INTRODUCTION
There should be little need
of apologizing for a new translation into
English of Saint
Bonaventura's "Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum," for it has
been recognized by all
serious historians of philosophy as one of the
shorter masterpieces of
medieval philosophy. It sets forth in very few
pages a whole system of
metaphysics; it illustrates a philosophical method;
it typifies the thinking of
one of the great monastic orders of the West;
it stands at the beginning
of Renaissance science as one of those documents
in which the future can be
seen in germ. Besides its importance as an
outstanding work in
metaphysics, a work comparable to Descartes' "Discourse
on Method," Leibniz's
Monadology, or Hume's "Enquiry" in its compactness
and suggestiveness, it
represents a strain of medieval thought which has
been too much neglected
since the publication of "Aeterni Patris," in 1879.
That encyclical with its
emphasis upon Thomism has given many people, both
Catholic and non-Catholic,
the impression that the philosophy of Saint
Thomas Aquinas is the
"official" philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church.
The result of this
miscomprehension has been disparagement of writings
other than Thomistic. Yet
even in the thirteenth century Catholic
philosophers were far from
being in agreement, either on matters of
doctrine or method. One has
only to mention such figures as Alexander of
Hales, the master of Saint
Bonaventura; Roger Bacon; and the various monks
of Saint Victor, to realize
that the confusion and disagreement which
certain writers of today
find in our own time were just as characteristic
of a period to which they
refer as one of universal concord.
The metaphysical point of
view of Saint Bonaventura can be traced back to
Plotinus, if not to Philo.
Fundamental to his whole system is that fusion
of the three hierarchies of
Neo-Platonism: the hierarchy of logical
classes, that of values,
and that of reality. Elementary students of logic
are accustomed to the
doctrine that individuals can be grouped into classes
which belong to certain
species; that these species are again susceptible
to classification in
certain genera; that these are capable of being
grouped into still larger
orders and families, until we come to the class
which includes all other
classes and which is usually called being. This
hierarchy of classes in the
textbooks of classical logic is called the Tree
of Porphyry. In
non-philosophic work we find the same sort of thing
illustrated in the Linnaean
classification of plants and animals. The
higher up one goes in this
hierarchy, the more inclusive are one's classes.
Thus the class of
vertebrates is more inclusive than the class of mammals,
and the class of animals is
more inclusive than the class of vertebrates.
If we assume, as most
classical writers did, that such a classification
reproduces the structure of
reality, that classes are ordained by God and
are not simply convenient
groupings made by man for his own purposes, then
we can see in this order of
beings a scale of creatures which might be
thought of as a map of all
things, a tree not only of life but of all
existence. But an added
assumption is usually introduced into the
discussion at this point,
the assumption of both Plotinus and Saint
Bonaventura, that the more
general a class, the more real and the better.
This assumption may be
argued, but one can at least imagine why someone
contemplating this
arrangement of classes within other classes, running
from the least inclusive to
the most inclusive, would maintain that there
was logical priority in the
more general. For before one can define, let us
say, man as a rational
animal, it would be necessary to know the definition
of "animal"; and
before one could define "animality," one would have to
know the definition of
"living matter." This logical order of priority and
posteriority might be
thought of as corresponding in some mysterious way -
and it has remained
mysterious to this day - to some relationship in the
order of reality. The
problem was to discover precisely what this
relationship was.
Plotinus answered the
question by the invention of a basic metaphor. The
universe was subject to
something which he called "emanation." The lower
classes flowed out of the
upper classes as light flowed from a candle. Such
metaphors have been of the
greatest influence in the history of thought,
both philosophic and
scientific. Thus we have had such figurative terms as
"affinity" in
chemistry, or the "life force" in biology, or the "life cycle
of a nation" in
history, terms which were taken literally by some people
but which upon scrutiny
turned out to be figures of speech. In Plotinus'
case there is little doubt
that he believed emanation to be literal truth;
though when he came to
explain how lower orders emanated from higher, he
could do it only by means
of a more elaborate figure of speech or by having
recourse to what he thought
of as a law of nature, namely, that all things
produced something and that
what they produced was always "lower" than they
themselves. Thus, Being
produced the kinds of Being, and each kind produced
less inclusive kinds; and
so on down to the smallest classes in which
individual things were
comprised.
