Henry Osborn Taylor

“ From age to age the religious soul finds traces of its God in nature and in its inmost self. Its ways of finding change, varying with the prevailing currents of knowledge; yet still it ever finds these vestigia, which represent the widest deductions of its reasoning, the ultimate resultants of its thought, and its own brooding peace. Therefore may we not follow sympathetically the Itinerarium of Bonaventura’s mind as it traces the footprints of its God? Thus far the way has advanced by reason, uplifted by grace, and yet still reason. ”

“ For there is no bound to the idealizing of the love which first transfuses a youth’s nature with a mortal golden flame, and awakens it to new understanding. Out of whatever of experience of life and joy and sorrow may come to the man, this first love may still vivify itself anew—often in dreams—and become again living and beautiful, in tears, and will awaken new perceptions and disclose further vistas of the intelligenza nuova which love never ceases to impart to him who has loved. ”

“ We marvel to see a language which once had told the stately tale of Rome here lowered to fantastic incident and dull stupidity, then with almost gospel simplicity telling the moving story of some saintly life; again sonorously uttering thoughts to lift men from the earth and denunciations crushing them to hell; quivering with hope and fear and love, and chanting the last verities of the human soul. ”

“ There has never been a passion between a man and woman more famous than that which brought happiness and sorrow to the lives of Abaelard and Heloïse. Here fame is just. It was a great love, and its course was a perfect soul’s tragedy. Abaelard was a celebrity, the intellectual glory of an active-minded epoch. His love-story has done as much for his posthumous fame as all his intellectual activities. Heloïse became known in her time through her relations with Abaelard; in his songs her name was wafted far. She has come down to us as one of the world’s love-heroines. ”

“ No one versed in medicine will judge of inner disease from outward view. Thy praise is the more perilous because I love it, and desire to please thee always. Be fearful rather than confident regarding me, so that I may have the help of your care. Do not seek to spur me on, by quoting, ‘For strength is made perfect in weakness,’ or ‘He is not crowned unless he have contended lawfully.’ I am not looking for the crown of victory; enough for me to escape peril;—safer to shun peril than to wage war! In whatever little corner of heaven God puts me, that will satisfy me. ”

“ History, through the ensample which it gives of perfect men, incites the reader to the imitation of holiness; allegory, in the revelation of faith, leads to a knowledge of truth; tropology, in the instruction of morals, to a love of virtue; anagogy, in the display of everlasting joys, to a desire of eternal felicity. In the house of our soul, history lays the foundation, allegory erects the walls, anagogy puts on the roof, while tropology provides ornament, within through the disposition, without through the effect of the good work. ”

“ The joy of love, new to us both, brought no satiety. The more I was taken up with this pleasure, the less time I gave to philosophy and the schools—how tiresome had all that become! I became unproductive, merely repeating my old lectures, and if I composed any verses, love was their subject, and not the secrets of philosophy; you know how popular and widely sung these have become. But the students! what groans and laments arose from them at my distraction! A passion so plain was not to be concealed; every one knew of it except Fulbert. A man is often the last to know of his own shame. ”

“ Thus salvation not only requires the action of the whole man, but is in and of his entire nature. It presents a unity primarily because of its agreement with the will of God, and then because of its unqualified and universal insistence that it, salvation, life eternal, be set absolutely first in man’s endeavour. What indeed could be more irrational, and more loveless and faithless, than that any desire should prevail over the entire good of man and the will of God as well? Oneness and peace consist in singleness of purpose and endeavour for salvation. ”

“ There is plenty of time to save your soul.’ In such way she melts the hearts of the wanton till Cocytus’s waves engulf them suddenly tripped by death.
“They have the faces of women, because nothing so estranges man from God as the love of women. They have wings of birds, because the desire of worldlings is always unstable, their appetites now craving one thing, and again their lust flying to another object. They have also the talons of birds, because they tear their victims as they snatch them away to the torments of hell. ”

“ For thou hadst not the true odour of a philosopher so long as thou didst not cull beauty of conduct from thy philosophic knowledge. Now, as honey from the honeycomb, thou hast drawn from that a worthy rule of living. This is to gather all of thee within virtue’s boundaries, no longer huckstering with nature for thy life, but attending less to what the flesh is able for, than to what the spirit wills. This is truly to philosophize; to live thus is already to enter the fellowship of those above. ”

“ The laborious culling of twenty tomes of universal knowledge surely had the joy of knowing as the active motive. And Aquinas too; no one could be such an acquisitive and reasoning genius, without the love of knowledge in his soul. Yet Thomas never let this love point untrue to its goal of research and devotion, to wit, sacred doctrine, theology, the Christian Faith in its very widest compass, yet in its unity of saving purpose. ”

“ We have outlearned the physics, and perhaps the metaphysics of the Greeks; their knowledge of nature, in comparison with ours, was but as a genial beginning; their polities and their formal ethics we have tried and tested; but we have not risen above the power and inspiration of the story of Greece and Rome, and the exemplifications of life in the Greek and Latin Classics. It has not ceased to be true that he who best loves the Classics, and most deeply feels and glories in their unique excellence as literature, is he who still draws life from them, and discipline and knowledge. ”

