It must be recalled that the divine nature cannot be located among sensible species, nor can it be grasped by a separate substance or separated soul through an analysis of its own essence. Rather, the divine essence can be understood by the human intellect only if that essence itself acts as its own intelligible species, not informing the human intellect to be sure, but rather enabling it through a contemp-lation of that species to see what it otherwise could not.143 This is to strengthen a finite area of vision by an infinite power, extending that vision into a new area of understanding.144 Because this is the strengthening of one power or nature by another higher power or nature, it cannot be effected by the lower power. "A lower nature cannot acquire a higher nature except through the action of the higher nature to which the property belongs."145 Thomas strengthens this point by drawing an analogy from natural fulfillment on the lowest, physical, level of nature: water cannot become hot by itself, but needs a higher "specification" by fire.

Four brief reasons justify this position. In the first place, it is "the special prerogative of any agent to perform its operation through its own form."146 As the divine operation is the contemplation of the divine essence, should any nondivine agent participate in this operation it must act through the divine form. Secondly, "the form proper to any being does not come to be in another being unless the first being is the agent of this event."147 God must act upon the human intellect in order that the latter come to the vision of the divine essence. Thirdly, "if any two factors are to be mutually united, so that one of them is formal and the other material, their union must be completed through action coming from the side of the formal factor."148 Since the divine intelligence is the agent of the intellectual information, it must be the source of the action. Finally, "whatever exceeds the limitation of a nature cannot accrue to it except through the action of another being."149 Again, using the physical example that water is unable to flow upward, Thomas makes it clear that, though vision is the natural end of man, it cannot be achieved by the natural action of man.150 It is a natural end supernaturally achieved. While this factor of supernatural achievement is concerned solely with the way to the end, with the method of the attainment of fulfillment, and therefore cannot stand as a proper distinction between vision and contemplation, it does give an initial direction toward the final solution.

A second pointer to a solution to the problem of two natural ends existing simultaneously is the subtle shift of approach or point of view which occurs in the midst of Thomas’ analysis of fulfillment. It has already been established that one cannot say that Thomas centers his discussion on Aristotelian contemplation from the twenty-fifth through the thirty-seventh chapters of his treatment, and then after the thirty-seventh chapter initiates a consideration of a totally new subject, that is, vision. It is clear from the opening paragraphs of his study that Thomas orientated his entire discussion to the conclusion of fulfillment in vision.151 Yet it seems odd that Thomas has no difficulty in accepting the entire Aristotelian corpus of principles when treating contemplation, but then immediately upon his first mention of vision as in opposition to other types of contemplation, begins a subtle, but unmistakable, reinterpretation of those principles. The change of emphasis cannot be attributed to the fact that vision is an object of revelation. In this context, where the entire discussion is encased in an Aristotelian framework, vision is being considered as a natural fulfillment of man. It would seem, therefore, that the principles of Aristotle should apply in their unaltered originality. Yet this is not the case.

In the beginning of his discussion, for instance, Thomas stated that the fulfillment of any being was to be found in the perfecting of that being and to the extent that it participated "somewhat" in God’s likeness.152 In the spirit of Aristotle, Thomas saw perfection as limited by the ability of the particular being and did not promise any degree of absolute perfection for any being. As has been stated often, human beings were considered happy, but happy as humans. By a process of induction, human happiness was found to reside in contemplation of God. This was Aristotle’s conclusion. It was necessarily a fallible one, not in so far as it stated that human fulfillment was to be found in the intellectual possession of the highest knowable, but rather in so far as Aristotle’s personal interpretation of the particular and specific nature of that fulfillment was subject to error. The perfection of man is more technically stated not as knowledge by contemplation, but as knowledge of more and more, as the putting off of ignorance.153

Yet it must be conceded that the arguments used by Thomas against simple knowledge and demonstration as fulfillments are not based upon an experience of a higher knowledge more perfectly offering this fulfillment. Rather, he bases his new approach upon a direct analysis of simple knowledge and demonstration to show that in themselves, rather than by comparison with something else, they do not contain absolute perfection. But in the Aristotelian framework there had never been a necessity for absolute perfection. The very characteristics of these species of knowledge used as arguments for exclusion by Thomas are the ones considered by Aristotle as establishing human fulfillment precisely as human. The presence of error, potency, and imperfection in simple knowledge and demonstration render them non-fulfilling in the Thomistic understanding. According to Aristotle, who was also aware of these imperfections, these same forms of knowledge were declared to be the source of human fulfillment.154

Briefly, therefore, whereas for Aristotle humans are happy as humans, for Thomas in their present state humans simply are not happy.155 The requiring of ever-perfecting fulfillment in human happiness is quite obviously Aristotelian, but the demanding of perfect fulfillment for this happiness is a new addition to the argument. Some have interpreted Aquinas to hold that such a demand implies the rejection of contemplation, as Aristotle understood it, as able to fulfill human nature. Rather, this study will conclude that in some sense Aquinas must hold for more than one type of fulfillment on the natural level.