This hierarchy of Being appears
throughout the work of Saint Bonaventura,
though he did not derive it
immediately from Plotinus. It had become a
medieval commonplace which
few were willing to question. And yet he could
not accept the whole theory
of emanation, since he was bound by his
religious faith to believe
in actual creation out of nothing. The God of
Plotinus was The One from
whom everything flowed like light; the God of
Saint Bonaventura was the
personal God of Genesis. His metaphysical problem
was to accommodate one to
the other. This accommodation appears most
clearly in the fifth
chapter of the "Itinerarium."
The second hierarchy which
was fused with the logical hierarchy was that of
value. There is no purely
logical reason why the general should be any
better than the particular,
though there are good traditional grounds for
thinking so. Plato,
Aristotle, the Neo-Platonists, and even the Stoics had
a tendency to confuse
goodness with the ideal or the general. In ancient
Pagan thought, there was a
standard belief that no particular was ever a
perfect exemplification of
its class - no triangle made of matter being a
perfect geometrical
triangle, no human being a perfectly rational animal,
no work of art a perfect
realization of the artist's idea. Arguing in this
way, one could see that no
species would ever perfectly exemplify its
genus, no genus its higher
order, and so on. Hence the process "downward"
from Being was
degeneration. When one stops to think that the Christian
religion insisted upon
man's nature as having been vitiated by sin - sin
which, though committed by
our primordial parents, was nevertheless
inherited by us - one can
also see why, to a Christian, the fusion of the
logical and the
value-hierarchy was natural enough. We still look in vain
for the perfect
exemplification of animal and vegetable species, though we
are inclined to believe
that the species is an ideal formed for
intellectual purposes, and
not to be expected to exist in anything other
than scientific books and
articles. But to a Christian thinker of the type
of Saint Bonaventura, the
species and genera were the ideas of God in
accordance with which He
had created the world. It is they which are
responsible for the orderliness
of the universe; they are sometimes called
by the Stoic term, seminal
reasons. In the nineteenth century, when men
were as impressed by the
regularity of scientific laws as they had been in
the thirteenth, people like
Lord Russell found a religious satisfaction in
contemplating them, the
only difference being that Lord Russell did not use
the Stoic term; nor did he
think of scientific laws as the ideas in the
mind of God. If permanence
and invariability are marks of goodness, then
indeed the more general the
law, or the more inclusive the idea, the
better. And since the most
general and inclusive term is without question
the term "Being,"
it would follow that "Being" was the best of all things.
In the sixth chapter of the
"Itinerarium," in which Saint Bonaventura
discusses "Good"
as the name of God, the importance of this fusion appears
most clearly.
The third hierarchy, as we
have said, was that of reality. In common speech
we are accustomed to think
of particular things in this material world of
time and space as more real
than ideas, or logical classes, or mathematical
concepts, such as circles
and triangles. We should, if untutored in the
history of philosophy,
think that a given man, George Washington or Abraham
Lincoln, was more real than
the idea of mankind though it is doubtful
whether we should proceed
to maintain that the idea of "rational animal" is
more real than that of
"animal." The fundamental question for a philosopher
is what we mean by the
adjective "real" and whether we should give it a
meaning such that it may be
used in the comparative and superlative
degrees. Saint Bonaventura
was far from being unique in thinking that this
adjective was comparable;
indeed such modern thinkers as Hegel and his
followers seemed to have
taken that for granted. In any event Saint
Bonaventura did believe in
its comparability, and he identified the
hierarchy of reality with
those of logic and value.
This fusion of hierarchies lies
behind the whole method of thinking which
is illustrated by the
"Itinerarium," and it must be accepted by a reader
who wishes to study the
work sympathetically. But along with this
metaphysical matrix a
certain philosophical method is to be found which is
of particular importance in
studying this work. That method is resident in
a theory of knowledge which
makes true knowledge a matter of inspection, of
seeing. We all have to
believe that certain ideas must be taken for
granted, whether they are
the postulates of a system of geometry which we
accept merely for the
purpose of deducing their consequences or whether
they are the simple matters
of perceptual fact which we are likely to call
the truths of observation.
Again, when we deduce a conclusion from a set of
premises, as in a simple
syllogism or a bit of arithmetical reasoning, how
do we know that the
conclusion is not merely logically entailed in the
premises, but true also to
fact? Cardinal Newman, in his "Grammar of
Assent," distinguished
between what he called "real assent" and "notional
assent" - the former
being the assent which we give to propositions of
existence or, roughly,
fact; the latter, that which we give to the logical
conclusions. Thus the
following syllogism is logically accurate, but no one
would believe in the truth
of its conclusion:
1. All triangles are plane
figures.
