clouded views on the subject of sovereignty and the primacy of the people.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, shocked with the spectacle of revolution which brought the age of the Encyclopedists to a tragic end, witnessed a certain reaction against the Thomistic-Suarezian tidings of popular sovereignty. Distorted and abused by Rousseau, it had served for woe as well as for weal. Yet, in its original Scholastic character, it was as stimulating as noble, and as safe as an incorrect conception of it was dangerous. In the clearer atmosphere of our own day, this appears; and we are in a position mildly to criticize the methc by which fervent but fearful thinkers, even up to the close of the last century, have sought to minimize the multitude. De Maistre and de Bonald behold God as determining the subject of power by directing both history and the human will.251 Which would be an ill answer to the question, why has the Deity endowed people with intellects and wills of their own? And, on the other hand, to attribute a Caligula or a Nero to the direct operation of God would be beyond the bounds of reason and reverence; but such a course seems unavoidable with such a premise. It is meet to charge up the mistakes of history to humanity; and that the people are permitted to choose badly, or to tolerate unwisely, is at least an evidence that they have the power of choosing and of tolerating. Having that, how could they have lacked authority? No one gave more humble cognizance to the pervasion of God's influence in the universe than he who was called "no less the most learned among the saints than the most saintly among the learned." Yet the tenor of the politics of Aquinas is quite apart from these Maistre and Bonald convictions.

Taparelli, like St. Thomas, considers ability and fitness (virtus) the title to power. Even though requiring that the people accord their consent, however, he denies that they have the primal power.252 Since he goes so far, one cannot but see and wish that with a mere touch from the De Legibus of the illus

251 See Crahay, op. cit., p. 62, and Vareilles-Sommières, op. cit., pp. 407-418. 252 See Vareilles-Sommières, op. cit., pp. 433-439; and Macksey, Sovereignty and Consent, p. 26.

trious Jesuit opponent of King James, or the Summa of Aquinas, he might go a bit further. Since it was easy for a monk of the thirteenth century to be so democratic, even in Italy, it ought not to have been too difficult for a keen scholar of the nineteenth, expressing Catholic thought, to be at least equally so, and to distinguish more clearly between the merit and the abuse of popular theory.

M. de Vareilles-Sommières teaches that political power does not come from the people, because no individual originally is invested with it, and hence it is the category of res nullius.253 But what belongs to no one, can be justly possessed by anyone who finds and takes it. Power then goes naturally him who is superior in force, aptitude, or merit; for he is the one to meet and keep it.

The defect in this thesis seems to be that power, expressly according to Suarez and implicitly according to St. Thomas, is not res nullius.254 It is the property of the community. Varielles-Sommières may regard the proposition ultra that the multitude could possibly command and obey itself, as a primary tenure of power would entail. He merely proposes a fact and a necessity which St. Thomas recognized: that authority is alienable.255 Furthermore, the people formed civil society not to obey themselves but the commands of reason; in other words, to lead a more rational and hence more profitable existence. Thus the Scholastic concept gives to authority "a local habitation and a name:" while Vareilles-Sommières imagines it as a vague something floating aimlessly about somewhere

253 Op. cit., p. 210.

254 With regard to possession, St. Thomas holds that the community is prime (jus naturale); the right of private possession is conditioned by reason and enactment (secundum humanum condictum), and is therefore jus positivum. (Summa, 2a 2ae, qu. LXVI, a. II, ad 1). Here he is speaking of property; but his idea would apparently be likewise in the case of power.

255 Burri, La Teorie politche di San Tommaso, p. 51. One gathers from the De Reg., Lib. III, cap 4, that this alienation is less necessary according as three virtues are present throughout the State: love of country, zeal for justice, and warmth of civil benevolence. The writer claims that these "meruerunt dominium." We have but to refer back to the observation of both Aristotle and Aquinas that there are more of such virtues in the many than in the few or in the individual; and so can we clearly see the natural seat of power.

somehow. Of these two views, it is easy to judge which is the more natural and the more acceptable to a rational doctrine of State.

The contrast of Aquinas with modern thinkers, therefore, is apt to disclose strikingly the quality and quantity of his democracy. More justification for modern political programs may be found in his writings than in many a nineteenth-century

tome.

CHAPTER III

THE PEOPLE

1.-MEANING OF THE WORD WITH ARISTOTLE, ST. THOMAS, AND MODERNS

Now that we have traced power to its primary source in the doctrine of St Thomas, it is of interest to ascertain what and whom be understood by "the people." First one should gaze into the mind of his Master. Aristotle identifies the People with the citizenry and characterizes a citizen as one who has some share in the government.256 Children, criminals, and slaves are not in this category. They are wanting in qualification, mental or moral, for the necessary participation in affairs of State. Sojourners, too, are barred; for their contribution to the community is incomplete. The aged are beyond politics, being past service. Women are not mentioned; possibly because the Philosopher is impressed with a line from Sophocles which he sees fit to quote: "Silence is a woman's ornament.' In the Grecian democracy, where the individual's tongue was as essential as his brain, a member of the gentle sex, if silent, would be unserviceable, and, if natural, would be shocking.

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In his definition of a citizen, Aristotle, despite his narrow use of the word, has a democracy in mind, and says so. One could not carp at his exclusion of boys, degenerates, and helots from citizenship; resentment, however, may be stirred by his expressed attitude against old men and his implied political suppression of all women; and resentment can become irritation in the modern mind when, almost with the same breath in which his proclamation of democracy sounds, he calmly questions the inclusion of mechanics as citizens. For him, these were what the great industrial and self-supporting class are for us. He mentions without criticism and, it seems, with commendation,

256 Politics, III, 1. Com. Polit., Lib. III, lec. 4 257 Politics, I, 13.

He

a law at Thebes, whereby no one might share in the government before having retired from gainful labor for ten years.258 observes that in the best states, laborers are political nonentities. So that, democratic as he was, it is patent that his democracy was rather a puffed aristocracy. His concession that tradesmen may be admitted to civil rights in a polity, especially if they become rich, is large 259

Still, justice to the Philosopher requires an appreciation of the reasons for his restrictions.

He saw citizenship as more than

a name. It necessitated a personal and active service in the Athenian common-wealth, where every member of the demos had a voice and used it. It demanded much more from its possessor than does modern citizenship in our mammoth democracies which the boldest Hellenic fancy would not have bodied forth and which representative government has brought. Education, in Aristotle's day, belonged only to the upper class; and, reasonably enough, he regarded only the educated fit to rule. Though a Macedonian, he apparently fostered the average Athenian's horror of hoi barbaroi and the ignorance which symbolized them. His Greek education would have been in vain, had not exclusiveness entered his concept of democracy. But he is impatient, nevertheless, as artificial standards of citizenship, and both disproves and discards the Attic idea of a citizen as a person who has at least one parent a citizen. If he exalts wealth as a requirement, it is not because of riches in themselves but by reason of the culture and leisure which they can secure and assure.

Aquinas is influenced by whatever merit these opinions of the Philosopher manifest, but he appears proof against the note of excess in them. A Christian and saint, he founds his conception of the people not on citizenry but on the divinely human value of man's nature, and, secondly, on the general purpose of the State. Civil society is the creation of reason with which every man is endowed. And it exists solely for the common good in which each individual has some part. These two prin

258 Politics, III, 5. 259 III, 5. But he also expresses a doubt with regard to the monopolization of citizenship by the rich. Com. Polit., Lib. III. lec. 1.