Man, however, has a twofold final good, which first moves the will as a final end. The first of these is proportionate to human nature since natural powers are capable of attaining it. This is the happiness about which the philosophers speak, either as contemplative, which consists in the act of wisdom, or active, which consists first of all in the act of prudence, and in the acts of the other moral virtues as they depend on prudence. The other is the good which is out of all proportion with man’s nature because his natural powers are not enough to attain to it either in thought or desire. It is promised to man only through the divine liberality. "The eye hath not seen. . . . This is life everlasting.156

 

The famous Thomistic commentators, Thomas de Vio Cajetan and Dominic Bañez, for example, rejected Thomas’ position that vision was a natural fulfillment of man. Faced with Thomas’ own words, Cajetan accused Aquinas of being mistaken on the subject. Surely vision could be an object of the natural desire of man, if by natural desire was meant "an elicited yet determined operation of the intellectual appetite following cognition," which Cajetan referred to as actus secundus. But if by desire one meant actus primus, the natural tendency, Cajetan considered the Thomistic position to be untenable.157 Cajetan admitted the presence in the nature of man of an obediential capacity for vision, but placed this passive capacity far below the active drive of a tendency. This interpretation is definitely at variance with the Thomistic understanding, for Aquinas knew of the concept of obediential capacity, had used it elsewhere in his works, but chose in this context to speak rather of natural tendency.

For Scotus, however, the natural tendency of man is not this general drive, but rather a particular appetite, particularized by his historical, redeemed situation, whereby man "necessarily and perpetually and in the highest way tends to beatitude, and this in particular." The distinction drawn here is absolutely essential for an understanding of the issue. Whereas in Thomas the desire is general and is fulfilled upon attainment of an end, in Scotus it is particularized in the very nature of the will. (Immediately it should be apparent that the distinction of fulfillments is therefore not to be found in the desire itself, but in the level of being, natural or supernatural, upon which the being attains its end.) Placing vision as the particularized object of human desire, Scotus is, therefore, forced to reject contemplation as fulfillment in any way. If the will desires vision, it cannot be satisfied in any way, on any level, by something else. This is further corroborated by the fact that the mention of levels of being implies Thomistic analogy, a teaching again rejected by Scotus, who himself considered the object of human intellect as not ens analogice consideratum, but ens universale.163

How then does Scotus explain the fact that the human intellect in this life cannot attain the object of its desire? Unable to speak of levels of being, Scotus is forced into the position of saying that it is either the will of God, a higher voluntarism, or a defect existing in the human state, caused possibly by sin, preventing the intellect from seeing the divine essence, and forcing man now to see God as dimly as one in this life sees by the light of a candle.164 Thus, the fact that man does not presently possess the fullness of his desired happiness is explained either through a voluntaristic principle or through a moral fault. The entire position, on the one hand, offers a confusing picture of the natural order, even implying the possibility of injustice on the part of the orderer himself.165 On the other hand, the position seems to dispense entirely with the supernatural aid demanded by Thomas to elevate nature to the capacity of direct vision of God.166

The explanation of natural end by Henri de Lubac is somewhat in the same line. Again in the Augustinian tradition, de Lubac considers man as he exists in his present historical situation, that is, (though the word is admittedly theological), redeemed. Man is "not a thing of nature", de Lubac states;167 there is no order of pure nature. Further, given the will of God, such an order is inconceivable. Rather, there has always existed and exists now only one order, which is "supernatural", better called "superadded".168 De Lubac is not stating that the natural has an exigency for its complementing supernatural. His position is that given the totally gratuitous will of God creating things as they are, man is of necessity directed to finality in vision. Once again, there appear a dominance of voluntarism and a weakening of absolute necessity as understood by Thomas. It is in no sense a question of presupposing natural beings upon which is bestowed a supernatural and gratuitous finality; the entire order, neither natural nor supernatural in the common understanding of those terms, is gratuitous. "The divine generosity does not presuppose receivers; it prepares them", a commentator of de Lubac explains.169

