and to the exterior conditions of human existence, whether proprietary, personal or marital."342 Thus St. Thomas is not faithless to democracy; in fact he is more consistent with it than many an enlightened modern.

Jourdain tells us that the Latin language had only the word "servus" to cover three different ideas: first, slavery properly socalled, or the possession of man by man; secondly, the service of the soil, which was a milder form; and thirdly, domesticity.343 This writer warrantably teaches that St. Thomas does not intend the first significance, which is paganic, so much as the other two. The Angelic Doctor uses the diction of Aristotle, but not the thought. He thinks for himself, and he is a Christian. Feugueray's complaint that the Doctor follows Aristotle and not St. Paul, and respects antiquity to the extent of forgetting Christian liberty and equality would seem unjust.344

Thus though St. Thomas did not view slaves as active citizens and parts of civil community, he granted them a passive

342 Studies, The Democracy of St. Thomas, March, 343 La Philosophie de Saint Thomas, t. I, p. 419. tions several mild significations of the word "slave." et Pacis, Bk. II, ch. V, par. XXX.

1920.

Grotius, too, men-
See De Jure Belli

344 Jourdain, p. 422. M. Delécluse (Grégoire VII, saint Francois d' Assises et saint Thomas d'Aquin, Paris, 1844, t. II, p. 421, et suiv.) is also quoted as unfavorably regarding St. Thomas' view. Both Feugueray and Delécluse measure the mind of the Angelic Doctor with the standards of a remotely modern century and fail to consider sufficiently the character of his age. They must at least admit, with Jourdain, that Aquinas did not consider slavery a political expedient, nor a means of government, and that he did cleanse the concept with Christianity. See Schwalm, Leçons de Philosophie sociale, t. I, pp. 180-181, for a clarification of Thomistic views.

Cf. Phillip's American Negro Slavery, p. 514: "The government of slaves was for the ninety and nine by men and only for the hundreth by laws. There were injustice, oppression, brutality and heart-burning in the régime, but where in the struggling word are these absent? There were also gentleness, kind-hearted friendship and mutual loyalty to a degree, hard for him to believe who regards that system with a theoristic eye and a partisan squint. For him on the other hand who has known the considerate and cordial, courteous and charming men and women, white and black, which that picturesque life in its best phases produced, it is impossible to agree that its basis and its operations were wholly evil, the law and the prophets to the contrary notwithstanding." Such is the conclusion of the latest and perhaps the ablest critique of slavery as an American fact, from a conscientious study said to cover twenty years of research. And yet, the slavery of St. Thomas' connivance was much more humane in principle than the American brand. It demanded freedom for the subject in all that pertained to the soul and to the nature of the body.

share in it and found a place for them in his broad concept of the People. He sees the People pressing upward to the heights of virtue: the best leading on; the stronger helping the weaker; the weaker supplying the stronger with ordinary needs, while the latter engage in the greater purposes of the State. When a sufficient number attain the objective, political democracy may begin; and, acordingly as those above raise up those below, it is perfect.345 St. Thomas knew that Christian endeavor would do more for democracy than a frenzied theory, whirling destruction and enkindling hate. The pure Christianity of his principles is the greatest merit of his politics and his best contribution to the cause of liberty.

Let us recall, too, that the revered pioneers of liberty in our own land took the institution of slavery for granted: and that political expediency, was a primary object of the Emancipation Proclamation of one of the kindest and fairest souls which have graced the story of America. No more may we impugn the politics of Aquinas for its tolerance of slavery than that of the leaders of American liberty; and perhaps less.

345 He does not believe, however, that the flow of democracy is to be the ebb of government. His idea is somewhat like that expressed by Dupont-White: "Quant à votre objection que la moralité croissante des hommes doit se résoudre en une reduction croissante de gouvernement, je responds que le fait d'une élit, et il ne puet devenir celui des foules que sous le poids d'une forte contrainte (here Aquinas may differ). Au début, tout progrès doit s'imposer, et ensuite, tout progrès accepté donne lieu à la conception d'un progrès nouveau parmi les natures superieures. Autrement à quoi servirait leur superiorité? Tel est le jeu des inégalités dont le monde est fait." Quoted by Laveleye, Le Gouvernement dans la Democratie, p. 35, t. I.

CHAPTER IV

RULERS

The lowest levels of civil society suggest, by contrast, the highest points. The apex of the State is its ruler.346 Authority, in the degree in which it rises up from the State, extends down through it. The democratically erect pyramid properly expresses the ideal political vision of Aquinas; not the tipsily inverted one of some other medievalists who would have God empower the one and ignore the many.

