Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/232

214 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. 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 properties and therefore having not only an economical but also a moral aim, Aquinas is able to arrive at some political results which are remarkably accordant with modern theories. Foremost among these is his distinct preference for nationality, involving community of manners and customs, 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 it is the duty of the state to provide for the education of all its