Again, as with Scotus, difficulties emerge. If within the very nature of being—that whole nature being a univocally gratuitous establishment—there is a fundamental and necessary tendency to vision, how can de Lubac justify what he chooses to call superaddition?170 One must credit the logic of de Lubac’s thought. He cannot be challenged to justify the natural, as in the case of Scotus, for he has eliminated the natural; similarly he has eliminated the supernatural. But the philosophic mind, it would seem, would require his further rejection of the superadded to perfect the unity of his system. So long as he leaves some room for distinction, he must justify the passage of being from one level to the other, the question faced by Thomas and answered by the need for aid from the higher level of activity.171

Thus it is not in the elimination of either vision or contemplation as natural fulfillments that the correct understanding of natural end as conceived by Thomas Aquinas is to be found. For while Thomas’ faith convinced him that the final end and consummation of all human desire is to be found in vision, a proper understanding of the very tendency directed to this vision, together with a proper distinction of the notions of nature and supernature, reveals that for man there must be a two-fold natural end, a two-fold fulfillment. The basis of the argument, as stated above, is found in the correct understanding of the object of natural desire, which is not contemplation or vision, but rather the knowledge of more and more until full knowledge is attained. It is this knowledge of more and more which, for the rationability of the entire natural order, must be attainable by every intellectual being according to its mode of action. "It is impossible for natural desire to be unfulfilled, since `nature does nothing in vain’."172 This knowledge of more and more is not to be interpreted as a mathematically infinite progression. Seen in itself, it could be considered infinite.173 But if there existed no term, no point to end the process, the natural order would still be shrouded in unintelligibility, for the end of human desire would be an ever-receding mirage, never to be attained. Rather, there must be a term of the progression, a definite highest point, the most knowable object, to which the desire to know more and more is directed and at which it is fulfilled. This point is God.

It must be stressed again that God as the end of the process of knowledge is not intrinsic in the process seen solely as process. The process is directed to knowing, and God is the most knowable.174 Toward this most sublime point the intellect steadily progresses, ever accelerating its polarized movement, the closer it approaches the source of its fulfillment.175 Thomas never abandons the fundamental physical analogue upon which his philosophy of fulfillment is based. Man’s natural desire is thus a tendency to knowledge, which knowledge must be of God. Once one attains this knowledge of God, to the highest degree possible on the level of being on which one is acting, one is fulfilled.176

The fact that there are two fulfillments of intellectual desire can in no way be derived from the nature of that desire, as Scotus tended to do. The fact of two sources of fulfillment, two natural ends, is based entirely upon the philosophic possibility and the theological fact that there are two levels of being in which man can attain the knowledge of God. On the level of being proper to himself, man finds his natural fulfillment, the perfection of his desire to know all possible, in contemplation of God, the highest possible activity proper to his state. On another level of being, not proper to him, but to which he has been supernaturally raised, he also finds in vision his natural fulfillment, the perfection of this same desire to know all possible. On this level, the human person’s natural fulfillment acquires the unique quality of exceeding the capacity of his human nature, and therefore of being attainable solely through supernatural assistance.177 Thomas states, "Although man is naturally inclined towards his final end, he cannot naturally attain it except through grace. This is because of the eminence of that end."178

Thus it must be concluded that vision is the natural end of man, the fulfillment of all human fulfillments. It is the attainment of human finality upon the highest level of being which is possible to man. But because the absolutely necessary assistance needed for the elevation of man to this high level of being is totally supernatural and therefore not necessary to the proper functioning of the nature of man, to save the rationality of nature as nature, it must be concluded that some form of natural fulfillment must be present on the level of being proper and natural to man. That natural fulfillment is what in the Aristotelian and Thomistic perspectives has been called contemplation. There is no room for the Scotistic view that the human inability to see the divine essence in this present state of being is due to moral fault. If Thomas himself does at times speak of human nature as defective in relation to the vision of God’s essence, he should be understood as speaking of nature in comparison with supernature and not as referring to any factor within nature itself impeding the attainment of one’s natural end through natural means.179

