The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-03-20

Ut was AIDerCuS MagnuS VINO IlrSC
4 undertook the task Of coordinat-
ing the varied works of Aristotle
into an encyclopedia of Catholic
learning. Albert was q scholar and
saint, a man whose greatness be-
came almost part of his name, one
of those geniuses whose scope is
equalled only by their modesty.
Born in 1893 of a noble q. e. con-
genitally wealthy Swabian family
he abandoned his inheritance as
Count of Bollstadt, joined the Do
minican order, came to Paris in
1923, taught there in that Rue
Maitre Albert near Notre Dance g..
which still bears his name, and
then passed on to lecture at Cologne
whence his fame spread to all the
Christian world
Through his long life Of honor
and achievement, as philosopher,
Provincial, and Bishop of Regens-
burg, he persisted in the poverty and
simplicity of the early monks; he
held nothing as his own, not even
his manuscripts, and walked bare
footed on his journeys through the
vast bishopric he ruled.
For fifty years he held to his pur-
pose, to reduce all Christian knowl-
edge to orderly and consistent form,
with Aristotle as his guide; it is a
sign of the hold which the Stacy
rite yet had upon the philosophic
mind that Santayana, in our own
time, has modestly limited his own
majestically- phrased philosophy to
the application Of Aristotle to the
problems of our day.
Here, in Albertus: Opera, or
Works, we find everything; in the
first volume, logic; in the second,
physics, astronomy. NEUROLOGY and
mineralogy; in the third metaphy-
sizes; in the fourth, ethics and poll
tics; in the fifth, psychology and
vegetables de vegetabilibus-let us
say, with more dignity, treatise on
botany; then several volumes Of
commentaries on the Bible; then
two volumes on theology, one "On
the Creation" and one on the Vir-
gin Mary.
No man has read them all, except
perhaps in Dominican loyalty; and
the reader does not have to be told
that he need not read them now.
They belong to another World-as
great as ours. but unintelligibly diff
ferent; and in all those patiently
accumulated tones only three words
concern us: "Experimentum solum
certificat" -(Only experiment can
give certainty
Far off in England, in a Fran
ciscan monastery, another monk,
called Roger, would soon say the
same thing; not in sentence lost
in twenty volumes, but with pas
sionate iteration that would shake
the world.
II. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
THOUGH Albert did not himself
l. follow the clear principles
which he laid down, it was good to
have it uttered; and though his
philosophy followed Aristotle's Slav-
ishly, it was invaluable that once
again a man should reason, and
raise in the minds of Christians the
hope that their faith might bear the
sharpest scrutiny of knowledge.
Bonaventure might carry on An
selm's hope that men would believe
even where they could not under
stand; but Thomas of Aquin would
come forth boldly and undertake,
with reason alone, to prove every
Christian doctrine to the heaten
world.
This was the historic role of
scholasticism: that it would try by
reason to demonstrate the Faith,
and so, by failing, liberate reason to
try in its turn to build a civiliza-
ton. Abelard was to win after all.
The greatest of the scholaSticS
was born near Monte Casino, in
southern Italy, in the year 1925. His
father was the Count of Aquinum,
and his mother too was of aristo-
cratic lineage, having in her the
blood of Norman princes of Sicily.
His family ragged when he joined
the Domiricans; they had hoped
that he would be another count,
and not disgrace the family by be-
coming philosopher A monk at
10, at 20 he was assistant to Albert
at Cologne; and Albert's nobility
never shGne SO brightly as in the
love which he bore to his pupil even