. Doubtless, if one abides by the decisions of the rule,
Franciscan studies are necessary and must be sufficient to provide a
solid foundation for the teaching of truths pertaining to salvation,
for their defence against the attacks of infidels, and for the forma
tion of good preachers.98 But where must one fix the limits of the
necessary? Vain curiosity is to be condemned: it is displeasing to
St. Bonaventure, to all good friars, to God and His Angels. Those
who waste their time in studying useless writings are equally inde
fensible, for this is a detestable habit and should be uprooted. But
when is a writing useless? Can one ever be sure that a book is
useless? And even if a man seeks in good faith to study only
useful books can he be sure that he is not mistaken? It is very
difficult to gather grain without gathering some straw with it, to
study the words of God without suffering some admixture of the
words of man. Therefore let the brothers gather everything: the
strong breath of devotion will soon separate the straw of words
from the grain of truth. We might blame this man or that for
vain curiosity: but his curiosity might better deserve the name of
love of study. A man who studies the doctrines of heretics in
order to come to a better understanding of truth would be acting
neither as a heretic nor as one merely inquisitive, but as a Catholic.
If a man seeks in philosophy the means of strengthening the
foundations of his faith, he has precedent for so doing, and even
illustrious precedent. Many questions of faith could not be examined
50 ST. BONAVENTURE
shame, since Our Lord Himself came into this world a s a poor man
for the love of God. As early as the text of the two Rules, there
appear the two different ideas, and the combinations of which these
are capable were later to give rise to a highly complex theory of
mendicancy. In principle, there is no ground for begging save
when one has been unable to provide for one's needs by labour:
et cum necesse fuerit vadant pro eleemosynis. But, on the other
hand, the poor man has a hereditary right to alms-it is the wealth
bequeathed to him by the ideal poor man, Jesus Christ, and if
anyone refuses to give alms, the shame is for him who refuses, not
for him who is refused. Still further. he who begs does a service
to him who gives, for he furnishes him with an opportunity to
exchange perishable goods for immortal merits.103
On this essential point as on the matter of studies, St. Bona
venture found himself faced with the problem of reconciling the
respect that must be paid to the primitive ideal of St. Francis and
the actual conditions imposed upon him by the extraordinary
development of the Franciscan Order. We cannot doubt the abso
lute sincerity of his desire to preserve all that could be preserved
of the spirit of poverty for which St. Francis had so passionately
and tenaciously fought. Olivi himself admits that St. Bonaventure's
intentions at least were pure, and he implies that if the saint did
not practice perfect poverty. at least he preached it and explicitly
maintained the principle: fuit enim interius optimi et piissimi affect
us et in doctrinae verba praedicans ea quae sunt perfectae pauper
tatis. 1 04 We know that he had to maintain the right to voluntary
poverty against the attacks of the seculars and that he did this
with extreme energy. TI1e ideal of Christian perfection represented
by the life of total renunciation of the mendicant friars preserved
in his eyes an absolute value, as against the ethic of the golden
mean defended by the followers of Aristotle and his pagan philos
ophy. If the world and its goods are in themselves superfluous
and vain, no matter how little one posesses of them that little is
too much : upon this central point his mind never wavered.105
52 ST. BONAVENTURE
into the Friar's hands, they would not be "receiving" it in the sense
forbidden by the Rule as long as their will remained firm in the
refusal to consider it as their own property.113
What is true of money. is still truer of things. Friars Minor
use what they need but possess nothing. All the movable or other
goods given to the Order belong by right either to the donor if
he reserves to himself the mere ownership, or to the Pope provider
in-general for all the poor of the Church if the donor abandons all
his rights. The Order then is at every moment ready to give up
all its goods to the Pope if he so wills, 114 and therefore it can use
the goods necessary to it with a clear conscience as far as the Rule
is concerned.
If it is true that the study of Wisdom and contemplation are
in the first rank of the duties incumbent upon religious, they must
necessarily be conceded the use of large convents, situated near
the great centres of study, abundantly provided with necessary
books from which these men of study can receive sufficient nourish
ment. Religious who live continually in their convents would soon
suffer in health if they had not at their disposal wide and airy
spaces wherein they might breathe freely, they would languish and
become incapable of spiritual studies and indeed of progress in
Wisdom.115 But the Friars equally need sufficient bodily food, for
the assiduous study of Scripture, a desire for devotion, struggle
against temptation, the intensity of the interior life, so rapidly
wear down and consume bodily strength that they would not long
resist unless care were taken from time to time to build them up.11 6
Finally in the house of studies there must be books, and one
feels from the way in which this great scholar speaks of them that
even if he did not in the Franciscan sense possess books, he had
books and loved them. Not only did the convents of the Order
by now have many books, but they guarded them jealously and
were unwilling to lend them. They had been reproached with this,
and St. Bonaventure felt called upon to justify their attitude by a
the austerities practised by the friars when they had the strength,
naturally imitate their manner of living as they see it, and by that
very fact water down the severity of the primitive rule. \Vhat is
worse, they do not discern the purely interior virtues of the first
friars because these are no longer manifested in external acts, and
in proportion as the older men relax in external observance, the
novices relax interiorly. It is true that their seniors could and
should correct them, but they do not: for since they can no longer
preach by example they are afraid to preach only in words; when
they remonstrate with the young, these reply: "They speak well,
but they do not do what they say" ; and such corrections are
rather an occasion of scandal.
But the descent from the primitive ideal does not stop there.
The direction of the order falls at last into the hands of those
younger men themselves, and once they are superiors, they do not
aim at making the novices like to the first friars of whose perfection
they have no suspicion, but only at making them like to them
selves. So long as the friars preserve a sort of exterior discipline and
manage to bear themselves fittingly in choir and such like, the
superiors declare that never has the order been more perfect. Yet
new habits creep in unperceived : when their effects are at last
discovered they are already too deeply rooted to be remedied, and
each of these habits involves some other, so that the primitive life
changes more and more completely.11 8 All these considerations do
not of course justify a Minister General in giving up the struggle,
but they are the sufficient answer to any attempt to maintain an
order in its original state. The struggle must be pursued without
relaxation, but its object must be different- continuously to re
establish the harmony, of itself ever tending to disappear, between
the actual state of the order at the point of development it has
reached and the spirit which reigned at its foundation.
Wby after all did St. Francis want to found a new Order? His
soul had always been consumed with the flame of a three-fold
desire: to adhere to God totally by the savour of contemplation,
58 ST. BONAVENTURE
Adam had never sinned; and at the same time there is the subtle
intellect, avid to know, a pupil in the school of the most illustrious
master in the most illustrious university in the world.
In St. Bonaventure then was to be realized the extraordinary
and immeasurably fertile paradox of a genuinely Franciscan soul
seeking its inner equilibrium in leaming, and constructing its phil
osophy of the universe under the pressure of its own needs. What
St. Francis had simply felt and lived, St. Bonaventure was to think;
thanks to the organizing power of his genius, the interior effusions
of the Poverello were to be given shape as thought; the personal
intuitions of St. Francis were totally detached from science, but
they were to work like leaven in the mass of philosophical ideas
piled up by Bonaventure in the University of Paris, to act as a
principle of selection, eliminating some elements, assimilating others,
drawing nourishment from Aristotle as from St. Augustine, yet
adapting both to its use wherever it judged necessary. By what
psychological ways this transmutation of values could have been
effected, can only be understood if we grasp how St. Bonaventure
interpreted not only the Rule, but the life of St. Francis.
First it is certain that St. Bonaventure died leaving an uncon
tested reputation for sanctity. The Spirituals themselves, who did
not always mince matters in saying what they thought of his life
or his actions, have done justice to his leaming, his eloquence, his
self-effacing humility, his sanctity: Fratre Bonaventura propter
farnam scientiae et eloquentiae ac sanctitatis ad cardinalatum contra
suam vohmtatem assumpto .
12 0 And it is not simply sanctity
. . .
Alvernia, where St. Francis saw God and himself under the ap
pearance of a twofold light, and whence he returned bearing the
stigmata impressed in his flesh by the six-winged seraph.
When contemplation rises to this degree of perfection, it acts
like a real force with effects immediately perceptible: the con
templative who comes back from these celestial regions to life
among men, comes back with virtues beyond the human, he passes
in the midst of things as an angel might pass: radiating extraor
dinary forces, seeing into what is fundamental in beings, entering
into communion through the wrappings of matter with whatever
of divine lies hid in the heart of each. Think first of the forces: an
indiscreet bishop loses the use of his tongue when he comes to
interpret the prayer of St. Francis; an abbot for whom St. Francis
has agreed to pray feels himself penetrated almost beyond his
bearing by a glow and a sweetness for which there is no name1 2 8 :
birds, beasts, plants, the very elements obey him, for he enters into
relations with them by virtues which are not to be acquired in any
purely human condition.1 29 But this kind of external force is not
the only nor the most important thing that he draws from his
ecstasy. There is also a profundity of thought whereby he can
read deeper into things and writings than any man could do who
seeks to discover their sense with the aid of human learning. We
have seen how deeply he penetrated into the meaning of Scripture;
but he saw equally deeply into the meaning of beings, discovering
among them relations unknown to the learned.
Ecstasy, of course, is not exactly a transient experience of the
Beatific Vision as the elect will possess it in eternity, but most
certainly it is in our human experience the one thing that comes
closest to it. It implies a sort of suspension of the soul, detaching
it in some measure from the body and by that very fact conferring
upon it the virtues of action and knowledge that belong to a spirit
uality purer than ours. Because he had just experienced an almost
total liberation of his soul from his body, because he had just made
almost immediate contact with the first Type of all things, the man
64 ST. BONAVENTURE
who came down from Alvernia could penetrate the sense of crea
tures, and decipher their secret without difficulty. Even if he lost
for a time the immediate contact with the Divine Presence, he yet
remained a man illumined, divining God in things. even when he
no longer possessed Him. Hence the endlessly springing fountain
of symbols or rather the permanent transfiguration of the universe
in which he saw. not fragments of matter or beings deprived of
knowledge, but precious images of God. Having touched God, St.
Francis could discover His presence where ordinary mortals were,
and could only be, unmindful of it. In those Middle Ages V\rith
their passion for symbolism-yet a symbolism that is often only a
stereotyped repetition of comparisons grown traditional-St. Francis
appears as an inventor; it was because he had rediscovered the first
source from which all symbols flow that he was able to create while
others repeated, that he was able especially to see the deepest sense
of beings in their symbolical significance. His thirteenth-century
biographers well saw what a distance there was between the alle
gories seen, lived and loved by St. Francis and the mass of cliches
deposited by tradition in the formulas of the Lapidaries and Besti
aries of the time. Celano not only points out how original and
spontaneous was the art with which St. Francis read the meaning
of things. he also gives us the reason: St. Francis was already free
of this world. he might enjoy the liberty reserved by Beatific Glory
for the Children of God.130
The universe as St. Francis saw it in his passage was then
endowed with a quite particular essence: so that his body was for
him nothing more than a barrier hiding God from him, the world
through which he hastened no more than a pilgrim way, an exile
of which the end was already in sight. Here again St. Francis
profoundly transfonned a theme sufficiently familiar to his time
and place, that of the "Contemptus Saeculi. " Radical as it was,
his contempt of the world had nothing of that sombre hatred with
which certain ascetics felt called upon to colour it. On the con
trary. we can say that the more he despised the world the more
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD 65
out from his ecstasy enriched with virtues which enable him to win
back without effort souls unmindful of God. His word, his look,
his example alone have power to do what this world's learning and
the pride that goes with it are incapable of bringing to pass.
It is then Divine contemplation that St. Bonaventure places at
the very centre of the Franciscan ideal; and consequently the peace
towards which all his thought is to be directed and to direct us is
rightly to be called ecstasy. To follow the way of the soul towards
God means to strive with all one's strength to live a human life
as close as possible to that of the blessed in Heaven: quam pacem
evangelizavit et dedit Dominus noster Jesus-Christus; cujus prae
dicationis repetitor fuit pater noster Fra n c i s c u s , i n o m n i s u a
praedicatione pacem i n principia et i n fine annuntians, i n omni
salutatione pacem optans, in omni contemplatione ad extaticam
pacem suspirans, tanquam civis illius Jerusalem, de qua dicit vir
pacis . . . rogate quae ad pacem sunt Jerusalem.136
It is equally evident that St. Bonaventure wished no other ideal
than that of the Gospel and St. Francis. It was with a soul con
sumed by desire that he sought ecstasy after the example of his
spiritual father: com igitur exemplo beatissimi patris Francisci hanc
pacem anhelo spiritu quaererem. It was to find it that he, a sinner,
the seventh successor, though unworthy, of St. Francis, was led
by Divine inspiration to the solitude of Mount Alvemia, round
about the anniversary of St. Francis' death and thirty-three years
after it.137 What St. Bonaventure went seeking on the mountain
where St. Francis received the Stigmata was the same peace in
ecstasy in the midst of which the miracle had taken place: ad
montem Alverni tanquam ad locum quietum, amore quaerendi
pacem spiritus, declinarem.13 8 And it was while he sought in his soul
the interior ascent by which he might obtain it, that he remembered
the miracle wrought upon St. Francis in the same spot, that vision
of a winged seraph in the form of a crucifix. Immediately his mind
was filled with light; the seraphic vision indicated both the ecstasy
in which St. Francis had then been and the way by which it may be
68 ST. BONAVENTURE
attained; the six wings of the seraph are the six mystical contem�
plations by which, as by so many degrees or roads, the soul fits
itself to enter into the peace of ecstasy. That is the true term, the
sole term to which the ways of Christian wisdom lead. St. Bona
venture never knew any other than the ecstatic life led upon earth
by his master, St. Francis.139
Now just as St. Bonaventure sets up ecstatic contemplation as
the ultimate term of knowledge, so likewise he borrows from St.
Francis his conception of the ways by which a man prepares for
it, the object it proposes to attain and the fruits the soul receives
from it.
For the master as for the disciple, action is the necessary prep
aration for contemplation and the repose of the contemplative life
must be the reward of the labours of the active life. Not only
long-continued exercise of love of neighbour and penance, but
also- and especially- the constant practice of meditation and
prayer become the normal conditions of all true knowledge. We
have seen that St. Francis had been transformed as it were into a
perpetual prayer; it is easy to trace out in the descriptions of his
manner of prayer left us by his biographers all the virtues that
are to be found ordered, developed, organized and shaped into the
very ground-work of St. Bonaventure's method. At the base of
this unending prayer was desire for Christ-a desire intimate, pro
found, unceasing. a cry of the soul to God, the necessary condition
of ascent to Him.140 This desire often burst forth in ardent prayer
a prayer of groaning, tears, colloquies aloud with his Lord, his
Judge and his Friend141 ; but more often its effect was to tum him
back within himself, drawing him away from the world of matter,
ruthlessly driving away the images that might hinder him and
seeing their irruption into his long prayers as so many grievous
faults which he confessed and for which he did penance.142 It was
only then with the last resistances of body and imagination con
quered, that he entered into a sort of interior discourse, wrapped
himself wholly within himself, reached out to God, offering Him
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD 69
all his love and all his desire, and so at last arriving at that ex
perience of spiritual joy which made him for a few hours a citizen
of the heavenly city.143
There is not one of these conditions that St. Bonaventure like
wise does not require to introduce us to true knowledge and lead
us to God. We must avoid the error of taking St. Francis's spirit
uality as an absolutely new thing; he himself would have claimed
that his piety was fundamentally traditional and in fact there is no
one of its constitutive elements which, materially considered, is
not found elsewhere. Thus St. Bonaventure, in the very moments
when the Franciscan inspiration of his work is most strongly
marked, can often justify his doctrine by an appeal to the authority
of the pseudo-Denis or St. Augustine when you might have expected
him to appeal to that of St. Francis. Further, it is beyond dispute
that even in this matter of mysticism and the interior life. St.
Francis is not St. Bonaventure's only master. The Areopagite, Hugh
of St. Victor, St. Bernard, offered for his use interpretations of high
spirituality so rich and so profound that he could not but be in
spired by them and draw largely from their doctrine. But what
St. Bonaventure owed to St. Francis was a concrete example, a
living proof that just as the perfection of poverty is not an excep
tional grace reserved for rarely privileged souls,144 so the way of
mystical contemplation is open to those who can find the key. Now
the first condition shown by the example of St. Francis to be
necessary is desire.
To attain understanding or wisdom, one must first thirst for
it. The gift of understanding. for example, is a solid food like
bread, which St. Francis said that we must labour hard to acquire.
Men sow the grain, it grows, they harvest it, take it to the mills,
bake it and do a score of other things beside; so it is with the gift
of understanding, which is acquired only at the cost of multiple
labours and by one who has ardently desired it.145 But to be that
man of desire to whom grace will not be refused, requires more
than a superficial emotion. He who is animated by a vehement
70 ST. BONAVENTURE
desire for grace from above has recourse first to prayer; thus it is
that the continuous prayer of St. Francis came to be the very
foundation of the whole structure of human knowledge as St.
Bonaventure conceived it. Doubtless many men do not pray, and
yet know; but we are assured in advance that their knowledge is
either erroneous or incomplete and that it rests condemned never
to attain its full perfection.
It is not prayer only that St. Bonaventure raised to the level
of a preliminary discipline for philosophy; likewise he has learned
from his master the firmly grounded certitude that the practice of
moral ascesis is a no less necessary condition of all true knowledge.
Knowledge needs for its acquirement not only the discipline of the
schools, but of the cloister. The gate of knowledge is the ardent
desire we have for it; but the desire of knowledge engenders a
ecstasy when the body is worn down by maceration and vigil: but
in such a condition the intellect would find it very difficult to trace
out the subtle contour of ideas or unravel the knot of their closest
problems. St. Bonaventure knew it, and it was because he did not
renounce the joy the soul can find in the understanding of the
mysteries of faith that he had of necessity to abandon the ideal of
following in his amazing austerities the total denudation of St.
Francis.
On this point we are not reduced to mere hypothesis; if we look
carefully, we find him actually saying it. In a text of capital im
portance in which, with his usual virtuosity, he intertwines the
three themes of the perfection of the angelic Orders, the perfection
of religious orders and the perfection of souls, he places himself
and the other members of the Order on a plane other than that of
St. Francis; and nothing is more instructive than his manner of
making the distinction. The Order of contemplatives which in his
eyes occupies the summit of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, he sub
divides into three sub-orders- the suppliants, the speculatives and
the ecstatics. The first live in prayer, devotion and the celebration
of the Divine praises; to that they add just so much manual labour
as is necessary to supply their needs; such are, among others, the
Cistercians, Premonstratensians, Carthusians and the Canons Reg
ular of St. Augustine; these may have possessions, and ought to
have, to pray for those who give them. The speculatives are those
who give themselves to the study of Scripture: they must begin by
purifying their souls, for one cannot understand the words of Paul
who has not the soul of Paul. Such are the Dominicans and the
Franciscans. The Dominicans have as their principal object specula
tion, hence their name of Preachers which supposes above all the
knowledge of what they are teaching, and they have as secondary
object the enjoyment of the Divine Goodness by love. The Friars
Minor, on the contrary, have this enjoyment as primary object, and
speculation as secondary object; yet they remain speculatives, and
St. Bonaventure makes a point of recalling that St. Francis wished
76 ST. BONAVENTURE
to see the Brothers study, provided only that they began by putting
their teachings into practice. Multa enim scire et nil gustare quid
valet? If the suppliants correspond to the Order o£ Thrones, the
speculatives, even mystics, represent the evangelical Order o£ Cheru
bim, and it is here that St. Bonaventure takes his place with the
other Franciscans.
Now the remarkable thing is this- that it is not to this place
that he assigns St. Francis. Above the suppliants and the specula
rives are the ecstatics:
tertius ordo est vacantium Deo secundum
modum sursumactivum, sclicet ecstaticum seu excessivum. Their
order corresponds naturally to that o£ the Seraphim, but what is it
and who belong to it? Those who constitute it, if it does in fact
exist, are men for whom ecstasy is a sort o£ habitual and natural
grace, and it certainly seems that St. Francis belonged to that order.
The proof that his Seraphic gifts did not have their origin in the
graces attached to the Order o£ Friars Minor, is that he had already
been found in ecstasy and without consciousness even before he
took the habit. Men of this kind, says St. Bonaventure, are as yet
exceptional beings, for ecstasy is possible only if the soul frees itself
for a time £rom its body, leaving it literally inanimate; and it frees
itself only after it has reduced the body to a point o£ extenuation
where it can no longer hold the soul. The life o£ the ecstatic-and
we mean by that a man whose habitual life consists in being in
ecstasy as that of the speculative consists in thought-involves,
then, such a wearing down o£ the whole body that the man who
leads it could not continue to live without some special grace of
the Holy Spirit. Everything suggests that this Order does not yet
exist, but that St. Francis was given to the world as the first model
of what it is to be. The Seraph who appeared to him on Mount
Alvernia was perhaps there only to signify the Seraphic perfection
of the Order which should later correspond to him. And as the
winged angel imprinted upon him the Stigmata of the Passion, he
may well have wished that to be a sign that the Order should
develop only in the midst of sufferings and tribulations-at the end
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD 77
79
80 ST. BONAVENTURE
is peace that we seek, and demons and damned alike long for it
in the despair in which they are plunged.1 It was this same peace
that Christ came to bring to a world which He knew to be athirst
for it; for He said to men, "My peace I leave you, My peace I
give unto you"; and this promise was repeated anew by St. Francis,
who glorified peace at the beginning and end of all his discourses,
wished peace to every man he greeted, aspired to the peace of
ecstasy in each of his mystical prayers. This peace, after the ex�
ample of St. Francis, St. Bonaventure pursued with all the ardour
of his soul on Mount Alvemia in the accomplishment of his pil�
grimage to God. 2
Now one cannot attentively observe this triple desire without
perceiving that it does not possess in itself that wherewith it may
be satisfied, and indeed that it cannot find satisfaction in any finite
object. It is a fact noted by Aristotle himself that the knowledge
of the human soul has no natural limitation; we are not possessed
of a faculty of knowledge tending to this or that object: on the
contrary we are capable of knowing all that is knowable, and it
is the feeling of our universal aptitude that engenders in us the
desire we have experienced. Capable of knowing all things we are
never satisfied by the knowledge of a determined object: confusedly,
but intensely, we aspire to the possession of all the knowable, of
something which, being known, would enable us to know the rest.
The same is true of the good. We love all that is good just
as we seek to know all that is intelligible: therefore no particular
good suffices us. Scarcely have we loved it when the boundlessness
of our desire draws us towards another good, as though through an
infinite series of particular goods we sought an absolute good which
should be the end of all the others. It is therefore obvious that we
cannot find in any finite object that peace which flows from the
complete satisfaction of all desires. To enjoy peace one must be
perfectly happy and no one is happy if he does not think himself
so. Now since our knowledge always tends beyond each finite
object towards some other object. and since our desire always tends
THE CRITIQUE OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 81
beyond each .finite good towards another good, we shall never .find
in what is .finite our completion, our achievement and our peace.
For him who can see, all philosophy is bound up in this initial
experience: nata est anima ad percipiendum bonum infinitum, quod
Deus est, ideo in eo solo debet quiescere et eo frui:3 it remains for
us to explicate it.
Before setting about this task. one question forces itself upon
our attention: does this philosophy exist already? Since the world
began and ordered cities came to be, there have existed social classes
enjoying sufficient leisure, and thinkers gifted with genius suffi
ciently profound, to enable a rational explanation of the universe
to have been obtained already. If we consider in particular the
period of human history just before the coming of Christ, it is
evident that it was extremely rich in systems of all sorts. Can we
not .find among them one that will satisfy us? Or else, if we come
to the conclusion that human thought of itself has never been
capable of attaining the truth, can we not ascertain some deep
and abiding reason for the failure?
Observe .first that St. Bonaventure sees clearly the formal dis
tinction between faith and reason; and remember, since the fact
has been called in question, that it would have been absolutely
impossible for him not to distinguish them. The existence of pagan
philosophies like those of Plato and Aristotle are a .final and conclu
sive historical proof of the matter. Since there have existed whole
generations of men who did not enjoy the grace of revelation, they
must of necessity have had to use their reason independently of
faith. The distinction between the specifying principles of theology
and philosophy could not then have been unknown to any man
of the Middle Ages, and in fact St. Bonaventure has proved that he
saw it very clearly. Philosophy. properly so called, is for him as
for everyone the knowledge of things that men can acquire by means
of reason alone. Its distinctive character is an absolute certitude:
veritatis ut scrutabilis notitia certa4 ; and this character is accounted
for by the fact that. as distinct from the certitude that faith inspires,
82 ST. BONAVENTURE
a rational activity which took itself and its objects as its end: it
was the divinization of matter. In its other use, natural reason,
conscious of its divine origin and bent upon returning to its true
source, reached out in desire to God, begging for more light: and
this desire, if it were ardent enough, could not but be granted. Thus
acted those of the ancients who received from God an illumination
of the reason even before that which faith brought, and who, thanks
to its aid, became masters of the great truths of philosophy. Patri
archs, prophets, philosophers-all these men were children of light
even under the law of nature and they were so because they had
wished to gather knowledge at its true source in God.1 4
The most perfect type of these men, enlightened though with
out faith, was incontestably Solomon. All his knowledge came to
him from God as the granting of a desire; having desired much, he
had at last received: sic fecit Salomon et factus est clericus magnus. 1 5
Now when it is thus obtained philosophy presents itself manifestly
as a gift of God-although there exist more perfect gifts, like the
gifts of the Holy Spirie6-and it is of this that it is written in the
Proverbs: ecce, descripsi eam tripliciter in cogitationibus et scientia,
ut ostenderem tibi firmitatem et eloquia vanitatis (Prov. 22:20
and 21) . By these words Solomon not only affirms the solidity of
philosophical knowledge, but also sets out the threefold distinc
tion. And in fact this science is divided into three parts according
as it studies the truth of things, the truth of discourse, or the truth
of conduct. The first considers being in its relation and intimate
accord with the source of all being: the second studies the relation
between being as stated in words and real being: the third sets out
the relation which unites being with its end. From this flows the
threefold truth described by Solomon; the truth of conduct (moral) ,
the rule of life in accord with the right rule seen by reason; the
truth of discourse (logical) which resides in the agreement of word
with thought-adaequatio vocis et intellectus; the truth of things
(ontological) which resides in the accord of thought with being
adaequatio intellectus et rei.
THE CRITIQUE OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 87
though they were not in the blindness of Aristotle, yet they were
plunged in darkness23 that nothing could penetrate save the higher
light of faith. Reason stops when it reaches the uttermost limit of
its own nature; but for reason to stop and rest in itself is error.
Suppose a man who knows physics and metaphysics. He has
attained to the higher substances and even to the affirmation o£
one sole God, principle, end and exemplar cause of things. Arrived
at this point he can go no further, so that by that very fact he is
in error unless, illumined by the light of faith, he believes in a
God Who is one and three, infinitely powerful and infinitely good.
For to believe otherwise is to be wrong about God, and he who
does not possess these truths attributes to creatures what belongs to
God alone, blasphemes or falls into idolatry by attributing to things
a simplicity, a goodness, an efficacy which belong only to the Crea�
tor. That is why metaphysics has led into error all philosophers, even
the wisest, when they had not the light of faith. This is the eternal
consequence of an error which is always the same. Philosophy leads
to sciences above itself; he who would rest in it is in darkness.24
What is true of metaphysics is not less true of logic and ethics.
Logic finds its high point in rhetoric, with its disputes upon the
useful and the harmful, actions safe or dangerous, the deserving
and the blameworthy. Now man cannot know what is useful to
him and what is prejudicial, unless something is added to the knowl�
edge he has by reason alone?5 The same is true for the science of
the virtues, even as attained by the most perfect human ethic.
Those illumined philosophers who set the eternal exemplars
of things in the Divine ideas also set in those same ideas the
exemplars of our virtues. They taught, rightly, a moral illumina�
tion which is comparable to intellectual illumination and completes
it. These philosophers distinguished between the social virtues,
which teach us how to act in the world of men, the purgative vir�
tues, teaching solitary contemplation, and the virtues of the purified
soul whereby the soul rests in the contemplation of its Divine model.
92 ST. BONAVENTURE
thought, we both can and must know it and believe it at the same
time and in the same sense.30
This is a decisive point: if it is not grasped, the whole system is
incomprehensible. For, as reflection will show, a metaphysic of
mysticism is possible only if we admit the legitimacy of an act of
knowledge into which the light of faith and the light of reason both
enter, each lending strength to the other. And as this point is
decisive for the rest of the system, it is on it that those commenta
tors hesitate who are not prepared to follow the system to the very
end. An effort is made. for instance, to save at least some rudiment
of natural theology as product of reason alone- such as the proofs
of the existence of God or even of God's oneness: texts of Bona
venture are cited which seem to support such an interpretation, but
they are not properly understood. For example, St. Bonaventure
says-when a philosopher can prove that God is one by a necessary
demonstration, he cannot deny it; yet, if he were told that this
oneness is compatible with a certain multiplicity, he would deny it
because he does not know it and such a truth is beyond the reach
of his natural faculties. This does not mean that he knows one
thing about God-namely His unity-but is ignorant of another
the Trinity: for obviously he does not really know that unity which
he has just demonstrated since he thinks it is a mere unity whereas
in fact it is a trinity.
Again St. Bonaventure distinguishes among truths relating to
God, of which some are transcendent and others accessible to
reason. And we must make the distinction with him, for there are
degrees of inaccessibility in the truths relating to God. The higher
they are, the more deeply they penetrate the very essence of God,
the further they are from our comprehension. The Trinity, the In
carnation, the Immutability of a God who yet acts- these seem
not only beyond the power of unaided reason even to suspect, but
actually contradictory to the first principles which philosophy
makes its own- especially the principle of contradiction. That is
why philosophers know them not or even deny them.31 Other
98 ST. BONAVENTURE
truths are not so inaccessible that the human mind could not have
discovered them without revelation: they are in some sense external
to the divine essence, and among them we shall choose-as crucial
in any attempt to explain St. Bonaventure's system-the knowledge
of the existence of God.
Does St. Bonaventure's system allow the possibility that God's
existence may be proved by reason? It does. No one in the Middle
Ages could have been unaware that a purely rational demonstration
of God's existence was possible, since Aristotle had proved it. But
St. Bonaventure's system does not allow that because this can be
proved rationally it ceases to be an object of faith: so far from
being rendered superfluous by the proofs. faith gives them support
and direction. The truth is, as the reply already quoted indicates,
that the aspiration of our mind is not to demonstrate God but to
see Him:quamvis enim aliquis possit rationibus necessariis probare
Deum esse, tamen cernere ipsum divinum esse non potest.