As the attainment of natural end is in Thomas intellectual, he has grounded his distinction between the levels of being in that category. On its naturally attainable level of being, human knowledge of all things, and therefore human knowledge of God, falls far short of the vision of the divine essence. In this life, all human knowledge must be mediated by the sensible phantasm and must possess some element of the potency-act relationship in order to be matter for abstraction from the phantasm. Certain elements concerning God, primarily the fact of his existence, can be so understood by the human mind, but the understanding of these elements is infinitely removed from and inferior to the understanding proper to vision. In no way can the essence or quiddity of God be "specified", i. e., reduced to a sensible species in order to be abstracted.180 In the next life, moreover, in which man’s knowledge does attain to a quasi-vision of separate substances, the divine essence again cannot be grasped. In no way can the infinity of God be comprehended and defined by the soul after death.181 Thus, if the limited mind of a separate substance or vision of God is to be considered by Thomas as the perfect fulfillment of man, of his natural desire to know, a new power of knowledge must be communicated to man, this power being the unmediated divine essence itself. But introduction into human knowledge of this new specification is not to be understood as a rejection of the mode of knowing proper to the nature of man and due to him from his nature. This to leads to fulfillment, to a knowledge of God that is perfect and perfecting in its own order of being.

Considering the object of knowledge in the context of being, this distinction between contemplation and vision as fulfillments can be drawn more clearly in the light of the analogy of being. The object of human knowledge is being, but not the univocal being posited by Scotus. All being known by man must be known according to the mode of his own being, and that mode is one of composition, infinitely below the simple being of God, yet proportioned to it by way of analogy. "Knowledge always takes place according to the way in which the knowing subject exists", a commentator explains.182 Even though with the removal of what Thomas has called the defect of human nature man can come to the fulfillment of vision, still on his own level of understanding, in the mode of composition, he also can attain his fulfillment.

However small the amount of divine knowledge that the intellect may be able to grasp, that will be for the intellect, in regard to its ultimate end, much more than the perfect knowledge of lower objects of understanding. . . . The ultimate end of man is to understand God, in some fashion (quoquo modo).183

 

Since the created intellect is exalted to the vision of the divine substance by a certain supernatural light . . . there is no created intellect so low in its nature that it cannot be elevated to this vision. The gap between the intellect, at its highest natural level,184 and God is infinite in perfection and goodness. But the distance from the highest to the lowest intellect is finite, for there cannot be an infinite distance between one finite being and another. So, the distance which lies between the lowest created intellect and the highest one is like nothing in comparison to the gap which lies between the highest created intellect and God. . . . Therefore, it makes no difference what level of intellect it is that is elevated to the vision of God by the aforementioned light: it may be highest, the lowest, or one in the middle.185

 

Technically speaking, the most fully developed understanding of contemplation would have to be seen in a study of this activity as it is engaged in by separate substances and by souls after death.186 But as the purpose of this study is to discuss contemplation as it exists in the human person as a composite of soul and body, a treatment of this activity in separate substances would not be to the point. This discussion of contemplation in man in his present state of existence will be two-fold. It will consist in the first place of a discussion of contemplation as fulfillment in itself, and secondly, of a philosophical exposition of those characteristics of this activity which serve to make it, though totally separate from vision, the most perfect analogue and associate of vision within the capabilities of man unaided by supernatural assistance. Finally it must be pointed out that though the central theme of this chapter will be a continuation of the discussion of contemplation as natural fulfillment, as found in the Summa Contra Gentiles. However, the material in this section will be extended to include a study of man as fulfilled a total person, rather than simply as a natural being. Hence, a somewhat more diversified use of sources will be employed. The central source for this chapter will continue to be the Summa Contra Gentiles. Its contributions to the discussion will be amplified, however, by material drawn from other writings of Thomas Aquinas, as well as from the works of other philosophers who have addressed themselves to this subject.

First Thomas’ contention should be reiterated that on the natural level contemplation is a fulfillment of man, and as such, a source of his happiness, albeit an imperfect source. "Imperfect beatitude, such as can be had here, consists primarily and principally in contemp-lation."187 The very possibility of a fulfillment of any type, intellectual or not, on the earthly level of human existence has been a source of great discussion throughout the history of philosophy, both by those philosophers who, because of a lack of Revelation, could offer nothing else as source of greater fulfillment, and by those thinkers in the Christian era, who were faced with the challenge of reconciling the findings of natural philosophy with the content of supernatural Revelation. In the writings of Thomas, there are passages in which he states quite clearly that in no sense can man be called happy in his present state. Yet it is equally true that Thomas speaks of an earthly happiness, which is a participation in the divine beatitude, the only fully perfect state of fulfillment.188 The basis for this difference of opinion expressed by the same writer seems to lie, as do so many other differences, in the two seemingly conflicting understandings or rather emphases that are possible in the question of the analogy of being. In one sense, all being which is not perfect being or supreme being can be said to be no being at all. This is the negative understanding of reality. Yet, on the other hand, in so far as all participated being derives its being from perfect being and in some sense possesses that being, in that sense it can be said indeed to have being. So also is the question of happiness to be understood. In one sense, no man is happy.189 In another sense. given his position in life, with its necessary imperfections, man is happy. Through his participation in the beatitude of God, he is perfectly happy in accord with his own limited situation, and this happiness is achieved through the activity of contemplation.190

