the individual, isolation would have meant limitation. Wants would have been starved; growth, stunted; existence itself, problematic. Man is endowed with instincts and reason; both must have combined to articulate his interests with those of his fellowmen; the latter convincing, the former compelling. His instinct for self-preservation was stronger than his means. Brutes with their natural equipment were fitter for the vital contest.43 Too, they knew by nature the dangerous and the safe, while man's enlightenment was empirical and, if he remained apart from his fellows, it could have been, at most, meagre. More markedly than the lesser animals had man a disposition to communication and self-revelation, of which his gift of speech gives evidence.

His mental power must have enabled him to find the way of satisfying the urge into which his instincts merged. By very means of his reason he must have seen that reason was a liability as well as an asset, a hindrance as well as a help; for, while inferior animals without it fared well, he, with it and on account of it, was thrown on his own resources. It was a light, in which he percieved his weakness and wonderful possibilities of strength. It discovered to him that he could not achieve a sufficient amount of knowledge alone and that he required the complement of other intelligences and experiences.45

Still more elemental, however, than reason and the tendencies mentioned, as causes of society, was, in all probability, man's paternal instinct. It gave rise to the family, which, as we shall later see, St. Thomas esteemed the unit of society. doubled the individual's interests and problems. him into intimate relation with a fellow creature.

It

It brought

In a word,

it served to waken his other instincts and his reason; for it inspired a sense of responsibility and power.46

Thus it would seem that St. Thomas chiefly attributes society to the instinct; and the higher form of society called the State

43 De Reg., Lib. I, cap. 1.

44 Ibidem.

45 Com. Eth., Lib. II, Lec. 1; Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. LII, a. 1, ad 1; Contra Impug. Relig., Cap. III; De Verit., qu. II, a. 1. Aquinas speaks also of intelligent foresight-Com. Perih., Lib. I, lec. 2.

46 Com. Polit., Lib. I., lec. 2; Com. Eth., Lib. VIII, lec. 12. Cf. Cicero's De Officiis, I, 17.

to reason.47 tion.

To the former, the origin; to the latter, the evolu

Such conclusions in Aquinas' doctrine are not too broad nor abrupt; for his premises, though brief, are pithy. In them are to be found a serious investigation and appreciation of phychological values. He sees not only the positive in man, but the negative as well; not merely qualities, but likewise the requirements which qualities create. He considers man not only as struggling for existence, but also for the perfection of existence.48 He finds him both fitted for social life and, in a manner, forced by his very fitness into it. The advantages of such a state of existence are magnetic. Human thoughts are increased by being shared; hearts are eased by being emptied into each other.49 Interiorly and exteriorly, a man's nature finds invitation and stimulation to association. He cannot but be in relation to others. No life is lived to itself.50

For

Society is so natural51 that, even had original sin never obtained, and the primal state of innocence and perfection remained, man still would have been social.52 Such an authority as Bluntschli deludes himself that Catholic theologians regard the State as a consequence of man's fall from grace.53 Aquinas clearly expresses the opposite view; as do also the great thinkers of the sixteenth century, Suarez and Bellarmine.55 St. Augustine saw sin as causal in civil society.56 Gregory XII was certainly of this sombre conception. John of Salisbury, too, could be cited as a scintillant predecessor of St. Thomas,

47 We are not adopting Hegel's distinction between State and Civil Society, by which he views the former as a complete organic unity in which individuals as such do not exist, and the latter as the relative totality of individuals. There does not seem to be any notion akin to this in the politics of St. Thomas. We feel justified in using the words "state" and "civil society" interchangeably.

48 De Reg., Lib. I, cap. 14.

49 Com. Eth., Lib. IX.

50 Contra Gentiles, Lib. III, lec. 130.

51 Antoniades, Die Staatslehre des Thomas ab Aquino, p. 13

52 Summa Theol., la. qu. XCVI, a. 4.

53 Vareilles-Sommières, principes fondamentaux, p. 67.

54 De Opere Sex Dier., Lib. V, cap. 7.

55 De Laicis, Lib. III, cap. 6.

56 De Civitate Dei, Lib. III, cap. 5; Lib. XV, cap. 1; Lib. XIX, cap. 15. 57 Lib. VIII, ep. 21, Migne, Tome 148.

who held the State a necesary evil rather than a necessary good.58 But Aquinas has the courage to wave aside such authority and to express the opinion which, despite Dante, has since remained common in Catholic thought.