The philosopher, proving by reason that there is a God, pos
sesses all the certitude that can be acquired in that way. But let
him be converted, and with the gift of faith thus acquired he re
ceives a new illumination of grace, and therewith a knowledge of
a new order. Admittedly this knowledge will not enable him to
see the divine essence, nor the existence necessarily implied therein,
for it is not yet the Beatific Vision; but it will confer upon his
intellect a certitude in some degree comparable to the certitude of
the Beatific Vision. And it will give rise to a new line of proof.
The necessity of God's existence, which we do not yet see in God's
essence, we begin to see in the idea of God which is in us as the
image and imprint of His essence. Thus faith in God's existence
is added to the proofs of philosophy: it neither excludes them nor
is excluded by them. but it inaugurates a higher order of knowledge,
leading them to their point of perfection.32
In the light of this, Bonaventure's conception of philosophy
grows clearer: it can coexist with faith: nay rather, it cannot be
what it ought to be unless it thus coexists. The divine light is
THE CRITIQUE OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 99
infused for knowledge of the object: let the knowing subject, the
reason, but accept this assistance and it will find that to which it
will ultimately owe its own rational perfection. But if pride, self
love, self-sufficiency come between man's mind and the light of
God. then there is eclipse and man is doomed to unwisdom.33 Thus
the certitude and apparent ease of philosophic knowledge are
qualities which may only too easily destroy it, and us with it.
The man who has mastered philosophy tends to place all his con
fidence in it: he prides himself on it, thinks that by it he is superior
to his former state: whereas in fact he has lost true understanding.
His is the capital mistake of taking for a whole what is only a
part, for an end what is only a means. Whereas he should pass
through philosophy as a stage of a longer journey. his mind settles
down in it contentedly; and philosophic knowledge, which is
nought but good if taken for what it truly is, becomes the source of
the worst errors�and not only errors and failures of comprehen
sion in theology but even, and primarily, in philosophy itself:
granted, that is. that it is of the very essence of philosophy as
such that it does not suffice to itself. but requires the irradiation of
a higher light if it is rightly to conduct its own operations.34 It
may then be affirmed that, in St. Bonaventure's view, philosophic
truth implies an initial act of submission and humility, an admis
sion by the reason that it cannot achieve its mvn object unaided,
and a final acceptance of the light above all lights, which is
sufficient to itself. and which dispenses man from lighting a candle
to look at the sun. There are those who doubt whether this is a
true statement of St. Bonaventure's thought on philosophy: for
further confirmation I shall look at his theology; and since their
doubts are mainly theological. the digression is to the point.
One most characteristic feature of his doctrine on grace is the
real distinction between the virtues and the gifts.35 Sanctifying
grace operates in the soul along the threefold line of the virtues,
the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and the beatitudes. The virtues� faith,
for example� give back to the soul the rectitude impaired in it by
100 ST. BONAVENTURE
sin. By the virtues, therefore, the soul receives all that is strictly
necessary to bring it into right relation with God: but nothing
more.36 Note how such a soul is placed in relation to our problem.
It has faith, it believes in revelation though it does not comprehend
it; it has at its disposition all that is necessary for salvation.
But sanctifying grace may be given with more abundance and
flow out into gifts. The gifts of the Holy Ghost presuppose a soul
already rectified, and their special effect is to "fit" it for higher
state. The technical expression used by St. Bonaventure is "ex
pedire. " The word is difficult to translate, implying both that the
soul is liberated from the bonds that would hold it back and fortified
with the resources necessary for actual advance. And in fact, the
soul, enriched with the gifts, is in a state to receive the beatitudes
which lead to its perfection. Now the beatitudes can consist in
naught save graces of vision, which set the soul face to face vvith
its object and enable it to seize its object, in so far of course as a
finite nature can apprehend the infinite. The gifts of the Holy
Ghost then must necessarily find their place between the virtues
faith without understanding-and the beatitudes-understanding
freed from the obscurity of faith: that is why they may be rightly
considered as destined to bring us to a comprehension of what we
believe. Their intermediate role-which is to assure the passage
from faith alone to mystical vision-bears an exact analogy to the
transient and intermediate nature assigned by St. Bonaventure
to theology.37
If this is so, the origin of theology is to be sought in a liberality
of grace and a special gift of the Holy Ghost: the gift of under
standing which comes to raise us from our poverty. This gift it is
which stirs our intelligence to explore the content of our faith and
brings us to some comprehension of the object which as yet we do
not see: it is the supernatural foundation of fides quaerens intel
lectum.
But St. Bonaventure's classification leaves the philosopher in
extreme perplexity. The Holy Ghost disposes of his gifts in favour
THE CRITIQUE OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 101
107
108 ST. BONAVENTURE
spiritual than God. But we shall have to see later whether there
is not another mode of knowing God-whether it may not be that
God-who is present to our soul and to every intellect by truth
informs it by means of a knowledge which He imprints upon it
and which it does not abstract, a knowledge inferior to God since
it is in man, but superior to the soul since it enriches it.5 A priori,
then, there is no sort of impossibility standing between the soul
and the knowledge of God.
We can even go further. Not only is God not unknowable
by man; the knowledge we have of Him is evident and easily
acquired. We may take any one of three different ways of arriving
at the fact of His existence: and each of the three brings us to a
certitude as complete as it is humanly possible to desire.
The first way is based on the fact that the existence of God is
a truth naturally innate in every rational soul.6 This "innateness"
does not imply that man sees God by His essence; it does not
necessarily imply even that he possesses by nature and with no
sort of effort an exact knowledge of what the divine nature is;
when we speak of an innate knowledge of God's existence, it is of
His existence alone that we make the affirmation. Hugh of St.
Victor gives the definitive formula of this innatism when he says
that God has measured out the knowledge man has of Him in such
a way that we can never either totally comprehend His essence or be
in total ignorance of His existence. 7 It is essential to understand
exactly what St. Bonaventure held on this delicate point.
To grasp his thought in all its complexity, we must first pose
the problem in the precise terms that St. Bonaventure had inherited
and adopted from St. Anselm and St. Augustine. The question
with which the philosophers of this school were above all pre
occupied was whether the human soul can or cannot be ignorant of
God. The affirmation of the innateness of the idea of God does,
at first sight, come into collision with the plain fact that idolators
adore statues of wood and stone: how could this be, if the idea
of God were inseparable from man's mind and born with it?
' 111
THE EVIDENCE FOR GOD s EXISTENCE
same again applies to our thirst for peace, for the peace of a
rational being can reside only in a Being immutable and eternal;
but this thirst supposes a notion or a knowledge of its object; the
knowledge of a being immutable and eternal is then naturally innate
in every rational mind.10
How could it be otherwise? The soul is present to itself and
knows itself directly; but God is eminently present in the soul, and
just as the soul is intelligible of itself, so also is God. We have
then an intelligible present to an intelligible.11 And though this
supreme intelligible be superior-even so infinitely superior that
there is no proportion at all between it and the being in which
it resides- this fact proves nothing against the possibility of such
a knowledge. In fact if. for knowledge, it were necessary that there
should be proportion between the knowing subject and its object,
the human mind would never arrive at any knowledge of God at
all, for it cannot be proportioned to God by nature, by grace or
by glmy. But the proportion that would be required for a knowl
edge adequate to its object-and especially for a definition of
essence-is not required for mere awareness of its existence. A mere
relation of aptitude, an underlying accord, a certain compatibility
suffice for an infinite God to be naturally knowable to us. And
such a relation exists. The soul, as has been said, is naturally apt
to know all because it can be likened to all; add further that it is
specially apt to know God by this way of assimilation, because it
is made in His image and likeness. Our innate knowledge of the
existence of God is thus rooted in a profound harmony between
these two intelligibles, of which the one is the cause and the
archetype of the other.11"
The second line of proof of the existence of God is by way
of creatures, the reason making a simple application of the princi
ple of causality. By this principle we may rightly argue not only
from cause to effect, but as legitimately from effect to cause; if
then God is truly the cause of things, it must be possible to dis
cover Him in His effects. And this should be all the easier because
'
THE EVIDENCE FOR GOD s EXISTENCE 1 13
127
128 ST. BONAVENTURE
philosophy finds its true function by letting in upon itself the light
of revelation, that only by that means it will attain the clear realiza
tion of its own truth.
God is pure spirit and sovereign truth; we cannot now throw
doubt on that, since the most immediate proofs of his existence
have made us realize Him as the supreme Intelligible and the primal
Truth. Now a being whose very essence is to know and whose
substance is wholly intelligible, since He is pure spirit, cannot fail
to know Himself. And, since He is at the same time all intelligence
and all intelligible, He knows Himself integrally, comprehending
at the same time and in a single act the totality of all that is. Let
us now try to conceive what relation can be established between
such a knowing subject and the act by which He knows Himself.
When we apprehend an external object, the knowledge which we
have of it is in some way added to our thought to enrich and
complete it; but when God knows Himself, the act by which He
does so is identical with the knowing subject, since the divine
essence is precisely to know, and it is identical with the object
known, since this act apprehends itself completely. In this unique
case therefore a relation appears which cannot be compared with
any other: a thinking subject which in some way reflects itself, yet
integrally and adequately, in the act by which it thinks itself.
The knowledge which it has of itself can legitimately be called
resemblance, since this knowledge represents it as it is, but it is
at the same time a resemblance of a unique kind, since it is in fact
identical with its original. As opposed to all the likenesses which
are given to us in every-day experience, this is not in any way
distinguished from the subject which it repmduces and imitates�
in nothing, except that it presents it to itself and puts it in some
way before itself, an adequate resemblance in that it is the totality
of what it represents, but nevertheless a resemblance, since it has
this subject as its source, derives its content from it and distin
guishes itself from it as far as it is possible and necessary so as
to constitute an other self. This resemblance thus pushed to the
THE IDEAS AND DMNE KNOWLEDGE 131
of heaven and who speaks in the depths of our souls,6 the ori
gin of our knowledge, of the things that we know and of the
originals that they reproduce.
If we must ascend to the Word to reach the hidden source
of the ideas, the realization of this capital fact must control down to
its smallest details the method by which we shall represent them to
ourselves. Knowing that their being is bound up with the very act
which produces the Word, we have a right to suppose that they
share in the very essence of the act which engenders them and,
consequently, to formulate a well-grounded hypothesis as to their
nature. We should, in fact, recall the expressive metaphors by
which Scripture and the theologians describe the eternal relation
of the Son to the Father: the Word is engendered, expressed,
spoken� all comparisons implying an utterance by the Father from
all eternity; none of them profess to express completely the mysteri
ous act which it signifies, but they have something in common, and
the hidden point towards which they direct our thought is precisely
the original source of ideas.
What do we really mean by the terms "word" or "speech"
which we are here applying to God? In our human experience, a
word or a speech is essentially something that we say, and to say
is the same thing as to speak. Now an act of knowing is always
the origin of speech. If then we wish to explain completely the
nature of the word or speech we must first posit an intelligence
or an act of knowing. At the moment when it knows, this intel
ligence engenders or, as is ordinarily said, "conceives" the repre
sentation of its object; that is the very essence of an intelligent
nature; it is by its own nature fruitful and productive, and we see
this easily enough since before any act of knowing there is only
an intelligence and its object, but after the act of knowing there is
always present also the concept of this object.
Let us now try to define the nature of the image so conceived.
It is essentially a resemblance, a sort of copy formed by the intel
ligence in imitation of the object which it knows, and which is,
THE IDEAS AND DMNE KNOWLEDGE 133
Thus, from one end to the other of the process by which the
ideas express God, and things, in their tum, express the ideas, we
find nothing but images of productivity and generation; therein
lies the distinctive character of the theory of ideas as understood
by St. Bonaventure. The particular term which in his teaching
describes the resemblance engendered by an act of knowing is the
term "expression." Now in this term which he so frequently
uses St. Bonaventure always envisages the generating activity which
we exactly describe by the term "conception, " although common
usage has weakened its original significance. And as the fruit of
a thought cannot be other than a resemblance, "expression" must
necessarily be a resemblance established and engendered rather
than merely stated. The relation of the ideas to the divine substance,
considered in its metaphysical origin, is therefore one with the
relation of the Son to the Father. In conceiving and engendering
from all eternity, in the act by which He thinks Himself, what
He can and will manifest externally of His own thought, God has
expressed all things in His Son: Pater enim ab aeterno genuit Filium
similem sibi, et dixit se et similitudinem suam similem sibi, et cum
hoc tatum posse suum; dixit quae posset facere et omnia in eo
expressit.8 There is then a deep�seated reason for St. Bonaventure's
continual employment of the term "expression" to describe the
relation of the ideas to God on which their essence depends. From
the time of his commentary on Peter Lombard, he affirms that ratio
cognoscendi in Deo est summe expressiva and he identifies the
term idea with that of similitudo expressiva;9 he repeats this in his
disputations on the knowledge of Christ, 10 and he maintains it
finally with no less energy in the sermons on the Hexaemeron. So
we meet here with a term which is indeed pregnant with meaning
and unless we grasp its full significance we run the risk of mis�
interpreting St. Bonaventure's theory of ideas.
How do we in fact imagine to ourselves most frequently the
relation of the ideas to G od ' s though t ? We sho u l d s a y , for
example, that a point which knows what it is able to produce would
THE IDEAS AND DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 135
know. in knowing itself, the straight line and the circle; or that a
unity, endowed with a cognitive faculty and reflecting on itself.
would know all numbers. So also God, who is capable of produc�
ing everything. would know everything in knowing Himself capable
of it. But this manner of knowing things. although it seems worthy
of God, is not really so. For God does not know things discur�
sively, passing from a principle to what is contained within it; He
must see things in themselves and not as consequences deduced
from a principle or found to be implied in it. Besides, God does
not produce things confusedly and in their indirect conditioning
of one another; He produces each of them for itself and distinctly;
now it is the mode of the artist's knowledge which determines his
mode of production; if then God produces things distinctly, it is
because He knows them individually. We must add also that God
knows certain things that He does not produce, such as sin; how
then could He know them as implied in His productive power?11
But that is not the decisive argument against the Dionysian theory;
the truth is that the very notion of knowledge without ideas is
impossible because contradictory. The fact of knowing. we have
said, always implies that the knowing subject is made to resemble
the object known, and this resemblance is nothing but the idea.
The only question that can be raised as concerns the divine knowl�
edge of things is not whether there are distinct ideas in God, but
whether He possesses the ideas and the resemblance or whether He
is this resemblance and these ideas themselves. This is what we now
propose to examine under the following formula: is there a real
plurality of ideas in God?
The extreme difficulty which we encounter when we undertake
the study of this question is due to a sort of contradiction inherent
in it. To resolve it we have in fact to discover a method of
reconciling the One and the Many. The pagan philosophers never
discovered it, it was not in their power to discover it, and that is
why reason alone could hardly succeed in freeing God from the
bonds of necessity. Without ideas, there is no providence or divine
136 ST. BONAVENTURE
liberty; but with them, divine unity disappears. That is the dilemma
which purely philosophic speculation cannot escape. We can easily
assure ourselves that this is indeed the heart of the difficulty because
we ourselves, informed as we are by Revelation, nevertheless only
just succeed in reaching the height of so lofty a truth. When we
pretend to grasp. by pure thinking, the unity in multiplicity which
characterizes the divine art, our imagination frustrates our efforts;
the purely spiritual infinity which we wish to represent to ourselves
appears to us as a material infinity, extended in space, the parts of
which are consequently external to one another, the multiplicity of
which is irreconcilable with all true unity. We have not then and
cannot have a simple intuition of the unity of the divine art; we
conclude to it by reasoning without perceiving it; dialectic reason�
ing can force us to affirm it as a purely abstract necessity, but
ecstasy only, the special illumination which can confer divine grace
on the soul, is capable of making us realize it.12
Since we have recognized the contradiction involved in a
knowledge which does not operate by means of the idea, we are
forced to attribute ideas to the supreme Intelligence; but since on
the other hand it is to God that we are to attribute them and He
is all being, these ideals cannot be distinguished from His own
substance; this is the first point which reason can at last make
us accept it i£ it cannot make us understand. This thesis is more�
over less of a stumbling�block the more carefully we guard against
all the illusions that might conceal from us its true meaning. We
have said that the relation of things to the ideas and of the ideas
to God is a relation of resemblance, but it is well to notice care�
fully the manifold meanings which are cor:tcealed behind this word.
Two things can resemble one another first because they have a
quality in common as do two white sheets by their real participa�
tion in the same whiteness; now it is clear that this similitude does
not apply to creatures since nothing belongs to them which at the
same time belongs to their Creator. But there exists another sort
of resemblance which is found where one thing reproduces the
THE IDEAS AND DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 137
This doctrine of the ideas and the divine knowledge bears the
stamp of such profound elaboration, and occupies so important a
place in the history of philosophy, that it is surprising not to see
it appreciated at its true worth. It is usually thought sufficient to
say that in the main it accords perfectly with that of St. Thomas.
Now there is no doubt that both attach considerable importance
to this point of doctrine, that both found the divine knowledge on
the ideas and consider them really identical for the divine being
and distinct from the point of view of the reason only; but if
the elements which compose their teaching are materially identical,
the spirit which directs and animates them appears quite different.25
In the first place it seems certain that exemplarism does not
occupy exactly the same place in the two teachings. St. Thomas
considers that no man who misunderstands the ideas is a meta
physician, and he certainly is not unaware of the central position
which this doctrine possesses in philosophy, but he does not con
sider it the only true prize of metaphysics. We never find from
his pen a formula like that of St. Bonaventure's, in which exem
plarism is made its very essence. Doubtless the explanation of this
difference is primarily that St. Bonaventure makes no specific dis
tinction between our theological knowledge of the Word and our
philosophical knowledge of the ideas, but it is also found in his
underlying hostility to Aristotelianism. While St. Thomas tries
to diminish and even to bridge the gulf which stretches between
Aristotle and exemplarism, St. Bonaventure identifies exemplarism
with metaphysics in order to exclude Aristotle as entirely from the
latter as he has excluded himself from the former. If metaphysics
is exemplarism, and if Aristotle denied the ideas, it follows that he
may indeed have found the secret of science, but that he did not
succeed in reaching metaphysics. This decided hostility, which
appeared implicitly in St. Bonaventure's first works, is openly
expressed in the sermons on the Hexaemeron; the more Aristo
telianism itself gained strength and scope, the more resolutely was
it mani fested .
THE IDEAS AND DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 145
147
148 ST. BONAVENTURE
are its faculties also. The absolute simplicity of the divine act
excludes then a priori all limitation in space which would forbid
the presence or hinder the efficacy of its action in any portion of
created being; that is what is meant by saying that God is in all
things by His substance and His power.1
This mode of presence being supposed, we see at once why
God can be present everywhere without being present at all in any
place. In a certain sense, the natural body is subordinated to the
space which it occupies. for it owes to it its rest and its conserva
tion ; in another sense, it is equal to it, for the dimensions of the
THE POWER AND THE WILL OF GOD 149
body and the space which it occupies are the same; in a third and
last sense, it is superior to it, for the body fills the vacuum of
natural space at the moment when its movement is there arrested.
This relation between the body and the space which it occupies
is only the shadow of a deeper relation between the body and God
Himself. Just as the position of a body in some way implies its
presence, and the orbit of the eye can only be swept by the eye
itself, so the metaphysical emptiness from which the finite sub
stance o£ creatures suffers can only find its fulfilment in the presence
of God. Every particular thing contains a sort of emptiness and
privation; however perfect it is, its being has been established only
by a limitation, and the contours which define it separate it at the
same time from all that it is not. Now this thing, the external
limits of which establish a minute fragment of being in the middle
of an immensity of non-being, is obviously not sustained by itself;
it must have a metaphysical support without which it would dis
solve and disappear. Empty and weak, created being is at the same
time variable and fugitive; it fades away every moment, and none
of it would subsist without the internal permanence of Him who
gave it existence. We are then necessarily led to believe that the
spatial relations of bodies to the voids which they fill symbolize
and underlie the metaphysical relations of the divine substance to
the finite essences whose impermanence it preserves and whose
poverty it enriches. God is present to things to maintain them as
a seal leaves its mark upon running water for as long as it is
impressed upon it: locatum per praesentiam replet vacuitatem dis
tantiae; Deus autem per praesentiam replet vacuitatem essentiae,
et illa quid em sine hac esse non potest. 2
The purely metaphysical nature of the relation of presence thus
defined leads to the important conclusion that God is present to
all things not equally but in exact proportion to their degree of
being. If the above considerations are well founded, it is in fact
evident that God is present to each thing according to what He
gives it; now no alteration affects the divine Being Himself arising
150 ST. BONAVENTURE
from His giving more or less to one creature or another, but the
effect which results from His productivity is, on the contrary, spe�
cified by it in its own essence; the relation to God in which it is
makes it different from all the rest. When we say that God is
more present to a creature to the precise extent to which He gives
it more, we also help ourselves to understand why the knowledge
of God, for example, is the more evident in that the object and
the intellect which knows it are themselves more elevated in dignity;
we understand what St. Bonaventure incessantly repeats about the
degree of intimacy which characterizes the presence of God in the
human soul; we see lastly the full meaning of the comparison of
God with a mountain which is the more easily carried the higher
it is. Since God is more present the more He gives, He is present
and evident as the cause of material things, more present and more
evident still as the cause of knowledge, eminently present and evi�
dent when we discover in ourselves the splendid gift of the innate
idea of God. We must add, however, that we could discover in
creatures still nobler gifts and modes of presence: the grace by
which God leads back to Himself the nature which issued from
His power, and the divine union, unique in the history of the
world, which has been realized by Jesus Christ, in the unity of a
single Person, the substantial unity of the creature and the Creator.3
It is enough now to compare it with this general conclusion to
see the solution of the problem which we had raised about the
possibility of the divine power's efficacy. All the difficulties which
we had piled up against the hypothesis of a divine action upon
things supposed that a certain distance and spatial externality
separated the cause from the effect: now we see here that, so far
from opposing God to the externality of things, the action which
His power exercises defines the very mode according to which He
is present to them. The divine power can act outside itself or pro�
duce a thing outside itself without being itself external to this thing,
and, as the divine essence is perfect, its power is indivisible; it acts
from outside without suffering dependence or defect.4
THE POWER AND THE WILL OF GOD 151
of dividing it. God could therefore bring to act the potential infinity
of the continuous in the sense that He could always be dividing it,
but not in the sense that there could ever be a time when He had
effectively brought it to act and completely divided it. The very idea
of infinite number is charged with essential unintelligibility and
contains contradiction; there is no actual infinity except that of
God and His power, because His infinity is not that of number but
that of simplicity.12
To complete our account of the possibilities realizable by the
divine power, it remains for us to examine it in relation to the
universe which it has actually realized. Was the quality of created
things predetermined by the mode of the divine power's exercise,
or was God capable of producing a better world than that which He
has produced? We find ourselves brought before the problem of
metaphysical optimism, and the solution of it which St. Bonaven�
ture puts forward ranks among the most exact and most carefully
elaborated that the history of philosophy can show.
Let us first ask whether God could have made the world better
as regards the substance of the integrating parts which constitute
it. We must distinguish in the first place between differences of
perfection and the purely quantitative differences which separate
things. An ass is inferior to a man because the very form of man is
superior in perfection to that of ass; a gold mark is only superior to
a gold ounce because it contains a superior quantity of the same
metal. We must distinguish, besides. the question whether God
could have made this actually realized world better than it is from
the question whether He could have made another world better
than that which has been actually realized. These distinctions
established, we reply that, if it is a question of our actual world
and of superiority of essences. God could not have created it better
than it is. For if it had been better, it would have ceased to be the
same, as being constituted of parts with essences superior to that
of the beings which constitute it. Just, in fact, as that which has
been made a man would have been other than what it is if it had
158 ST. BONAVENTURE
been made an ass, so the actually realized universe would have been
another universe if it had been composed of essences more or less
noble than those which constitute it. But as God is an infinite
being whose power suffers no limitation, He could have made a
world other than ours composed of beings more perfect than those
of which our world is composed, and, in consequence, essentially
superior to this world. And it is evident, finally, that if it is only
a question of quantitative superiority, such as that which distin
guishes a gold mark from a gold ounce, God could have made
our world larger than He has made it. For if He had made it
larger than it is, our world would yet have remained the same
like a child given by God the stature of a giant and possessing more
substance and power without ceasing to be what it is.
It is true that there remains a further question to answer. If
we admit that the divine power could produce a world better than
ours, why has it not been produced? Like many of the problems
which are raised with regard to the divine power, it is a false prob
lem, and the illusion which engenders it is that same illusion which
makes us misunderstand the radical difference between the infinite
in potency and the infinite in act. Just as number is always fixed
in a definite degree although God can increase it, so the degree of
the world's perfection, whether we consider it as regards the quality
of its essences or as regards the quantity of its mass, is always fixed
in a definite degree although God can increase it. Consequently, if
we imagine the infinity of possible worlds, each of them is good,
although some are better than others; and if God realizes any one
of these, what He does will be good; but it does not therefore follow
that He could not have made it better, and we are on the contrary
certain a priori that, whatever the world chosen by God may be,
He could make a better, and so on ad infinitum. In these circum
stances the problem raised disappears; by virtue of the law which
forbids the infinite in potency to be realized, and which does not
allow even God to realize it; there is no conceivable world, how
ever perfect, about which the same question could not be raised
THE POWER AND THE WILL OF GOD 159
as has been raised about our own. If God had made a better world,
we could always ask why He has not made one still better, and the
question would never be meaningless, for no term of the series of
possible worlds contains in itself the necessary and sufficient rea
son for its realization. The only solution possible to such a ques
tion does not reside in creatures but in God, and therefore it escapes
us. God has created the actual world because He has wille d it and
He alone knows the reason of it; we know that what He has given,
He has given by pure grace, in an act of goodness which allows of
no dissatisfaction; the rest is His secret: et ideo talis quaestio est
irrationalis, et solutio non potest dari nisi haec, quia voluit et ra
tionem ipse novit. 13
Having now considered the substance of the parts of which the
universe is composed, we can consider the order according to
which they are disposed. Could God have made the world better
as regards the order of its parts? Such as it is given us, this world
shows to our eyes two different orders of which one is subordinated
to the other. The first is an order of a cosmic nature; it consists
in the reciprocal adaptation of the parts of the universe to one
another and it depends primarily on the Wisdom of God. The
second is an order of finality; instead of connecting together the
parts of the universe so as to organize them, it disposes them all in
view of the last end which is God. Clearly these two orders are
not independent, for the first is ordered itself in view of the second.
Besides we can consider in the universe either its first and sub
stantial parts, such as the natures of angels. of men, of the elements;
or its accidental and corruptible parts, such as a particular material
body or human being. These distinctions once established, an
exact reply to the question becomes possible. If it is a question of
the cosmic order of the substantial parts of the universe, it is as
perfect as it can be. our universe being precisely what it is. And
if it is a question of the order of these substantial parts in relation
to the end of things. it is equally perfect, for the universe is like
a magnificent poem the harmonies and divisions of which follow
160 ST. BONAVENTURE
CREATION
167
168 ST. BONAVENTURE
forms in the heart o£ matter at the same time, since many o£ them
are incompatible with each other and can only be actualized by
the suppression of their opposites. For that reason this opinion
\vas rejected by subsequent philosophers.
So another school, that of the Platonists, attempted to resolve
the same problem by appealing to other principles. According to
these philosophers. the world is to be explained by the concurrence
o£ three equally eternal causes-God, matter and the idea. First
of all matter existed separately and subsisted of itself from all
eternity. until the time when God came to associate with it the
forms or ideas. which were also separate. Now we know from
Aristotle's criticism of it what difficulties are raised by such a sup
position. To admit it is to admit that matter has subsisted from
all eternity in an imperfect state, to maintain that the same form
can exist simultaneously in a state of separation and in combina
tion with matter, to admit even that a man can exist simultane
ously in three different existences-as a natural man composed of
matter and form, as a man abstracted and conceived by thought,
and as a divine man subsisting eternally in the world of the ideas.
Once again the philosophers who came after had to abandon the
opinion of those who had preceded them.
Then appeared the peripatetics, whose master and leader was
Aristotle, and whom St. Bonaventure treats with some moderation
during the calm period of the Commentary on the Sentences. At
this time he is well aware that Aristotle taught the eternity of the
world; nmv, as we shall see more fully later on, he considers that
the doctrine of the eternity of the world is extremely hard to recon
cile with that of creation; he does not believe then that Aristotle
considered matter and form created by God out of nothing, even
from all eternity:
utrum autem posuerit materiam et formam factam
de nihilo, hoc nescio; credo tamen quod non pervenit ad hoc.3
Relying upon charitably interpreted texts, St. Bonaventure sup
poses that Aristotle considered the world as made by God from
eternal elements. The philosopher's error was therefore double,
170 ST. BONAVENTURE
imprints from all eternity upon an eternal dust, the vestige of this
foot will also be eternal. Now what is the created world but the
vestige and, as it were, the trace of God? He who supposes matter
coeternal with God is therefore only upholding the most logical
view in teaching the eternity of the world. Is not this more rea
sonable than to suppose with Plato a matter remaining eternally
deprived of its own form and removed from the divine activity?
This error, if we must believe with the Fathers and the Commen
tators that it was really made, is therefore quite worthy of so great
a philosopher.9 In 1270 St. Bonaventure denounces the "blind
ness" of this theory as the genuine teaching of Aristotle, but at
this time he does not yet knmv v.rith absolute certainty whether
Aristotle completely denied that the world had a beginning in time,
or whether he only denied that the world could have begun in
time by a natural movement.
We must not suppose however that St. Bonaventure did not
clearly realize at this moment in his career the metaphysical im
plication of such a doctrine. He hesitates to put responsibility for
it upon Aristotle, so he pronounces no condemnation of him per
sonally; but he does not hesitate to condemn the doctrine, and the
sentence already hangs over his head fully prepared. If the phi
losopher wished only to prove that the world could not have begun
by a natural movement, his proofs are good, and he is entirely
right, for we shall see in what follows that creation is not in fact
a natural movement. But if he wished to deny completely that the
world had a beginning, he is clearly wrong, and to avoid self
contradiction he would have to maintain either that the world was
not created out of nothing. or else that it was not formed by God.
Still further, if he maintained the eternity of the world, Aristotle
would have had to teach the actual existence of an infinite number
of past days or an actual infinity of human souls, propositions
which we have just rejected; if, on the contrary, he wished to deny
the possibility of an actual infinite, he must necessarily have sup
posed either the mortality of the soul, or the unity of the active
178 ST. BONAVENTURE
know what is the end of creation. God rests eternally in the perfec
tion of His being; being actually all the possible, He lacks nothing.
suffers no defect and requires no external complement of His being.