There is, however, a variant reading for this passage, in which the words of Aquinas are as follows: "Est enim . . . contemplativae vitae. Et hoc quidem maxime in illa visione consummabitur . . . ei innotescent." The translation of this version would state that it is in vision that man’s intellectual desire is "most perfectly" or "most especially" fulfilled, but would make no explicit exclusion of contemplation.191 Without passing judgment on which reading is correct, it would seem that the second version is more in line with Thomas’ views on the double end of man. Whether or not the second reading is the one to be accepted, the point remains that in the light of the doctrine of analogy, as contemplation can be understood as fulfillment in its own order of being, so all that is predicated of vision as fulfillment in its higher order of perfection by analogy can be predicated of the state of contemplation.192

"The end of man is to arrive at the contemplation of truth."193 This was the position of Aristotle and Plato and it is the position as well of Thomas Aquinas.194 On the level of being which can be entered into by man’s natural powers, it is in contemplation that the total actualization or perfection possible to man is attained. An activity perfect in its imperfection, contemplation is the most perfect source of human happiness, human delight and human pleasure possible to man in his present state. More surely than all other sources of human fulfillment, contemplation brings to man the joy that is necessarily connected with all perfection.195 Of all human activities, it is the most self-sufficient, the one least in need of external aids. Once attained, it is not possessed as a means for the attainment of anything else, but entered into as an end in itself. It fulfills all else, and looks to nothing else for its own fulfillment.196 In what might be termed a utopian flight of fancy, Thomas Aquinas saw in contemplation the consummation of the entire life of the state. "The whole of political life seems to be ordered with a view to attaining the happiness of contemplation."197 Aquinas himself more fully expressed this view when he said that contemplation was the goal of man’s whole life.198

Again in the tradition of Aristotle and Thomas, and in perhaps the most obvious application of the analogue between natural desire and natural place, contemplation gives to man the peace of rest in fulfillment, true leisure in a sense that will be explained in a subsection to follow. It "brings to a termination man’s natural appetite, in the sense that, once the end is acquired, nothing else will be sought."199 Though source of total fulfillment and of rest from desire, contemplation also must be, and according to the potential of man in this life is, a continuous and unwearying activity, a permanent operation. Aristotle had stated centuries before Thomas that the permanency possessed by contemplation of its very nature was subject to all the inconsistencies and fortuitous circumstances of the total picture of human existence, that human happiness or human fulfillment was happiness and fulfillment only in a human manner, but of its nature the contemplative process, the process of knowing more and more until all is known, is endless. All can never be grasped by a finite being, because all includes the infinite, which the finite mind cannot comprehend. Yet of all human activity, contemplation represents by itself "the higher and more enduring part in the soul’s life. . . . Even on earth, the contemplative moments are the highest and the most condensed."200

Contemplation has been called by both Aristotle and Thomas a divine activity. It is divine because through its operation man is united in an intentional union with God himself. Further, seen in itself, it is the most noble analogue of the proper activity of the divine, for it is the activity of knowing all things, of knowing the self, and in the highest order of cognition known to Aristotle, of knowing its own process of knowing.201 In attaining to this reflexive intuition, it achieves the pinnacle of all knowledge, the supreme activity of God. Finally, in the hierarchical view of nature adopted by Thomas, as the highest operation proper to man, it unites him by way of likeness with the beings superior to him, with separate substances and, indeed again, with God Himself.202

An analysis of the inner nature of this knowing activity shows it to be the perfection of the nature of the human person and the link joining one in the order of intentionality with the supreme contemplator, God. But there is far more to be understood concerning the fulfillment of contemplation than can be seen in an analysis of its own intrinsic nature. It is only when the effects of this activity upon the existing person in one’s situation in life are seen that the full value of the activity can be appreciated, and that contemplation can be seen as the actualization of the total person, as the source of one’s "rounded perfection."203 It is to these effects that this study now briefly turns. They may be described succinctly as, first, the intimate, wonder-filled presence of the contemplated to the contemplator, and, secondly, the a-temporality of the contemplative act.

