Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/657



Now we shall speak of the arguments of Albertus Magnus, a doctor; they too, will leave us disconsolate. He says that in our time there was born from our disputations, in the depths of an abyss that is, in the depths of the devil's snares, a small frog which has the audacity to croak against the justice and the law of God, and to assume that it is in no wise and for no reason permissible to kill a man. Not only must they who refuse to do justice be chastised and called unjust, but also they must be punished and called enemies of justice. Therefore justice and discipline must muster all strength and power and arm itself against injustice and lack of discipline.

And Master Albertus goes into great details in his arguments against the little frog whose croaking is so dis- Albertus Magnus ( 1206?–1280), a German scholastic doctor and Dominican. He taught in various German towns, especially at Cologne, and at the University of Paris. He became provincial of his order and was, for a while, bishop of Regensburg. He outlived his most famous pupil, Thomas Aquinas. He published twenty-one folio volumes. He took as his special task the writing of commentaries on all the works of Aristotle; in addition he compiled extensive works on geography, botany, and zoology: His treatise on plants and animals is, according to Singer (,, New York: 1928), the best work on natural history in the Middle Ages. This "Doctor Universalis" became the authority for the thirteenth century.

224*