The radiation of this eternal happiness in Himself and the satisfac
tion which the divine Being receives in it are called Glory; a glory
which has not to be further acquired, since it is coessential with
God, and which cannot be further increased, since it is inseparable
from the creative perfection. What profit then to the divine glory is
the fact of creation? Simply to communicate itself, to manifest itself.
to extend beyond itself something of the infinite goodness which
constitutes it in multiplying around itself fragmentary images of the
perfection on which it rests. This glory therefore which God enjoys
from all eternity radiates around itself partial gleams which reflect
without increasing it; in doing so, it shows itself. and it is this very
manifestation of the divine perfection which constitutes the imme
diate end of creation.14
So the first and principal end of the universe is God Himself.
but by a necessary consequence this transcendent finality becomes
the good of the creature which is its means and even the law which
defines the creature's struchue. To show itself and to communicate
itself. the divine perfection produces outside itself images which
bring it no more increase than does a mirror to the substance of the
object which it reflects, but which are in themselves reflections of
glory projected into the obscure depths of the void, participations in
the eternal self-happiness and the infinite goodness of which the
life of God is properly constituted. The essential productivity of
the creative glory means then that in showing itself for itself and
simply to manifest itself. it multiplies for others a goodness which
cannot be multiplied for itself. None of the beings thus created
could have been willed originally for its own perfection, and, since
the Perfect exists, it absorbs all finality at the same time as it estab
lishes all good; each of these beings must have arisen out of
nothing in response to a divine summons which was not issued for
it in itself. but the formula of this summons has become the very
1 82 ST. BONAVENTURE
law of its substance; the end of the creation of beings has become
the end of created beings; for each one of them, that only is now
useful which realizes as fully as possible the purpose of its existence.
which manifests the glory of God and makes them participants in
it; in a word, the utility. the glory and the happiness of things are
to glorify God and to reflect His beatitude:in Cujus manifestatione
et participatione attenditur summa utilitas creaturae, videlicet ejus
glorificatio sive beatificatio. 1 5
We are entitled to say that at the point which we have now
reached all the perspectives of morals and of natural philosophy
lie before our eyes. How could it be otherwise? When we attain
to its metaphysical principles, the science of nature is, as it were,
the ethics of things. Originating from the same divine effusion
and ruled by the same internal law. the universe answers the same
exigence of original goodness, and what man does by means of
his intelligence and his will, each thing does by means of its own
form and the operations which it performs. For every creature.
at whatever degree of creation we consider it, it is one and the
same thing to exist and to praise the Lord; Scripture proclaims it;
St. Francis had brought it back to men's minds by his every word
and gesture; reason, in its turn, brings us proof of it; why should
we not allow our imagination to push further along the road which
reason indicates and to interpret in the light of the creative pro
ductivity the very structure of the created universe?
God is at once power, wisdom and goodness; if then creation
has for its first end to manifest His glory, the creature must bear
the stamp of this triple perfection. Now the degree of an agent's
power is measured by the diversity of the objects which it can pro
duce and by its skill in linking them together. In other words, the
more powerful a being is, the more the effects which it can produce
are by nature separated from one another, and the more it is able
to establish a certain communication, order and harmony between
such different beings. Is it not exactly this prodigious virtuosity
of the divine power which is expressed in the creation of the Angel.
CREATION 1 83
from the beginning to the end of the process. Now in the partie�
ular case of creation being succeeds to non�being; this then would
be a change without a starting�point. St. Bonaventure, entirely
agreeing with the doctrine which St. Thomas teaches, prefers to
use a different terminology;19 he distinguishes changes with move�
ment from changes without movement. Creation is an alteration
or a change, because we see a form suddenly appear where nothing
was before, and yet it is not a movement analogous to natural
movements, since it makes being succeed to non�being, and not a
new state to a previous state in a being already given. In either
case the conception of the creative act is the same; as is the being,
so is its operation; creation is God's own action when He acts out�
side Himself, an action which adds nothing to what He is and
changes nothing, since it is His action, but which does change
something in the history of the creature, since it marks its begin�
ning. We must examine in detail these divine images which the
creative act has established between Being and nothing.
CHAPTER VII
UNIVERSAL ANALOGY
185
186 ST. BONAVENTURE
hand that the being of things is not borrowed from God and that,
ontologically speaking, God and creatures can have nothing in
common.
But what is true in the realm of being is not so necessarily in
that of relations. In default of univocity founded upon the un
divided possession of a common element, we may invoke analogy
founded on a community of relations between substantially dis
tinct beings. To this order belongs what is called proportionality,
which consists not in a relation between beings, but in a relation
between the relations which unite two pairs of beings, these beings
moreover being as different as one may wish.
For example, a doctor is analogous to a pilot in the order of
proportionality, for a doctor is in the same relation to the school
over which he presides as a pilot to the ship which he directs. In
a case where the two pairs of beings considered are of the same
species, arithmetical quantities for example, the name "propor
tion" is given to the relation which unites them; sometimes we
call both classes of relations "proportions" in a wide sense. It is
never in any way a question of a community of being, since the
relation of proportion or proportionality is found either between
distinct individuals within one and the same species, or between
individuals specifically different.4
A second sort of relation, which it is perhaps more important
to study in explaining created nature, is that which is found be
tween t\vo beings of which one plays the part of a model and the
other that of a copy.5 On this point St. Bonaventure's thought
relies upon certain texts of Aristotle, but also probably on ob
servations self-evident to common sense.6 There does exist a spe
cial class of beings, which we call images, whose distinctive charac
ter is to be engendered by way of imitation. For a being to be
called the image of another, it must necessarily resemble it, but
besides this the resemblance must derive from the act which en
genders it: there is nothing more like an egg than another egg, yet
we do not say of an egg that it is the image of another because the
190 ST. BONAVENTURE
distinct and close. From this first method of distinction there pro
ceeds a second: a creature is the shadow of God by those of its
properties which are related to Him without specification of the
class of cause under which it is considered: the vestige is the prop
erty of a created being related to God as to its efficient, exemplary
or final cause; the image lastly is every property of the creature
which implies God not only as cause but as object.9
From these first two differences proceed two others again. The
first lies in the sorts of knowledge that these various analogies in
troduce. Since they are classed as the more distant and the more
close, they are necessarily distinguished by the exactness of the
knowledge relatively to God that they bring us. Considered as a
shadow, the creature leads only to the knowledge of the attributes
which are common in the same sense to the three divine Persons,
such as being, life and intelligence. Considered as a vestige, the
creature leads again to the attributes common to the three divine
Persons, but to those that are assigned more particularly to one of
them, such as power to the Father, wisdom to the Son, and good
ness to the Holy Spirit. Considered as an image, the creature leads
to the knowledge of the attributes that belong to one divine person
and therefore to one only: the fatherhood of the Father, the sonship
of the Son, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
A final method of distinction proceeds in its turn from those
above, that drawn from beings in which these various degrees of
analogy are found. It is clear that, contrary to the opinion of the
theologians to whom we have referred, these modes of resemblance
are not exclusive one of the other. That which possesses the greater
possesses the lesser also; spiritual creatures are the images of God
because they have Him as their object, but they are equally ves
tiges and shadows because they have Him for cause; and that
in the three classes of cause. But that which possesses the lesser
does not necessarily possess the greater and, consequently, material
creatures can be the shadows and the vestiges of God, but they
are not images, because they have not Him for object.10
UNIVERSAL ANALOGY 193
Let us first deduce the conclusions which follow from this doc
trine as far as nature and the structure of the sensible world are
concemed. If the relation established by the creative act between
God and the universe is really one of analogy, not only must the
creative act have left traces upon things, but also this relation must
be written in things in the depths of their being. In fact either
analogy is not implied in the notion of creation, or else it is the
very law which presides over the substance of creatures. Now we
know from the proofs of the existence of God that no property in
things finds its sufficient cause in things themselves; so they are
necessarily and naturally imitations and analogies of God.
Whatever corporeal body we consider, its essence will show
immediately that God has created everything according to the triple
law of measure, order and weight: omnia in mensura et numero et
pondere disposuit (Wis., 1 1 : 21 ) . For the body possesses a certain
external dimension which is its measure, a certain internal order
of parts which is its number and a certain movement resulting
from an inclination which impels it as weight impels the body.
But we can penetrate more deeply into the very substance of this
body; before possessing weight, number and measure, which are
so many vestiges of God corresponding to appropriate attributes,
this body possesses being or substance, considered under their
most general and least determinate aspect, shadows of the primary
Being from \Vhom they derive. Now if we allow the light of faith
to illumine our reason, with what richness will this distant shadow
seem to us to be filled! Every being is defined and determined by
an essence; and every essence in its tum is constituted by the con
currence of three principles: matter, form and the composition of
matter with form. Why is corporeal creation necessarily consti
tuted to this type? There would seem to be no a priori reason,
and the internal structure of the beings which make up the uni
verse would remain unexplained unless we remembered what faith
teaches us about the primary essence, the origin of all the essences
and the model which they are constituted to imitate. It is in God
194 ST. BONAVENTURE
than the similitude of God, one must be this similitude itself, that
is the Word; there is nothing beyond the possession of God but
to be God Himsel£.36
So from the lowest degrees of nature to the supreme point at
which the reconstituted creature becomes worthy of union with
God, the whole universe appears to us as sustained, controlled and
animated by the divine analogy. But if such is indeed the law that
presides over its organization, it must also be this that will explain
its structure; the metaphysic of analogy must therefore be com
pleted by a logic of analogy, and it remains for us to consider
its laws.
At first sight the logic of St. Bonaventure does not differ from
that of Aristotle. The syllogism in his eyes is the instrument par
excellence of scientific demonstration, the means by which prob
able knowledge is elaborated in the sphere in which absolute
knowledge fails, the instrument which allows reason to enrich
its knowledge by deducing from first principles the consequences
that they contain. Yet it is impossible to read the works of this
philosopher for long without perceiving that Aristotelian logic is
for him rather a process of exposition than a method of discovery.
Another logic animates that of the Stagyrite, and sustains it with
its discoveries, nor could it be otherwise. In a universe with
the metaphysical substructure which we have disclosed, the only
suitable process of explanation must consist in discerning, beneath
the apparent disorder and diversity of things, the tenuous strands
of analogy which connect them with one another and reunite them
all to God. Hence this prodigious quantity of resemblances, cor
respondences, proportions and conformities in which some have
tried to-day to see only a mental gymnastic, a delight of the imag
ination or, at best, an inebriation of the soul which tries to forget
its limited human condition, but in which in fact we must see
first and foremost the only possible means of exploration and in
terpretation exactly adapted to the universe as St. Bonaventure
saw it.37
208 ST. BONAVENTURE
to the surface of the earth, but also descended to the depths of its
centre. By His crucifixion Christ became the centre of the world's
centre-operatus est salutem in medio terrae, because after His
crucifixion His soul descended to Limbo to deliver the just who
awaited Him. So Christ is to the heavenly kingdom what the Earth
is to the machinery of the world; an allegorical proportion to which
is added a tropological, that is moral, proportion, for this centre
of the world is also the centre of humility from which we cannot
stray and save our souls: in hoc medio operatus est salutem, scilicet
in humilitate crucis. 41
Let us now consider the order of the forms as the philosopher
envisages them. The intellectual and abstract forms are as it were
intermediary between the seminal principles and the ideal forms.
When the seminal principles have been introduced into matter,
they engender there other forms; and it is the same with the intel�
lectual forms, for they engender the word or internal speech in the
thought in which they appear; thus too the ideal principles can�
not subsist in God without the begetting of the Son by the Father;
in this way only the demands of the reasoning of proportion will
be satisfied, for such a productivity is a dignity, and if this dignity
is proper to the creature, it is still more clearly proper to the
Creator.
To take another argument of the same sort, the highest degree
of perfection realizable in the universe could not be reached if the
appetite for the form which works upon matter did not result in
the union of the rational soul and a material body; only in this way
can the desire of matter be satisfied. So in the same way we may
say that the universe would lack its highest degree of perfection
if the nature which contains the seminal principles, the nature
which contains the intellectual principles and the nature which
contains the ideal principles did not join ultimately in the unity of
a single person, which was realized in the incarnation of the Son
of God: praedicat igitur tota naturalis philosophia per habitudinem
proportionis Dei Verbum natum et incarnatum. 4 2
UNIVERSAL ANALOGY 211
six days after which Christ led His disciples to the mountain to be
transfigured before them, of the six degrees of the ascent of the
soul to God, of the six faculties of the soul and their six proper
ties.48 And one could go on almost for ever.
There is no exaggeration in this; it is St. Bonaventure himself,
and the reasoning by which he justifies it shows us that his subtlest
variations on the properties of numbers belong to a definite method.
The interpretation of the universe present or future seems to him
entirely contained in a finite number of facts or notions which are
as it were the seed from which this interpretation is to proceed.
To draw it from them, he has recourse to what he calls the theories,
that is to say the explanations deduced from these seeds by dis
cursive thought: as a ray reflected by a mirror can engender an
indefinite number of images, as one can interpose an indefinite
number of angles between the right angle and the obtuse, or be
tween an obtuse angle and an acute, and as seeds can be multiplied
to infinity, in the same way the sowing of the Scriptures can pro
duce an infinite harvest of theories. 49 Thus the mind passes from
correspondence to correspondence without encountering any ob
stacle; one passage of Scripture, declares the Seraphic Doctor,
summons a thousand others; the imagination has therefore no
obstacle to fear. And it could not find more in that other book
which is nature. Modelled strictly upon the intimate structure of
things, the logic of proportion alone allows us to advance and to
raise ourselves to the broad path of illumination by revealing to us
the hidden presence of God within each one of the beings that we
meet along our way.50
On this point again the comparison between St. Bonaventure's
teaching and that of St. Thomas is as deceptive as it is inevitable.
It is not difficult to juxtapose a certain number of texts that cor
respond to one another, showing that both make use of analogy,
reason by means of proportions and reveal at the heart of things
the vestige or the image of the creative Trinity. The agreement
of the two systems upon the metaphysical principles of analogy
UNIVERSAL ANALOGY 213
and the similarity of the formulre which express them are equally
incontestable; yet the spirit that animates them is profoundly dif�
ferent. The idea of analogy has not the same meaning for St. Bona�
venture as for St. Thomas Aquinas, and in the sometimes identical
formul<e which they employ the principal term has scarcely ever
the same significance.
In the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas analogy contains and
systematizes a Platonist and an Aristotelian signification. To sat�
isfy the demands of exemplarism it shows the dependence and the
kinship which unite particular things to their eternal models; but
to satisfy the demands of Aristotelian logic it separates the analo�
gous from the univocal by a line of demarcation which may not be
crossed. Thus, when one gives to the terms which St. Thomas
employs the significance which he himself attached to them, one
designates a relation of dissimilarity no less than of similarity in
affirming that one being is analogous to another being. But we
must go a stage further. St. Thomas is preoccupied above all else
with closing all approaches that lead to pantheism and with re�
jecting any substantial communication of being between God and
creation. For this reason he is always much more ready to insist
upon the distinguishing than upon the unifying signification of
analogy. This fundamental tendency of his thought appears in
his first works and is brought out strikingly in the Commentary on
the Sentences; St. Thomas opposes to the Augustinian analogy
which connects, unites, and seeks always for common origins to
assign resemblances of kinship, the Aristotelian analogy which
separates. distinguishes, and confers upon created beings a relative
substantiality and sufficiency while definitely excluding them from
the divine being. 51
Now the fundamental tendency of St. Bonaventure is exactly
contrary to that of St. Thomas. The philosophers whom he has in
mind are not those who exalt the creature so as to confound it
with the divine being. but those who misapprehend the immensity
of the divine being by assigning to creatures excessive freedom
214 ST. BONAVENTURE
THE ANGELS
215
216 ST. BONAVENTURE
God on the first day, namely the empyrean heaven, the angels,
matter and time. One of the chief reasons of this quadruple crea
tion is that it was proper to produce all possible kinds of creatures
at the beginning of the world: passive bodies, active bodies, spirits,
and the measure of them all. Now the first of spiritual creatures
is the angel. since he is a pure spirit; his position was therefore
marked out when creation began. At the same moment appeared
the first of the active corporeal substances which is the empyrean,
the first of the passive corporeal substances which is the matter
of the elements, and the first of the measures which is time. We
see here why we may and must say that the world was created in
time, for it is not only the measure of what exists and continues,
but also the measure that attaches to things in their passage from
nothing to being: non tantum dicit mensuram durationis, sed etiam
egressionis, 1 0 each thing is born along with the duration that con
tains it and will measure it thereafter.
Another reason for this simultaneous quadruple creation is
that the angelic substance, as being supreme in the whole natural
order and independent of other substances, must have been pro
duced at the earliest moment. As we shall see later more fully,
the world of the angels implies distinction and order, and its exist
ence could not be introduced into nature in conformity with order
unless the angelic substances were assigned to a certain place; the
empyrean is just this place, the highest of all celestial bodies, con
taining in consequence all the others. But since we know that
empty space is impossible, the empyrean, the residence of the
angels. could not remain without content and hence the creation
of the corporeal matter of the four elements. Lastly, nothing that
exists could exist without a duration that measures it; so these
three orders of creatures necessarily imply timeY Thus the angels
rightly appeared first by reason of their proper perfection, and it
is in consequence of a concomitant necessity that their place, the
content of their place and the duration of the whole were created
simultaneously.
THE ANGELS 221
stances is to say that the actual and the possible are in them; now
act is always form and the possible always matter, and therefore the
angels are necessarily composed of matter and form.14
This will perhaps appear still clearer if we repeat with refer�
ence to the angels the general arguments which we have brought
forward to establish the hylomorphism of every created nature.
The angels are subject to change; they have not the immutability
of the divine essence; and, since nothing that changes is simple,
the angel must be composite. But, if it changes, it must necessarily
contain matter, for matter is the very principle of change. So the
angel must possess an essence which, in certain respects, is neither
being in the absolutely positive sense of the term, nor non�being
in the absolutely privative sense; therefore there enters into its com�
position a part of that principle which is neither entirely some�
thing nor entirely nothing, which Augustine calls matter; so there
exists in the angel a matter for its changing. Further, all change
and all movement imply two terms, one which moves and another
which is moved; thus activity and passivity are inseparable from
change. Now the principle of activity is the form and the principle
of passivity is matter; if then, for example, the angels can receive
knowledge or communicate it, they can act by reason of a form and
be acted upon by reason of matter, and we again reach precisely
the same conclusion as before.
We shall reach it again in considering the principle of individ�
uation of the angelic substances. Some, including St. Thomas,
avoid the difficulty by maintaining that each angel constitutes a
in fact God. Now the angel is only a creature, a finite being sub�
ject to conditions of space as well as to those of duration; its sub�
stance therefore requires a principle of determination and limitation
which can only be matter, and we reach the conclusion which we
proposed to prove.17
It remains to show of what matter we speak when we attribute
it to the angels. In St. Thomas's teaching the answer is given un�
hesitatingly; matter and body are the same, and with perfect logic
he refuses to admit any corporeality in the angels and at the same
time any materiality. St. Bonaventure, on the other hand, uses the
word matter in its most general sense and he always understands
by it an absolutely indeterminate potentiality. As the principle of
becoming, it is literally neither this nor that nor the other; so it is
neither corporeal nor spiritual, but will become body or spirit in�
differently, body if it receives the form of body, spirit if it receives
the form of spirit: materia in se considerata nee est spiritualis nee
corporalis, et ideo capacitas consequens essentiam materiae in
differenter se habet ad forman sive spiritualem sive corporalem. 1 8
Thus we can easily resolve this problem which at first seems so
obscure, on which great and illustrious thinkers, philosophers as
well as theologians, have been divided. When one reasons from
the physicist's point of view, matter is considered only as already
animated by a sensible form, and when matter is discussed the
physicist understands it as the matter of the bodies which constitute
the normal object of his study. For him all matter is therefore
corporeal, and consequently he is never willing to admit that the
angels possess matter for fear of attributing to them the only matter
that he knows, corporeal matter in general. But the metaphysician
is not confined to the concrete being given in experience: his
thought penetrates to the very essence of things and to their sub�
stance as such. Now substance implies a determined existence
which the form confers and a permanence in the existence which
matter confers on this form. But the matter which the metaphysi�
cian considers is the matter of all substance whatsoever, independent
226 ST. BONAVENTURE
of a definite mode of being which this form or that confers upon it,
and therefore it is pure indetermination. If then we ask the meta
physician, he will affirm as against the physicist that the matter of
the angels is the same as that of the body.
The choice lies with the theologian. Will he reply to the ques
tion as the physicist or as the metaphysician? His choice is free;
so he will make it from the higher point of view of Christian
Wisdom, to which all the other sciences are subject in that it uses
their conclusions according to its requirements. Why indeed should
he hesitate between two judgments one proceeding from a science
superior in dignity, the other from one inferior? The theologian
knows that the metaphysician judges things from a higher point
of view than the physicist, and consequently he must decide in
favour of the metaphysician. Those who consider matter to be
one and the same for bodies and for angels are those who take
the loftiest view of the question and answer it in the true way. All
are therefore agreed in denying that the matter of the angels is a
corporeal matter, but the metaphysicians are right to consider matter
as itself indeterminate, receiving determination from angelic forms
and corporeal forms, and as being homogeneous and numerically
identical in spirits and in created bodies.19
So the angels are presented to us as spiritual substances, wholly
independent of bodies, composed of matter and form and numer
ically distinct from one another; but a final problem still awaits
solution touching their essence: what is the principle of individua
tion in these composite substances in which the individualization
of the form is made possible by matter?-a problem of the greatest
importance, with far-reaching consequences in metaphysics. For
it may seem perfectly clear that a universal form is multiplied by
the successive contractions which matter imposes upon it; but if
we explain in this way how a certain number of individuals come
into being, we still do not know whether the principle of their
individuation is matter alone, and still less whether matter explains
a perfection superior to individuality, that of personality.
THE ANGELS 227
first of all the right to occupy the first place among all created
natures and to be immediately ordered to God alone as their end.
This may be described as a quality, but it is one which cannot be
considered as a simple accident of the substance; it is an essential
property of rational natures, engraved upon their very being, that
they own no end intermediate betv.>een themselves and God; so we
already know that it would be absurd to base personality upon any
accident. Besides, personality adds to simple individuality what one
might call actual eminence, in the sense that it always resides in
the highest form of the subject that possesses it. Personality would
not therefore be sufficiently explained by the union of any form
with matter; this form must also enjoy an eminent dignity. Thus
it must be the dignity and eminence of the form that constitute
the principle of personality as such, and matter suffices to constitute
it still less than it sufficed to be the basis of individuality. 25
In this way we are brought back to the source of each of St.
Bonaventure's conclusions, his respect for the eminent dignity of
the human person: nee ita potest attribui materiae personalis dis
cretio, sicut individuatio, propter hoc quod dicit dignitatem. And
if we look for the subject in which this dignity resides, we find
that substance is always its shrine. In his eyes the person is indeed
something separate and incommunicable, but the "privation of
communication" that confers upon it its distinct existence is not
something purely negative; unless a dignity can arise from nothing,
the distinction of substances can only be the reverse, a consequence
rather of some positive perfection: privatio illa in persona magis
est positio quam privatio. 2 6 If then we wish to give a definition of
person, angelic or human, we must necessarily include in it and even
consider as of chief importance the substantial form which confers
actuality and dignity upon it. Personality is the dignity given to
substance by the form which resides incommunicably and in a
different manner in each subject: proprietas dignitatis incommunica
biliter existens in hypostasi; aliter tamen reperitur hie, aliter ibi.2 7
THE ANGELS 231
along with themselves, but also of all that He was to create in the
future. This knowledge is therefore a received knowledge, and
thus the angelic intellect does not possess its actuality of itself; it
knows all that it is possible to know and also all that comes to
pass in the universe without being subject to action on the part of
these things, because the intelligible species of them have been
granted it by God at the very moment of its creation; the angel is
subject to the law which is imposed on all created being.
The problem is rather more complicated when we consider the
knowledge of particular things, but it will be solved on the same
principle. To confer upon the angels the innate species of all
particular beings and all their possible combinations would have
been to confer upon them an infinity of particular species, for the
particular can be multiplied to infinity and becomes lost in the
unintelligible through lack of number and law. Besides, the angelic
knowledge, having reached its completion from its beginning, would
be a completely static knowledge, unable to extend or to be en
riched by the proper activity of a knowing subject. But an in
termediate solution remains possible. If the particular is lost in
the infinite, we can always gather the infinity of particular cases
within the combination of a finite number of universals, and, con
versely, we can always combine a finite number of given universals
in an infinite number of different ways. To take a concrete example,
I do not possess the image of a detennined individual, still less that
of all possible individuals; but if I am able to conceive of figure in
general, man in general, colour in general and time in general, I
shall always be able, by putting them together, to represent to
myself any individual without the addition of any new knowledge
to the general knowledge that I already possess. No other condi
tion is necessary for this combination to be possible; for it to be
true it must also correspond with a real being independent of
thought; the angel then must turn towards the knowable particular,
to consider it and, without submitting to any action or receiving
from it any new species, to recompose in himself, by an appropriate
THE ANGELS 233
of the sun unless the sun itself illuminates it with its beams.
Secondly, this solution makes us understand, from the first case of
divine illumination that has been brought to our notice, how this
illumination takes place; it is not an introduction of the intellect
into the divine substance, but a mingling of the divine light with
the intellect, in such a way that the angels see the divine essence
indeed, and see it in itself, but only because it assimilates them to
itself by means of the very beam with which it has illuminated
them.Z9
Endowed with an essence and a mode of knowing that are
their own, the angels must also be endowed with their own duration.
Measures of duration necessarily differ with the manner in which
things endure, and this manner in its tum depends on the manner
of being. Now God is pure form and wholly realized perfection;
His essence, His existence and His operation are identical with one
another; there is therefore nothing anterior or posterior in Him, and
no mutability, but according to the famous formula of Boethius an
endless life possessed with an absolute and perfect possession; this
is exactly what we call eternity. The angel, on the contrary, is a
created substance, and we have described its manifold composi�
tions; but he differs from God above all as regards duration in
that he has had a beginning and does not possess by his essence
the privilege of having no end. In fact the angel shares in our
universe; he received being at the time when matter appeared, and
if his history has run its course with a prodigious rapidity to
become definitely established in a glorious or in a fallen state, he
plays his part none the less in the vast drama in which men also
are actors. Besides, the angel, created at the beginning of time, is
an incorruptible substance but a composite being no more incor�
ruptible by nature than other creatures; he is only so through
grace, and his incorruptibility, as our immortality, is a gift of God.
Lastly the angels are subject to changing affections; they do not
possess all their knowledge at once, and we have seen that they
tum towards the sensible world to recompose by means of innate
THE ANGELS 235
which they possessed or acquire one which they did not possess.
On the other hand, the being which the aeviternal substance has
received from God at its creation is continued by the permanent
influence of God and undergoes no change; but it remains true
that no creature, even angelic, and no created faculty can be com
pletely in act, since it always has need of the divine power for its
continuance. So although in a sense it has all its being at the
same time, it has not all the continuation of its being at the same
time, which amounts to saying that there is succession without
innovation, the continuance of an existence in respect of which
the angel is to a certain extent in potency. and in consequence
a real succession.33 In this way St. Bonaventure reaches the result
which he had intended; he subjects the creature to the Creator by
a relation of metaphysical dependence, which, engraved upon its
substance, is found in its very duration:solus igitur Deus, qui est
actus purus, est actu infinitus, et tatum esse et possessionem sui
esse simul habet.
If there is metaphysical succession in the immutability of angelic
being, we shall have even stronger reasons for finding succession in
the changing affections of the angel. And here it is not only a
question of the aevum, but of time in the true sense. Thus the
angels. placed in the aevum through the permanence and stability
of their substance, are in time through the mutability of their
affections. No doubt we have here a conclusion that Aristotle did
not forsee when he elaborated his theory of incorruptible sub
stances; but no more was he concerned to decide what kind of
quantity their duration, so different from all others. could possess.
No doubt Aristotle did not propose to include measures other than
those of inferior natures and we cannot blame him for such omis
sions; but even if he had made them deliberately and were therefore
responsible for them, we should have no reason to stray from the
straight path of truth.34
The angels. situated in the aevum by their being and in time
by their affections, are also situated in a place. What is this
238 ST. BONAVENTURE
the empyrean is the nearest heaven to the primary mover, but the
primary mover is immobile and may as well confer repose upon the
empyrean as movement to the heaven below it.
As a matter of fact, none of these ingenious arguments repre
sent St. Bonaventure's real thought; it is on quite a different plane;
for him there cannot be philosophical reasons for the movement of
the empyrean if there are Christian reasons for its immobility. In
fact we see upon reflection that the philosophical reasons for the
movement of the heavens are in no way decisive; there is more
vanity in them than verity, for the final reasons for the movement
of the celestial spheres are not philosophical, but religious. The
sky with its stars turns around us only for the service of man on
his pilgrimage, and we know that the last celestial revolution will
take place at the exact moment when the number of the elect is
fulfilled. The true reason for affirming the existence of the empyrean
and for defining it as we have done is that a uniform, immobile
and luminous dwelling place is needed to receive the blessed.35
Now it is also in the empyrean that the angels are found; first
of all because the whole universe is contained in the empyrean and,
since the angels are part of the universe, they are in the empyrean;
secondly and more particularly because the angels act upon bodies,
and we must therefore assign to them the place best adapted to
angelic contemplation where they are yet not so separated from
bodies that their action cannot reach them; the empyrean satisfies
this double requirement, and it is therefore proper to situate them
in it.36
But we can put forward a reason that goes deeper, in that
it not only shows that the angels are in the empyrean but also how
they exist there. Nothing that is distinct can be ordered unless it
is situated in a place that contains it, and this place must necessarily
be a corporeal place. The uncreated spirit which is God possesses,
with the simplicity by which it is present in all things, the immen
sity by which it contains everything and yet remains external to
everything. The act by which it creates things communicates to
240 ST. BONAVENTURE
245
246 ST. BONAVENTURE
that the matter of all bodies was created on the first day, although
the complete distinction of bodies by means of their forms took
place afterwards and by degrees, as Scripture expressly affirm s and
as tradition teaches.3
We may bring forward first a reason based upon the literal
sense of Scripture. God was not obliged to do all that He can, and,
although it is clear that He could have created the world in its
present form, we are not bound to conclude that He must have done
so. Let us then suppose that the sacred text is right; a deeper
reason is at once presented to our minds to confirm it. God could
have completed the world of bodies immediately, but He preferred
to produce it at first in an imperfect state and in an incomplete
form, so that matter might rise towards God, the outcry, as it
were, and the appeal of its very imperfection. That He postponed
the completion of the world until the end of six days is explained
by the properties of the number six, a perfect number in that it
results from all its aliquot parts and cannot increase or diminish
of itsel£.4 The moral reason of this divine decision is that by it
man is taught of the relation in which his soul stands to God. Just
as corporeal nature, formless of itself, is completed when the divine
goodness bestows its form upon it, so the soul is itself incapable
of being formed unless grace is poured into it by God. The alle
gorical reason is found in the analogy between the six days of crea
tion, the six ages of the world and the six ages of man. The
anagogical reason is that it shows us the perfection of knowledge
in the beatified angelic nature.� Therefore nothing prevents us from
accepting as it stands the letter of the sacred text and admitting
a true temporal succession in the six days of creation.