Presence. The ramifications of contemplation seen in the light of this first effect are startling. Through contemplation, the knower assimilates to himself in the order of intentionality all nature, and indeed God himself. In this activity, one arrives at the highest and most intimate mode of possessing all reality, but also in a most intimate and personal way one becomes all reality.204 One’s relation with all the world around and with God may be said to be "beyond all bounds."205 Giving expression to the boundless dimensions of the contemplative act, Thomas says that "it is possible that in a single being the whole comprehensiveness of the universe may dwell."206

In a society where separation and absence have been described and attacked so poignantly by modern philosophers, the very fact that contemplation renders all reality present to the knower shows this activity to be indeed fulfilling. The charge has been made that intellectual consideration of reality does not bring man into contact with that reality, but rather separates him hopelessly from the facts of true existence. Especially this criticism has been made regarding the understanding of the person: that intellectual consideration does not give one the reverence and honor due as a person, but rather objectifies one as a thing. This view greatly mistakes the truly unitive value of the knowledge process. Understanding or knowing a person does not separate one from the knower, but draws one into an intimate unity, an assimilation with the knower which in modern philosophy has come more and more to be referred to as intuition.207 Contemplative knowledge, as one author has put it, is "the intuitive penetration of the essence of a thing . . . the conscious `dwelling’ in a truth . . . a communing therewith in awareness of everything it means."208 Perhaps the union achieved between the known and the knower, the presence of the known to the knower, can be understood most vividly through a reference to the meaning of the word "to know" in the Hebrew language. Far from connoting an image of separation, the word "to know" in Hebrew bears strong connotations of intimate union, being applied even to the unity achieved by two persons with one another in the marital act. The marital act was for the Hebrew the vivid realization and actualization of the knowledge one person can possess of another. Far more intimate is the union achieved between persons in contemplation, where the knower and the known are not only physically joined to form one in the flesh, but spiritually are made one in the one being of the knower. Further, if the act of knowledge is entered into mutually, the union of the two persons becomes even more strongly knit, even more personal, and the presence of the two to each other even more total. In Augustinian terminology, while the most abstractive logic may see the known as solely a thing to be manipulated, to be used (uti), the intimate knowing of contemplation grasps the known as person. In this knowledge, the knower enters into the total enjoyment of the known dwelling within his very being, and comes to a joyful and fulfilling rest in its presence within him (frui).

Linked with the presence of the known face-to-face with the knower in the very depths of his nature is the ever deepening wonder and awe brought necessarily by this intimate knowledge. Thomas Aquinas said that the divine never ceases to amaze the contemplator.209 While he was speaking directly of vision, the knowledge of God possible to man here on this earth and the further contemplation by man of the wondrous works of God, though less perfect than vision, never leave him wearied or unwilling to come to a knowledge of more. Again, here is seen the paradox of being ever fulfilled, yet never filled; of being possessed with a total awe at the wonder of God, yet ever able to be further amazed, further filled with wonder.

A-Temporality. Although totally surrounded and penetrated by the wondrous presence of God, the human person in contemplation remains obviously always within the limits of one’s finite nature. Yet, in the act of contemplation, more than in any other possible human operation, one is able somehow to transcend the limits of one’s state, to step beyond the bounds of time within which one’s existence is restrained. Through this act of transcendence one becomes involved in an operation and activity of such intensity that it seems to be totally bound up in a single dynamic act. No longer progressing from one step to another in knowledge, the contemplator enters into a simple, unified act, in which one takes to oneself at one moment the entire reality existing about him. In its higher forms of operation contemplation has an aura of a standing still in the midst of the flux of all reality, yet of grasping at the same time that entire flux. Modern writers have called it "feeling unhistorically", a "restful attitude" which is an actualization of one’s entire being. Contemplation is an operation or activity which, in one author’s phrase, is a unique and express now, "a particularly momentous moment".210

