Viator Author:David Hoffman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. V. THE SCHOOLMEN.—Vt. E PLURIBUS UNUM.—VII. THE PHILOSOPHICAL EATER.—VIII. A CURIOUS PROPOSITION. NOTE V. THE SCHOOLMEN. 'You must really pr... more »omise me to read the works of St. Thomas Aquinas,"1 said an eminent Jesuit at Rome, as he was exhibiting to me, with infinite bonhomie, the extensive and beautiful establishment over which he presided, and specially calling my attention to the curiosa of his well arranged library. 'Worthy father,' replied I, 'you do me too much honour to bring to my poor notice the elaborate works of so distinguished a saint; for, if I mistake not, his learning is said to have been as immense, as his piety was exemplary. Was he not called the angel of the schools—the Jifth doctor of the church, and was not his tomb, after his canonization, the scene of many miracles ?' 'True, my dear friend,' answered the pious follower of St. Ignatius, 'these titles were most worthily bestowed upon St. Aquinas, whose writings are as eloquent as they are rich in wisdom, and in the soundest logic of the schools. He, of all others, best understood that prince of philosophers, Aristotle; and hence he has ever been the admiration of popes,and of sovereigns: but I must not fail tojnention that his works are a special favourite with one of your own most eminent scholars and illustrious statesmen—the Ex-President A.—who, as I have heard, owes much of the discipline of his high reasoning powers, to the writings of this saint.' The profound sincerity of the good father, I was in no ways disposed to doubt; but I had some previous acquaintance with the class of writers to which the idolized saint belongs; and the old saying, noscitur a sociis, too promptly occurred to my mind, to permit the padre's eulogy to affect me much. In looking around, moreover, I found ...« less