2. John Doe is a triangle.
3. John Doe is a plane
figure.
We should be obligated to
maintain that the conclusion followed from the
premises, but we would not
give real assent to it nevertheless. Just what
do we mean by real assent,
and how does it arise?
The most obvious case of
real assent occurs in the acceptance of the truths
of observation. If someone
is asked why he thinks sugar is sweet, he will
tell you that it is because
he has tasted it. If someone asks why a person
believes that the sky is
blue, he will be told that the person has looked
and seen. Sensory
observation looks like simple and direct and
incontrovertible knowledge.
It is not quite so simple and direct and
incontrovertible as used to
be thought, but we are dealing with the common-
sense point of view here,
and from that it has all these traits. Throughout
the "Itinerarium"
Saint Bonaventura emphasizes that knowledge in the last
analysis comes down to
seeing, to contemplation, to a kind of experience in
which we know certain
things to be true without further argument or
demonstration. On the
lowest level, this occurs in sensory observation, on
the highest in the mystic
vision.
Along with this insistence
on direct experience as the source of all truth
runs a practice which goes
back at least to Philo-Judaeus in the Hebraic-
Christian tradition: the
practice of the allegorical method. In Philo, who
was mainly interested in
the Pentateuch, the allegorical method was
employed in interpreting
Scripture. It was believed by him that if every
verse in the Bible was
accepted literally, then we should have to believe
things which were contrary
to reason. Thus we should have to believe that
God, Who is not in space,
actually walked in the Garden of Eden; that He
spoke as human beings speak
with a physical voice; that He literally
breathed into Adam the
breath of life as we breathe our breath into
things.[1] But to
hold such beliefs is to deny the spirituality and ubiquity
of God, and that is
repugnant to our religious and philosophical theories.
Consequently Philo
maintained that these and similar texts must be
interpreted allegorically,
and he naturally believed that he had the key to
the allegory. Similarly the
"Itinerarium," which begins as a meditation
upon the vision which Saint
Francis had on Mount Alverna, continues as an
interpretation in
philosophical terms, not only of the vision itself, but
also of certain passages in
Exodus and Isaiah in which details of the
vision are paralleled. The
Seraph which Saint Francis saw, and which had
three pairs of wings, has
to be interpreted as a symbol of a philosophical
and religious idea. The
wings become stages in the process of the mind's
elevation to God, and their
position on the body of the Seraph indicates
the heights of the stages.
Furthermore, it will be seen that even the
physical world itself
becomes a sort of symbol of religious ideas. This was
in keeping with many
traditions which were common in the Middle Ages - ideas
that appeared in the
Bestiaries and Lapidaries, and which we retain in
weakened form in some of
our pseudoheraldic symbols, such as the Eagle, the
Lion, and the Olive Branch;
or the use of certain colors, such as blue for
hope, white for purity, red
for passion. Among these more popular symbols
was that of the macrocosm
and the microcosm, according to which a human
being exactly mirrored the
universe as a whole, so that one could pass from
one to the other and find
corresponding parts and functions. Much of this
was undoubtedly fortified
by Saint Francis' fashion of humanizing natural
objects - the sun, the
birds, the rain, and so on - in his talks and poems.
Few, if any, of the saints
seem to have felt such an intimate relationship
with the physical world as
the founder of the Order to which Saint
Bonaventura belonged.
The full effect of this
appears in the first chapter of the "Itinerarium,"
in which we are told that
God may be seen in His traces in the physical
world. This is the basis of
what sometimes is called natural theology; for
if we can actually see the
traces of God about us in the order of natural
law, then we have a start
toward knowledge of the divine mind which is
sure. It is only a start,
Saint Bonaventura maintains, but it is the proper
start. It means that one
does not have to be a great rationalist, an
erudite theologian, a
doctor, to know religious truths. One has only to
look about one and observe
that certain laws obtain; that there is order;
that all things are
"disposed in weight, number, and measure." This can be
seen; and when it is seen,
one has a reflection of the divine mind in one's
sensory experience. One has
only to contrast this with the method of Saint
Thomas Aquinas in the
"Summa Theologica," in which God's existence is
proved by a series of
rational arguments - where objections are analyzed,
authorities are consulted
and weighed, multiple distinctions are made, and
the whole emphasis is upon
reason rather than observation. Saint
Bonaventura seems to have
as his purpose a demonstration of God's existence
and of His traits which is
not irrational but nonrational. That is, he
would be far from saying
that his conclusions would not stand up under
rational criticism, but
would insist that his method, to use modern
language, is empirical
rather than rational. To take a trivial example from
another field, we could
prove that a person had committed a crime either by
circumstantial evidence or
by direct testimony. If we can produce two or
three persons who actually
saw him commit the crime, we do not feel that we
must corroborate what they
say by a rational demonstration that he could
have committed it, that he
had a motive for committing it, that he
threatened to commit it,
that no one else could have committed it, and so
on. We like to think that a
good case gives us both kinds of evidence, but
frequently we have to be satisfied
with one type or bits of both types.