Thus corporeal matter was not created by God either deprived
of all form or clothed with all its forms; can we define more exactly
its original condition? St. Bonaventure's reply to this question is
interesting because it prepares us for a better understanding of his
doctrine, so difficult to grasp, of the relation between matter and
form. He admits that matter was created by God clothed with a
248 ST. BONAVENTURE
certain form, but that this form was not a complete form and that
it did not confer upon the body its complete being. This solution
has for him the advantage not only of making more intelligible the
temporal development of creation in six days, but also of implant�
ing in the very heart of things a sort of universal expectation
of God.
If we try to represent to ourselves this first informing of the
sensible, it will appear as resulting in the production of bodies the
matter of which although already informed was yet not satisfied
and was still exercised by the desire for further fom1s. Thus this
informing must have consisted much less in producing completed
beings than in preparing the ground for the advent of the highest
forms. Scripture tells us that the earth, and therefore matter, was
then inanis et vacua (Gen. 1 :2) , and so without forms. And it
was so in fact, in the sense that its form actualized it just enough
to give it the lowest determination required for actual existence,
but not enough to establish it in this mode of being. Matter then
possessed a sort of incomplete diversity or heterogeneity, and
hence arose a confusion which did not result from the disorder of a
multiplicity of definite natures, but from a partial lack of definition.
To represent to ourselves in the least inadequate way this matter
incompletely actualized by its form, we must consider it less as a
confusion of elements than as a confusion of desires: materia in
diversis suis partibus quamdam diversitatem imperfectam habebat,
non ex diversis actibus completis, sed magis ex appetitibus ad
diversa. 6
Perhaps we shall gain a better understanding of St. Bonaven�
ture's meaning by comparing it on this point with the teaching of
St. Thomas. For the latter, creation resulted at once in a com�
pletely defined matter, that of the four elements. Creation was not
finished on the first day, because God had not yet divided the
waters from the earth and the firmament and because the elements
were not yet in their places. Besides, all the mixed bodies which
were to be formed eventually by means of these elements were not
INANIMATE BODIES. LIGHT 249
within this time the characteristic types of each sort of beings, the
empyrean must correspond to the formal principle of bodies as that
which it contains corresponds to their material principle and as the
angels inaugurate the order of rational creatures. Now we have said
that the nature of the empyrean is a perfectly homogeneous lumin
osity; it is therefore probable that we should consider light as the
definite form with fully determined actuality that is to confer their
successive forms upon the matter of bodies.
We can in fact distinguish two different ways in which corporeal
matter is informed; one is special and confers upon bodies the
forms which make them elements or mixed bodies; the other is
general and common to all bodies as such, namely light.9 What
is meant, of course, is corporeal light, as it was created by God on
the first day and therefore three days before the sun itself. That it
is not a question of the divine light is obvious. God is light, no
doubt, and He is even light in the true sense, as St. Augustine points
out, and not the analogous light of the sun. But it remains none
the less true that the immediate sense of the word "light" in
ordinary usage is that of corporeal light,10 and we shall take it in
this sense. As for Augustine's ingenious theory, which identifies
with the angels the light created by God on the first day, St. Bona
venture thinks it tenable but rather too far from the literal meaning,
and therefore he does not accept it.
The light of which we shall speak is therefore corporeal light,
but that does not mean that it is itself a body. Although physical
light is in fact an analogue of the divine light and even the analogue
which stands in the most immediate relation to God of all cor
poreal creatures,11 we cannot admit that there exists a body the
substance of which is integrally light. No creature in fact, whether
corporeal or spiritual. can be considered as a pure form. Except
for God, all that exists is form united to matter; therefore it is
necessarily so for bodies, and it is even more evident in that all
bodies are extended, all extension implies corporeal matter and
materiality is thus absolutely inseparable from corporeality. So if
INANIMATE BODIES. LIGHT 251
who teach the existence of several planetary orbs distinct from one
another, vvith that of the theologians, who maintain that all the
stars are in the firmament-fiant luminaria in firmamento caeli
(Gen. 1 : 14) , St. Bonaventure allows that the firmament is a sort of
continuous medium, and of a corporeal nature, and that the plane�
tary orbs are only distinct from one another by their movement.
Diversity of movements is in fact in no way incompatible with
continuity of substance, and this is easy to prove from the currents
which pass through air or across water; continuity of the medium
which Scripture calls firmament can therefore be reconciled with
distinction between the orbs which the philosophers require.36
The stars on the highest orb are the fixed stars; they have in
fact no motion at all of their own and only move by reason of the
heaven which carries them with it; their number counter�balances
to some extent the uniformity of movement of the eighth sphere.
The movement of the planets which are placed on the lower orbs
raises a problem of far greater complexity. Astronomers tend to
attribute to them a movement of their own upon epicycles and
eccentrics, so as to explain the apparent rising and falling of the
planets upon their sphere. Thus they allow of an apparent move�
ment of the planet upon its epicycle, of the epicycle upon its
eccentric and of the eccentric itself around its own centre, which
in its tum is distinct from the centre of the world. But the
physicists prefer to teach with Aristotle that the planets themselves
are moved by the movement of their spheres, just as a nail fixed
upon a wheel follows the movement of the wheel; it seems to them
in fact that an unchangeable medium such as the matter of which
the heaven is made cannot admit of movements such as those of
the planets which in that case would have to pass through it; the
apparent elevations or depressions of the planets seem to them
therefore to be explained by the varying speeds of the spheres, for,
when one celestial body overtakes another to any considerable ex�
tent, the other appears to travel backwards. Faced by these con�
flicting solutions. St. Bonaventure takes up a very curious position.
INANIMATE BODIES. LIGHT 263
THE ANIMALS
conceive that the existing part produces the part which is lacking
than we can conceive that the form of the effect can arise whole
and entire from that of the cause. What then is it? It is a prin�
ciple that contains in a virtual state that which will be the form
in an actual state. No other definition is necessary; it may be said
with equal truth that its nature consists in its power to be the
form, or that it is the very essence of the form considered in a
state of incomplete being; the two formulre are equivalent: illud
potest esse forma et fit forma sicut globus rosae fit rosa; 5 a rose�
bud is not a rose, but it contains a rose, and is the condition of
its flowering under the sun's influence.
Thus considered, St. Bonaventure's doctrine of the extraction
of forms satisfies the first condition of the problem, that the par�
ticular agent must accomplish something by its action. For we
must not suppose that the presence of a seminal principle upon
which the action of the cause is to operate is sufficient to dispense
it from exercising a real efficacy. The seminal principle is of the
nature of the form, but to develop and bring to act what it con�
tains in a germinal state it must receive from without what is lack�
ing to it, what it would be for ever incapable of bestowing on
itself if left to its own resources. We must add that a sort of ex�
temal stimulus or initial impulse which does not affect its being
is not enough to set it in motion. The efficient cause, by penetrat�
ing into the seminal principle to arouse it, informs it positively,
and it brings it to perfection by giving it something of itself. So
true is this that what is infused by the efficient cause becomes an
integrating part of the being of the effect, in such a way that the
effect itself contains something that is really fresh.
But the doctrine of the seminal principles, while it respects
�he efficacy of the secondary cause, at the same time removes all
suspicion of a creative or quasi�creative aptitude on the part of
the secondary cause to engender the form from its own resources.
For what the efficient cause bestows on its effect is not being but
only a mode of being. The essence of the seminal principle and
THE ANIMALS 27!
the essence of the completely actualized form is one and the same ,
and this must be so, for essences change by the addition of being
as numbers change by the addition of a unit, so that i£ the cause
added being to the seminal principle, the fom1 which arises from
it would possess not its essence but another, and we should be
faced with the pseudo-creation of the previous solution.6 When
the seminal principle passes from potency to act, it is therefore
a new mode of being that it receives�a mode of substantial and
not of merely accidental being, for before the action of the cause
there was only a mere potentiality and not a substance, but yet
purely a mode of being, for i£ the efficient cause had been capable
of adding being to its content it would have been capable of cre
ating it. Neither animals nor men nor even the demons are capa
ble of creation ;7 they can only operate upon nature efficaciously
by submitting themselves to it. They are in fact like the farmer
who cultivates his land. No one denies that it is he who pro
duces the harvest; but before he may gather it in he must first get
his seeds, sow them in the soil that is to fructify them, and sprin
kle them with water, and thus his action is efficacious because it
makes use of the potentialities that are latent in the womb of
things. The animal which reproduces its kind acts like the artisan
as regards the employment of the seminal principles ; it engenders
a form like its own only in virtue of that which it has itself re
ceived and of the potentiality for substance that it finds ready to
be developed. This is no question of secondary importance or
limited application�the principle defines the respective domains
of the Creator and of creatures: Deus enim operatur ex nihilo;
natura vero non facit ex nihilo sed ex ente in potentia;8 it must
therefore be an absolute principle.
Finally, to convince ourselves of this, let us compare the only
three conceivable modes of production. We may distinguish a
faculty which produces things by acting from without, another
which produces them by acting wholly from within, and lastly a
third which produces them partly from within and partly from
272 ST. BONAVENTURE
therefore exists in view of form, and the animal soul gives itself
the body that it needs to perform all its operations. The animal
perceives external objects, in particular by the sense of touch; and
by this it discovers the presence of the four sensible qualities
the hot, the cold, the dry and the wet; these four sensible qualities
in their tum manifest the presence of the four elements to which
they belong- fire, air, earth and water; these four elements must
therefore necessarily enter into the composition of the animal body
if the soul is to communicate with them through its intermediation.
And the same conclusion could be reached in other ways. The
animal body is endowed with various movements; it does not only
grow in length, but it also expands and contracts: now no single
element could explain such different movements and only the pres�
ence of all the elements in the body can account for them. But
the true reasons, the most deep�seated, are found in the exigencies
of universal order. The more spiritual the form, the more numerous
are the operations that it can accomplish; the animal form, com
pared with that of mixed bodies and with elementary forms, cor
responds to a very high degree of spirituality: anima sensibilis est
valde spiritualis; it must therefore be capable of performing very
diverse operations, and, since it can only perform these operations
by the agency of the body that is given to it to serve it, this body
must necessarily be capable of performing a multiplicity of opera
tions. But to perform them it needs faculties; to possess these
faculties it needs the natures on which they depend, and to possess
all these natures it must necessarily possess the elements-a physi
cal deduction that is proved immediately by a metaphysical prin
ciple: the less noble and the anterior exist only in view of the more
noble and the ulterior; the elements are therefore given in view of
the form of the mixed body, and, if they were not ordered to one
another with regard to the superior form, the sensible soul, they
would have no reason for existence.18
If it is evident that the four elements must enter into the com
position of the body of animals, the problem of their admixture
278 ST. BONAVENTURE
further apart. For the animal organism possesses not only the con
stitutional balance and multiplicity of organs that enable it to
receive the soul. but also subtle "spirits" which make it in some
sort comparable with the soul itself. The vegetative faculty of the
soul is sufficiently lowly and the constitution of the body tem
pered with sufficient perfection for the spirit of life to play the
part of intermediate and connecting link between the two. In
the same way the organization of the organs of life and of the
senses is sufficiently harmonious and the vegetative or sensitive
faculties of the soul are sufficiently hmhble to enable the natural
or animal spirits to form the bridge between the bodily organs and
the faculties of the soul which utilize them. Thus just as water
connects earth \•lith air and air connects water with fire, so fire.
by its heat and by the spirits that it releases, connects the body
with the soul which quickens it. Thus the exigencies of the im
manent form agree with those of universal order to determine the
structure of the organic body down to its smallest details.
How are we to describe the precise nature and formation of
these spirits? This question brings us back to the disagreement
between Augustine and Aristotle as regards the nature of the celes
tial bodies. The Greek philosopher declares that these bodies are
formed from a quintessence of a nature entirely different from that
of the elements; St. Augustine on the other hand holds that the
nature of the celestial bodies is that of elementary fire. 20 We have
seen how St. Bonaventure's theory of light enables us to reconcile
these two points of view; it will also enable us to define the true
nature of the spirits.
If we once agree that the celestial fire is of the same nature as
elementary fire, we must say that the animal body participates in
the perfection of the celestial body in virtue of the fire that it con
tains, and that this fire constitutes the matter of vital or animal
spirits itself. But if we make an absolute distinction between the
quintessence of which the celestial bodies are made and the nature
of elementary fire, the spirits and the animal body itself would
THE ANIMALS 281
Both the form and the matter of animated beings are now
knm.vn to us: we have also determined the nature of the corporeal
intermediary which acts as a bridge between this matter and this
form: it remains for us to determine the final cause of their crea
tion. What is the one final cause of the universe considered as a
whole? Our study of the creative act enabled us to establish it
beyond doubt: God, and God alone, is the ultimate cause towards
which all things are ordered, as He is the sole cause from which
all things proceed. God has made everything for His glory. There
is but one last end for animate or inanimate beings, yet there is also
a secondary and subordinate end, and this end is man. In main
taining this thesis, St. Bonaventure is not yielding to an impulse
of mere natural pride nor falling into anthropocentric presump
tions. In his eyes it is a fact that man is the most perfect creature
in the universe. He is such in virtue of his soul. with its gifts of
free will and rational knowledge. By his intellect, man possesses
himself of the essence of all beings: by his will, he is the master
of all animals and all things to use at his pleasure. If any would
deny this sovereignty of man over nature, he must adduce facts to
contradict it and show us the equivalent of the science and industry
of human beings. Now we have admitted as a principle that the
more perfect is the end of the less perfect, and that what is utilized
exists only in view of that which utilizes it; this principle has not
been invented to justify the pre-eminence of man, but has on the
contrary been demanded simply for the purpose of making the fact
of man's sovereignty intelligible and of enabling us to interpret it.
Nothing is more natural therefore than to consider man as the
proximate end of animate creatures: it is to him that all irrational
creatures are ordered, and it is by being ordered to man, whose
immediate end is God, that all His creatures are in their own way
ordered to Him also.Z2
Man, the end of natural beings. presides over all creation, and,
since all was in view of him, he could be created only in a universe
completely prepared to receive him; man was therefore created last.
THE ANIMALS 283
Just as the fishes were created before the birds on the fifth day.
by reason of their lesser perfection, so on the sixth day the irra
tional creatures preceded the creation of rational man. The com
plexity of his body. in the composition of which all the elements
were represented, implied the existence of its constitutive elements;
the metaphysical discrepancy between the rational soul and the
body that it informs was properly symbolized by the discrepancy
in time between the creation of corporeal matter on the first day
and that of the rational soul on the last; and its superior perfection
demanded that it should be produced after all the others. because
the end of the work is its crown.23 Thus the animals were created
in the order that was proper to them; and that is why God rested
on the seventh day after bringing His work to a good end. This
rest is true only for our human understanding of the divine work,
since the creation had involved no change in Him and caused Him
no fatigue; it indicates simply the end of the appearance of new
species, for God never ceases to co-operate in the successive pro
ductions of beings and the multiplication of individuals in the
womb of species, and in that sense He still maintains the universe
to-day by the continuance of His activity.
CHAPTER XI
285
286 ST. BONAVENTURE
essence and existence that forbids its identification with God, for
we must also explain through what sort of composition this crea
ture can undergo the action of external things upon it, and react
in its turn upon them. 6 Now it is clear that the distinction of
essence from existence gives no reply to this new question; it is
not because it is passive with relation to its being that the soul
can become passive with relation to actions from without; it must
therefore possess the composition of matter and form that we have
attributed for similar reasons to the angels, for the comparison is
not between angels and men, but between creatures and God.
At the same time that the composition of matter and form
explains the mutability of the human soul. it is in St. Bonaven
ture's eyes the ground of its substantiality and thus guarantees its
ability to subsist separately; these two aspects seem to him prac
tically inseparable and they are in fact presented to us simultane
ously: cum planum sit animam rationalem posse pati et agere et
mutari ab una proprietate in aliam et in se ipsa subsistere. It is
the presence of a material principle to which a form is to be united
that makes possible the constitution of a substance endowed with
a fixed being and capable of subsisting in the full sense of the
word ; either then the human soul is not a substance, or else it
possesses matter as well as form/ and nothing authorizes us to
suppose an exception in its favour. The two problems of being
and operation are hard to separate in St. Bonaventure's eyes be
cause they condition one another reciprocally in reality. All that
can naturally undergo the action of an external cause and be al
tered by it, can be such only by reason of the matter that composes
it; it is therefore by its very passivity and mutability that the soul
is a substance properly so-called and a hoc aliquid which can take
its place as a subsistent individual in a determinate genus. 8 It is
thus one and the same thing to say that the human soul is subject
to change, that it is an individual substance, and that it is com
posed of form and matter, and this will enable us to define with
more precision the conditions of its individuality.
290 ST. BONAVENTURE
by their bodies, like the animals, but also by their souls and by
the intellectual parts of their rational souls. For that reason we
say that human souls are diversified as are the human bodies that
they inform, each of them exactly proportioned to the organized
body that it brings to its perfection. Lastly the doctrine of the
unity of the intellect contradicts the evidence of sensible experience
itself. For it is a fact that different men have different thoughts
and different, indeed contradictory, opinions. To explain such
diversity it is not enough to say that each individual possesses
different sensible species, and it may be added that such a reply
has no meaning for St. Bonaventure, maintaining as he does the
doctrine of innate ideas. If we allow that the diversity of sensible
species explains the diversity of the purely intelligible concepts
which we form by abstraction from them, we should still have to
explain the diversity of human thoughts formed without images
or of an order transcendent to that of experience. Averroes grants
Aristotle's proposition quod nihil intelligimus sine phantasmate;
St. Bonaventure does not grant it. There are spiritual realities that
we knew by their essences, such as the virtues; there is even one
that we know without seeing His image or His essence, God. 1 8
We must therefore necessarily attribute to each man a rational soul
which is both a substance and the form of the human body.
In what conditions does the soul become united to its body?
Here we must distinguish two problems- that of the creation of
the soul at the beginning of the world and that of the infusing
of the soul at the birth of every man who has come into being
throughout the course of time. On the first question the most
essential point is that human souls were not created simultaneously
at the beginning of time, but that the first soul was created alone,
in view of the first man, and that the other souls appeared in the
world successively according as the men were born to whom they
were to belong. To suppose the contrary would in fact be to main�
tain that souls were in existence before their bodies; and that is
inadmissible. For the soul is hampered by its body for so long
298 ST. BONAVENTURE
Just as the first human soul was created by God for the first
man, so all souls which inform bodies in the present come into
being by way of creation. Certainly this is not the teaching of all
philosophers; some, for example, believe that souls are produced
by the separated Intelligences; others suppose that the soul is trans
mitted to the child by its parents in the very act of generation; but
no solution of the problem is acceptable save that according to
which souls are created by God, when once the bodies are formed,
introduced by Him into their bodies and at the same time brought
by Him into existence.
It was proper that God should reserve to Himself the creation
of souls, in virtue of their dignity and their immortality-in vir
tue of their dignity, because the soul being the image of God is
ordered immediately towards Him and must therefore receive di
rectly from Him its whole being to give back to Him wholly in
love; in virtue of their immortality also, for only God possesses
in Himself inexhaustible life, and therefore only He can produce
the principle of a life which is never to be extinguished. Moreover
it is clear that the production of an incorruptible substance is
beyond the power of a creature. We can never produce substances
except by imposing a form upon a matter that is subject to change
by a natural or artificial operation; by introducing mutability into
this substance, we introduce into it an element of passivity, of con
trariety and therefore of dissolution. To produce an incorruptible
substance means then to produce a substance composed of unalter
able form and matter; this production implies a substance which is
itself exempt from change, and it follows that such a cause can be
none other than God.22
It will be asked no doubt how this creation of the human soul
is brought about and especially whether the creative act bears upon
the totality of the soul. sensitive as well as intellectual. or whether
it bears upon the intellectual part alone. The problem is in fact
inevitable when we reflect that the animal soul has appeared to us
as a form which, although certainly very noble, is yet of the same
300 ST. BONAVENTURE
justice in the human soul is its surest promise in this life of im
mortality. For all religions and all philosophies agree that a man
should sacrifice his life rather than transgress the law of truth or
the rule of justice; now this justice that the soul possesses in itself
and for which it dies would perish with it if the moment of its
separation from the body were that of its annihilation, a supposi
tion which does violence to the moral conscience and which our
thought cannot support. Lastly let us notice that the consideration
of the faculties of the human soul themselves lead us necessarily
to the same conclusion. No corporeal and corruptible faculty is
capable of reflecting upon itself, of knowing and loving itself, and
is it not the clearest sign of the soul 's incorruptibility that it sees
its faculties of knowing become strengthened and exalted in pro
portion as it separates itself from the body by mortification? Inde
pendent of the flesh in its operation as in its being, the rational
soul knows without the help of the body, remains young and even
grows in wisdom while the body ages and falls into decay; it is
certainly independent of it therefore and cannot be corrupted
along with it.
St. Bonaventure knows all these proofs and adopts them, but
they are in no way specifically his own; they receive only his assent,
while there are others that claim his preference. Since he considers
the human soul as a substance composed of matter and form, he
cannot attribute to it the incorruptibility commonly claimed for it as
a simple substance; it does not resemble the soul of Plato's system,
exempt from corruption by its kinship with the simplicity of the
ideas; it has far more resemblance to the gods whom the demiurge
of the Timaeus fashions, who owe their indestructibility to the will
from which they derive the proportions of their perfect mixture.
For the form of which the soul is composed is destined to enjoy
divine beatitude; made in the image of God, it bears His express
resemblance and cannot therefore be condemned to perish. But
what, it may be asked, is less like the incorruptible than the cor
ruptible? The matter of the soul, we reply, is not unworthy of the
THE HUMAN SOUL 305
form which actualizes it, and it is the perfection of its own form that
reflects upon it to ennoble it. United with a form of such dignity
that the divine resemblance is granted to the entire soul, the matter
is drawn towards it and bound to it by so urgent a longing for its
perfection that its desire for its form is wholly satisfied and satiated.
A spiritual matter asks nothing more from its form, when that which
perfects it bears the express image of God. And since God does not
wish to dissolve so perfect a union, He maintains the soul in being
by the same act of love that bestowed being upon it.2 6
The immortality of the soul is possible, even inevitable, by
reason of its structure; it is necessary, in a yet more metaphysical
sense, by reason of its end. The most evident of human experiences
is the desire for happiness which consumes us; no one dreams of
disputing it, and we cannot deny that we all wish for happiness
unless we have lost our reason. St. Bonaventure, who puts this desire
of beatitude at the basis of all his mysticism and therefore of all his
philosophy, cannot imagine this happiness except as the definitive,
and consciously definitive, possession of the most perfect good. It
is not happiness to possess a good if we know that we shall lose it,
or even if we are only uncertain of preserving it. The human soul
therefore cannot be considered as truly capable of happiness unless
we suppose it capable of reaching a definitive state in which the
good towards which it aspires will belong to it without any pos
sibility of subsequent loss. This permanence clearly requires the
inunortality of the soul; it is a metaphysical requirement based upon
the end, the most profound and most rigorously absolute of all
requirements, for it is the end that imposes its necessity upon the
means;27 we cannot deny this without violating the very principle
that governs the order of the universe and makes human life
intelligible.
As with the rest of St. Bonaventure's teaching this doctrine
of the soul has not always been favourably judged or thoroughly
understood, and this has been inevitable. If his main position and
even, as has been actually maintained, his method, was indeed to
306 ST. BONAVENTURE
309
310 ST. BONAVENTURE
soul gains contact with solid and terrestrial bodies, which are
the least noble of all. The three intermediate senses form a pas
sage for the three bodies of an intermediate nature; that of taste
for liquids, that of hearing for air-borne impressions, that of smell
to the vapours that result from a mixture of air, heat and humid
ity. 1 3 There are thus live senses, and there can be only live because
this number is necessary and sufficient for the perception of all
classes of sensibles.
If we consider the live senses in relation to the action of these
different bodies upon them, they fall into two groups; those that
enter into direct and immediate relation with the object itself and
those that are acted upon only indirectly. The first group consists
of the sense of touch, which is obviously immediate, and the
sense of sight, which St. Bonaventure treats as immediate, no doubt
because the luminous species acts instantaneously and without
passing through the medium; it can therefore be ranked with the
sense of touch, since with no obstacle ben-veen the organ and
the object it constitutes a sort of touch from a distance. The sec
ond group contains all the senses that we have called "intermedi
ate," those of hearing, smell and taste; their action implies a sort
of disassociation, engendering species which in a real sense pass
through the medium, however quickly, and they do not therefore
act with the truly immediate action of the two former senses. The
first class of sensations makes known to us the absolute properties
of bodies- colour and the resistance which their weight or their
surface makes to the touch; the second class makes known to us
the properties which objects can produce, but which they do not
possess necessarily. We must add that the two senses of the first
group belong to the essential perfection of the human soul and
will therefore continue to function after the resurrection of the
body; those of the second group, except perhaps the sense of hear
ing, are nothing but the means by which the soul's activity is
more completely expanded, and we may suppose that in conse
quence there will be no place for them after the resurrection. 1 4
THE ILLUMINATION OF THE INTELLECT 3 19
it emanates from the whole object and resembles it, it expresses it,
represents it and enables it to be known.1 6 These then are the
similitudes, also called species, which are continually radiated by
the complete object in its entirety in the surrounding medium and
which determine the sensible knowledge that we can acquire of
this object.
How can the contact betw·een the sensible species and the soul
be effected? St. Bonaventure was faced with two opposing in
terpretations of this fundamental operation. The first is that of
St. Augustine, who, as a faithful follower of the Platonist tradition,
maintains uncompromisingly the soul's complete transcendence
over the body, and, correlatively, the absolute impossibility of
action upon the soul on the part of the body. It is a principle
admitting of no exception that the superior can receive nothing
and undergo nothing at the hands of the inferior; it is therefore
contradictory to suppose that a body can introduce anything into
a mind by any process or even simply act upon it. How then can
we imagine the act of sensation? 'vle are forced to admit that an
external body acts upon the organ, and therefore that our body
undergoes its action, but our soul undergoes neither the action
of the external body nor that of our own; on the contrary, it is
the soul that then comes into action and reads in what our body
undergoes the nature of the object perceived. Sensation, as St.
Augustine conceives it, is thus essentially passive on the part of
the body, but essentially active on the part of the soul. which
produces itself and from its own substance the material of which
its sensations are made. 1 7 St. Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand.
fully perceived that Augustine was brought to this conclusion by
the thoroughness of his Platonism, and that his own Aristotelian
ism dispensed him from maintaining it. It is not the principle that
is here in question; the inferior cannot act upon the superior; and
it is in the name of this principle that Aristotle and St. Thomas
do not allow to sensible bodies the power to act directly upon the
intellect. The question is whether there does not exist a faculty
THE ILLUMINATION OF THE INTELLECT 32 1
even that lower form of the faculty of knowing, the capacity for
sensation, is closely bound up with the higher forms of spiritual
activity that continually act upon and fructify it.
This continuity appears so clearly that we seem to find two
operations of the same faculty at different levels rather than two
distinct faculties, properly so called, such as those of will and
knowledge. We have said that St. Bonaventure opposes sensibility
and intellection as one faculty to another, and this is entirely
accurate; but we are now in a position to notice the differences
between them and, in doing so, to leave free the ground on which
they may aftenvards reunite. Sensation is a state specifically dis
tinct from intellection, and the faculty of sensation is really distinct
from that of knowing, just in so far as the sensitive operation
implies an undergoing on the part of the compositum. It is pre
cisely this that marks the boundary line between the two domains,
and therefore sensation can never become intelligence. But at the
same time, since we admit that the faculty of sensation, qua faculty
of sensation, reacts actively upon the impression that it undergoes
and judges it, it shows itself as a sensitive faculty of a rational
soul. specifically different from that possessed, for example, by the
irrational animals.20 Not that this reaction of the sense upon
the impression that it undergoes is not itself sensitive in the proper
sense or attributable to an act of intellection-it is thecompositum
that receives the action from without and the compositum that
judges it; but it does not judge it as it would do if it were not the
extension, in the body. of a spiritual substance that does not de
pend upon the body and. in a word , if human sensation were not
the sensation of a rational being.
When we consider the judgment that sense makes upon the
impression that its organ and itself have undergone, it is clear to
us at once that, although the passive element in sensation attaches
principally to the body and the active element principally to the
soul, it is the soul and not the body that perceives. We say. and
with reason, that the eye sees; but we are entitled to say so only
324 ST. BONAVENTURE
because the soul exercises its faculty of vision by means of the eye,
so that it is the soul that bestows upon the body its faculty of
sensation: actum sentiendi dicitur communicare anima corpori/1
in other words again, we should imagine the different senses as so
many ramifications of a single soul the powers of which penetrate
to each of them through the intermediation of the common sense.
That is why St. Bonaventure's psychology instead of emphasizing
the characters that define the lower faculties of the soul as such,
so as to keep them in their place and prevent them from rising
above it, insists on the other hand upon the continuity that con
nects them with the higher faculties and penetrates them with their
influence. In the very act by which the soul perceives, the speci
fication of the sensation i n i t s own c l a s s r e v e a l s to us a real
judgment implied in it. If then this view does not allow to St.
Augustine that the soul forms of itself and from its own substance
the content of the sensation, it maintains at least that the percep
tion of sensible quality is not sufficiently explained as the mere
undergoing of the faculty of sensation, but requires also a move
ment of this faculty by which it is turned towards the sensible
species - conversio potentiae apprehensivae super illam,22 and con
sequently a sort of spontaneous judgment that the quality perceived
is white, black or any of the other qualities we may perceive.
But the activity of the sensitive soul is not yet exhausted.