1.-ARISTOTLE'S VIEWS

In his Commentary on the Politics, Aquinas considers with Aristotle the absolute ruler and the possible unnaturalness of his position in the State. The Philosopher, however, regards the matter from the viewpoint of the Athenian democracy in which all the citizens were as nearly equal as possible and each was fitted to take active part in the administration of the government, even to the holding of public office, as appears from the custom of voting by lot. In the case of only a few military and moral positions, which required unique qualification, was there recourse to the ballot.347 He deems it unworthy that one citizen should have control over so many equals, for two reasons: first, nature requires that the same right and rank exist among equals;348 secondly, just as it is harmful for those of different physical constitutions to have to follow the same regimen, so it is wrong that those who are equal in civic merit should be unequal in civic station.349 He advances, then, that

346 St. Thomas sees the necessity of rulers in the exigencies of social life. There must be some custodian of the common good, since each one is apt to be too interested in his individual inclination and welfare. Summa Theol., 1a, qu. XCVI, a. 4. See also De Reg., Lib. I, cap. 1. 347 Cf. Philip Van Ness Myers' History of Greece, pp. 255-256, and Aristotle's Politics, III, 1, 2, 4. 348 Com. Polit., Lib. III, lec. 15. 349 Com. Polit., Lib. III, lec. 15.

law should govern, instead of any citizen.350 Whoever is appointed to office in a democracy is only a guardian or servant of the law. We shall presently see how democratically far Aquinas agrees with these statements, even when their substance is applied to kingly polity. The Philosopher expresses himself like a good medievalist when he writes that to make the law supreme means to make God likewise.351 He somewhat

sacrifices truth to fervor, however, when he adds that to entrust the sovereign power to man is to fling it to a beast. He esteems the law to represent the intellect dispassionately, and hence to be the ideal ruler; for appetites and passions sometimes vitiate the judgments of even the best of men.352 St. Thomas remembers this fact and weaves it into his treatise on rulers.

But Aristotle proposes that the law have a living exponent. Of itself, it is cold and impersonal; and its very virtues may prove defects. Perchance a man who knows the art of ruling and brings a warmth of charity, wisdom and justice, to the interpretation and application of the statute, would make the law rule much more effectively than it could by itself. As Aristotle astutely observes, the sick physician does not depend on his medical books, but calls in another brother of the profession. Too, the law is limited. It is good as far as it goes; but just exigencies and exceptions, for which it does not provide, are constantly cropping out. The human element is needed to supply the deficiencies.353 The Philosopher therefore proposes the perplexity: is it preferable that the best man should govern or the best law? St. Thomas, it will appear, opines that they should go together.

Aristotle suggests the irrationality of one-man rule with the common-place observation that a single person cannot see better with one pair of eyes, hear better with two ears, nor do better with two hands, than many can with many.354 He also offers that, since a supreme magistrate cannot possibly attend

to all his duties himself and simply has to employ several subordinates, it would have been just as reasonable to have had many rulers in the first place, instead of one.355 Again, if one man is able to rule, two would be so much more so. A brace of quotations from the Iliad-"Let two go together," and "Were ten such faithful cousellors mine own!"356 are used by the Philosopher gracefully to press this point. Finally he observes that a monarch delegates part of his power to friends; but a friend is an equal and like to his friend; if, therefore, the king concedes that his friend should govern, ipso facto he submits that those who are his equals should rule: and theoretically monarchism softens into liberalism.357

2. ST. THOMAS' VIEWS: (1) QUALIFICATIONS FOR RULERS; (2) DUTIES

It will be clear in the following pages that St. Thomas is interested in this array of observations, and that he gives them due respect in his thought on rulers. He does not appropriate them wholly, however; for they are as unusual as the Greek setting which inspired them. The Athenian democracy, with a citizenry which for equality was unique in history, had grown dim in a past which seemed wholly out of relation to the thirteenth century. Since Pericles, great historical events had wrenched the world from the classic era; and St. Thomas appeared at a time and in a locale as different from those in which Anaxagoras, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Thucydides flourished, as a star from a shadow. The city-state had now expanded to a kingdom. The people were not severely separated into the ruling and the enslaved classes, but degrees were present between and, in evidence of evolution, were continually increasing.358 Proportionally, there were infinitely

355 Ibidem.

356 Iliad, X, 224, and II, 371.

357 Com. Polit., Lib. III, cap. 15.

358 Rickaby, Political and Moral Essays, p. 53: "The Greek City State was fullblown, and had no future before it: while the large and cumbrous masses, of medievalism had in them the potency of the modern world, a world at once better and worse than the medieval, but anyhow more vast, more complex, and more marvelous."