In the middle ages 93

activities (Tr/DaTxeiv) of conscious life, through which

we enter into relation with that reality {consider at

faciendo). Hence, as Thomas Aquinas explains,

practical philosophy is occupied with an order of

things of which man is at once spectator (since he

examines it by turning upon himself) and maker

(since he forms it through his conscious function,

that is, knowing and willing). Practical philos-

ophy includes logic and ethics and politics.

Logic sets up a scheme of all that we know, of the

method of constructing the sciences; and there is

nothing that the human mind cannot know in some

imperfect way. Ethics studies the realm of our

acts, and there is nothing in human life that cannot

become the material of duty. Politics is concerned

with the realm of social institutions, and there is

nothing which has not its social side, since man is

made to live in society (animale sociale) . Going

more deeply into the analysis of practical philos-

ophy, one might show that logic draws in its train

speculative grammar, for it invades the fields of

grammar and rhetoric — its former associates in the

trivium — to draw thence material for controversy.

Furthermore, Paris saw the birth of some true phi-

losophers of language, in the speculative grammars

of Siger of Courtrai and of Duns Scotus ;^^ and the

lexicographical codes of Donatus and Priscian

18 The authenticity of the Orammatica speculativa, attributed to

Duns Scotus, has been doubted. However this may be, it is a re-

markable work.

94 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

which had satisfied the twelfth century were finally

rejected with scorn. Logic, ethics, and politics all

claim to be in touch with the immensity of the re-

ality with which man enters into relation.

The same quality of universality should pertain

to the third group of the philosophical sciences, the

poetical (woLeiv, to make) sciences, which study the

order achieved by man externally through the

guidance of reason. Man is at once the spectator

and maker of an order which he creates. But this

order is outside of him, in matter.^^ This third

group is the least developed of all. It would seem

as if the human product par excellence, the work of

art, endowed with beauty, should here occupy a

large place. But the thinkers of the thirteenth cen-

tury regard the productive activity of the artisan, —

maker of furniture or builder of houses — as on the

same level with the human creative activity which

inspires epics and which makes cathedrals to rise

and stained windows to flame and granite statues

to live. Dante has no special thought of beauty,

when he speaks of the work of art, as "the grandson

of God."'" The professional philosophers bury their

reflections on beauty in metaphysical studies;

hence the fragmentary character of their thought

in that realm. Possibly this omission as regards

aesthetic theory has its explanation in the corporate

character of their labors. The artisan was devoted

IOC'/. Tlioinas Aquiruis, In Ethic. Niconi., I, 1.

20 The Inferno, XI, 103, "... a Dio quasi nepote."