Our perception may appear at first sight a simple quality, but on
analysis it breaks up revealing to us a series of faculties with grada
tions of profundity each of which bestows upon it some part of
its being. In the first place, particular sensations seem to us to be
comparable among themselves within each order of sense and to
constitute by their resemblance a definite class of sensations. Sight,
considered in itself and absolutely, has light as its proper object,
but it perceives white and black as objects almost equally imme
diate, and it even perceives things or persons as objects of greater
remoteness.23 Now between the perception of objects and the par
ticular sensation of a sensible quality considered in isolation must
THE ILLUMINATION OF THE INTELLECT 325
it is the sensible species that causes the sensation, and since three
terms are involved in the definition of the sensible species, three
different relations may be established between the sense and its
object. When we analyse the term "species," we find first of all
that it implies the notion of image and consequently of form; spe
cies is an image just in so far as it owes to the form of the object
the resemblance that it transmits to the organ; and it can accord
with our faculty of sensation from this first point of view. The
beauty of a form resolves itself in fact into a numerical relation;
it implies a certain arrangement of parts according to the laws of
number, which, although completed by other sensible qualities
that we have yet to define, constitute by their agreement with our
internal faculty of sensation the fundamental condition of every
impression of beauty.2 6 In the second place, we notice that the
species is not only in relation with the original form to which it
owes its appearance, but also with the medium that it traverses
with the speed of its natural movement. If this movement is too
violent for the sense that receives it or has insufficient force, the
perception will be painful or feeble; if on the other hand there is
an exact proportion between the structure of the organ and the
impact that it receives from the object, the perception will be agree
able. Clearly this second affective quality may complete the first
and be in some way identified with it, as happens when we take
pleasure in the beauty of forms painted in a picture, and the har
mony of their colouring. Lastly there is a third proportion possible
between certain species and certain organs. For the relation of
sense to object may be of a sort of vital nature, an expectation
and, as it were, a need of the body turning to the species radiated
by the object, rather than a disinterested curiosity. In such a case,
the agreement between the organ and the object consists in the
relieving of a want by the species, in supplying it, in bringing
nourishment and (in some sense) rescue; the chief examples of this
are the pleasures of taste and touch, for taste and touch are closely
connected with the needs of our life. for which reason we owe to
THE ILLUMINATION OF THE INTELLECT 327
a rather more active sense, what the imagination can only pre
serve.29 On the other hand memory is sharply distinguished from
purely passive imagination in that it is capable of reminiscence,
that is of recalling to consciousness, by its own act, the species
which the imagination preserves and which it itself retains.30 In
this second sense, it seems a voluntary faculty, for it is in our
power to awaken our memories or to let them lie dormant; and
it also differs from pure imagination in that these two ways of
remembering, the active and the passive, engender two ways, one
active and one passive, of forgetting. We can forget through the
natural obliteration of species-then there is a sort of effacing or
wearing away of the impressions received; but we can also forget
voluntarily, cancel in the book of memory what was consigned
to it and blot it out by a voluntary decision. At the same time it
becomes clear that the more deeply we penetrate into the analysis
of our sensible knowledge, the more we are obliged to connect it
with our intellectual knowledge. If we can imagine nothing with
out the species, we must constantly appeal to the will, a free and
therefore rational faculty, to save them from oblivion and bring
them forth. Thus we must naturally turn to the intellect itself if
we wish not only to discover its own structure but also to reveal
the ultimate basis of the sensitive operations each of which leads
us inevitably to it.
and since, considered in itself, it can only receive it; but it turns
towards it nevertheless, and once so turned, receives from the active
intellect the power to abstract it and to judge it. The precise for�
mula of its passivity is as follows: non potest sua conversione nee
speciem abstrahere nee de specie judicare nisi adjutorio ipsius
agentis; it is therefore true that it abstracts but not of itself alone.
And correlatively, it is the informing of the possible intellect by the
intelligible abstracted in virtue of the active intellect that enables
the active intellect itself to perform its function. The interdepend�
ence of the two aspects of the same act is such that the active
intellect concludes its operation thanks to the collaboration that it
enables the possible intellect to offer it. It is not surprising therefore
that St. Bonaventure's formulae do not seem always to describe the
operation in quite the same way; they may vary without ceasing
to be precise, because they may legitimately represent the facts
under two different aspects and because they can only represent
one at a time two aspects which are in reality inseparable. We
find then the root of the matter when we read in one passage that
the active intellect abstracts and the possible intellect receives; but
we find the complementary truth when we read in another passage
that the possible intellect, thanks to the power of the active intellect,
abstracts the intelligible from its matter, and that the information
of the possible intellect by the sensible species makes the active
intellect in its turn more actual as regards the object to be known
than it was before the sensible species was there for it to contem�
plate.
In the second place it is clear that the active and the possible
intellects in St. Bonaventure's teaching are not two faculties gen�
uinely distinct from one another. They cannot be so, since the
definitively active or passive character which St. Thomas assigns to
each, which is in his eyes the foundation for the distinction behveen
them, is here rejected in favour of a sort of interaction which is,
on the other hand, the basis of their interdependence as regards the
exercise of the very operation through which each is defined. It
THE ILLUMINATION OF THE INTELLECT 335
that they are in some fashion innate is a formula that should give
rise to no misunderstanding; it is not their content that is innate,
either clearly or confusedly. but the instrument that enables them to
acquire it, and St. Bonaventure's thought may be equally well
expressed by the formula "innateness of intellect, acquisition of
principles," or by the formula "in our acquisition of principles
there is something innate, but the principles themselves are not
such."
Considered from the point of view of St. Thomas the problem
might be treated as completely and finally solved. But from that
of St. Bonaventure, it is solved only for the domain of sensible
knowledge and must be raised afresh for all other categories of
known objects. The fact that we have no innate knowledge of
sensible things or of objects which are related to them does not
authorize us to conclude that we have no innate knowledge of any
being or any principle. For we must notice that the representative
species are necessary intermediaries only in the order of the sensible,
for the simple reason that they have no meaning outside the order
of the sensible. The representing species is the irradiation of a
corporeal object external to the soul. which, by reason of its very
corporeity. is not directly accessible to it. It is opaque to thought
by reason of its body and becomes knowable only in virtue of its
higher, almost spiritual. faculty of radiating round itself the sensi
ble image which an intellect can transfigure and make intelligible.
But when the object is incorporeal. we are straightway in the do
main of the intelligible, and therefore the mere presence of the
object should suffice to enable our intellect to possess itself of it.
Where no corporeal barrier is interposed between the intelligible and
the soul. no image has any right to exist; the mental chemistry
which had as its sole function to construct the intelligible by means
of the sensible becomes useless, and the intellect seizes upon the
known object directly.
St. Bonaventure maintains this explicitly in the case of two
objects which he nearly always cites together as obvious examples
340 ST. BONAVENTURE
The human intellect turns upon itself and reflects upon its own
nature; it sees itself knowing by a natural light which tends towards
the true and loving by a desire which tends towards the good;
combining these two data, it conceives of a desire which loves the
object approved by the understanding; in "conceiving" it, it en�
genders what every act of thought naturally engenders, a resem�
blance43 or, in modem language, a conception of the mind; and
as this conception is found in thought, it is, by its very definition,
the resemblance of an object conceived by thought; now the defini�
tion of truth is precisely this: habet rationem similitudinis dum
accipitur ab intellectu, habet tamen rationem veritatis prout est in
anima. But at the same time the intellect becomes enriched with a
positive content by means of the unaided resources of the soul,
and it can therefore operate as a faculty of the principles by apply�
ing itself to this new content. Thus if we were now to ask how
innate principles are possible, the answer would be that they are so
because the knowledge on which they bear is itself innate knowl
edge. The human soul knows God simply by reflecting on itself,
since it is made in the image of God; the knowledge by which it
knows, the desire by which it loves, the memory by which it grasps
and possesses itself tend towards God, suppose and imply Him
necessarily; the innateness of its knowledge of Him consists then
in the power which it possesses of forming this knowledge without
requiring fresh resources from the external world. 44 The human
soul also possesses innate knowledge of the virtues the definition
of which it can form by analysing itself, and, in consequence, it
possesses knowledge of all that it is by direct observation and by
reflection. vVe must therefore say that the human soul possesses
innate knowledge of all the principles that are related to itself or
to God45 ; it can find in things nothing but the knowledge of things,
but in itself it finds the knowledge of the moral law; the intellect
knows then by innate knowledge that God must be loved and
feared because it is an intellect and contains in itself the three ideas
of love, of fear and of God.
THE ILLUMINATION OF THE INTELLECT 343
of Good ( ch. vi) . The last degree, that of passive joy infused by
ecstasy, is by definition beyond the bounds of knowledge, since, as
we shall see, knowledge is no longer in question. There are thus
various modalities of intellectual activity which we shall examine
in determining the conditions of its operations at each of its levels.
An introductory distinction, of very wide range, corresponds
to the two initial attitudes between which a rational soul such as
man's has always to choose-whether to turn above or below. This
fundamental problem was raised for all humanity in the person of
the first man and is still raised for each of us when we decide what
are the fitting objects of our knowledge. This problem, it will be
noticed, does not concern our faculty of knowledge only, but the
whole rational soul. with its tw'o faculties of knowledge and will.
It is the soul that rises upwards or sinks downward, and, in re
habilitating or degrading itself, it rehabilitates or degrades its power
to love along with its power to know.47 That is why the first dis
tinction betw'een the offices or functions of knowledge is always
associated by St. Bonaventure with the "soul" rather than the
"intellect"; it is the distinction betw'een the superior reason and the
inferior-that is, within the rational soul considered as looking
above or beneath itself for fitting objects of knowledge or love.
If superior reason is not distinguished from inferior as one
faculty from another, it must be distinguished from it as one office
or function from another. But how can we explain in its turn this
difference betw'een the two offices of the rational soul?-precisely
by means of the influence to which it is liable from its objects; it
finds only that for which it seeks, and the value of the replies which
it receives is in proportion to the level of the questions which it
asks. Clearly, if the soul turns towards purely intelligible objects
it is informed by properties which are inseparable from their nature,
it becomes like them for so long as it thinks of them, and this is
expressed when we say that the fact of contemplating a certain
object engenders a certain disposition in the soul which contem
plates it. For example, if the rational soul turns towards external
THE ILLU MINATION OF THE INTELLECT 345
there is more than this. Not only will the ideal of our knowledge
be for ever unsatisfied in this world, since it is God Whom we wish
to see and the sight of Him is denied us, but also no part of the
knowledge that we can here achieve is sufficient of itself and able
to satisfy us fully. Perhaps. certainly even, we shall have partial
certitudes based upon the clear knowledge of created principles;
but here too we aspire to know the first principle from which they
derive, the sight of which alone could wholly justify the knowledge
that we have of them. Man's need remains absolute, and St. Bona
venture transposes and gives its full sense to Aristotle's famous
formula: the soul is born to know everything. All means God; so
to say that we know nothing in this life with full knowledge would
not perhaps be too inexact an expression.5 9 The best-intentioned
interpreters of St. Bonaventure sometimes hesitate before this for
mula, which yet does no more than reveal one of the deepest aspira
tions of his inner life; if God exists and if we are to see Him one
day. we cannot know anything unless we see it as we shall know it
when it has been granted to us to see it in God; the impassable
gulf which necessarily separates the best-established human knowl
edge from the sight of the very foundation of knowledge measures
precisely what is lacking to our full satisfaction.
Thus perfect knowledge will be achieved only in God, but our
humble human knowledge would not be constituted even as it is
save for Him. When we reflect upon the essential causes which we
have assigned for its lack of certitude. we find that they not only
explain that we can know nothing with an integral certitude, but
also make it almost impossible to believe that we can acquire cer
titudes of any kind. If we allow that all truth, however fragmentary.
implies an unchanging object and infallible knowledge. we are
inevitably condemned to know no truth whatsoever, since nothing
is unchanging in the data of our experience and our intellect is
continually shifting and uncertain. But yet it is a fact of experience
that we do possess certitudes; although they are not complete, they
bear upon objects the mere presence of which in thought such as
THE ILLU MINATION OF THE INTELLECT 351
therefore bear upon the content of true knowledge, but upon its
form, that is upon the truth itself of such knowledge. The problem
raised by St. Bonaventure reduces then to the question of the
source from which our intellect draws the certitude, unchangeable
ness and infallibility of its knowledge, that is, what makes its truths
true, whatever the content of these may be.
If we now suppose that our thought does not attain to the
divine ideas themselves. but that only a sort of divine co-operation
takes place. a mere influence from the eternal principles, we shall
find that, if the knowing subject does not attain to the eternal
principles themselves. but only their influence, all human certitude
becomes equally impossible. The reason for this capital assertion
in St. Bonaventure's teaching is that, since God is the sole founda
tion of being and knowledge, no knowledge can be attained unless
God Himself is attained; in this sense he regularly quotes and
consistently interprets the words of St. Augustine. If we attain to
the certain, we attain to the unchangeable and the necessary; our
thought is contingent; there is therefore in our thought something
transcendent to our thought; but there is nothing above our thought
save God and His truth. and it is therefore this that is present,
and it is by this necessarily. since it is not of ourselves, that we
know. It is the same with all the other perfections of our knowl
edge; we judge things with the aid of laws which we do not invent,
to which, on the other hand, we are subject and which judge us;
we who are pilgrims and finite attain to the eternal and infinite;
so we cannot explore the content of our thought without discover
ing in it a gift which comes from elsewhere, from above; we do
not contain in our essence the sufficient reason of the characteristics
which make our knowledge true.64 But, if this is so. we can never
solve the problem of certitude by invoking the mere influence of
the eternal reasons over our thought. This influence. distinct from
the eternal reasons themselves, could not be God; it would therefore
be created; but, created in our thought and for our thought, it would
share the lot of the contingent, since it would require an external
356 ST. BONAVENTURE
MORAL ILLUMINATION
365
366 ST. BONAVENTURE
faculty, nor have we any grounds for so doing. For the will to be
truly master of its acts it is sufficient that it should will to will;
for the intellect to be capable of judging its object it is sufficient that
it should have the knowledge of its knowledge; experience shows u s
that these two faculties are in fact capable of reflecting upon them
selves and taking their own acts as objects.4 Thus of themselves
they satisfy all the conditions required for the exercise of freewill
as already defined .
But at the same time it follows that freewill is constituted, in
its very essence, by the agreement of intellect and will; since it is
not a real thing exterior to them, it can only be those faculties
themselves, and it is necessarily reducible to a certain definite mode
in which they collaborate: consensus rationis et voluntatis. If the
soul possessed reason alone it would be capable of reflecting upon
its act, thanks to the immateriality of the intellect, but it would not
be capable of setting itself in motion or deciding its own activity.
If on the other hand it possessed only desire, without reason, it
would be able to set itself in motion and decide upon its activity,
but since it would be incapable of reflecting upon and judging its
own act, it would be incapable likewise of self-restraint, and would
therefore not possess self-mastery.
Thus just as the union of their efforts gives two men the
strength to carry a block of stone which either of them by himself
would be incapable of lifting; just as the agreement of a father and
mother to organize the life of a family brings into being a kind of
common faculty capable of introducing order, whereas the effort
of either of them singly would be unable to do so; just as from the
collaboration of hand and eye results the faculty of writing though
neither hand nor eye could write: so from the collaboration of
reason and will is born a sort of faculty which is precisely liberty
itself -that is the mastery and free disposition of the acts possible
to man. Here therefore by the term faculty is understood not only;
nor even principally , a power to act considered in itself, but a sort
of perfection of the rational soul, a domination which it exercises
MORAL ILLUMINATION 369
over itself to set itself in action, refrain from action or decide the
direction which it will take in the exercise of its operations or the
choice of its objects.5
This being so, the freedom of the will is to be ranked among
the habits. It is a facility in the intellectual and voluntary activity
and resembles rather a permanent disposition of the soul than a
distinct instrument used by the soul to manifest its activity. And
yet freewill is not nothing. It is more than a mere accident of the
rational soul, as are many of its habits; it is rooted in the very
essence of the soul, and this must be clearly grasped if we are to
see exactly what it is.
There are various quite different senses in which a faculty of
the soul can be considered as capable of accomplishing a particular
act. First we may say that it is capable in itself, that is that its
essence constitutes the necessary and sufficient reason of the act
which it accomplishes-thus thought appears to us as capable of
remembering itself and knowing itself, and in this sense the mem
ory and knowledge that our thought possesses of itself are simply
different names by which thought itself may be called. Second,
we may say that a faculty becomes capable of accomplishing a
certain act by reason of a habit which though additional to its
essence is yet truly proper to it: thus the human intellect simply
as such does not know geometrical figures, but it becomes capable
of knowing them by adding to its essence the accident called geo
metrical knowledge. But a third sort of habit is conceivable, one
which results from the collaboration of two faculties. The term
then signifies that, without receiving any new determination addi
tional to its essence, a faculty by uniting with another faculty be
comes capable of an operation which it could not a ccomplish by
itself alone. Such precisely is the very special habit we call freewill.
The rational soul can act freely without possessing either a
special faculty of being free, or even a complementary determina
tion rendering it capable of acting freely: its faculty of knowing
without any added habit-by the mere fact of its conjunction with
370 ST. BONAVENTURE
some sort co-essential with it. The most direct means of proving
this is to ask whether God Himself could constrain the freewill
and determine it to its act by a violence exercised from without.
Obviously if the question is merely whether God could constrain
man to will something by temporarily annihilating his liberty, the
answer could only be in the affirmative: the power of God is such
that it can do what seems good to it, and there is nothing to
prevent it depriving a soul of a perfection which it has itself
conferred. But if the question implies that God is capable of
constraining freewill without depriving it of its liberty and con
sequently of its proper nature, the proposition will be not only
false but actually unintelligible, since it would involve a contra
diction. Given that a soul is free, if it wills something, it wills it
freely: and given that it is a will, if it wills something it does so
by its own movement, of its own nature. Therefore to grant for
an instant the absurd hypothesis of a freewill which is constrained
would imply that, in willing something. it wills it slavishly. in
spite of itself. and so to speak in spite of the will it has in the
matter. To say that freewill is constrained is equivalent to saying
that the act of freewill is at the same time and in the same relation
free and servile, voluntary and non-voluntary. If then that which
involves a contradiction within itself is impossible even to the
power of God- since the contradictory is non-being-we can con
clude with certainty that it is impossible to God to constrain that
which is free, and that it would consequently be still more un
reasonable to attribute such a power to any created being. 8
From this it follows that it would be no exaggeration to say
that man's freewill. inviolable and absolute in its ovvn essence, is
not less than that of God Himself. Obviously if one considers
in freewill the total act-including the collaboration of the intel
lect in the discernment of objects, and of the body in carrying out
the decisions taken- there is an infinite distance between freewill
as it is found in man and as it may be attributed to God. Like
wise it is clear that if human liberty is by its essence beyond the
372 ST. BONAVENTURE
say charity or love. It has already been said that any object of the
will is good in so far as the will can find total satisfaction in it;
and love alone can satisfy the will totally. For the will, an end
can be described as that in which or by which it finds satisfaction;
and this satisfaction may either be for the time or for ever. But
the sole end wherein our will finds its complete satisfaction is
Uncreated Love, that is God. Obviously then the created and con�
summated love- the love by which the human will lays permanent
hold upon this infinite object-is love for God. This created love
in the embryonic incomplete form, wherein here below it inaugu�
rates and prepares the way for eternal beatitude-is simply the
charity by which our will rests in God here and now. Just as
material bodies do not come to rest until the weight that moves
them brings them to their natural place, so the soul can come to
rest in God-its natural place and its ultimate destination-only
if love brings it to God by making it seize upon the good precisely
because it is good. But the good considered precisely as good is
at once the end of the will and the object of its love; so that we
may rightly regard love as the end par excellence.
Our end is to enjoy God: it is by charity that we love God:
so that charity constitutes our end. From this it follows that we
can have but one principal end, and that all other ends can only
be called ends in so far as they subserve it. St. Bonaventure illus�
trates his conclusion by a picturesque example. It was the custom
in many churches of that day that those who came to Matins were
given money as an extra reason for coming. Those who came to
church to get the money might be divided into three groups. The
first sort would be those whose principal intention was the honour
and glory of God and who thought of the money as something
to be given to the poor, or in some other way used as God would
wish. The second sort would come to please God and would re�
ceive the money with no special thought that it could be put to
pious uses. The third sort like the second would come to Church
to please God, but also with the positive intention of making a
MORAL ILLUMINATION 375
little money to add to what they already have and feed their avarice.
The first sort seem to be pursuing several ends, but all these ends
are good, because all ordered in view of the principal end, God.
The second are pursuing two ends, but the one does not destroy
the excellence of the other because to gain money without regard�
ing it as a thing to be used for God is merely a venial sin. The
third are pursuing tv,ro ends, but in such wise that their will is
wholly bad, for these two ends are flatly contradictory and no man
can serve two masters: it is plain hypocrisy to try to honour God
and pander to one's avarice in one and the same act. Thus the
will can pursue several ends at once, but not several principal ends;
if the principal end is good, all the subordinate ends are so like�
wise: if a bad end is willed for itself, it becomes a principal end
and infects the other ends with its own malice.
Here we must note an important difference between a good
end for the will and a bad. The end of all wills that are good is
necessarily one single end, whether we consider the wills of sev�
eral men desiring one object or the will of one man desiring several
objects. The reason is that love is generosity: it is never its own
good that it seeks, but the common good; so that inevitably, if
several men are moved by the same charity, they must finally be
moved by the same good. If one man desires several objects, since
that which is totally desirable contains by definition the totality
of good, it follows inevitably that the most diverse acts of one
same will must, if they are good, find their satisfaction in one same
object. Conversely the imperfection of an object condemns to
dispersion the \Vill that chooses it. The passionate love of crea�
tures always seeks its own good and tends only towards itself; so
that even when two beings unite for the accomplishment of a single
act, each is seeking his own good: thus it is with the harlot and
the man who hires her, for he is seeking his pleasure and she
is seeking his money. If we consider the diverse desires of one
individual, we see that they are diverse precisely because of the
diversity of the ends sought: lust seeks enjoyment, avarice seeks
376 Sf. BONAVENTURE
includes an act of the reason and an act of the will; just as the
consent of the free will covers in one word the concurrences of two
acts equally indispensable, so intention involves the conjoint action
of two distinct faculties to accomplish an operation beyond the
power of either by itsel£.15 Thus, to rerum to an analogy already
used, just as the order of family life depends totally upon the
agreement of the father and mother, so the right ordering of acts
to be accomplished within the interior of the soul depends upon
the agreement of the will and the reason- the exercise of the acts
depending upon consent, their direction upon intention.
Intention may be expressed by an analogy: walking in a straight
line involves both the eye that sees the path and the legs that carry
one along it; so the act of intention involves at once the acts of
the reason and of the will, the one seeing, the other tending, the
one requiring the virhle of faith to aid it, the other the virhle
of charity.
With the intention we have practically reached a point at
which we have in our hands all the elements necessary for the
judgment of the morality of acts; but one still remains to be con
sidered, the most important of all, the conscience. All the diverse
functions of the intellect which vary its aspect without dividing
its essence come under one of two headings-the intellect's specu
lative function or its practical function. These of course, as we
have already seen, are not two intellects but one intellect: it is
called speculative when it treats of things to be known, and prac
tical when it treats of how its acts are to be done.16
Conscience, in its strict meaning, is simply a habit of the prac
tical intellect, corresponding exactly in the order of action to science
(a habit of the speculative intellect) in the order of knowledge.
It is a habit of our knowing faculty, but it is different from specu
lative science; it does not enable the intellect to know a particular
order of truths (as, for example, the habit of logical science en
ables it to deduce conclusions from the principles that contain
them) ; it enables the intellect to decide upon the principles to
378 ST. BONAVENTURE
its erroneous rule upon his will, it puts him in a situation in which
he cannot attain salvation, since whether he follows his conscience
or not he will be in mortal sin- following it, he will be disobey
ing the law of God: not following it, he will be disobeying his
conscience, for though the thing he does is not in itself wrong,
he will be doing it with a wrong intention.1 7 It is an offence
against God to ignore one's conscience, and to do something, in
itself pleasing to God, with the intention of displeasing Him.
Thus conscience always imposes an obligation upon a rational
soul- the obligation of following it if it is good or of reforming
it if it is bad.
We may now pass in review the conditions of a moral act.
Just as the speculative intellect consists in an innate natural light
which engenders the habit of the principles of knowledge, so the
same intellect, as practical, by the same natural light engenders
the habit of principles ofaction; the habit of speculative principles
engenders the habit of science, that of principles of action en
genders the habit of conscience. But these do not exhaust the
conditions of action, for they all belong to the intellect and we must
now consider the conditions required for the exercise of the will.
Like the intellect, the will must be seen first as an innate nat
ural gift. •.vhich is detennined by an acquired habit. The innate
natural gift is usually called synderesis; here, in this fine point of
the will, resides that "weight, " of which we have spoken, which
directs the will spontaneously towards what it is to desire. Syn
deresis is not the cause of every movement and inclination of our
will in general, but only of the inclinations which bear it towards
the good that we desire for itself, independently of the egoistic
advantage or profit that may accompany it. We might say that this
"weight" stimulates the will towards what is good, 18 as we say that
the natural light stimulates the intellect towards what is true; it
does not make itself part of our faculties of desire and action, but
it moves them, watches over them, directs them and corrects them
as the natural light guides all the operations of our intellect. Its
380 ST. BONAVENTURE
life. But what Aristotle could not do, other philosophers could,
even without the aid of revelation. Plotinus, for example, said that
it would be absurd to hold that the exemplars of all things are in
God while affirming that the exemplars of the virtues are not in
Him; Philo, Macrobius and others besides knew this truth, and
upon this first point we have but to group together their teaching. 2 1
Plotinus teaches that the thought of God contains in itself the
four cardinal virtues whence all the others derive in their order.22
The thought of God regarded in itself and in all the brilliance of
its light is prudence; considered in the perfection of its purity it
constitutes the very essence of temperance; considered in the efficacy
belonging to it as wisdom and the principle of operation, it is
fortitude; as the rule of beings and their actions, it is justice.
Now just as the immutability and necessity of our certitudes
do not find their sufficient reason in our thought, so these four
perfections of our actions-in the infinitesimal measure in which
our actions possess them-do not find their sufficient reason in our
will. The uncertainty and the fallibility of our intellect contam
inate the conclusions of our practical as well as of our speculative
intellect; the disorder of an unstable will, drawn in different direc
tions by the impressions of sense or the desires of the flesh, is
certainly not capable of explaining that element of the necessary
and the universal in the laws given us by the moral conscience or
set in action by our virtues. The divine archetypes must work
upon our soul in the order of action as in the order of knowledge:
haec imprimuntur in anima per illam lucem exemplarem et de
scendunt in cognitivam, in affectivam, in operativam.2 3
The purity of the divine being communicates to our facul
ties of knowing, loving and acting the purity of temperance; the
beauty of the divine being communicates to these faculties the tran
quillity of prudence; its stability and permanence communicates
to them the constancy of fortitude; the supreme rectitude of its
own act of self-communication communicates to them the even
ness of justice.
MORAL ILLUMINATION 383
denied that as a matter of sheer fact this progress is not only acces
sible to man but that he has often accomplished it.28 It should be
added that the acquisition of the habitus of the will seems in no
way more difficult than the acquisition of the habitus of knowl
edge, for we find that even creatures lacking reason seem to possess
them naturally. There are animals notable for generosity; others
for prudence or gentleness or fortitude; so that, unless we would
call in doubt man's superiority to the animals, we must grant that
he can possess these same virtues innate in his nature, and a for
tiori that he is capable by nature of acquiring them.
Even when the problem of the mode of acquisition of the
moral virtues is settled, the problem of their value still remains
unsolved. Are the natural virtues, thus acquired by habit, com
plete? Complete or not, are they meritorious? These are two ques
tions which the philosopher who is also a theologian cannot over
look. Now in the order of virtue, as in that of knowledge, the
purely natural is always possible, but is never sufficient; it is in
sufficient just because it is left in isolation. Virtue without grace
is like knowledge without revelation-stunted, vain and full of
uncertainty. This is why, adopting in the domain of action the
same attitude as in that of knowledge, St. Bonaventure will have
grace come to the aid of natural virtue as such- as previously to
the aid of knowledge as such- that both may be rendered fertile
and brought to their fullness.
The first thing to be realized as we study the problem under
this new aspect is that the moral and natural virtues are utterly
vain unless God comes to elevate and transfigure them by the free
gift of the theological virtues.2 9 They render us capable of accom
plishing moral acts and they owe this to the habit; but they leave
us incapable of acquiring the least merit, because merit is a gift of
God and comes to us not from nature but from grace. The way in
which grace informs nature to complete it is here particularly
instructive. The moral virtues, as the philosophers define them, are
in our soul by a natural root; that root is the innate rectitude of
386 ST. BONAVENTURE
sole cause. For St. Thomas nature contains nothing that is not
given to it by God; but, once made by God and assisted by Him,
it contains in itself the sufficient reason of all its operations. For
St. Bonaventure, on the contrary, nature has not received from God
such an original equipment that a general divine influence can
account for its highest operations. St. Bonaventure's tendency to
seek within for a datum as some kind of innate equipment of the
being who acts, is most certainly not to be explained by any desire
to glorify and elevate the excellence of the creature; on the contrary,
it is because the form has not in itself the power to create form
that he prefers to find it pre�formed in the ratio seminalis; it is
because the intellect has not in itself the power to construct the
intelligible, that he will have it draw from God the elements of the
immutable and necessary; it is because the will has not in itself
the principle of the four cardinal virtues that he will have these
impressed upon it by their divine archetypes.
For St. Bonaventure, then, the soul is "innatist" in the precise
measure of its realization of its insufficiency; and if it returns within
itself, it does so not to affirm itself as cause of what it finds within,
but to discover God at the ultimate origin of all that it does.
For St. Thomas, God has only to "move" nature as nature,
which is why our nature seeks Him by an innate intellect working
upon data from without; for St. Bonaventure God is continually
"completing" nature as nature, which is why it seeks Him by an
intellect which moves inward to meet the divine action corning
from within. For St. Thomas the soul. by reason of its very
sufficiency, cannot mount higher than itself in its own direction.
Its perfection is its own foundation and when it seeks God in the
fundament of itself it is its own perfection that it finds, its own
perfection which makes form, truth, virtue. For St. Bonaventure
the soul. by reason of its very insufficiency is, as it were, without
any foundation of its own; so that it must recognize either God,
or at least the direct action of God, filling all the emptiness from
which it suffers; and it is to God that it turns for the immediate
MORAL ILLUMINATION 389
391
392 ST. BONAVENTURE
fallen and towards what good we must strive that we may be finally
established therein. In the beginning man had the plenitude of a
threefold integrity- integrity of intellect, of will and of the faculties
that render possible the achievement of what is willed.
Consider Adam's intellect: it was endowed with a perfectly
right knowledge. Truth, by St. Anselm's definition, is a rectitude
perceptible only by the soul: which signifies that the thought of
God is the measure of all things, that things are true in so far as
they are conformed to the thought God has of them, and that our
thought in turn is true in so far as it is conformed to the nature of
things and to the divine model that they reproduce. Now in the
beginning the thought of Adam possessed this double rectitude.
Since all had been made for him, since he was at once capable of
giving to beings the names that befitted them, since all had been
subjected to him as ruler, of necessity he must have known the
nature of all things. Adam knew everything without ever having
learnt anything. The empiricism which condemns us to the use of
senses, memory and experience to acquire the knowledge of beings
is a method accommodated to our fallen nature; but the order of
acquisition of knowledge that belonged to man in his origin was
much more simple and direct. Since by way of innate knowledge he
possessed a plenary science of things, Adam could not but realize
by sense expe1ience the harmony between the facts as they were
and the knowledge he already had of them, and become more and
more master of his innate knowledge and more prompt to judge
rightly of things by reflecting upon what he knew of them? All
lay open then before his eyes: the book of nature was to him an
open book: this was the perfect ideal of a total science, and man
now tries desperately to reconstruct it in the midst of the darkness
by which he is blinded-to see things in themselves, to see them in
his own thought, finally to see them in the art of God and in the
ideas whence they draw their origin?" We recognize the ideal: St.
