CHAPTER VI

PURPOSE OF THE STATE

St. Thomas teaches that the common aim of states is something more than mere self-preservation. It would have to be; else selfpreservation could never be assured. He finds the mission of the State to be general and particular. The general purpose is to supply a fuller and more perfect life for its members; the particular may be considered as four-fold: economic, ethical, social and, in a sense, ultramundane. His is a complete program, and one towards the realization of which the best democracy of today is groping. Other plans of states should be subordinated to these, which are essential.

1.-LIMITATIONS OF CIVIL SCOPE: FIRST, INDIVIDUALITY

First, let us consider what Aquinas regards as the limits of civil scope; then we can more correctly appraise his doctrine of civil purpose. Primarily, he refrains from committing a modern folly of making the State more real than those who compose it. He deafens himself to the Platonic siren-song against which Hegel's ears were not waxed. A conception of the State as "the highest evolution of the Absolute," "the realization of the moral ideal," "the concretization of the divine will," or "the substance of individuals," would not be acceptable to him. He guards against the fallacy of separatism. For him, men cannot be parted from the State; they constitute it. The State may not be parted from them, else it were an emptiness. In this, as ever, his view is realistically synthetic.535 He does not sacrifice society any more than a Schelling, a Saint-Simon, or a Comte; nevertheless, he democratically does what they do not-he saves the individual.5 536 Here then is his first limitation of the State: it must

535 De Reg., Lib. I, cap. 14 et 15.

536 Com. Polit., Lib. I, lec. 1. Cf. Fouillée, La science sociale contemporaine, pp. 23-24; Schwalm, Leçons de philosophie sociale, I, p. 155.

not destroy individuality. It must not usurp the souls of its subjects.537 Man is man, before he is citizen; and the State is in his mind, before he projects it into the external world and realizes it there. Humanity is superior to the civil society it creates. There is much of man which has not gone into the State at all; and, over this, the State has no direct control.

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

The Doctor's first limitation of civil power being based on the principle of individuality, his second is inspired by the individual's rights, which are granted by the natural law, and according to which the State must always reckon.538 With regard to them, the State may not interfere, as we have already noticed, save to define and defend.539 Any measure in defiance of them or detriment to them, is not law but a corruption of it. We have only to recall the Angelic Doctor's theory of law, to see how firmly he attributes human rights to the reality of rational nature and not to any artificiality of civil concession.540 We find him warding off aggression from those precious prerogatives which enter so largely into the constitution of a democracy, particularly liberty of conscience and liberty of education.

As regards the former, he holds that anyone outside the fold is not to be forced into it. Free-will is to be respected. Faith, he maintains, involves freedom.541 However, by this he does not mean that deliberate opposition to religious truth, blasphemies, seductions, and frank affront, should not be repulsed. It may be that he was impressed with the ethical significance of liberty of conscience, more than with its political bearing. Cajetan comments on Aquinas' view, in effect, that, if it is an evil for

537 Cf. Laveleye, Le Gouvernement dans la Démocratie, I, p. 109. 538 Keesen, La mission de l'état d'après la doctrine et la methode de saint Thomas d'Aquin, p. 17. Crahay, op. cit., p. 138.

539 Summa Theol., la 2ae, qu. XCV, a. 2. Cf. Leo XIII's Encyc., De condit. opif.: "est autem ad praesidium juris naturalis instituta civitas non ad interitum."

540 Cf. Leo XIII's Encyc., De praecipuis civium christianorum officiis. 541 Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. X, a. 8. Cf. Deploige, La question juive, p. 9.

a Christian to live as a pagan, it is a greater wrong for a converted pagan to don in private what he has doffed in public. But the principle of freedom is there, for all that; and, for politics, this is the pearl of great price.

The Angelic Doctor further limits, or rather defines, freedom of conscience by assuming a different attitude toward those who have freely accepted but then rejected the Faith. For here a solemn pledge is broken and truth is outraged. They may be compelled to keep their Christian oath.542 It is to be noticed that St. Thomas speaks explicitly only against heretics, or those who, with their message, rend the peace of the State, which, as we shall presently see, he considers primary. As for those who think for themselves543 and whose thought has a portion of truth in it or at least is not fatal to the interests of the Christian State, he is quite tolerant.544

He believes it is at least as grave a matter to corrupt the Faith, which is the life of souls, as to falsify money, which procures the needs of bodies. And that exceptional monarch of his own day, Saint Louis, had ordained punishments for malefactors of the latter type. The spiritual life of men is nobler than the corporal. Yet, if we punish with death those who slay the flesh, who should object to a similar fate for murderers of the spirit ?545 Thomas further offers that, even though unsuccessful at corrupting others, heretics may be capitally punished or dispossessed, for their blasphemy and false faith; since their example has had a deleterious effect on the community.

