incitement and satisfaction to at least the minds of his auditors. Albert, with his mass of but half-conquered material, could not fail to show, whether he would or not, the doubt-breeding difficulties of the new philosophy, which was yet to be worked into Christian theology. Thomas exposed every difficulty and revealed its depths; but then he solved and adjusted everything with an argumentation from whose careful inclusiveness no questions strayed unshepherded. Placed with Thomas, Albert shows as the Titan whose strength assembles the materials, while Thomas is the god who erects the edifice. The material that Thomas works with, and many of his thoughts and arguments, are to be found in Albert; and the pupil knew his indebtedness to the great master, who survived him to defend his doctrines. But what is not in Albert, is Thomas, Thomas himself, with his disentangled reasoning, his clarity, his organic exposition, his final construction of the mediaeval Christian scheme.[1]
In the third book of his Summa philosophica contra Gentiles, and in the beginning of Pars prima secundae of his Summa theologiae, Thomas expounds man's final end, ultimus finis, which is his supreme good or perfect beatitude. The exposition in the former work, dating from the earlier years of the author's academic activities, seems the simpler at first reading; but the other includes more surely Thomas's last reasoning, placed in the setting of argument and relationship which he gave it in his greatest work. We shall follow the latter, borrowing, however, from the former when its phrases seem to present the matter more aptly to our non-scholastic minds. The general position of the topic is the same in both Summae; and Thomas gives the reason in the Prologus to Pars prima secundae of the Summa theologiae. His way of doing this is significant:
"Man is declared to be made in the image of God in this
- ↑ One may see the truth of this by comparing the treatment of a matter in Albert's Summa theologiae with the corresponding sections in Thomas. For example, compare Albert's Summa theol. prima, Tract, vii. Quaest. xxx.-xxxiii., on generatio, processio, missio of the divine persons, with Thomas, Sum. theol. prima, Quaest. xxvii. and xliii.