Bonaventure never conceived any other ideal of knowledge than
the recovery for fallen man of something of the knowledge of Adam.
NATURE, GRACE AND BEATITUDE 393
Man's will as he came forth from the hand of God had not
less rectitude than his intellect. Just as the rectitude of knowledge
(which is the foundation of the true) consists in the confonnity
of the intellect with the divine mind. so the rectitude of the will
(which is the foundation of the good) consists in its confonnity
with God's perfection. The conformity of the intellect with its
object is achieved by knowledge. of the will by love. To love is
to be transformed to the likeness of what one loves, to be con
formed to it, to become by an effort of one's whole being another it.
St. Bonaventure loves to quote the phrase that the mystic Hugh of
St. Victor addressed to his soul: Scio, anima mea, quod dum
aliquod diligis. in eius similitudinem transformaris3 - I know my
soul that while you are loving anything you are transformed into
its likness. But if the object of the soul's love is the good. it is
conformed to the good by loving it and becomes good by the mere
fact of its love - q ui enim diligit bonitatem bonus est: he who loves
goodness is good. Such was Adam's will on the morrow of his
creation : using all things as was fitting. it tended towards God
alone as its last end. and towards things only for the sake of God.
The same is true of the rectitude of man's power and man's
faculties. The power man exercises over things is rightful when it
is co-ordinated with God's power and acts in some sense simply
as an extension of God's power. But God's power is the very type
of rectitude in the order of action. because in it all comes from God
and is directed to God. Human power can be co-ordinated with it
and an extension of it. only if it always operates in and for God:
when it so acts it becomes a kind of image of creative omnipotence,
and man exercising it becomes the ruler and master of things. That
is why Adam's power was exercised over the fi shes of the sea and
the birds of the air: he was truly the lord of creation.
Very different is man's actual situation since Adam's fall: be
tween the original state of man and our present state a fall there
has certainly been: and one may well regard it as the decisive event
that governs the whole history of humanity. It may be objected that
394 ST. BONAVENTURE
the reading of the interior book; these were the angels: and beings
who could not read beyond the exterior book: these were the
animal souls. Between these two books and these two beings, God
created man to complete the universe by binding together the t\vo
poles of creation, the two opposed orders of creatures. That is why
man is endowed both with senses and with reason and is therefore
naturally capable of reading both the books set by God before
his eyes.6
But by the very fact that God permitted man to read both
books, He permitted him to choose between them. Two expressions
of the divine essence were offered to man's intellect, and t\vo imita�
tions of the divine perfection were offered to his will; man could
contemplate God in the clear mirror of his ideas or see Him across
the endlessly varied symbols of things. But by reason of this free
choice, man found himself in a condition of unstable equilibrium.
Apt to see in things what the animal cannot see in them and the
angel has no need to see in them, he could be solicited by a
curiosity necessarily unknown to beings more perfect or less perfect
than himself. It was not in vain that the cunning of the evil spirit,
already fallen and therefore jealous, first attacked woman and prom�
ised her knowledge- that is the inferior knowledge of things con�
sidered in themselves which is acquired by reason alone and bears
upon the things of sense6"-the knowledge, in a word, of which
Aristotle was later to construct the theory, codify the method and
define the content. From the moment he attributed subsistence to
things and relied upon his senses alone to study them in themselves,
man could no longer attain any stable object or immutable truth;
hence he was to be adandoned to himself in the midst of things
good but incomplete and incapable of satisfying either his thought
or his desires. Such was the fall: an act of curiosity and pride
whereby man turned from the intelligible, turned towards the
sensible as such and, limiting himself to the domain of the acci�
dental and of non�being, lost his way in an infinity of obscure
questionings.7
NATURE, GRACE AND BEATITUDE 397
but not only for the sake of his body but also and principally for
the sake of his soul. Originally, therefore, man used things to
preserve his life, but still more to acquire wisdom. As long as he
remained in the state of original justice, he possessed the knowledge
of all creatures and, regarding them as so many images or repre�
sentations of God, he was led by them to praise God and adore
Him and love Him. So doing, man not only attained his end, but
enabled the universe to attain its own. A world which exists only
to show forth God to the mind of man achieves its purpose only
if man's mind sees God in it- et ad hoc sunt creaturae et sic
reducuntur in Deum-for this do creatures exist and so are they
brought back to God. But once man turned from wisdom to look
for natural knowledge and claimed to discover a meaning for the
world intrinsic to the world itself, he was attempting an absurdity
and seeking the meaning of a book which had lost its meaning.
From that moment, things ceased to accord with the purpose of
their creation and were no longer ordered to the end assigned to
them by God: cadente autem homine, cum amissus est cognitionem,
non erat qui reduceret eas in Deum; unde iste liber, scilicet mundus,
quasi emortuus et deletus erat.9 We saw why the construction of
a science of things as such was an enterprise impossible for us;
we now see why it was an enterprise impossible in itself; natural
philosophy is the science of the universe precisely in so far as the
universe is stripped of its true meaning.
That is the lowest point to which man fell. But the spot upon
which one falls is that on which one leans to rise again; thus, strange
as it may at first appear, it is upon our very insufficiency that we
must set the foundation of our deliverance. That such is indeed
the first step required of man in St. Bonaventure's theory seems
to be shown by the mysterious incipit of the Itinerarium -"here
begins the speculation of the poor man in the desert."10 No theme
is more often in his mind or in his mouth than this. Man has turned
by a free act from the supreme God who is at once his beginning
and his end; a new free act in the reverse direction can never be
NATURE, GRACE AND BEATITUDE 399
the indifferent and the harmful; hence that interminable and ever
unfinished science which the serpent promised Eve in that grim
promise which still lives to set so many souls astray. In the soul,
ordered hierarchically by grace, this first orientation of the mind
the direction of which decides once for all that of the operations
which follow-is immediately regulated and ordered towards God.
Primo debet esse discreta perlustratio ut discrete consideretur mun
dus ab anima2 6 ; from now on nothing impure or even useless can
enter the soul. 1bis gift of discernment rules in the first place the
steps that we take as \Ve range through the world of sense; it
guides our steps in the direction we must take to discover beings
capable of instructing us and the aspects of those beings which
shall be signs for us. If we seek in the angelic hierarchy for the
analogy of this first degree, it corresponds exactly \'li th the order
of Angels who guard man, inspire his action and guide him in the
way of salvation. But grace does better still: not content with
regulating the steps of our mind in the exploration of the world of
sense, it enlightens us concerning the choice of the objects to which
we must fix our attention in order to decipher their hidden sense
praeelectio, or as St. Bonaventure says. the "ordered election" of
our judgments. This then is the second activity of that conversion
effected in us by the divine influence; and as it is of a higher order
than the first, this degree of the hierarchically ordered soul may be
held to correspond to that of the Archangels. The third degree
corresponds to the order of Principalities; the discernment of ob
jects which must be not only found and chosen, but pursued by
the regulation of our action according to them- this is judgment,
judicium, the norm of actions ordered according to the nature of
the true goods that our actions seek.
It immediately becomes obvious that as these three orders of
angels are set for the good administration of the sensible universe,
so these three ramifyings of grace will transform our vision of the
sensible world by supernaturalizing it. It is this threefold discern
ment of what must be observed, judged, and performed, which
406 ST. BONAVENTURE
the object. The beauty and attraction of the objects that we per�
ceive, the very forms we attribute to them, can be explained only
by the internal numerical laws which define their essences and
their relations with a rational soul capable of perceiving and judg�
ing them. At this point the universe of the philosopher fades
from view as there shines through it the analogical universe of
Bonaventuran mysticism; natures are translated into symbols, things
become signs and invite us to return into ourselves to be reunited
with their principle, instead of inviting us to lose ourselves in them
and be separated ever more widely from their principle.27
Once it is brought back by grace from outside itself to within
itself, the soul reorders its internal faculties and hierarchizes them
likewise. But the difficulty arising from the interior causes of the
darkening of our vision is greater than that which arises from the
false interpretations of the exterior world thereby engendered;
here we are at the very root of the evil from which we suffer and the
task that now constrains us is no less than the hard labour of a
complete reform of our own selves.
The first task to be undertaken is to uproot the passions and
bring into subjection the forces opposed to the development of our
new life; but the deepest evil is the one in which all the others
are rooted- concupiscence, which is the will to self, which we have
substituted for the will of God. Its complete extirpation would
mean the annulment of the sin of Adam, a task impossible for
us, even with the help of grace; but we can at least attack concu�
piscence at every point, lopping off each shoot the moment it begins
to show: usually it shows under one of three forms- thirst to
command, thirst for enjoyment, thirst to possess. The desire to
command-with the wish for the favour, glory and honours that
go \Vith it- arises from that vanity of which man is full and which
corresponds to the deordination of our faculties of action. The
thirst for enjoyment is the taste for pleasure which makes us desire
the carnal and the luxurious: it remains as witness to the deordina�
tion of our faculty of love. The thirst to possess is one in essence
408 ST. BONAVENTURE
which transcends alike the things that the mind judges and the
very mind that judges them.32 There is the same evidence when
reason contemplates the economy of our will. the relations to one
another of the faculties of the soul: as also when it sees divine
illumination in all the sciences one by one, in all the arts elaborated
by the mind of man, thus finding, in the very structure of the
works it produces, evidence of the fecundation of the human in
tellect by God.33
But the evidence becomes clearer still when the soul reformed
by grace takes its supernatural perfection for the object of its
effort. So far it has been considering its own inner being as it
were from the threshold. Moving inwards and entering into itself
fully, the mind now discovers in itself that hierarchical and ordered
aspect which grace confers upon it and which renders it like unto
the heavenly Jerusalem-corresponding to the ascending hierarchy
of the angelic orders and like them penetrated to the most intimate
centre of its substance by the influence of grace which works all
its works in the soul as in the Angels. 34 The three theological
virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity-inseparable from each other
and from the grace whose first out-branching they are-have not
yet completed their work but they have already brought it to a
point where its beauty can be seen in its entirety. Faith is applied
to the very nature of the human soul to purify it; and by purifying
it, to bring back the spiritual senses lost by sin. By this it is not
meant that the soul is now endowed with new supplementary
organs or with gifts superadded to the ramifying of grace which
we know; the spiritual senses are "fruits" - that is the completion,
the state of perfection of the anterior habits of grace already pos
sessed by the soul.
To state that grace has given us back our spiritual senses is
then simply to recognize the presence within us of higher knowl
edge and transcendent spiritual joys-in a word of all the perfec
tions which flow naturally from the infusion of grace in a soul
receptive to its action.35 Once the soul believes in Christ our Lord
NATURE, GRACE AND BEATITUDE 411
by Faith, i t has once more the ear to hear the teachings of the
Saviour and the eye to look upon His miracles, and from now on
it sees and hears the evidence of acts and words previously hidden.
Hope, in tum, is applied to the soul whose nature is already
purified by Faith, to perfect its action; the desire and the love
that accompany Hope are a kind of spiritual scent by which the
awakened soul keeps to the pursuit of Jesus Christ.
Charity. finally. perfects the work that has begun. Even one
who had never before experienced it feels that contact with God
has been given to him along with the desire for it, and that from
now )le is prepared to seize his object in a spiritual embrace, and
to savour the joy of a soul at last united to the being it loves.
It may be that charity has not yet developed all its fruits-has
not yet brought the soul to the point of ecstasy; but it is already
present, elevating the soul and leavening it from within, so that
at each new co-operation of the will new progress is produced. All
this is parallel with what happens in the order of bodily organisms
where the introduction of a new form makes the matter better
organized and apt for the reception of one higher still. Grace
clothes the soul at once with the three theological virtues; and if
the human will corresponds, grace leads it from state to state, each
more perfect, in the measure that this spiritual matter is receptive
to its influence and worthy of its action. No spectacle is more
beautiful than that of God re-creating in us. with generosity and
liberality unflagging, the work of creation destroyed by the con
cupiscence of the will; God turning back to Himself the soul that
had turned from Him and to self. willing Himself in it, finding
Himself in it, mirroring Himself in that nature purified of its
passions. freed from the sin that deforms it, master of its thoughts
and directed totally towards its object which is God.
It must be added that the soul cannot see this perfect ordering
of itself in its completion till it has passed the final stages which
lead to the mystical union; for only then is its hierarchical ordering
brought to its fullness. On this point St. Bonaventure always
412 ST. BONAVENTURE
all its knowledge, the soul in that act enters into night. This is
an essential point and must be thoroughly grasped, for it is at the
very heart of Bonaventure's mysticism.
If we think carefully upon the consequences that necessarily
flow from it, we shall realize that a union such as this mystical
union is an experience indescribable and literally ineffable-there
are no words for it. To know it, one must experience it; but there
is no possibility that one who has experienced it can describe it
or communicate it to others. Thought can express only what it
conceives; but it conceives only what the intellect knows; and in
this matter, ex hypothesi, we have passed beyond the extremest
limits of the intellect. It is silent, speechless. He who attains to
ecstasy can indeed tell us how he attained, and lay down the ex�
terior conditions necessary for such an experience; but if he would
speak of the content of his experience, he can say or explain prac�
tically nothing of it.39
From all that has been said one immense consequence flows
that never, not even in ecstasy, is the direct vision of God granted
to man in this life. If we weigh what is involved in this assertion,
it will be instantly obvious that it settles once for all the highly
controverted question of the scope of our lower modes of knowl�
edge. It has sometimes been said that St. Bonaventure leaned
toward what is called ontologism; and to refute this thesis his
torians have accumulated the most diverse texts. In fact, of course,
the assertion is seen to be groundless if we reflect that the notion
of any human vision of God here below is contradictory in such a
system as this. Ecstasy itself does not attain that vision. Either
there is still knowledge. in which event there is no ecstasy and
therefore no perception of God Himself; or else there is experience
of God. in which event there is no longer knowledge and where
there is no knowledge the question of a vision, whether direct or
indirect, does not so much as arise.
Hence it is not against the grain, not in spite of a strong
tendency in the other direction. that St. Bonaventure refused to
NATURE, GRACE AND BEATITUDE 417
or any representation plays any part whatever, but that we have only
the metaphors of cognition at our disposal even when we would
signify our hold of an object of which we have no cognition.
Thus again it is only in a very special sense that St. Bonaven
ture defines ecstasy as an experimental knowledge of God,45 for
there is no question here of knowledge properly so called; yet it
remains that ecstasy is an experience, and that this experience
which is not knowledge is pregnant with all the knowledge which
is ultimately to be developed from it. Hence his allusions to the
science and the light hidden in ecstasy; hence also a new aspect of
mystical union, whose importance must be rightly seen if the union
itself is not to be totally misconceived.
We have shown that, being passive, the ecstatic union requires
the "sleep" of thought; and this is precisely true. But we must not
regard the passing into ecstasy as though the soul were extinguish
ing the lights of knowledge one after another till only the flame of
love is left burning. As it brings to rest its powers of knowing,
the soul (which St. Bonaventure will not allow to be really distinct
from its faculties) is concentrated in its totality upon the ever
higher operations which it still has to accomplish, and when at
length it attains to the divine experience, it is not a soul minus the
accidental powers of knowing which enters upon the experience,
it is a soul in possession of all the energies which previously it had
used in the order of knowing, though in this supreme instant it
knows nothing. The powers of knowing are still, but only because
the affective faculty imposes silence upon them: soporat et quietat
omnes potentias et silentium imponit; but the affective faculty can
only impose silence upon them because it has drawn the whole
soul into itself and is using all its energies. Thus in ecstasy the
soul is not diminished, but concentrated; and it is by this concentra
tion that it lifts itself to the attainment of what in it is deepest and
highest:et tunc in tali unione virtus animae in unum colligitur et
magis unita fit et intrat in suum intimum et per consequens in
summum suum ascendit.46 This total presence of the soul at its
420 ST. BONAVENTURE
own highest point enables us to see how knowledge can flow from
an experience in which there is no mental representation of an
object.
Notice first that if the act itself by which the soul is united
to God is purely affective, there is in fact an ecstatic union only
because knowledge, aided by grace, is tending with all its might
toward God. At the moment when it attains, and in attaining
ceases to know, it achieves a flight towards which the intellect
never ceased to be directed from the very beginning of its joumey.47
But there is more: the mystical experience is not only the comple
tion of an ascent guided by thought, it is also a kind of knowledge
in so far as knowledge is compatible with the absence of mental
representation. This is not perhaps radically incomprehensible for
us: after all the sense of taste assuredly confers a direct knowledge
of its object and yet is not accompanied by any mental representa
tion. It is in the higher case as in the lower; because the contact
between sense and its object is immediate, a mental representation
cannot take place� for it requires a certain separateness, a certain
distance. That is why St. Bonaventure constantly uses metaphors
from taste to suggest to the imagination of the mystically inex
perienced what the mystical experience can be: in amore Dei ipsi
gustui conjuncta est cognitio; optimus enim modus cognoscendi
Deum est per experimentum dulcedinis. The notion of experience to
which St. Bonaventure continually appeals forces us to see ecstasy
as conserving and concentrating in itself, even at the moment when
it forgets it, all the knowing that has gone before; and as drawing
up or absorbing within itself, at the moment when it touches its
object without mental representation, all the substance of what it is
yet to know of its object. Thus it is true, according to St. Bonaven
ture, to say that ecstasy, the proper act of the gift of Wisdom, is not
cognitive but purely affective, since an experience with no thought
is not an act of knowledge48; and it is equally true to say that ecstasy
yet includes in itself a certain knowledge, in as much as it is an ex
perience. Hence the almost infallible certitude with which it directs
NATURE, GRACE AND BEATITUDE 42 1
itself to and fixes upon its object; hence also the enlargement of the
speculative knowledge which ecstasy confers upon the intelligence, 49
of which we have already said that it allows the simple and the
ignorant to confound the false science of the philosophers. All
the prerogatives which we have granted to the ecstatic come
from this; since the soul has been gathered together, concentrated
in its highest point, it is totally transfigured when it relaxes and
falls back into the multiplicity of its cognitive operations. The
powers of knowing had no part in the ecstasy itself, but that is
because the soul which exercises them had concentrated itself
totally; and it is not to be thought that the soul could return to
exercise them as though it had never entered into contact with the
pure intelligible which is God.
We have said all that can be said of the highest point that
the soul of man can reach in this life. If God does still more and
raises the contemplative to rapture-as He seems to have done
for St. Paul, and perhaps even for St. Francis of Assisi-it means
that for an instant that soul is no longer of this world but belongs
to the Kingdom of the Blessed. 50 Indeed, even in this life, ecstasy
brings us to the threshold of Beatitude: and it is ecstasy which
enables us best to prefigure Beatitude5 1 here below. But we must
be careful to remember that ecstasy is literally a foretaste of beati
tude precisely because it is a taste: it is not its image. Thus it
is to ecstasy that we must go for a foretaste of eternal happiness,
but it is to the intellect illumined by faith and strengthened by
ecstasy that we must go if we are to form any mental idea of it.
Beatitude is in fact the terminal point of the road that philo
sophic thought must tread here below; and just as we have treated
of emanation, exemplarism and illumination by conforming our
mind to the requirements of God's perfection, we must continue
so to conform it in describing the achievement of consummation.52
Now the joy of ecstasy, which in our present state seems all but
inaccessible, looks miserably meagre when we compare it to what
422 ST. BONAVENTURE
our nature demands. The human soul. as has already been seen,
is of such a nature that only an infinite object is capable of satisfy
ing it; the knowledge it can acquire during this life, great in
quantity as it may be, cannot fulfill the mind's need to know; and
the ecstasy which is its crown, complete as it may be, cannot give
our knowledge the completion it lacks since it is possible only if
the soul renounces knowing. Thus the ideal of human knowledge
remains beyond the mystic union; there is still an aspiration for the
discovery of an object containing in itself all things knowable, an
object in whose light all other things are known. Further, the
most perfect ecstasy leaves behind it an unease and a new thirst:
for how can the ecstatic be sure that the object attained in his
ecstasy is truly the term, beyond which there is nothing, if he does
not see this object? And how can he not be tortured with the desire
to see it when he remembers the unnameable joys that union with
it brought him? The total union of soul and God cannot then be
achieved here below: yet somewhere it must be achievable, unless
the divine work is doomed to eternal incompletion; and it will be
achieved in an enjoyment of God in which the knowledge acquired
by the intellect will make possible and complete the joys of the will.
The description of such a state must include all the conditions
required for the satisfying of the soul's exigencies, as well as for
the adaptation of the body to the perfection of the soul which
remains united with it. And now the hypothesis, apparently ex
travagant, which was suggested earlier proves to be the reality:
the mountain has given us the strength to carry the mountain, and
as it is of infinite mass, we carry it with perfect ease. The mind
has found its proper object which fills it, which satisfies it in filling
it to capacity. Does the beatified soul. once it has the joy of seeing
God, see God alone? No. Since it sees God face to face, the soul
sees Him as He is: and since He thinks all His participations, possi
ble or actual. in thinking Himself. the soul sees in Him all the finite
beings which are ordered to Him; if the soul saw only God precisely
as God. it would not be seeing Him as He is.
NATURE, GRACE AND BEATITUDE 423
427
428 ST. BONAVENTURE
solely upon the definition of the terms which compose it, or upon
their comprehension by any intelligence at all. Man grasps only
what he deserves to grasp. The same argument which seems a soph�
ism to a materialist may seem evident once the mind has been
stripped clean, purified, and turned towards God.
For a reason of the same sort the Christian philosopher will
realize that the expression of natural phenomena-and particularly
of their metaphysical conditions-cannot be the same in his eyes
as they would be if he left God out. Of two possible conclusions,
of which one attributes more to nature or freewill and less to God,
while the other attributes more to God at the expense of nature
or free�will. he will always choose the second provided only that it
does not contradict either free�will or nature.6 He would rather
find himself in error through humility than risk a sin of pride;
for there is no great harn1 in underrating one' s self, whereas it is
a crime to underrate God.
The repercussions of such a principle in such a system as St.
Bonaventure's are of necessity multiplied so that no part of his
system is unaffected by them. Attribuere quod est Dei creaturae
periculosum est. I£ one reflects upon it, that is why the world could
not be eternal. why the angelic substances could not be devoid of
matter, why form could not be drawn from matter without pre�
existent seminal reasons, why human knowledge could not .find
any absolute foundation without that illumination which is the
source of necessity and certitude, why philosophy could not succeed
without the light of faith, why virtue could not be attained without
the help of grace, why nature must remain incomplete without the
immediate and special concurrence of God. The doctrinal conser�
vatism of St. Bonaventure and his anxiety in face of the danger to
faith from innovators in philosophy or religion are but the most
general manifestation of this fundamental tendency: one cannot
place God in the centre of thought without taking account of His
presence every time one thinks. and the Christian soul judges of
things only in relation to God.
THE SPIRIT OF ST. BONAVENTURE 433
new desires and new energies driving it to seek, again and again,
the contact it has lost.
St. Bonaventure sees the soul illumined by grace turning majes
tically. like a sun which can never fix its light in one single point
nor cease its revolving, but which yet follows an ordered course
as if the twelve houses of the heaven it traverses were the only
places worthy of its passage.
An intellect ill-disciplined lets itself be drawn in unrelated
directions by a movement leading it nowhere; the hierarchized in
tellect, on the other hand, turns about God; it has fixed for ever
the spiritual constellations which make its zodiac and, having
fixed them, it passes ceaselessly from one of its houses to another
without ever leaving the luminous orbit which they constitute.
What are these signs? We know them already, for they are neces
sarily the same objects upon which along with St. Bonaventure we
have concentrated the effort of our philosophic reflection, plus cer
tain others upon which rational reflection can take no hold, but
which the soul illumined by grace can contemplate to its own
advantage: the consideration of corporeal beings, then of spiritual
substances; the consideration of the ways of knowledge conceived
by the mind; of the moral virtues, then of the laws instituted by
God; of the divine graces which give the soul its hierarchy, of the
unsearchable judgments of God, of His mercies likewise which are
as incomprehensible; of the merits which will be rewarded, and
of their rewards; of the sequence of times revealed by Scripture and
the order that the soul finds in them; of the eternal reasons, finally,
which bring this contemplation to its term in God and unite it
with the first sign of the mental zodiac- the beings of which these
exemplars are the models.7 Thus, ever moving on the orbit proper
to it, the contemplative soul ever finds itself in one or other of these
signs. yet never stays in any.
Now, it follows of necessity that such a transformation of the
intellect involves a correlative transformation of the universe.
Natural science claims to give the universe its true meaning by
THE SPIRIT OF ST. BONAVENTURE 435
St. Bernard goes straight to his goal and wastes no time on any
secondary consideration. He does not call Nature to his aid, but,
on the contrary, excludes it from the field he chooses to explore,
and systematically closes his eyes to the beauty of the world of
sense; the walls of his mysticism are as bare as the walls of a
Cistercian chapel; he is not curious to know whether human
knowledge comes by way of abstraction, as Abelard and Aristotle
taught, or by way of illumination, as St. Augustine had it. What
St. Bernard taught was not a system, not an elaborated doctrinal
scheme, but simply an interior life and its formula; and because
mysticism is much more a matter of doing than o£ speaking, it
was natural that Dante should have chosen him as guide to the
topmost heights.
Between St. Bernard and St. Bonaventure, mediaeval thought
was transformed by an immense labour of development. Not only
did St. Bernard' s disciples-like William of Saint-Thierry or Isaac
Stella- carry on the discussion and develop the analysis of the
mystical life, but the work of thinkers like Hugh and Richard of
St. Victor exceed in breadth and solidity anything previously pro
duced by the mediaeval West: their writings were veritable sum
mas of mystical inspiration, and the De sacramentis and the De
Trinitate were the immediate sources of Bonaventure's synthesis.
Between them and St. Bonaven ture lay also the Summa and
the teaching of Alexander of Hales; now that his text has been
restored, the student can study in detail the influence upon the
disciple of the master's thought. Such works bear ample witness
a witness that grows ever more irrefutable as they are more deeply
studied- to the intense vitality of Christian thought towards the
end of the t\velfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century. We
can no longer view that age as an age of chaos with scattered
groups of thinkers busying themselves without order or direction
and so leading nowhere and constructing nothing. It is clear that,
as early as the great age of St. Victor, Christian thought was
definitely set upon the way that leads to St. Bonaventure. While
444 ST. BONAVENTURE
nature, above all, a rule of action, and all this penetrated, sustained,
held in unity by an inspiration so perfectly one that the mind rises
from the humblest operations upon material objects to the highest
inpourings of grace without the faintest breach in the continuity
of its movement.
This undoubtedly is its gravest fault in the eyes of many of
our contemporaries. Philosophy must treat of nature; mysticism
can treat only of grace, and is, therefore, the business of none
but the theologian. But we should be clear, to begin with, as to
the meaning of the word "nature." We can, of course, use this
word to mean the collection of facts given to us through the senses,
with a priori supposition that they contain within themselves the
sufficient reason of their being and their own interpretation. In
this sense the notion of the transcendent or the supernatural is
evidently meaningless: but we may well ask whether the notion
of philosophy itself is not equally meaningless. All that is, is in
nature, and is therefore natural-but only if the idea of the super
natural, the desire and the need for the supernatural, are not an
integral part of nature: only if the exigency of the thing excluded
is not engraved in the very substance of that from which it is
excluded; only if we ignore, and indeed specially train ourselves
to ignore, those questions which are ever springing up in the
depths of the human heart, questions which we repress in the
name of that very nature which asks them so insistently. All is
as if man and things contained virtually in themselves the suffi
cient reason of what they are; a being can always be explained by
another being, and the totality of being would be self-explanatory
if only the totality were given to us. The eternal silence of the
infinite spaces no longer terrifies us; we are grown deaf to the
appeals which still spring up when we least expect them from the
depths of the human soul. Nothing remains but physics and in
consequence all that is belongs to science alone; the total exclu
sion of the transcendent results in the exclusion of all metaphysics
and hence of all knowledge that philosophy can call its own.
THE SPIRIT OF ST. BONAVENTURE 447
For the full notes, readers are refened to the French Edition published
by Librairie J. Vrin. Here will be found only textual references and a
minimum of essential explanatory matter.
racchi.
8 P. CRESCENTIUS v. D. BoRNE, De fontibus CommentariiS. Bonaventurae
451
452 ST. BONAVENTURE
v. p. 337.
59 In Hexaem. , XIX. 14, p. 422.
6o Op. cit. , V. 2 1 ; t. V. p. 357.
6 1 Op. cit., VI. 2-5 : t. V. pp. 360-361.
62 In Hexaem . XIX, 15; t. V. p. 422; XIX. 18. p. 433, and the whole of
.
Cap. II infra.
6 3 De vita Seraphici Doctoris, t. X. p. 6 1 .
64 Epistola III. Ad fratres Custodem e t Guardianum Pisarum, t . VIII. p . 461 .
See also P.�A. CALLEBAUT, 0. M Le chapitre general de 1 2 72 celebre ii
.•
duced to justify the theologians. St. Francis had in mind an order based upon
laymen like himself; he was not legislating for an order of clerics and
theologians.
79 Regula bullata, 10 (Analekten, p. 34) .
8 0 Regula prima, 3 (Analekten, pp. 3-4) . The text of the Regula bullata,
on the contrary, remains vague and authorizes clerics to possess breviaries
without forbidding them to possess other books ( op. cit., 3, p. 3 1 ) .
8 1 Regula bullata, 10 (Analekten, p. 34, line 21 ff.) ; Verba admonitionis,
5 (Analekten, p. 43) .
8 2 Cf. Speculum; cf. II, 3- 1 1 . ed. P. Sabatier. pp. 7-29; N. 4 1 , pp. 73-74;
N, 7 1 . p. 138; Cap. 68, pp. 1 3 1-132 ; cf. also IV, 69, pp. 1 33-134.
8 3 "Quomodo prima regulam scripsit undecim habens fratres," TH. DE
CELANO, Legenda prima, ed. P. Eduardus Alenconensis, Romae, 1 906, Cap.
XIII. p. 33 ff.
84 Elias was a layman, but learned, Catal. XV general. , SALIM BENE, op. cit.,
p. 659. He it was, says Salimbene, who developed the studies: Chronica,
p. 1 04. His successor, Crescenzio da Jesi, imitated him by his "insatiabilis
cupiditas sciendi. . . . " ANG. CLARENO, in Ehrle, Archiv, II, pp. 256-257.
8 5 HunERTIN DE CASALE, in Ehrle, Zur Vorgeschichte des Concils von
Vienne, Archiv. f. Literat, und Kircheng . . III. p. 157.
86 SALIMBENE, Chronica, pp. 279-280, 285, 287-288. He describes his
opponents contemptuously as "illiterati et ydiotae, et ideo nee predicare nee
missas celebrare possunt, . . . " p. 285. The epithet in which St. Francis
gloried has become an insult in the mouth of this Franciscan. For the rivalry
between the two orders. see supra, p. 30. These minor jealousies must not
make us forget the profound fraternity between the two orders, born for a
common work: we could produce much evidence of this.
