If Aquinas is evidently embarrassed in his attempt to
combine the free politics which he read in the Greek
examples with the existing specimens of monarchy in his
own time, a difficulty which comes out curiously when
finds himself compelled to restrict citizenship to the
soldiery and officers of government, he makes amends by
the clear and philosophic conception he forms of the
nature of the state and of the sovereign s ideal relation
to it. He rejects the popular spiritual view which from
Gregory the Seventh to Wycliffe regarded civil association
as a consequence of the fall of man.[1] Without the fall,
he says, there would have been no slavery; but man s
social instincts are an essential part of his constitution.
He cannot live alone as the beasts, nor is he like them
provided with, or capable of supplying, the necessaries of
life. He subsists by association and cooperation, and out
of this need arises the necessity for a state, to unite and
control individual action. The unity of society expressed
in the formation of the state is given effect to in the
person of the ruler. Following out this idea of the state
as an organised unity, representing humanity in all its
Baumann properties and therefore having snot only an economical
but also a moral aim, Aquinas is able to arrive at some
political results which are remarkably accordant with
> ibid., pp. i 44 modern theories. Foremost among these is h his distinct
preference for nationality, involving community of manners
and customs,[2] as the basis of a state, a principle which
helps him to the conclusion that * small states are a priori
better than large ones. Nor can we omit to note the
emphasis with which Thomas maintains that k it is the
duty of the state to provide for the education of all its
- ↑ In the Secunda secundae x. 10 fol. 30, he says Dorainium vel praelatio introducta est [ed. sunt] ex iure humano : distinctio autem fidelium et infidelium est ex iure divino. lus autem divinum quod est ex gratia, non tollit ius humanum quod est ex naturali ratione.
- ↑ Neither in Aquinas nor in John of Paris, whose views on this point agree with his (see his treatise De potestate regia et papali iii, M. Goldast, Monarchia s. Romani Imperil 2. Ill, Frank furt 1614 folio), do I find any notice of the advantage of a common language.