It is in this timeless, restful, yet supremely active penetration into all reality and into God that true humanistic leisure is attained. Rest, and therefore leisure, can be acquired only when true fulfillment has been reached. The unfulfilling and false rest, the frantic, passing leisure which comes to man in attainment of pleasure, honor, or power is far removed from the truly humanizing fulfillment possible to, and destined for, man in this life by his very nature. The separation of man from the tension of the passing of time gives one through contemplation a control over one’s own situation in life which the person seeking vainly for fulfillment in lower levels of reality can never attain. Aquinas saw the person in contemplation as master over all his or her affairs, as ordering them all into a unified pattern, enabling one to live one’s entire life according to the order of virtue.211 It is in this sense that the contemplative person above all others can be seen as the true humanist.212 Seeing God everywhere and in all things, one approaches the world and all in it with the most profound respect, not as something to be used as a thing, but rather to be entered into as a living reality, almost as a person, in so far as it is the reflection of the person of God.213

One cannot contemplate in any sense, according to the religious or Aristotelian understanding of the activity, without in the first place being recollected. Seen again in its timeless aspect, contemplation involves the total gathering together of all the faculties of the body and the soul, and their direction to the object of contemplation in a single act transcending all time, even the time necessary to the very functioning of the body and soul. In contemplation, one achieves total inner perfection, unification of all one’s faculties, under the control of one’s highest faculty in its highest operation. In the fullest sense possible, one becomes not only one with the other as described above, but one with oneself.214

Contemplation Related to Other Human Faculties. Thus it can be concluded that contemplation is not only the elevating of the intellect to the highest operation possible to it, but also the perfecting of the operations of all the other faculties of the human person. It is the entire person who contemplates; and while the activity is rooted in the intellect, the recollection needed for the intellect to engage in its activity demands the ordering of the entire personality towards its one supreme end. In particular, both the will and the body are brought to the realization of their highest potential in this activity.

While this is true, it is readily to be admitted that once the intellect has attained its highest good, the very possession of this good must offer to the will a total quenching of its every desire. In visualizing the human person as a totality, Hugh of St. Victor described happiness as the knowledge of the truth and the love of the good.215 In the most accurate manner of speaking, this is not true. Happiness and fulfillment for man technically are rooted principally in the knowledge of the true, which knowledge must, nevertheless, be seen by the will of the person as good. In the practical order, the cooperation of the will seeking the good is essential to the intellect’s attainment of the true. It was in this light that Thomas Aquinas said that one cannot attain to contemplation unless one is first possessed of virtue.216 Throughout his discussion of contemplation as man’s final end in the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas often established contemplation as the only source of human fulfillment on the grounds that it is the only species of fulfillment which can be possessed solely by good men.217 It is true to say that in its most technical sense human fulfillment is to be rooted in intellectual possession, not in love.

But in so far as the highest intellectual possession is necessarily intuitive and of the intentional order, it must be added that that intellectual hold can not be simply of a thing, but must be rather of a loved thing, a person in the broadest sense of the term. One cannot take a thing into oneself and form with it such an intimate union that in a sense one becomes that thing, without having for that thing a deep love, without developing with it what Martin Buber in more recent philosophy has called an "I-Thou" relationship. Surely human fulfillment is not "love of what is possessed" in the most technical sense; but even speaking with technical language it is "possession of what is loved". It is in the expression of a modern Thomistic commentator, "a loving attainment of awareness, an intuition of the beloved object."218

2. The Body and the Sense Faculties. As in the case of the will, so also in the act of contemplation the body is drawn into a share in the fulfillment of the unified human person. The human person properly and totally understood, Thomas Aquinas states, is not the bodiless soul, but rather the being composed of body and soul acting together for the perfection of one’s nature.219 Contemplation of God is the highest approximation of the perfect fulfillment the human person will achieve in the vision of God. Further, the sense knowledge received into the body by means of the faculties of the bodily organs is essential to any human understanding of God in this life. In the very nature of this highest of all actions, therefore, the body has an integral role to play.

An appreciation of the aesthetic experience casts a greater light of understanding upon the true dignity of one’s intellectual encounter with reality. Just as the good is good and fulfilling because it is true, so also the truth found in the essence of the beautiful constitutes the beautiful as the true source of human fulfillment. Beauty is indeed according to Augustine the splendor veri. The aesthetic experience is, therefore, one further dimension of the total fulfillment realized by the person in contemplation of truth. Taken in the abstract one’s perfection must root one’s fulfillment in the activity of his intellect. However, because man is a unified being of many faculties in the real order that perfection must be understood as fulfillment of the entire intellectual, volitional, spiritual, and physical nature by which one exists.220