Saint Bonaventura might be
compared to the man who insists on direct
testimony; Saint Thomas to
him who puts his trust exclusively in
circumstantial evidence,
though the comparison would be superficial. It
would be superficial since
both would agree that God's existence could be
shown in both ways.
The method of direct
observation by which one is made certain of one's
beliefs leads step by step
to the mystic vision. The mystic, like the
strict empiricist, has a
kind of knowledge which is indisputable. No one
can deny what the mystic
sees any more than one can deny what the sensory
observer sees. The
philosopher who bases all knowledge upon the direct
observation of colors,
sounds, shapes, and so on, has knowledge which he
readily admits is
uncommunicable, in spite of the fact that most of us use
words for our elementary
sensations in the same ways. But whether John Doe,
who is looking upon a patch
of red, sees precisely what Richard Roe sees,
could be doubted and has
been doubted. For the psychological equipment, the
sensory apparatus of the
two men may and probably does contribute something
to even the most simple
sensory experiences. If Messrs. Doe and Roe are
exactly alike in all
relevant ways, then one may reasonably conclude that
their sensations are
exactly alike. But nevertheless Roe would not be
having Doe's sensation, for
each man is the terminus of causal events which
diverge from a given point
and which cease to be identical once they have
entered the human body Thus
a bell may be ringing and therefore giving off
air waves. When these air
waves enter the body of Roe, they are no longer
the same waves which have
entered the body of Doe for Roe's auditory
nerves, no matter how similar
to Doe's, are not existentially identical
with them. If we
distinguish between existential and qualitative identity,
and we all do, then we may
say that Doe and Roe have qualitatively
identical but existentially
nonidentical sensations. Until Roe can hear
with Doe's ears and
auditory nerves and auditory brain centers, he will
never experience Doe's
auditory sensations. Similarly with the mystic
vision. If one man has such
a vision, he is not made uneasy the fact that
another does not have it.
The other man has only to follow the discipline
which will lead him to it.
Saint Bonaventura traces the steps on this road,
one by one, until he
reaches his goal.
The mysticism of Saint
Bonaventura was peculiar in that it was based on a
theory of knowledge in
which all degrees of knowledge were similarly
direct, immediate, and
nonrational. One sees God's traces in the sensory
world; one sees His image
in the mind; one sees His goodness in human
goodness; one sees His
powers in the operations of our own powers - it is
always a question of direct
seeing. Thus we have the possibility of real,
rather than notional,
assent in all fields of knowledge. We are not forced
to know about things; we
can know them. We have, to use other familiar
terms, direct acquaintance
with, rather than descriptions of, them. In
other words, there is never
any real need for rational discourse, for
erudition. The simplest man
of good will can see God as clearly as the most
learned scholar. That made
a philosophy such as this a perfect instrument
for the Christian, for
throughout the Christian tradition ran a current of
anti-intellectualism.
Christianity was held to be a religion, not merely a
body of abstract knowledge.
It was an experience as well as a theory. A man
of faith could have as
certain knowledge of God as the man of learning.
This did not discourage the
Christian from attempting to build up rational
systems which would
demonstrate to the world of scholars what the religious
man knew by faith. Far from
it. But what Kant was to say of the
relationship between
concepts and precepts, the Christian could have said
of that between faith and
reason, or religion and philosophy: faith without
reason is blind, reason without
faith empty.
The difficulty with the
extremists who maintained that either one or the
other faculty was
sufficient was that faith and reason were both supposed
to assert something.