“ Theology, if it be a science, is one apart from the rest. The knowledge which makes its substance is never its end, but always means to its end; which is to say, that it is practical and not speculative. By virtue of its primacy as well as character, theology pertains to the Will, and works itself out in practice: practical alike are its principles and conclusions. Apparently, with Duns, theology is a science only in this respect, that its substance, which is most rational, may be logically treated with a view to a complete and consistent understanding of it. ”

“ The mystic spirit is an essential part of all piety or religion, which relates always and forever to the rationally unknown, and therefore mysterious. Without a consciousness of mystery, there can be neither piety nor religion. Nor can there be piety without some devotion to God, nor the deepest and most ardent forms of piety, without fervent love of God. This devotion and this love supply strength of conviction, creating a realness of communion with the divine, and an assurance of the soul’s rest and peace therein. But that the intellect has part, Hugo abundantly demonstrates. ”

“ There may be a direct and simple love of God for simple souls; but for the man of mind, knowledge precedes love.
“In two ways God dwells in the human heart, to wit, through knowledge and through love; yet the dwelling is one, since every one who knows Him, loves, and no one can love without knowing. Knowledge through cognition of the Faith erects the structure; love through virtue, paints the edifice with colour.” [498] ”

“ After the Lady’s answering benediction, there comes to Dante, in grace, the final mystic vision of the Trinity, enfolding all existence—substance, accidents and their modes, bound with love in one volume. Supreme dogmatic truth is set forth, and the furthest strainings of reason are stilled in supersensual and super-rational vision, which satisfies all intellectual desire. This vision, vouchsafed through the Virgin’s grace, assures the pilgrim soul: the goal is reached alike of knowledge and salvation. ”

“ Yet few of those who have been touched by her story have known that Heloïse was a great woman, possessed of an admirable mind, a character which proved its strength through years, and, above all, a capacity for loving—for loving out to the full conclusions of love’s convictions, and for feeling in their full range and power whatever moods and emotions could arise from an unhappy situation and a passion as deeply felt as it was deeply thought upon. ”

“ Knowing and willing are faculties or properties of the soul. The will is purely spiritual, and to be distinguished from sense-appetite: the will, and the will alone, is free; absolutely undetermined by any cause beyond itself. Even the intellect, that is the knowing faculty, is determined from without. Although some cognition precedes the act of willing, the will is not determined by cognition, but uses it. So the will, being free, is higher than the intellect. It is the will that constitutes man’s greatness; it raises him above nature, and liberates him from her coercions. ”

“ This is the holy error and blessed deception between man and wife, when affection perfect and unimpaired keeps marriage inviolate not so much by continency of body as by chastity of mind. But what with other women is an error, is, in my case, the manifest truth: since what they suppose in their husbands, I—and the whole world agrees—know to be in thee. My love for thee is truth, being free from all error. Who among kings or philosophers can vie with your fame? ”

“ Even as things have being in matter or nature, they have also being in the anima through its acquired knowledge; they have also being in the anima through grace, also through glory; and they have also being in the way of the eternal—in arte aeterna. Philosophy treats of things as they are in nature, or in the anima according to the knowledge which is naturally implanted or acquired. But theology as a science (scientia) founded upon faith and revealed by the Holy Spirit, treats of those matters which belong to grace and glory and to the eternal wisdom. ”

“ In Bacon’s time, the love of knowledge was enlarging its compass, while, really or nominally as the individual case might be, the criterion of relevancy to the Faith still obtained, and set the topics with which men should occupy themselves. All matters of philosophy or natural science had to relate themselves to the summum bonum of salvation in order to possess ultimate human interest. Therefore, if philosophy was to preserve the strongest reason for its existence, it had to remain the handmaid of theology. ”

“ Hugo is an instance of the intellectual nature which will not rest in reason’s province, but feels equally impelled to find expression for matters that either exceed the mind, or do not altogether belong to it. Such an intellect is impelled to formulate its convictions in regard to these; its negative conviction that it cannot comprehend them, and why it cannot; and its more positive conviction of their value—of the absolute worth of God, and of man’s need of Him, and of the love and fear by which men may come close to Him, or avoid His wrath. ”

“ There were in you two qualities by which you could draw the soul of any woman, the gift of poetry and the gift of singing, gifts which other philosophers have lacked. As a distraction from labour, you composed love-songs both in metre and in rhyme, which for their sweet sentiment and music have been sung and resung and have kept your name in every mouth. Your sweet melodies do not permit even the illiterate to forget you. Because of these gifts women sighed for your love. ”

“ When the mind is crazed against God it will not placate Him with prayer so much as irritate Him with complaints. We could only weep, pressing to follow rather than bury you. How could we live after we had lost our life in you? The thought of your death is death to us; what would be the actuality? God grant we shall not have to pay those rites to one from whom we look for them; may we go before and not follow! A heart crushed with grief is not calm, nor is a mind tossed by troubles open to God. ”

“ For if single goods are objects of delight, consider intently how delightful is that good which contains the joy of all goods; and not such as in things created we have tried, but differing as greatly as differs the Creator from the creature. For if life created is good, how good is the life creatrix! If joyful is the salvation wrought, how joyful is the salvation which wrought all salvation! If lovely is wisdom in the knowledge of things created, how lovely is the wisdom which created all from nothing. ”