From his psychological exposition of the birth of society, we pass to St. Thomas' teleological explanation. In the former he applied the great Aristotelian principles of Potency of Act to a concept of social genesis; seeing man endowed with powers and inbued with needs which could find expresion and gratification only in intercourse with other mortals. Now he uses the Philosopher's principle of Finality, and, through it, beholds a mightier urge than the personal, at work to effect and affect not only the rise of society but also its course. It is plain that man must have had a purpose in forming and entering society.59 His reason demanded this.60 But his object was not exclusively the naked necessities of life. A whole chapter in the Commentary of Thomas on Aristotle's Politics convincingly teaches that civil society is formed not so much out of the lower needs of nature as for the attainment of the higher.61 And he adverts to God as the ultimate beginning and end of man. He teaches that the rational creature is subject to the Providence of the Deity in a most excellent way: being a partaker of Providence by being provident both for himself and others.62 Having a natural inclination to his proper act and end, man has a share in the Eternal Reason.63 Thus human reason is a reflection of the divine, as is also human providence. And civil society, growing out of both, is heavenly-human in origin. St. Thomas offers no deistic concept of the world. He sees God brooding over his creation, operating on and in it, seeking His human ones and desiring to be sought by them, inviting and urging them to Himself, the Supreme Good. God is good "per essentiam"; but all else is good only "per participationem." Nothing is

good save in so far as it possesses some semblance to the divine goodness. God is the "good of all good."64

From these principles it is clear that man could never have remained indifferent to his human environment, without remaining indifferent to his God, Who is reflected in His creatures..65 With a common Author, a common Master, and, most significantly, a common Destiny, mankind could not but have felt and appreciated, from the start, an impulse to union. The paternity of the Divinty implies the fraternity of humanity.66 True, St. Thomas is no ontologist nor traditionalist. He teaches plainly that the concept of God is neither innate nor primary, but that it is acquired through creatures.67 But when it is attained, surely, in its light, one can understand much which would have remained mysterious. Whether the first founders of society realized it or not, God was working in and through them, that mankind might work for and to Him.68 Man's body may be content with lower gratifications, but his spirit craves higher objects and relations, and these lead on to the Supreme Good..

In this, his teleological view, St. Thomas could not have penetrated more deeply into the origin of society. His psychological explanation brought us into the mind and heart of the individual; this second elucidation carries us beyond to the Being Who is the Alpha and Omega of the individual's existence and Who implanted in humanhood both reason and instinct. With Creator and creatures clearly in mind, Aquinas sees two sets - of relations; those of men to God, and those of men to men.69 The means by which God's human creatures should and do perpetuate, if not originate, a union are no less ethical than psychological. If God is first and last, and men come from and must return to Him, mankind constitutes a vast brotherhood under the Divine Plan.70 The inter-relations which such

64 Contra Gentiles, Lib. I, cap. 40.

65 Idem, Lib. III, cap. 19.

66 Summa Theol., 2a, 2ae, qu. CLXXXVIII, a. VIII, ad. 5.

Here is the

best basis for that international understanding which Wells seeks in his The Outline of History. He gives Kant credit; why not Aquinas? 67 Summa Theol., 1a, qu. LXXXVIII, a. 3.

68 Idem, 1 a, qu. XII, a. 12; Contra Gentiles, Lib. III, cap 19.

69 Com. Eth., Lib. I, lec. 1.

70 Summa Theol., 1a, 2ae, qu. XCI, a. 1.

a condition entails suggest the ethical foundation of society.71 St. Thomas is not content with teaching the mere social good which association affords. If this were the main cause of congregation, it is conceivable that civil society might not have arisen; for primitive men in Rousseau-manner might have preferred to tend to individualism. But Aquinas, in his ethical explanation, says that men must come together, for they have duties towards their Maker and each other. To accomplish the former, they require mutual aid, intellectual and moral.72 Their mutual obligations, namely, charity and justice, are facilitated by inclinations.

It is natural for them to love the Source of their blessings73 and all that suggest it. An elementary conscience directs them that they must not use badly what is good.74 Thus the love of neighbor and justice toward him are sufficiently primary forces to shed light on the question of social origin. They involved relations which required association. And so we find Aquinas observing that individuals are united in society by love and that the true nature of the bond among the members of a community is virtue.75 Love is a general virtue which proposes and promotes the others.76 The others, without it, are ineffectual. It ensures justice. It is at once a bond and corner-stone of civil society; and the indication is that it must have been one of the strongest factors in the origin thereof.

71 De Reg., Lib. 1, cap. 14.

72 Contra Gen., Lib. III, cap. 128. To be able to do without the inestimable aid of his fellow-creatures, man would have to be a beast-or a God. (See Com. on Aristotle's Politics, Lib. I, lec 1.) It is only the genuine exception among mortals who can live apart from the multitude, neither asking nor receiving. As such, St. Thomas cites John the Baptist and Anthony the Anchorite. (Com. Polit. Lib. I, lec. 1.) But he evidently appreciates that only the average individual is to be regarded in a theory of society. Com. Polit., Lib. I, lec. 1: "et sic homini auxiliatur multitudo civilis-non solum quantum ad corporalia -sed etam quantum ad moralia-."

73 Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. XXIV, a. 2.

74 Contra Gen., Lib. III, cap. 128.

75 De Caritate, qu. I, a. 1.

76 Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. LVIII, a. 6.

77 Contra Gen., Lib. III, cap. 130.