Complete Works

He attempted to apply labor suited to the quality [of the task]: namely, to cauterize foul and naturally impure diseases with sharp and bitter medicines; to soothe with gentle and mild applications those wounds which were infected with less malice and depravity and desired to be covered by a scar; and to prepare most wholesome potions and celebrated antidotes for those who had attained health but feared a relapse. He had begun many other works by which it could be hoped that the study of philosophy as a whole might flourish again, with errors eliminated and barbarism driven out. Chief among these was the harmony of Plato and Aristotle, which he had already begun and would have perfected in a short time, had his ancestral companion [life] remained for but a few more years. For he had nurtured philosophy, suckling it from its cradle, and had brought it to adulthood in our own times. So much so, that a philosopher of our age would have nothing more to desire in Greek, Latin, or barbarian books; he would have summoned Thales, the fiery Heraclitus, and Democritus surrounded by his atoms; Orpheus likewise, and Pythagoras, and others of the ancients would have met in the Academy by his help and favor. Finally, the princes of philosophy—namely Plato, cloaked in the veils of myths and the wrappings of mathematics, and Aristotle, fortified by [his doctrines on] motions—having given their right hands, would have sanctioned the bond of future friendship. Between Averroes and Avicenna, also, and between Thomas and Scotus, who had long been in conflict, he would have obtained, if not a total peace, at least a truce in many matters; since in most of their controversies, if someone examines the words of disagreement more attentively and weighs them more exactly—searching more scrupulously and, leaving the surface, penetrates with his mind into the innermost hiding places and profound sanctuaries—he will find without ambiguity a union of meanings beneath inseparable and clashing words. The crowd of neoterics would have been both honored and rebuked, partly according to their merits and partly for their faults. Thus, entirely dedicated to God, he defended the Church with whatever weapons he could, and led out Truth (as they say) from the well of Democritus, and utterly broke off and cut down the unassailable grass of ignorance by which the minds of many are stifled, as well as the budding pernicious weeds.

But approaching death rendered the labor of so many and such great vigils, and the birth of his refined lucubration, almost in vain; and this was the primary reason that he left behind very many imperfect commentaries, which for the most part were roughly hewn and unpolished—for he wrote, of course, for himself alone, and not for us. For as he was of a swift wit in composing, so he was of a rapid hand in writing. And whereas previously he used to delineate most beautiful characters of letters, it happened that, from the habit of excessive speed in composing, he was scarcely able to read what he himself had written. He was also accustomed to write here and there, sometimes obliterating beautiful passages with new ones that came upon him; for that reason I found some things worn away and struck out, others written only in snatches and fragments—everything, in short, so confused and disordered that they might be thought of as "forests" or "farragoes." From the sevenfold book, which he had titled against the enemies of the Church, that part which especially attacks the divining astrologers and casters of horoscopes was brought "from the anvil to the file," as the saying goes; which, nevertheless, we have drawn out with no small labor and no mediocre care from a blotted and almost torn manuscript. In this work, he demonstrates himself to be a supreme philosopher, a supreme theologian, a supreme orator, and a most sharp defender of the Church of Christ, endowed with the incomparable genius that is seen in all his commentaries. I also found in my possession certain small pieces not yet polished: namely, an interpretation of the Lord's Prayer, and approximately fifty brief rules for living—unless...

The harmony of Plato and Aristotle.