— A Classic — Includes Active Table of Contents — Includes Religious Illustrations
As the Philosopher says in the seventh book On the Histories of Animals nature proceeds little by little from the inanimate to the animate, so that the genus of inanimate things is found prior to the genus of plants. When the genus of plants is compared to other bodies, it seems to be animate, but compared to the genus of animals, inanimate. (Nature) similarly proceeds from plants to animals in a certain continuous order; for certain immobile animals, which cling to the earth, appear to differ little from plants. Likewise in the progression from animals to man, there are found certain animals in which some likeness of reason appears. Although prudence is a virtue proper to man (for prudence is right reason concerned with things to be done, as is said in the seventh book of the Ethics), yet some animals are found to participate in a kind of prudence.
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Thomas Aquinas was an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus and Doctor Communis.
He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology, and the father of the Thomistic school of philosophy and theology. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy was conceived as a reaction against, or as an agreement with, his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law and political theory.
The philosophy of Aquinas has exerted enormous influence on subsequent Christian theology, especially that of the Roman Catholic Church, extending to Western philosophy in general, where he stands as a vehicle and modifier of Aristotelianism, which he fused with the thought of Augustine.
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