All this doctrine is, of course, chargeable to the medieval viewpoint, which the modern thinker finds hard to comprehend and excuse, and still harder to reconcile with the idea of democracy. It is only when we project our thoughts into the mind, heart, and environment of the thirteenth century, that whatever virtue

542 Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. X, a. 8; et idem, ad 3.

543 He teaches further that, when a person is capable of thinking for himself, he may choose for himself; that, at most, persuasion should be used on him, and never force; and that, even in the face of parental opposition, he may do what he considers right and just. Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. X, a. 12.

544 Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. X, a. 9.

545 TV Lib. Sent., dist. XIII, qu. II, a. 3.

this particular and peculiar teaching possesses can appear to us. Then the Church and the State were united as never before nor since; and a revolt against religion practically amounted to treason and presaged bloody warfare. The Albigensian heresy was filling France with woe in the Doctor's own day. The dove of peace was wounded and bespattered. And the infamous sect, called the Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit, which repells us as the serpent of the century, was grievously offending the public with unclean excesses. The Waldenses and the Cathari continued and increased the confusion. Aquinas could not but see that the all-important political principle of the common good was far from being enhanced by this pandemonium and that the sponsors of these heresies were more carnal than spiritual, and more erratic than sincere or, if not so, at least blind beyond belief to the logic of their own premises. With the exception of the Waldensian doctrine, each of them afforded an invitation and foundation to turpitude.

In St. Thomas' attitude, aside from his zeal for truth and the God of it, we can see two democratic facts. First, his championship of the spiritual rights of individuals. No more may a man be robbed of his religion than of his life. Burglars and murderers whose outrages are material, are admittedly outlaws; much more, the assaulters of souls. Aquinas stands against the principle of would-be dissenters seizing hold of the ignorance of the medieval masses, and administering their doctrinal poisons. He is no opponent of intellect, as his thoroughly reasoned tomes testify.546 He would have the people able to argue for the Faith within them.547 But he does not consider it just that any and every one who, like Peter Waldo, may have been stirred to sudden religious fervor by the death of a friend, or who may have

546 Blakey writes: "It must be borne in mind that the scholastic writers greatly aided the cause of religious and civil liberty and enlightenment by their claiming unreserved intellectual discussion."-The History of Political Literature, Vol. I, p. 219.

547 St. Thomas does not consider the authority of any Father, whose doctrine may be contradicted, as superior and final; but the authority of the Church. Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. X, a. 12.

conceived a brainless passion for ripping the moral, political, and social fabric, should be given a free field to contradict authorities greater than himself and accomplish chaos. The masses of the Middle Age had to be safe-guarded all the more carefully, for the fact that they could not discern the true from the false. Education was general then, as now, but very weak with youth. To Aquinas, it was a most serious matter to attack a mind incapable of defending itself; just as violence committed on the body of a child would be much more criminal than in the case of an adult. He does not aim at the limitation of anybody's right to think freely, but rather at the protection of everybody's right to the truth.

And so, secondly, he seeks the good of the many. The right of the people to the truth and to be protected in its possession, is superior to that of any individual to free speech. The question is: where and what is truth? The Angelic Doctor pointed to an authoritative, divinely instituted Church. And for him the keenest and surest intellect could not soar beyond the principles which Christ, through the living voice of His Spouse, enunciated.

Aquinas repeats Augustine, that the extreme punishment of heretics is undesirable. But as in the house of David there could be no peace until impious Absolom, warring against his own father, was removed by fate: so in Christendom calm can be secured only by the ejection of the disturber. Many may be free, when one is bound.548 Each individual has his rights; but these do not exceed the cumulative rights of the multitude and must not be sought at the expense of the whole people. True democracy does not teach that everyone should be allowed to do everything, but that verity and equity should have free access to all. Thomas takes no liberty from the people in guarding them against the enemies of the truth which makes all men free.

However, we must never forget that he was writing on this point for a world which was substantially a politico-religious unit; and, with this unique state of affairs vanished, his doctrine would not please modern mentality and sentiment. But the Church of St. Thomas realizes as well as her most intelligent

548 Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. X, a. 8, ad. 4.