Contemplation and Vision: Possible Further Interconnections. There is no further naturally known mode of knowledge upon which this study can philosophize. Yet there is a truth, known by faith, that a higher perfection of man actually does exist, and that this perfection, achieved in the direct vision of the divine essence, is promised to man in the world to come. Some say that to philosophize upon this truth is simply to enter into another field of study, that of theology. Were one to base one’s thought entirely upon a consideration of the facts of revelation, this objection would be valid. But Frederick Copleston notes that if one treats the object of his faith in its relation to the basic questions of all philosophic search, one cannot be eliminated from the category of philosophy simply because his faith prompts him to orientate his thought in a certain direction.221 The vision of God’s essence is presented by Thomas as the fulfillment of the inner tendencies of human nature. Therefore it falls within the philosophic category of finality and can be analyzed in that category.

Surely to the person of faith, contemplation can be seen in another light as a preparation or means to vision. If vision is to be merited by good works and by a virtuous life, there is no more certain method of achieving a unity of one’s nature, a harmony of all one’s faculties in the order of virtue under the control of the intellect and will, than through contemplation. Yet, for contemplation as an end in itself to be able to play a role in relation to vision as fulfillment on a different level of being, something more is required. One cannot, on the other hand, establish a connection between contemplation and vision in a certain exigency of the former for the latter, a certain complement between the two, making them but two stages of the same process. This they certainly are not, for although Thomas does admit that on this earth contemplation is the highest approximation of vision, he is equally insistent that one need not have attained any stage of contemplation in order to be elevated by God to the eternal enjoyment of the divine essence.222

1. Unity of Activity. At the risk of confusion, it is here stated that contemplation, fully understood, is more properly rendered by the verbal form "contemplating. " It was in this manner that Aristotle referred to it, when he chose the Greek infinitive form to express his understanding of the activity. Just as the true finality of the activity of eating or drinking is not totally grasped by a study of the object of the process after it has been eaten or drunk, but also includes the very process itself; and just as the true finality of a ship is not to be understood or comprehended solely by an examination of its arrival at its port of destination, but rather must include the entire activity of its journey; so the true finality of contemplation should not be considered solely as the object of thought, for example God, residing in the mind of the contemplator, but must also include the very process of contemplating or understanding that object.223

As has been stressed above, the fulfillment of contemplation is not had at a particular moment, beyond which no further fulfillment can be attained. Rather, while at any moment the activity of contemplating may offer fulfillment in so far as the contemplator is involved in the fulfilling process of knowing more and more, at no moment is this fulfillment totally accomplished. Of its very nature, contemplation offers a fulfillment of such a type that it ever deepens in its perfection and ever grows in its richness. Man is a being in motion to perfection,224 and in the analogy of motion to a natural place, the intensity of that motion increases the greater the degree of one’s fulfillment.225

The result of this phenomenon is that in the finite order of earthly contemplation, while man is ever increasing his fulfillment he is intensifying his activity of contemplating.226 Thus it can be said that the higher the degree of contemplation, the higher the intensity of the operation.

Vision too is an activity of knowing, an operation also dynamic and carried out on a level of being higher than, but analogically related to, the level of being upon which contemplation is exercised. In so far as vision is a total fulfillment and the only fulfillment which can satisfy without frustration the desire of man to know, it can in a sense be considered the completion of what was indeed fulfilled, but was still perpetually being rendered imperfect and unfulfilled by the spectre of its own inherent frustration. The operation of vision can be said to fulfill the operation of contemplation. The point is not that one operation is related to the other as two stages of the same process. Contemplation and vision are to be found on separate levels of activity. The point made is rather that the frustration encountered in the one activity is dispelled when the contemplator begins to carry on his fulfilling activity of knowing on another level of activity. Contemplation and vision are therefore to be seen as two activities of knowing on separate levels of being, yet related as fulfillment and fulfillment of fulfillment in the similarity of their operation. It is in this context that Aquinas can say that contemplation is the beginning of eternal life, when by eternal life he understands vision.227

The capacity of the intellect for truth can never be filled naturally, and this condition belongs to the nature of a spiritual creature. It is purely an assumption that the natural end of man must be a terminative end, completely and perfectly satisfying his natural cravings for truth and for happiness on the natural plane.228

To have achieved human happiness is to have discovered that the perfection of human nature is openness to absolute happiness. To be thoroughly human is to have cast aside homocentricity. For the perfection of the relative is precisely to be relatively to the absolute.229

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