Whether you believed by faith or by reason, you
believed in ideas which
presumably made sense, could be stated in words,
could be true or false. If
you believed in one of these truths by faith,
without reason, you were in
the position of a man who had no knowledge of
what he was believing nor
why, nor even whether there was any good reason
for believing in it rather
than its contradictory. It was all very well for
a man like Tertullian to
maintain that there was more glory in believing
something irrational -
inept - than in believing something demonstrably true.
Most Christian philosophers
were anxious to put a sound rational
underpinning beneath their
beliefs. Similarly, if you had only rational
knowledge, you were like a
blind man who might be convinced that there were
such things as colors,
analogous to sounds and odors, but who had no direct
acquaintance with them; or
again like a man who had read an eloquent
description of a great
painting, but who had never seen it. Though all
Christians were in the
position of maintaining that there were some
beliefs, those in the
mysteries, which could not be rationally
demonstrated, nevertheless
they all, including Saint Bonaventura, pushed
their rational
demonstrations as far as they were able. Thus Saint
Bonaventura goes so far as
to attempt a dialectical proof of the dogma of
the Trinity (Ch. VI),
though he realizes that such a proof is not
sufficient for religion.
It is worth pointing out
that Franciscan philosophy as a whole tended to
put more emphasis upon the observation
of the natural world than its great
rival, Thomism, did. Even
in the "Little Flowers" of Saint Francis, only in
a remote sense of the word
a philosophical work, there is a fondness for
what we call Nature which
led him at times close to heresy. Later there
were Franciscans like Roger
Bacon, Duns Scotus, and their great friend and
protector, Robert
Grosseteste, whose interest in what we would call
science, as distinct from
philosophy, was almost their main interest.
Indeed, one might without
too much exaggeration maintain that the impetus
to the study of the natural
world through empirical methods came from the
Franciscans. This appears
in the early chapters of the "Itinerarium," where
observational science
becomes not simply the satisfaction of idle
curiosity, but the
fulfillment of a religious obligation. But it goes
without saying that a man
of science may discover truths which contradict
what he has believed on
faith and that a man of faith may look to science,
not for everything which it
is capable of revealing, but only for those
things which corroborate
his faith. The best illustration of this conflict
is found in the use made of
arithmetic by allegorists, as early as Philo.
Few mathematicians today
would play upon the curious properties of numbers-
-virgin numbers, perfect
numbers, superabundant numbers, numbers which are
the sums of such numbers as
three and four - to prove religious truths. Few
men of religion would, I
imagine, seek validation of their religious
beliefs in the properties
of numbers, finding it extraordinary that there
are four Gospels, four
points of the compass, four winds, four elements
(earth, water, air, and
fire), four seasons, four humors, four
temperaments. But all men
will usually feel uneasy in the presence of
contradiction and will do
their best to bring all their beliefs into
harmony with one another.
The question reduces to the motivation of
knowledge, the question of
why exploration is pushed into fields which
previously have been terrae
incognitae. And when one compares science as it
was before the fourteenth
century and that which it became after that date,
one sees that only a strong
emotional propulsion would have produced the
change of interest. That
propulsion, we are suggesting, came from the
Franciscans.
The student who has no
acquaintance with the philosophy of Saint
Bonaventura can do no
better than to begin with the "Itinerarium." It is
short and yet complete; it
is typical of his manner of thinking; and it
presents only the
difficulties which any medieval philosophical text
presents. There is no need
to hack one's way through a jungle of
authorities, quotations,
refutations, distinctions, and textual exegeses.
It is not a commentary on
another man's book; it is a straightforward
statement of a
philosophical point of view. It illustrates the manner in
which its author's
contemporaries and predecessors utilized Biblical texts,
and it also illustrates the
knowledge of physics and psychology which was
current in the thirteenth
century. It is thus one of those representative
documents which it behooves
all students of intellectual history to know.
It should be read with
sympathy. One should accept its author's various
assumptions, both methodological
and doctrinal, and begin from there. There
would be no point in trying
to translate it in terms of the twentieth
century, for the attempt
would fail. But similarly one would not attempt to
translate Dante's cosmology
into modern terms nor justify Chartres
Cathedral in terms of
functional architecture as that is understood by
modern engineers. This book
is a kind of prose poem, with a dramatic
development of its own as
one rises from step to step toward a mystic
vision of God. That would seem
to be the best approach which the beginner
could make to it.
GEORGE BOAS
THE JOHNS HOPKINS
UNIVERSITY
July, 1953
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