8 7 Epistola, I. t. VIII. p. 469.
88 Expositio sup. Reg. fr. min., Cap. X. t. VII, p. 433. This is a definite
broadening. even in relation to the Constitutiones Narbonenses, rubr. VI, t.
VIII. p. 456.
89 Constitutiones Narbonenses, rubr. VI. t. VIII. p. 455.
9° Cf. Quaest. disp. de perf. evangel.. II. 3, concl. ; t. V. p. 1 60 ff. Cf. also
loc. cit., ad 1 6, p. 165.
9 1 Epist. de tribus quaest., 9. t. VIII, p. 334.
9 1 a Expos. sup. reg. fratr. minor., Cap. V, t. VIII. p. 420; Apologia pau
perum, Cap. XII, 17, t. VIII, pp. 321-322; De perfect. evangel . . II, 3, t. V.
p. 1 60.
92 He even presents it as having been explicitly imposed upon the Friars
by St. Francis (In Hexaem. , XXII. 2 1 , t. V, p. 440 ; Legenda S. Francisci.
Cap. XI) .
93 Expos. sup. reg . Cap. III. 2, t. VIII. p. 406.
.
tinctions which establish that in certain cases, in spite of the Rule, one may
speak at length.
96a Epist. de trib. quaest., 10, t. VIII. p. 334.
97 Constitutiones Narbonenses, rubr. VI, t. VIII, p. 456.
98 Detenninationes quaestionum, I. 3, t. VIII, p. 339.
99 Epist. de trib. quaest., 12, t. VIII, pp. 335-336. The suggestion some
times made that Roger Bacon was the recipient of this letter seems improb
able: he felt no scruples as to the utility of studies.
100 J. }OERGENSEN, op. cit., pp. 377-378.
101 Luke 9 : 3 .
1 o2 Reg. prima, 14 (Analekten, p . 13) ; Regula bullata, 6 (Analekten. p.
32) ; Petri Epist., I, 2, 1 1 . On the part played by Hugolin and Elias of Cor
tona in the editing of the Rule, see JoERGENSEN, op. cit., 371-374. It is
to be noted on this point that the Testamentum, 7 (Analekten, p. 38) simply
returns to the Regula bullata.
103 Reg. prima, 9 (Analekten, p. 10) ; Reg. bullata, 6 (Analekten, p. 32) .
The Testamentum treats the first Life of St. Francis as an ideal already rele
gated to the past.
104 EHRLE, op. cit. , Archiv. f. Lit. u. Kirchengesch., t. Ill, p. 5 1 6, and
Opera omnia, t. X. p. 50.
10 5 In Hexaem., V. 5, t. V, p. 355.
106 Exposit. sup. Reg. frat. min., VI, 22 and 23, t. VIII, pp. 423-424.
107 Apologia pauperum, Cap. XII. 17, t. VIII, p. 32 1 ; In Hexaem., XX.
30, t., v. p. 430.
10 8 Apologia pauperum, Cap. XII, 13, t. VIII, p. 320.
1 09 St. Bonaventure thus distinguishes Christ's beggars on the one hand
from prelates who have a right to payment, "in quibus acceptio stipendiorum
non est mendicitas, sed potestas"; and on the other hand from the countless
beggars who beg only through idleness.
110 JouRDAIN DE GrANO, Cltronica (1207-1238) , Analecta franciscana, t. I,
p. 1 1 ; Quaracchi, 1 885 .
111 See especially Determinationes quaestionum eire. Reg. fratr. min., I. 7
(t. VIII. p. 342) ; I. 8 ( ibid .. pp. 342-343) ; II. 14 (p. 367) . Cf. SALIM
BENE, Chronica, pp. 255 and 288.
112 Regula prima, 1 and 8 (Analekten, pp. 1 and 8) ; Regula bullata, 4
and 6 (Analekten, pp. 31 and 32) ; JOE.RGENSEN, op. cit. , pp. 34 1-355.
1 1 3 Exposit. sup. Reg. fratr. min., IV, 17. t. VIII, p. 4 1 8 ; Detenninat.
quaest., I. 25, t. VIII, p. 354; this explicitly allows the interpositarn personam,
explicitly excluded by St. Francis.
1 14 Determ. quaest. eire. Reg. fratr. min., I. 24, t. VIII, pp. 353-354.
1 1 5 Detenn. quaest. eire. Reg. fratr. min., I. 6, t. VIII, pp. 340-34 1 . Cf. I.
5, t. VIII, p. 340.
116 Ibid., I. 9, t. VIII. p. 344. St. Bonaventure's ideal is thus that of an
enjoyment of goods without right of property, for thus the material conditions
of study are safeguarded and freedom of spirit assured: De perfect. evangel..
II. 1. t. V. p. 129 ; ibid.. II. 2, ad 9, t. V. p. 145.
1 17 Detenn. quaest., II, 21, t. VIII. pp. 371-372.
11 8 Detenn. quaest., I. 19, t. VIII. p. 350.
NOTES 457
ed. min., pp. 29 1-292. In this last text will be noted the eminent role played
by the crucifix in prayer. As to seeking knowledge only for the sake of virtue,
see ST. BoNAVENTURE, Legenda S. Francisci, IX, 1 , t. VIII p. 535. St. Bona
,
154 EHRLE, Archiv. f. Literatur und Kirchengesch., t. III, pp. 5 1 6-5 17.
Amended text in the edition of Quaracchi, t. X, p. 50.
155 P. SABATIER, Actus beati Francisci, Paris, Fischbacher, 1902, pp. 2 1 6-
220; ANGELO CLARENO, Hist. sept. tribu!at., Archiv., t. II. pp. 280-28 1 . The
story passed into the Fioretti.
1 56 In Hexaem., XXII, 22-23, t. V, pp. 440-44 1 .
1 5 7 D e reductione artium a d theologiam, 26; ed. min., p. 385.
NOTES TO CHAPTER II (pp. 79-105)
1 De myst. Trinit., I. 1, 6-8. t. V. p. 46.
2
ltinerarium, Prol., 1-2; ed. min. p. 289-290.
3 I Sent., 1 , 3, 2, Concl., t. I. p. 40; Sermo II de reb. theol. 9, t. V.
pp. 54 1-542.
4 De donis S. S . , IV. 5, t. V, p. 474; De reduct. artium ad theologiam,
4; ed. min., p. 369.
5 III Sent., 23, 1, 4. Concl., t. III, p. 48 1 ; Itinerarium, III, 2; ed. min.,
p. 3 1 5 ; In Joann. , prooem. 1 0, ad 1m, t. VI, p. 243.
6 Cf. Breviloquium, Prol., 3, 2; ed. min., p. 1 8 ; II Sent., 24. 2, 1. 1. Concl.,
t. II, p. 575 and 17, 1 . 1. ad 6rn, t. II, p. 4 1 3 ; De reduct. art. a d theolog.. 4;
ed. min., p. 369. Cf. In Hexaemeron, III. 25, t. V, p. 347; III Sent., 35, un.
2, Concl.. t. III, p. 776.
7 ST. AuGUSTINE, De utilitate credendi, XI, 25; P.L., t. 42, col. 83; ST.
BoNAVENTURE, Breviloquium, I, 1, 4; ed. min., p. 35.
8 Breviloquium, Prol.. 5, 2; ed. min., p. 24.
9 Breviloquium, I, 1, 3; ed. min., p. 34.
1 0 I Sent., prooem., II. Concl.. t. I. p. 1 1 . Cf. ST. BERNARD. De considera-
tione, V. 3, fin.
11 Breviloquium, Prol.. 5, 3; ed. min., p. 25.
12
I Sent., prooem., I. Concl., t. I. p. 7.
13 In Hexaem., IV, 1. t. V, p. 349. Cf. "Donum scientiae duo antecedunt,
unum est sicut lumen innatum, et aliud est sicut lumen infusum. Lumen in
natum est lumen naturalis judicatorii sive rationis; lumen superinfusum est
lumen fidei." De donis S.S., IV. 2. t. V. p. 474; "Illud intelligitur de lumine
naturae, non gratiae, et quilibet habet signatum lumen vultus Dei," Comm. in
Joann. , I. 30, t. VI, p. 253.
NOTES 459
14 In Hexaem. , IV. 1 . t. V. p. 348.
1 5 The theme, common in the Middle Ages, of the knowledge of Solomon,
comes from the passage, Wisdom Vll, 7-23, which bases knowledge upon
desire - "Wherefore I wished and understanding was given me . . . " Cf.
Comm. in Sap . . VII. t. VI. pp. 1 52, 1 55. From this comes the description of
all the modes of Solomon's knowledge. Elsewhere St. Bonaventure adopts
another classification of the sciences inspired by Hugh of Saint-Victor, De
reduct. artium ad theologiam, ed. min., pp. 365 II. ; In Hexaiim . , IV. t. V,
pp. 349-353.
16 In Hexaiim., IV, 1 and 4, t. V. pp. 473-474.
1 7 We may measure, by a comparison of the two texts, the progress of
Bonaventure's thought between the Comm. in Sap. c. VII. t. VI. p. 155, and
the In Hexaem. , loc. cit. It is also to be noted that St. Bonaventure does not
give so immediately ecstatic a significance to the term wisdom in the earlier
works as in the later. There is another description of Solomon's knowledge in
the De donis S.S., IV. 8, t. V. p. 475.
1 8 De donis S.S . . IV, 1 1 . t. V, p. 475. The theme is developed by the De
reductione artium ad theologiam.
1 9 De donis S.S., IV. 1 . t. V. p. 473.
2 0 Unless, of course, Plato really regarded ideas as independent of God,
II Sent., 1, 1 . 1 , 1, ad 3m, t. ll, p. 17. Even then he would have had the
merit of setting Augustine upon the way of truth.
2 1 In Hexaem., VI. 1 -5. t. V. pp. 360-36 1 . Cf., as to the possible excuses
for ARISTOTLE, ibid., VII. 2. t. V. p. 365.
22 From his earliest commentaries St. Bonaventure opposed the Platonic
doctrine of Providence (according to the Timaeus, in the translation of Chal
cidius: "Nihil est cujus ortum non praecesserit legitima causa") to the error
of Aristotle: cf. In Joann., I. 13. t. VI. p. 249 ; In Sap., XIV. vers. 3, t. VI.
p. 196; In Eccles . , IX. vers. 1 2, t. VI. p. 77.
2 3 In Hexaiim., VII. 3-4. t. V. p. 366.
24 De donis S .S IV. 1 2. t. V. p. 476.
.•
bat enim caput deforme et factum ad modum galeae antiquorum et pilos multos
in fronte," SALIMBENE, Chronica, ed. Halder-Egger, p. 1 37.
2 3 De red. art. ad theolog., 12; ed. min., p. 376.
24 It is hardly necessary to observe that the consciousness of such a fact
must transform the moral and religious life of man. That is why the idea of
analogy is at the very root of St. Bonaventure' s anthropology.
2 5 "Dicitur imago quod alterum exprimit et imitatur," I Sent., 3 1 . 2. 1 , 1 .
Concl., t . I, p . 540.
26
St. Bonaventure borrows from Aristotle the technical definitions which
he uses in commenting upon Genesis 1 : 26: "Faciamus hominem ad imaginem
et similitudinem nostram," and Ecclesiasticus 17: 1 : "Deus de terra creavit
hominem et secundum imaginem suam fecit ilium." The Categories, c. de
qualitate expressly place resemblance and its opposite in the category of
quality, and hence St. Bonaventure: "De prima nominis impositione differt
imago et similitudo . . . . Imago enim nominat quamdam configurationem, et
ita importat figuram, quae est quantitas in qualitate, vel qualitas in quanti
tate; similitudo vera dicitur rerum differentium eadem qualitas," II Sent., 16.
2, 3, Cone!.. t. II, p. 405. Cf. I Sent., 31. 2, dub. 4, t. I, p. 551.
2 7 De vera religione, XLIV, 82, et De Trinitate, XIV. 8, 1 1 .
28 II Sent., 16, 1 . 1 , Cone!.. t. I. p. 395.
29 II Sent., 16, 1. 1, ad 4, t. I. p. 395. Cf. I Sent., 3, 2, 1, 1, ad 2. t. I.
p. 8 1 .
3 ° I Sent., I . 3 , 2 . 1 , 1 , Concl., t . I , p. 8 1 ; Breviloquium II. 1 2. 3 ; ed. min.,
p. 94; Itinerarium, III, 5.
3l I Sent., 3, 2, 1, 3, Concl., t. I. p. 83. Cf. ST. AUGUSTINE, De Trinitate,
XII. 4.
32 I Sent., 3, 2. 1 . 2. ad 5, t. I. p. 84. It is to be noticed that the two con
siderations of the image here distinguished correspond with two different
orders of knowledge. To consider the Trinity in its human image is what
reason can do of itself, but that does not lead it to the knowledge of the
divine Trinity. The proof of this has been furnished by the pagan philosophers:
"Philosophi istam trinitatem ( sc. mens, notitia et amor) cognoverunt, et tamen
non cognoverunt Trinitatem personarum: ergo haec non necessaria ducit in
illam." To bring to its perfection the analogy which the human image dis
closes, we must know it as such and thus compare the copy to the divine
model; now faith alone reveals to us the nature of this model: "Et ita perfecta
ratio imaginis non habetur nisi a fide." We find here a new example of the
insufficiency of natural philosophy which cannot reach its fulfilment without
faith. Cf. I Sent., 3, 2. 2, 3, Concl., t. I. p. 93.
33 II Sent., 16, 1. 2, Concl., t. II. p. 397.
34 For the angels the curious discussion, II Sent. , 16, 2, 1. Cone!.. t. II,
pp. 400-402, should be consulted. It will be noticed that, in conformity
with the spirit of Augustinianism, the distance which here separates the angel
from man is not as considerable as might be imagined.
For the relation of the image as concerns male and female, ibid., qu. 2, t.
II, p. 403, and: "Vir enim, quia fortis est et praesidet mulieri, superiorem
portionem rationis significat, mulier vero inferiorem . . . . Hoc autem est ratione
virilitatis ex parte una et infirmititis sive fragilitatis ex altera, quae non respi-
NOTES 469
ciunt imaginem secundum se, sed ratione corporis annexi, et ita non essen
tialiter, sed accidentaliter," Zoe. cit., p. 404.
35 Grace in itself is uncreated, for it is the Holy Spirit, but Grace bestowed
on man is created, for otherwise God would be the immediate form of man,
II Sen t , 26, un., 2, Concl., t. II. p. 635. In this sense it is even an accident.
.
36 "Qui fruitur Deo Deum habet; ideo cum gratia, quae sua deiforrnitate
disponit ad Dei fruitionem, datur donum increatum, quod est Spiritus sanctus,
quod qui habet habet et Deum," Breviloquium, V, 1, 4 ; ed. min., p. 1 65.
Cf. ibid., 3 et 5, pp. 1 64-166: I Sent., 14, 2, 1 , t. I. p. 249 ; II Sent. , 26,
un., 3 et 4, t. II, pp. 637-64 1 . It will be noticed that if the image is found
in the cognitive faculties, similitude resides in the affective part of the soul.
and that, in consequence, the most immediate divine analogy has its seat in
the will. This point is of capital importance in explaining the trend of St.
Bonaventure's moral and mystical teaching; d. II Sent., 1 6, 2, 3, Concl., t.
II, p. 405. For the superiority of the similitude over the image, see also
Breviloquium, II, 12, 1 ; ed. min., p. 93, and I Sent., 48, 1 , 1, Concl. . t. I.
p. 852.
37 Cf. De plantatione paradisi, 1. t. V, p. 575.
3 8 Breviloquium. Prolog.. IV. 1 et 5; ed. min., pp. 20-23; In Hexaiim.,
II, 15-18, et XIII, 1 1-33, t. V. 338-339 et 389-392; De reductione artium,
5, t. V, p. 32 1 , and ed. min., p. 372.
39 In Hexaiim., II, 27, t. V, p. 340.
40 In Hexaiim. , I, 30, t. V, p. 334. Cf. ibid., 10, p. 330. Cf. also 1 L p. 33 1 :
"In Christo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae Dei absconditi. et ipse
est medium omnium scientiarum." The whole of Coll. 1 a is a development
of this theme and the passage which refers to exemplarism as the specifically
Christian metaphysics is contained in it. St. Bonaventure also brings out on
the same occasion the link which binds Christian logic to Christian meta
physics: ibid., I, 1 3, p. 33 1 .
4 1 In Hexaiim. , I . 21-24, t. V , p. 333.
42 De reductione artium, 20-2 1 ; ed. min., p. 380; In Hexaiim. , I, 25-26,
t. V, p. 333.
4 3 De reductione artium, 22; ed. min., p. 382. See also III Sent., I, dub.
1, t. III, p. 33; cf. Breviloquium, IV, 3 et 4; ed. min., pp. 133-140. One
could also extract from St. Bonaventure a whole system of spiritual physics
minutely copied from corporeal physics. See, for example, the four spiritual
leprosies, spiritual dropsy, spiritual paralysis: Dom. XIII post Pentecosten,
Sermo III, t. IX, p. 406; Dam. XVI post Pentecosten, Serrno I, t. IX, p. 4 1 6 ;
Dom. XVIII post Pentecosten, Serrno I . t . IX , p . 423.
44 Breviloquium, II, 3, 5 ; ed. min., p. 67.
45 Breviloquium, Prolog. II, 1-4; ed. min., pp. 14-18. References to the
.
part of the subject to the form that constitutes personality and confers in
communicability upon it: "Rursus, ex his habetur quod persona ponit, circa
suppositum de quo dicitur, intentionem subjiciendi et non praedicandi de
pluribus"; lac. cit., t. I, p. 443.
2 8 II Sent., 3, 2. 2. 1 , Concl., from et ideo, et ad 1 . 2, 3, t. II. p. 1 20. On
the interpretation of this knowledge as vespertina (as St. Augustine puts it) ,
cf. II Sent., 4, 3, 2, t. II. p. 1 4 1 .
29 II Sent., 3, 2, 2 , 2 , fund. 6 , and Concl., t. II, p . 123. O n this knowl
edge as matutina, cf. II Sent., 4, 3, 1 , Concl., t. II, p. 139. It follows from
this knowledge of God that the angels were created with a natural capacity
for loving Him for Himself and above all things; see II Sent., 3, 2, 3. 1 , t.
II. p. 125.
3° An interpreter of St. Bonaventure declares in connection with his doc
trine of the angels: "We see therefore that they have no acquired knowledge
in the strict sense. " This expression falsifies St. Bonaventure's thought, for in
his opinion the angels can acquire new knowledge but cannot receive new
species. II Sent., 3, 2, 2, 1 , ad 1 . t. II. p. 120.
3 1 II Sent., 2, 1. 1 . fund. 4-6, and Cone!., t. II, pp. 55-57.
32 St. Thomas in his turn refers to St. Bonaventure in the Sum. theol. 1 ,
1 0, 5 , ad Resp. "Alii vero assignant . . . " I t will b e noticed that the argu
ments 3 and 4 ad oppositum are based upon the Aristotelian doctrine of in
corruptibles: "In perpetuis non differt esse et posse." It is this that leads
St. Thomas to deny all succession in the duration of the aevum. Cf. II Sent.,
2, 1 , 1 . 3, t. II. p. 6 1 .
3 3 II Sent., 2 , 1 . 1 , 3, Cone!., t . II, p . 62.
34 II Sent., 2, 1 , 1, 1, ad 6, t. II, p. 57. Here we see distrust of Aristotel
ianism appearing before the time of the Hexaiimeron. Cf. In Hcxaiim., V. 26,
et VII. 1, pp. 358 and 365.
35 II Sent., 2, 2, 1. 1. ad 3. t. II, p. 72; cf. ibid. fund. and Cone!.
36 II Sent., 2, 2, 2, 1 , fund. 3 et 4, t. II, p. 75.
37 II Sent. , 2, 2, 2, 1. Concl., t. II, pp. 76-77. It follows from this that an
angel cannot be in several places at once and that this place is not a mathe
matical point, but a divisible space, also that an angel can always occupy a
space smaller than any given space. At the same time, owing to the laws of
universal order, two angels cannot occupy the same space.
38 II Sent., 9, un., 1 . Cone!., t. II, p. 242.
39 II Sent., 9, un., 4, ad 1. t. II, p. 249.
40 II Sent., 9, un., 4, Concl., et ad 4, t. II, pp. 248-249. On the individual
inequality of the angels ibid., 8, Concl., t. II, p. 255. On the natural in
equality which leads to that of grace, 1 1 . 9, praenotata, 3, t. II, p. 239. For
the definition of an order, ibid.
4 1 In Hexaiim., XXI 2 et 3, t. V. pp. 43 1-432.
,
t. II, pp. 239 ff. contain a simpler division, but it has been retouched and
much more fully treated in the Hexaiimeron, which is always the most im
portant source for all the points with which it deals.
43 II Sent., IX, praenotata, ad definitiones, t. II, pp. 237-238; In Hexaiim . ,
XXI. 1 7, t. V. p . 434: cf. ibid., 1 8-19.
NOTES 473
nature of the desire for forms which matter possesses in this original state,
see ibid . , ad 6. These variations of density imply no diversity of forms, ibid.,
a d 5. O n the disposition which requires the form, see I Sent. , 6, un., 1 .
Concl., t. I . p . 1 26. A n example would be the need o f nourishment in an
organic body. but this is not exactly parallel to the condition of the matter
of the first day.
8 II Sent., 12, 2, 3, Concl.. t. II, p. 306.
9 "Lux est natura communis reperta in omnibus corporibus tam caelestibus
quam terrestribus," II Sent., 12. 2, 1, arg. 4, t. II, p. 302. Cf. II Sent., 1 3,
divis. textus, t. II, p. 3 1 0. On St. Bonaventure's theory of light consult CL.
BAEUMKER, Witelo (Beitr. z . Gesch. d. Philos. des Mittelalters III, 2. Mun-
474 ST. BONAVENTURE
1 5 The statement of the Quaracchi scholiasts (p. 322) : "S. Bonav. pro
more suo viam mediam inter utramque opinionem aggreditur, " is not alto
gether exact, for St. Bonaventure, by adopting the second theory for light
and the first for the luminous ray escapes St. Thomas's fundamental objec
tion: "lmpossibile est ut id quod est forma substantialis in uno sit forma
accidentalis in alia." Moreover if all bodies participate in the same substantial
form, light, the plurality of forms must be admitted. There is no media via
between the two opinions.
16 Cf. II Sent., 13, 2, 2, Concl.. t. II. p. 321. Hence no doubt the numer
ous comparisons which St. Bonaventure loves to borrow from the science of
Perspective: for example, the equality between the angle of incidence and the
angle of reflection. Domin. 3 in Quadragesima, Sermo III; t. IX. p. 228.
1 7 See above, p. 262. note 1, and II Sent. . 12. 2, 1. fund. 1, t. II. p. 302.
18 St. Bonaventure. who does not argue as a physicist, tells us nothing of
the process by which light can confer extension upon matter, but it may be
said without risk of error that he refers here to the theory of Robert Grosse
teste, De luce, op. cit., pp. 5 1 . 12-1 3.
1 9 II Sent., 13, 2. 2. Concl.. t. II. p. 320.
2 0 II Sent., 13, 2, 2. fund. 5, t. II. p. 3 1 9 ; ibid . ad 6, t. II, p. 322.
.
The lux interius perficiens there referred to is precisely the common sub
stantial form of bodies: ibid., ad Sm. t. II. p. 321. " . . . de productione illius
formae (lucis) quae est quasi generale principium distinguendi caeteras
formas," II Sent., 14, 1 , divis. textus. t. II. p. 335; II Sent 17, 1 . 2. ad 6,
.•
receptacle taken from the matter of their orbit and the light created on the
first day. See II Sent., 14, dub., 3, t. II, p. 368.
37 II Sent., 14, 2, 1 . 1 . ad 4, t. II, p. 352 et 2, Concl.. p. 353. The num
ber of the spheres or celestial orbs amounts to ten, a number which is satis
factory by reason of its very perfection. St. Bonaventure reviews the history
of the problem: II Sent., 14, 2, 1 , 3, Concl., t. II, p. 356. Here it is the
crystalline which plays the part of the primum mobile, although St. Bona
venture seems disposed to grant to the crystalline a movement of its own
which makes it advance one degree in a hundred years.
3B II Sent., 14, 2, 2, 1 et 2, Concl.. t. II, pp. 358-360. On the efficacy
of light, cf. ibid., ad 3, t. II, p. 361. On the nature of heat, cf. ibid., ad 4.
Against astrological determinism, cf. II Sent., 14, 2, 2, 3, t. II, pp. 361-
365. The whole of this question, of which we give here the conclusion only,
is of great historical interest.
39 II Sent., 14, 2, dub. 1, t. II, p. 365.
NOTES TO CHAPTER X (pp. 265-283)
1 See on this point the excellent Scholion of the editors of Quaracchi, t.
II, pp. 199-200, with which should be read that on the essential passage of
the Sentences, dist. 18, art. 1, qu. 3, t. II, pp. 440-442. Cf. ZIESCHI!, Die
Naturlehre Bonaventuras, Phil. Jahrb., XXI. Bd. 1908, pp. 1 69-1 89 - an
accurate account which may usefully be consulted.
2
The argument refers to passages of ARISTOTLE, Metaph. , 1. 3, and Phys. ,
1, 4.
3 AVICENNA, Metaphys., IX, Cap. V.
4 Cf. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, II Sent., 1 8, 1 . 2, ad Respond. The disagree
ment between the two philosophers does not concern matter, for St. Bona
venture is equally insistent that matter is not active as such, but the presence
in matter of imperfect forms, which St. Bonaventure allows and St. Thomas
denies.
5 II Sent., 7, 2, 2, 1. Concl., t. II, p. 198.
6 II Sent., 1 8, 1, 3, Concl.. t. II, p. 440.
7 II Sent., 7, 2, 2, 2, Concl.. t. II, p. 202.
B Ibid.
9 II Sent., 7, dub., 3, t. II, pp. 206-207. Cf. IV Sent. , 43, 1, 4, Concl. ,
t . IV. p . 888. The principle o f the doctrine appears i n plain fonn, II Sent. ,
7, 2, 2, 1 . ad 6, t. II, p. 199. As there stated it will apply also to the souls
of animals, II Sent., 15, 1. 1, Concl. , t. II, p. 374.
10 II Sent., 7, 2, 2, 1. Concl., t. II, p. 198.
11 II Sent., 15, 1. 1. Concl.. t. II, p. 374.
1 2 See
preceding chapter, p. 249. In any case there is never any question
of identifying the incomplete form of matter of which we have spoken with
the seminal principles; the question is whether matter had at the beginning
this incomplete form of corporeality and in addition the seminal principles
as such in any equally imperfect form.
1 3 II Sent. , 15, 1. 1. Concl. , ad 3, t. II, pp. 375-376. St. Augustine ex
pounds the doctrine of the seminal principles on several occasions. It is an
interpretation, inspired by Stoicism, of well-known scriptural passages: Genesis
NOTES 477
i. 1 ; i. 29; ii. 4, 5 ; ii. 2, 3 ; Ecclesi. xviii. 1 . See among other passages: De
vera religione, 42, 79, P. L. t. XXXIV, col. 158. Cf. also op. cit., IV, 33,
52, t. XXXIV, col. 3 1 8; VI, Cap. XV, n. 1 8 to Cap. XVIII, n. 29, t.
XXXIV, col. 350, esp. : "si omnium futurorum causae mundo sunt insi
tae." - De Trinitate, Ill, 8, 13, t. XLII, c. 875; an important passage which
explains why St. Bonaventure raises the question in connection with demoniac
miracles. Note the remark in ibid., 9, 1 6 , col. 877-878, "Alia sunt enim
haec jam conspicua oculis nostris ex fructibus et animantibus, alia vero ilia
occulta istorum seminum semina." To these passages should be added pseudo
Augustine, Dialogus quaest. LXV, qu. 37, P. L., t. XLV, col. 745. An inter
esting historical source for reference is Ouvr, In II Sent., qu. 3 1 , ed. B.
Jansen, Quaracchi, 1 922, pp. 508 ff.
It is also noteworthy that St. Bonaventure believes Aristotle's teaching
to conform with that of St. Augustine on this point; he refers to De Generat.
anirnalium, II, 3, and to this the editors add Ill, 1 1 . Here then it is certainly
an idea that he is opposing and not an individual. On the "rationes primor
diales, causales, seminales, naturales, " cf. II Sent., 1 8, 1 , 2. ad 6, t. II, p. 438.
14 See AVERROES, Metaphys. , lib. I. text 1 8, c. 8, summary t. II, p. 440,
n. 6.
1 5 II Sent. , 1 8, 1, 3, Concl., op. 2a, t. II, p. 44 1 .
16 II Sent., 1 8, 1 , 3, Concl. , t. II, p. 442. Compare ST. THOMAS, II Sent.,
1 8, 1, 2, Resp. ad Quidam enim dicunt. The most informative reference is
Ouvr, In II Sent., qu. 3 1 , ed. B. Jansen, Quaracchi, pp. 508 ff.
1 7 IV Sent. , 43, 1, 4, Concl. , t. IV, p. 888. The last part of this passage
is interesting as showing that the Augustinian doctrine of the seminal prin
ciples does not lead St. Bonaventure into occasionalism. His constant pre
occupation is to ensure an efficacy, which is yet not a creation, to the second
ary cause. It is also interesting in that a controversy between the interpreters
of St. Bonaventure can be decided by means of it. J. KRAUSE, Die Lehre des
heil. Bonaventure uber die Natur der korperlichen Jtnd geistigen Wesen und
ihr Verhiiltnis zum Thomisnms (Paderborn, 1 888) , maintains that the forms
were present in matter from the beginning (p. 24) ; Eo. LUTZ, Die Psychologie
Bonaventuras nach den Quellen dargestellt (Beitr. z. Gcsch. d. Philos. d. Mit
telalters, VI, 4-5, Munster, 1909) , after declaring that it is difficult here as
on many other points in the subject to arrive at a definite result (p. 34 ) , con
cludes that in St. Bonaventure's philosophy all natural production implies
three principles; matter, form in potency in the seminal principles, and the
natural faculty which brings it to act. Now both these interpretations leave
on one side an element in St. Bonaventure's philosophy. We cannot say
that forms are present in matter, as Krause maintains, but only the essence of
the form without its actuality. We cannot say that there are three principles of
operation, as Ed. Lutz would have it, because the natural force which actual
izes a seminal principle is a form, and as the essence of the seminal principle
is the same as that of the form, there remain only the two classical principles,
matter and form. Thus St. Bonaventure's alleged inconsistency proves once
more to be imaginary; the mistake can only be due to a failure to conceive
with him of a potency which is not pure passivity or a mere logical possi-
478 ST. BONAVENTURE
bility, but an essence which can only gain its complete form by receiving
what it needs from a form which is already actualized.
