GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

136 ETHICS AND POLITICS : THE GREEKS
Ages, that ethics and politics have already fallen apart*
Whereas in Plato's and in Aristotle's thought civic duty
constituted an integral part of the good life for man,
whether as ruler or as citizen, in the thought of St. Thomas
civic duty is merely an incidental adjunct to man's true
welfare which is moral and spiritual, while in Dante's view
the virtues ofthe good citizen, albeit desirable in themselves,
belong to man's earthly and not to his spiritual self.
St. Thomas holds that man's spiritual life is bound up
with the development of his soul, while morals derive their
sanction from the next world. Dante admittedly writes of
the full development of man's intellectual faculties as
an end in itself, and of the State as a necessary means
to that end, but for him, too, the true home of die spirit
is elsewhere. Speaking generally, we may say that for
the Middle Ages our existence in this world and, therefore,
in the State, is looked upon as a rather discreditable
episode in the career of beings who are intended for higher
things. The fact of earthly existence is regrettable, but
only temporary. The object ofpolitics is, therefore, to organize
the collective aflairs of mankind in such a way that our
time here m&y be spent with as little temporal preoccupation
and as little spiritual danger as can be contrived.
Some may be inclined to protest that this is to over-
emphasize the neglect of political issues by
the thinkers
of the Middle Ages. Yet it is impossible to read the Schoolmen
without deriving the impression that they think of
the State and of everything connected with the State as
a niriiffliKtt, necessary no doubt, but unimportant; unimportant,
that is to say, relatively to the real business of
the individual soul which is to prepare itself for salvation.
With the coming of the Reformation, the split widened.
Man's life in the Middle Ages was at least a whole.
Christendom offered to those who were members of it
and they were practically all those who belonged to what
we should now call Western Civilization the doctrines
of a single Church, These were accepted as part of a
revelation which all acknowledged, while, in the sphere