1 s II Sent., 15, 1. 2, fund. 1-4, t. II, pp. 377-378. The conclusion of the
article shows that the form of the mixed body would not be sufficient, but
that the form of the organic is also necessary.
1 9 II Sent., 1 , 2, 1 , 2, ad 2, t. II, p. 42. Cf. II Sent., 15, 1 , 3, Concl., t.
II, p. 380.
20 See Cap. IX.
21
II Sent., 17, 2, 2, Concl., t. II, p. 423. There are thus three lights:
celestial light, a substantial form which conserves bodies: elementary light
radiated by fire, and, if one can find in the body any sort of analogue to
celestial light, the spirit, or "lux ex aequalitate complexionis generata sive con
surgens. " In reality, this light is not a light at all, and it must be clearly
understood that the spirit alone makes the body capable of receiving an animal
soul, in the order of the c01poreal conditions for its appearance. The others,
the true lights, have no part in this: "Et haec est ilia lux, quae facit corpus
esse susceptibile vitae; aliae vero minime," ibid., ad 1 . It is the same with
heat. There is no celestial heat in the human body; but the celestial nature,
by introducing and maintaining proportion in the body by the form of light,
allows human heat to appear, ibid., ad 2.
On the question of intermediaries, St. Bonaventure bases himself upon
ST. AuGUSTINE, Sup. Genes. ad !itt., III, 4, 6, P. L., t. XXXIV, p. 28 1 . He
borrows from the same source III, 6, 8 ff. a curious explanation of the origin
of fish and birds, d. ibid., pp. 282 ff.
22 II Sent., 15, 2, 1. Concl., t. II, p. 383; II Sent., 2, 2, 1. 1. ad 3 et 4,
rat. 4a, t. II, p. 72. Cf. II Sent., 2, 2, 1. 2, fund. 4, t. II, p. 73 . That is
also why animal souls have not the right to immortality in the divine plan.
The heaven and the four elements which enter into the composition of the
celestial abode are eternal, but animal souls which only serve terrestrial man
are not: II Sent., 19, 1, 2, t. II, p. 463 .
2 3 II Sent., 15, 2, 2, Concl., t. II, pp. 384-385. For the repose of the
seventh day, ibid., 3, pp. 386-387.
NOTES TO CHAPTER XI (pp. 285-307)
1 II Sent., 17, 1, 1, fund. 3, et Concl., t. II, pp. 400-4 12; I Sent. , 19, 2,
un. 3 ad 4, t. I. p. 361.
2
See, in particular, BOETHIUS, De Trinitate, Cap. II, PL. t. LXIV, col. 1250.
3 II Sent., 17, 1. 2, fund. 6, t. II, p. 4 14.
4 Quoted by ST. BoNAVENTURE, I Sent., 19, 2, un. 3, fund. 1. t. I. p. 360.
5 I Sent., 19, 2, un. 3, Concl., t. I. p. 361.
6 II Sent., 17, 1 . 2, Concl., t. II, p. 4 14. It goes without saying that here,
as in the case of the angels, the matter in question is not a body: "Ilia autem
materia sublevata est supra esse extensionis et supra esse privationis et cor
ruptionis, et ideo dicitur materia spiritualis," lac. cit., p. 4 15. On St. Thomas's
solution of the problem, see Le Thomisme, pp. 1 38-139.
7 II Sent., 17, 1 . 2, Concl., t. II, p. 4 1 5. Breviloquium, II, 9, 5, ed. min.,
p. 84 ; II Sent., 18, 2, 3, fund. 5, t. II, p. 452.
8 II Sent., 17, 1, 2, fund. 5, t. II. p. 414.
NOTES 479
9 II Sent., I 8, 2, I . ad I . t. II. p. 447.
1 0 II Sent. , I 8, 2, I . ad 3, t. II. p. 447. The passage to which St. Bona
venture refers applies both to men and to angels: "Et per hoc patet sequens
objectum de fine (sci!., multiplicationis; ut quia non poterat salvari in uno,
ipsa species salvetur in pluribus) , quia ille non est finis multiplicationis, sed
multiplicationis successivae. Sed ratio potissima multiplicationis in hominibus
et in Angelis est divinae potentiae et sapientiae et bonitatis declaratio et col
laudatio, quae manifestantur in multitudine et gloriae Beatorum amplifica
tione, quia amor caritatis exultat in multitudine bonae societatis. Uncle credo
quod enmt in magna numero et perfectissimo, secundum quod decet illam
supernam civitatem, omni decore fulgentem," II Sent. , 3, I . 2, I , ad 2, t. II.
p. 104.
11 II Sent., I8, 2. I . ad 6, p. 447.
1 2 "Personalis discretio in creatura dicit maximam nobilitatem; sed quod
magis nobile est maxime elongatur a materia et ma.xime accedit ad formam,"
II Sent., 3. I . 2, 3, fund. 3. t. II. p. 108.
1 3 One of the most interesting subjects in the work of K. ZIESCHE (Die
Naturlehre Bonaventuras, Phil. Jahrb., I 908, pp. 56-89) is the care which
St. Bonaventure shows in interpreting experience as he sees it. It is certainly
a characteristic feature of his work and one which he shares with the Oxford
Franciscan School.
1 4 II Sent , I 7, I . 2, ad 6, t. II. p. 4I 5 . Cf. Sabbato sancto, Sermo I. 4,
.
t. IX. p. 269.
1 5 II Sent. , I 2, I. 3, ad 3, t. II. p. 300.
1 6 Equality of proportion is opposed to equality of mass: II Sent., I7. 2, 3.
Cone!. . t. II, p. 425.
1 7 II Sent., I 7, 2. 2, ad 6, t. II, p. 423.
We find the plurality of forms maintained at the time of the Hexaihneron,
when the question was particularly controversial. These passages are so
closely connected with their context and so perfectly in accord with all that
has preceded that their precision leaves no room for doubt: "Observatio justi
tiae disponit ad earn (sci!.. sapientiam) habendam, sicut appetitus materiae
inclinat ad formam et facit earn habilem ut conjungatur formae mediantibus
dispositionibus; non quod illae dispositiones perimentur, immo magis com
plentur sive in corpore humano. sive in aliis. Observatio igitur justitiae intro
ducit sapientiam." Cf. In Iiexaiim .. II. 2. t. V, p. 336, which shows clearly
that the economy of natural forms is organized in the same way as the econ
omy of supernatural forms; as we shall see, the most exalted gifts do not sup
press the least exalted gifts of the Holy Spirit, but bring them to their per
fection: for example, the gift of Wisdom in relation to the gift of Knowledge;
and gifts in their turn do not suppress virtues, since without the three theo
logical virtues the whole edifice of grace would be undermined. The order
of nature symbolizes the order of grace. All these echoes of the supernatural
lead St. Bonaventure to utter, later on. the condemnation which we have al
ready quoted: "Uncle insanum est dicere, quod ultima forma addatur materiae
primae . . . nulla forma interjecta."
18 II Sent., I 8, 2, I , fund. , et Concl. , t. II, pp. 445-446.
19 This in no way contradicts the natural desire of the soul for the body.
480 ST. BONAVENTURE
for the body is natural to it in so far as the soul has been created for the
body and with it. On the hypothesis of pre-existing souls, such a desire
would have no reason to appear. Neither does this argument imply that the
union of soul and body is the result of a fall; on the contrary, it rejects the
hypothesis of the pre-existence of souls because it would force us to admit
that the union of souls to bodies takes place through a deterioration; the
state in which they were created is inferior to that of souls which are free
from body for example, but it is at least their normal state. Cf. II Sent., 1 7.
l . 3, Concl., t. II, p. 4 17, et 1 8, 2, 2, Concl., t. II. p. 449.
20 St. Bonaventure is no less explicit on this point than St. Thomas. II Sent.,
1 8, 2, 2, Concl., t. II. p. 449; Breviloquium VII, 5, 2 ; ed. min. , p. 269;
Breviloquium, VV. 7, 4; ed. min., p. 279. Cf. II Sent. , 19, l . 1, ad 6, t. II.
p. 461 . Soliloquium, IV. 20-22; ed. min., p. 154. Cf. also St. Augustine,
sup. Genes. ad Litt., 1, VII, c. 27, n. 38. Pat. Lat., t. XXXIV, C. 369 and l .
XII, c . 35, n . 68, col. 483.
21 II Sent., 18. 2, 2. Concl.. t. II, pp. 449 and 450.
22 II Sent., 1 8, 2, 3, Concl.. t. II, p. 453 .
2 3 II Sent., 30, 3, l . Concl.. t. II, pp. 730-73 1 .
24 II Sent., 3 1 , l . l . Concl.. et ad 4m, t . II. p. 742.
2 5 I Sent., 8, 2. un . . 3, Concl.. t. I. p. 1 7 1 ; ad l . p. 1 7 1 .
26 II Sent., 19, 1, 1, Concl.. t. II. p. 460. The text itself of the Tirnaeus,
translated by Chalcidius. appears here: "Quod bona ratione junctum est, dis
solvi velle non est Dei," ed. Wrobel. p. 43.
2 7 St. Bonaventure draws here upon ST. AuGUSTINE, De Trinitate, XIII. 7,
10 ff; De Civitate Dei, VIII, 8; XIV. 25; XIX. l .
2 8 "Freilich gelingt Bonaventura diese Synthese aus mancherlei Grunden
selten in befriedigender Weise," En. LuTZ, Die Psychologie Bonaventuras,
p. 7.
29 Cf. En. LuTZ, op. cit., pp. 8-9. For another view, the pages devoted to
this question by K. ZrESCHE, op. cit., pp. 1 64-1 69, may be profitably
consulted.
3° l-Ie quotes it, II Sent., 1 8, 2, l. fund. l. t. II, p. 445; Aristotle's defini
tion is not among the objections which St. Bonaventure rejects, as Ed. Lutz
states, but one of the fundamentals which he accepts, op. cit. , p. 9; it is in
his eyes a decisive argument against the unity of the active intellect.
3 1 "Anima non tantum est forma, immo etiam est hoc aliquid," !oc. cit.
"De anima igitur rationali haec in summa tenenda sunt, secundum sacram
doctrinam, scilicet quod ipsa anima est forma ens, intelligens, libertate utens, "
Breviloquium. II, 9, 1 ; ed. min., p. 82. "Anima rationalis est actus et ente
lecheia corporis humani, " II Sent., 1 8, 2, 1 , fund. l . t. II, p. 445.
3 2 See II Sent., 26. un. 2, Concl.. t. II. p. 636. Among the objections on
the same question Augustine's formula is quoted: "Sicut corpus vivit anima.
ita anima vivit Deo"; see references, ibid., p. 633. note 5.
33 I Sent. , 3, 1 , l. 1, ad 5, t. I. p. 70.
judicatur, utrum hoc sit album, vel nigrum, quia hoc pertinet ad sensum
particularem, " Itinerarium, II. 6; ed. min., p. 307. The active character of
sensation is strongly emphasized in a passage of the Commentary: "In po�
tentia sensitiva . . . activa potentia est ex parte animae, passiva ex organo,"
IV Sent., 50, 2, 1, 1. Concl.
23 III Sent., 23, 1 . 3, Concl., t. III. p. 479.
24 IV Sent., 12, 1. dub. 1 . As a receptacle of sensations of various orders,
it receives the name of phantasy. II Sent., 7, 2. 1. 1 . ad 2, t. II. p. 190.
25 I Sent., 1 7, 1 , un. 2, Concl., t. I. p. 297.
26 Itinerarium II. 5; ed. min., pp. 306�307, et 10, p. 3 1 1 . The reference
is to ST. AuGUSTINE, De Musica, lib. VI. t. 32, c. 1 1 62 If.
27 Cf. ltinerarium, II, 6; ed. min., p. 307. The definitely internal character
of the common sense in St. Bonaventure's teaching is confirmed by the pas�
sage quoted in note 2 1 supra; yet this does not contradict its dependence upon
an organ; see the passage following.
2 8 II Sent., 8, 2, un. 3, Concl.. t. II. p. 229; I Sent., 1 6. un. 2, ad. 4, t. I.
p. 282.
29 II Sent., 7, 2, 1 . 2, Concl.. et ad 3, t. II. p. 193. The memory. con�
sidered as a purely conserving faculty. appears in St. Bonaventure as follow�
ing the distinction of · the objects: the sensible past, the intelligible past, the
non�temporal intelligible, I Sent., 3, 2, 1 . 1 . ad 3, t. I. p. 8 1 ; ltinerarium, Ill,
2; ed. min., p. 3 1 5.
3° II Sent., 7, 2, 1 . 2, Concl. . t. II. p. 193.
3 1 This must be remembered before declaring contradictory the manifold
classifications of our faculties which are found in St. Bonaventure. Actually
there is only one classification of faculties; all the rest represent different ways
of considering the faculties thus distinguished. The essential passage on this
point is: II Sent., 24, 1 . 2, 3, Concl.. t. II. p. 566. It is a serious error to
try to group a classification of faculties under the same heading as different
classifications which, so far from enlarging upon the first, are not themselves
interchangeable. It should be noticed, for example, to avoid the commonest
confusion, that the famous classification of the ltinerarium into the six stages
of the soul does not represent six faculties. as Ed. Lutz believes ( op. cit. ,
p. 1 05) , but six different aspects of the same faculty ( divisio potentiarum
secundum aspectus) considered as it turns successively to different objects.
It will be seen later what radical misconceptions this error introduces into the
interpretation of the ltinerarium.
32 It should be noticed that this problem is only a particular case of the
problem of the eduction of the forms and that the criticisms made upon
Avicenna by Averroes gain the support of all the scholastics on this point;
see II Sent., 7, 2. 2, 1. t. II. p. 198, and note 3. The theory of "dator forma�
rum" suppresses all efficacy on the part of the human intellect, as well as of
the secondary cause in general.
33 This is the solution accepted by Alexander of Hales, Summa Theologica,
ed. Quaracchi. t. II. p. 452.
34 II Sent., 24, 1. 2, 4. Cone!. , t. II, p. 569; ibid .. ad. 5, t. II. p. 572.
On the sense of "judicare" in these passages, see infr. , note 75 . It is the
484 ST. BONAVENTURE
tween the offices or functions, which is explained in its turn by that of the
dispositions. Cf. ST. AuGUSTINE, de Trinitate, XII, 4, 4 ; t. 42, c. 1 000.
49 This results from the comparison of the two following passages: "Di�
cendum quod divisio rationis in superiorem portionem et inferiorem non est
adeo per diversa membra, ut haec et ilia sit potentia alia et alia . . . ; nee est
per membra ita convenientia ut non sit in eis differentia nisi solum secundum
aspectus. Est enim differentia in eis secundum dispositiones et secundum
oilicia," II Sent., lac. cit. , p. 564. And the so�called faculties of the ltinera
rium are certainly aspectus: "Secundum hunc triplicem progressum mens no�
stra habet tres aspectus principales. Unus est ad corporalia exteriora. secun
dum quem vacatur animalitas seu sensualitas; alius intra se est et in se, se�
cundum quem dicitur spiritus; tertius supra se, secundum quem dicitur mens, "
I, 4; ed. min., p. 296. These three aspectus are further divided into six gradus,
as we shall see later. The tripartite division is based upon Mark 12: 30; Mat
thew 22: 37; Luke 10: 27; and HuGH OF SAINT VICTOR, de Sacramentis, t.
X, 2.
5 0 To enable the reader to find his way more easily among St. Bonaventure's
classifications, we give here some of the commonest, which will act as models
for arranging the others:
CREATIVE TRINITY
Aspectus
Mentis.
{ Sensualitas
. .
Spmtus
Gradus potentiarum
{
{
animae
Mens
{ per spec. - intelligentia.
. . .
lD spec. - apex mentis (or synderes1s) .
For the definition of "mens," see II Sent., 25, 1, un. 2, Concl., t. II. p. 596.
It is noteworthy that the classification of the rational soul's faculties properly
so-called (vegetative, sensitive, intellect, will) does not enter into these tri
partite classifications or their subdivisions. Thus, when the name of a faculty
occurs in a passage where aspects, functions or degrees are in point, we must
be careful not to give it the force of a faculty in every case; and not to con
clude, when two faculties and a third term are being considered, that this
third term also stands for a faculty; for example: "Memoria, intelligentia,
voluntas"; memory is not a faculty. Again care is necessary when St. Bona
venture speaks of "vires animae" and at the same time refers to faculties or
aspects which are involved in his subject; for example: De triplici via, I. 4,
19, ed. min., p. 14. Lastly. in the final classification of the preceding list,
there are found two degrees of the single sensitive faculty (sensus, imagina
tio) and four degrees of the single intellect (ratio, intellectus, intelligentia,
synderesis) ; when further on we find the passage: "Qui igitur vult in Deum
ascendere necesse est ut . . . naturales potentias supradictas exerceat" (p. 298) ,
we must not conclude therefore that there are six faculties of the soul, but
these two faculties ordered hierarchically in six degrees. The original inten
tion of the Itinerarium is thus to show us the examination of the three funda
mental modes of the existence of things by an intellect considered at all the
degrees of its activity, and, moreover, assisted by the aids of grace in all their
fmms. For a concrete example of this, I. 10; ed. min., p. 299, where an in
quiry is conducted by two degrees of the intellect (ratio, intelligentia) and
a virtue (fides) , the whole working upon the data of the first cognitive faculty
( sensualitas) at its two degrees (sensus, imaginatio) .
51 I Sent., 8, 1, l . l. ad 4, t. I, p. 152. This is true also with regard to
God, but through a mere distinction of the reason.
52 Breviloquium, VI, 8, 2; ed. min., p. 227; I Sent., 40, 2, l. ad 1, t. I.
p. 707.
53 De scientia Christi, IV, Concl., t. V. p. 23 ; Senna IV de rebus theol.,
6, t. V, p. 568. Dominica XXII post Pentecosten, Senno I. 1, t. IX. pp. 44 1-
442.
54 On the jurists, cf. In Hexaem., V, 21. t. V. p. 357.
55 Sermo II de reb. theol., 5, t. V, p. 540.
56 Senna II de reb. theol., 7, p. 54 1 .
57 Comm. i n Sap., Cap. VIII, t . VI , p . 162.
5 8 Sermo II de reb. theol. , 4, t. V, p. 540.
NOTES 487
59 De scientia Christi, IV, ad 22, t. V, p. 26. See, for what follows, M. M.
MENESSON's discussion, op. cit., Revue de philos., August 1 9 1 0, p. 1 1 5,
note 1; CouAILHAC, Doctrina de idaeis, Cap. II, p. 33.
6o De red. art. ad theol.. 1 et 5; ed. min. , p. 365 et 372; Breviloquium,
prol. 2; ed. min., p. 8; Itinerarium, prol. 1; ed. min., p. 289.
6 l In Joann., I, 1 2, t. VI, p. 249; De donis S. S., IV, 2, t. V, p. 474.
62 De scientia Christi, IV, Concl.. t. V, p. 23; cf. Itinerarium, III, 3; ed.
min., p. 3 1 9.
63 ST. AUGUSTINE, Cont. Academicos, II, 5, 1 1 ff.; PL. t. XXXII. cc. 924
ff. Cited by ST. BoNAVENTURE, De scientia Christi, IV, Concl.. t. V, p. 23.
64 ST. AuGUSTINE, De libero arbitrio, II, c. 9-15, n. 25-39, t. XXXII,
cols. 1 253 ff.; De vera religione, c. 30, n. 54-59, t. 34, col. 145; De magistro,
cc. 1 1 ff., n. 3 8, t. XXXII, c. 1215; De musica, VI, 12, 35 ff., t. XXXII.
col. 1 1 82; De Trinitate, VIII, 3, 4 ff., and 6, 9, t. XLII, c. 949 and 953. Ad
duced by ST. BoNAVENTURE, loc. cit., rat. 17 ff., p. 1 9 ; cf. Itinerarium, III,
3 ; ed. min., pp. 3 1 7-3 1 8.
65 Sermo IV de reb. theol., 1 8-19, t. V, p. 572; cf. De scientia Christi,
loc. cit. , p. 23.
66 Loc. cit. , p. 23, note 3 of the Scholiaste of Quaracchi.
67 De scientia Christi, loc. cit., p. 23 . For the same reason the intermediary
could not be an angel: In Hexaem. , II, 10, t. V, p. 338; I Sent., 3, l. 3, ad
1, t. I. p. 75.
68 II Sent., 23, 2, 3, Concl., t. II, pp. 544-545.
69 "Animae a conditione sua datum est lumen quoddam directivum et quae
dam directio naturalis; data est etiam ei affectio voluntatis, " I Sent., 17, 1 ,
un. 4, Concl.. t . I . p . 3 0 1 . Cf. I n Hexaem., II, 9, t . V , p . 338.
70 Itinerarium, III, 4 ; ed. min., p. 320.
71 Itinerarium, V, 3; ed. min., p. 333 and note 2.
72 Itinerarium, V, 4; ed. min., p. 334. This is one of the points which have
led to most misunderstandings. M. Menesson, in a laudable attempt not to
disfigure St. Bonaventure's thought, maintains that the Itinerarium accords
to man the immediate knowledge of God. "Et si l'on opposait a cette con
clusion quelques textes tires des Sentences ( t. II, p. 123 ) , il faudrait dire que
Bonaventure avait bien pris dans les disputes parisiennes une formation schola
stique et meme une certaine apparence de peripatetisme, mais que, revenu a la
vie active et a la priere, il reprit les voies mystiques, les sublimes intuitions qu'il
affectionnait davantage. Et quand il nous expose le fruit de ses meditations,
nous n'avons pas le droit de nous refuser a l'ecouter, comme si nous posse
dions deja toute sa doctrine philosophique; moins encore celui de tourmenter
ses paroles pour les mettre d'accord avec !'idee que nous nous etions faite de
son systeme. II est possible que Bonaventure ait repousse la connaissance
immediate de Dieu dans les Sentences; il parait indiscutable qu'il l'ait admise
dans I' Itinerarium mentis in Deum," op. cit., Rev. de philos., 19 1 0, p. 125.
In reply to this conclusion it may be said first that it is not possible but cer
tain that the Commentary denies to man any natural vision of God; II Sent. ,
4. 2. 2, ad 2, et 4, t. II, p. 1 23, and 23, 2, 3, Concl., ad Secundum autem
modus, p. 544 (d. E PH R . LoNGPRE, op. cit., p. 58) ; secondly, that the
Commentary teaches well before the ltinerarium this thesis which is explained
488 ST. BONAVENTURE
for St. Bonaventure because of the deep-lying analogy between light and
grace; cf. Cap. XIV. p. 428.
28 III Sent., 33, un. 5, fund. 4-5, t. Ill, p. 722.
29 II Sent., 25 , 1 , dub. 1 m t. II, p. 607.
,
touched on this last point, Cap. XIII supra. The essential notion is precisely
that grace, being the likeness of God, can supernaturalize the being and the
operations of that which does no more than receive it; hence the transmuta
tion by which the substance of the soul is assimilated to God by that hierar
chization of the faculties which is about to be described.
24 II Sent., 26, un. 5, Concl., t. II, p. 643.
2 5 Cf. In Hexaem., XXII, 24 and 25, t. V, pp. 44 1 and 442.
26 In Hexaem., XXII. 35, t. V, p. 442.
2 7 Itinerarium, I and II; for this last point, II, 1 1 and 1 3 ; ed. min., pp.
3 1 2-3 13.
2 8 In Hexaem., XXII, 36, t. V, p. 443, which should be read along with
De trip!ici via, I. 5; ed. min., p. 5 ; De perfectione vitae ad sorores, 1 , 3 ; ed.
min., p. 275.
29 This programme, often outlined in his spiritual and mystical works, is
treated in full in the Quaestiones disputatae de perfectione evangelica, t. V,
p. 1 1 7 ff. It will be noted especially that humility is placed as the founda
tion of Christian perfection and the condition of ecstasy: I, Concl., p. 1 2.
In the De triplici via, I, 8; ed. min., p. 8, one common virtue combines the
three virtues opposed to the three vices, just as these latter are combined in
the one common vice of concupiscence: that virtue is severitas.
3D De trip!ici via, I, 4; ed. min., p. 4. An even more detailed analysis of
negligence will be found in the De perfectione vitae, I, 2; ed. min., p. 274.
3l Along with In Hexai!m., lac. cit., read Itinerarium, III, 1 ; ed. min., p.
3 14.
32 Itinerarium, Ill, 3 ; ed. min., p. 3 19, and op. cit. , IV, 1, p. 324 .
33 This last idea, sketched in Itinerarium, III, 6; ed. min., p. 322, is fully
developed in De reductione artium ad theologiam; ed. min., pp. 356-385.
3-1 Cf. Itinerarium, IV, 4; ed. min., p. 327. The nine degrees assigned by
the Itinerarium are those which the Hexaemeron gives as corresponding to the
ascent to God; they are exactly parallel to those which the Hexai!meron gives
as corresponding to the return (regressus) to God. Here are the lists:
Ascent. Return.
People. Nuntiatio. Perlustratio. Angels.
Councillors. Dictatio. Praeelectio. Archangels.
Princes. Ductio. Prosecutio. Principalities.
Minor Orders. Ordinatio. Castigatio. Powers.
Priests. Roboratio. Confortatio. Virtues.
Bishops. lmperatio. Convocatio. Dominations.
Monks. Susceptio. Admissio. Thrones.
Contemplatives.
Dominicans and } Rcvelatio.
{ lnspectio
(or Circum
Cherubim.
Franciscans.
Ecstatics.
(St. Francis) .
} Unitio.
spectio) .
Inductio. Seraphim.
NOTES 493
{
The hierarchy is in inverse order, according to the three virtues of the soul:
vivac�tas desiderii ( �eraphim, etc. ) .
_ .
Virtus susceptiva persprcacrtas scrutmn.
{
tranquillitas judicii.
auctoritas imperii.
Virtus custoditiva virilitas propositi exercitati (Firm purpose)
{
nobilitas triumphi.
claritas exempli.
Virtus distributiva veritas eloquii.
humilitas obsequii (Angels) .
35 Itinerarium, IV, 3 ; ed. min., p. 325. Cf. III Sent., 23, dub. 1 , t. III,
p. 5 1 . See In Hexaem. , XXII. 28-33, t. V, pp. 44 1-442.
36 In Hexaem., XXII, 39, t. V, p. 443.
37 Note the extraordinary analogical precision v.ith which St. Bonaventure
compares the two supreme ideas to the two cherubim in the Itincrarium, VI,
4 ; ed. min., p. 34 1 , and makes circumspectio or perceptio, which consists in
these considerations of being and goodness, correspond to the order of Cheru
bim in the Hexaemeron, XXII. 39, t. V, p. 443.
3 8 This notion of transitus is sometimes detached and considered separately;
its principal symbols are the Pasch (Exod. xii. l l ) and the passage of the
Red Sea, In Hexaem., XIX, 1 , t. V, p. 420; Itinerarium, VII. 2; ed. min., p.
345.
As to the last point: "Iste ascensus fit per vigorem et commotionem fortis
simam Spiritus sancti," In Hexaem., II, 32, t. V, p. 342. This purely gra
tuitous character of ecstasy is what makes it a purely passive state, an otium
in the fullest sense.
39 Cf. In Hexaem. , II, 29, t. V. p. 34 1 ; ibid . , 30.
4 0 II Sent., 23, 2, 3, Concl.. t. II, p. 544. The exception made in St.
Paul's favour does not affect the solidity of the thesis. St. Paul was not in
ecstasy, he was in a state of raptus - a state absolutely exceptional. produced
only in those "qui specialitate privilegii statum viatorum supergrediuntur."
The exception proves the rule; he whom God raises to rapture is no longer
a man, he is one of the Blessed, and this precisely because the notion of a
she passed through the two opening stages of ecstasy, admissio and circum
spectio, and if her plaint is that she could not at that time make the final
step, she does not say that she did not do so later, op. cit., II. 17; ed. min.,
pp. 1 14-1 15.
43 Itinerarium, Vll , 4; ed. min., p. 346; In Hexaem. , II, 29, t. V. p. 34 1 ;
ibid., 30.
44 In Hexaem., XX, 1 1 , t. V, p. 447; II Sent., 23, 2, 3, ad 6m, t. II. p.
546. Cf. Comment. in Joan., I, 43, t. VI, p. 256.
45 III Sent. , 35, un. 1. Concl., t. III, p. 774 ; De perfect. evangel., I. t. V.
p. 1 20.
4 6 In Hexaem., II, 3 1 , t. V. p. 34 1 ; XII. 16, t. V, p. 387. Cf. De triplici
via, III, 13; ed. min., p. 42.
47 This is why when St. Bonaventure speaks not of ecstatic union in itself,
but of the gift of wisdom whose supreme fruit it is, he will not separate the
two: III Sent., 35, un. 1 , Concl., t. III, p. 774.
4 8 III Sent., 35, un. 1 . fund. 5, and Concl., fin. , t. III, p. 773.
4 9 III Sent., 34, 1. 2. 2, ad 2m, t. II, p. 748.
5° Cf. supra, p. 442, note 2.
5l Breviloquium, V, 6; ed. min., p. 186. Cf. Soliloquium, IV. 1 . 4; ed.
min., p. 138.
52 Breviloquium. VII. 7. 2; ed. min., pp. 277-278 ; I Sent., 1 , 3, 2, Concl.,
t. I. pp. 40-4 1 ; I Sent., 1 , 2, un., Concl., ad Quia ergo frui., t. I. p. 36.
5 2a Soliloquium, IV, 3, 1 3 ; ed. min., pp. 145-146, and IV, 5, 27, p. 1 66:
"Si societas et amicitia, ibi est Beatorum societas et omnium una voluntas,"
Breviloquium, VII , 7, 8; ed. min., p. 284.
53 Soliloquium, IV, 5, 24; ed. min., p. 1 60.
54 Soliloquium, IV. 5, 2 1 ; ed. min., pp. 156-157; Breviloquium, VII , 7, 4 ;
ed. min., pp. 279-280.
55 Cf. I Sent., 1 , 2, un .. ad 3m, t. I. p. 37.
5 6 I Sent., 1, 2, un., Cone!.. et fund. 1-3, t. I. pp. 35-37. Cf. IV Sen!.,
49, 1 . 5, Concl.
57 II Sent., 38, 1 . 2, ad 4m, t. II, p. 885.
NOTES TO CHAPTER XV (pp. 427-449)
1 B. PASCAL, Pensees, ed. L. Brunschvicg; ed. min., p. 4 6 1 .
2 I n Hexaem., I . 1 . t . V, p . 329; ibid., 1 0 , p . 330.
3 In Hexaem. , I. 1 2-14, t . V . pp. 33 1-332.
4 In Hexaihn . I. 38, t. V, p. 335.
.
497
498 ST. BONAVENTURE
19 65