We are referring to a myth which certainly had its source in Platonic philosophy. But this does not necessarily mean that it is mainly an "ancient" myth. It may have come to a position of true "honour" and "dignity" only in modern times. That would seem a natural evolution. For ideas, too, have their "evolution". Anyway, we are speaking about the myth of "the individual as the illusory value".
Today of course we need not climb to the top of the high masts of philosophy in order to feel the reverberations of that dogma. We may just stay on the "firm" ground of our sturdy men of science. And even the "man in the street" will eagerly nod his approval to them. For is not this today an unshakable "axiom"? Has it not been an unshakable axiom for millennia that "Nature is concerned about one thing: the well-being and survival of the species. It does not care one bit about the survival of the individual."
Here it should be remembered that "Nature", in our environment, often means "God". Not that, in our contemplation of nature, we necessarily have the habit of winding ourselves up to the sublime heights of a religious devotion. No, what happens to every one of us in this culture is that we say Nature because we are ashamed of saying God. For it is obviously nothing less than a shame in our tough Western milieu to "be religious". So, when we come across something marvelous we want to describe from our sense experience, we carefully measure down our "excessive religiousness" to a tolerable level by using the "euphemistic" term "Nature".
In the present case, however, what ordinary men think they perceive so unmistakably in nature, hardly fills them with any ecstatic feelings of religiousness they need to "jack down".
Our "man in the street" is a convinced individualist (in his own peculiar way). He is not tempted to see any particular virtue in the assumed fact that Nature spurns him as an individual; he is instead sincerely sorry about this. He is not so much in love with the species that he admires nature for considering the survival of the species as the "only thing worthwhile".
But what about the "axiomatic certainty" of that conclusion as such? The historian of ideas can hardly help being impressed by the way that idea has managed to establish itself in the general thinking of this world. How did it come to happen that the species was to be hailed as the grand thing?
It must be permissible to consider this trend in terms of an inveterate dualism. For here there is a clear insistance upon separating two things whose separation is not at all a self-evident fact of empirical reality. On one hand we have the general idea of the species, on the other the specific reality of the individual belonging to it. And, of these two, the species is immediately crowned as the "obviously superior"!
With what right is that done? Is it with the right of philosophy or with the right of natural science?
Let us see what attitude the great philosopher of the Middle Ages takes towards this crucial question. If he had been a disciple of Plato, we should hardly have been justified in entertaining any hope whatsoever that Thomas would have represented any element of a harmonious balance here. On the contrary, then we could hardly have expected him to possess any greater evaluation of the individual than did Plotinus. But Thomas is not the disciple of a spiritualist. He is the disciple of a biologist (moreover, he is of course above all a disciple of Christ). Anyway, his attitude is remarkable, as may be seen in the following synopsis.
Who can verify that nature's whole intention is set on the species? One might rather say that nature's intention is directed towards something higher than both the species and the individual; that is, something including both of them. In fact, her goal is nothing less than life itself. Thomas calls it "Incorruptibility". But undoubtedly this is one and the same thing.
Now, of course, in the pursuit of the lofty aim, it may easily appear--in a given case--as if nature had made the survival of the species her primary object. Everybody knows the very special case we are referring to. Everybody knows the conditions existing as far as life is concerned--we mean life in our world at the present moment: individuals are corruptible!
Yet, there does remain one "hope", one little "consolation". To the biologist, that even appears as a considerable boon of consolation. There is one chance for a certain amount of incorruptibility--or for biological continuation--still left: the species has a fair possibility of being maintained. At least it has succeeded in maintaining itself so far. So nature eagerly seizes the one chance open to her [what else could she do?]: she saves the species.
But to pretend that this is her preference--and that it gives her full satisfaction--that is certainly a bold conclusion, as far as we can see. In fact, would not that be tantamount to making a postulate which we think no one but an obstinate Platonist would be inclined to make: "The highest form of life towards which any biology, under any circumstances, can be presumed to aspire, is, not the individual one, but most decidedly the generic one!"
Of course it is a fact that survival--here, today reaches no higher point than that of the species. But is that equal to proving that no higher point has ever been reached--or that no higher point can ever be reached in the future? This is a pagan assumption, an assumption just excluding the God of Christianity, the God of Creation and Redemption, the God of miraculous personal intervention in man's world. Thomas Aquinas, basing himself not only on the biological principle of Aristotle but also on those known to the Christian religion, as well as upon his own profound reasoning as an independent philosopher, seems to have a very firm conviction, as far as nature's attitude towards the individual is concerned:
"Etiam ipsa individua sunt de principali intentione naturae"! (Even the individuals themselves are intended by nature.)
To be sure, Thomas is a man profoundly influenced by ancient philosophy. And we have shown that, in the last analysis, even Aristotle's philosophy is not so very far from Plato's dualism. Survival is reserved for the only thing really worthy of survival, namely, pure Soul, intellect in the sense of some perfect abstraction; this is not so very remote from Plato's Idea. And the closest our biological scientist has ever come to this is evidently the "species".
So we are not at all astonished that Thomas, disciple and great admirer of the biologist-philosopher Aristotle, states, a few lines above the one we have already quoted, that:
The chief purpose of nature is the good of the species. (Summa theologica I, 98, 1c, English transl. Benziger Brothers edit. 1947, Vol. I. pp. 492-493)
This is in perfect harmony with a preceding statement (Summa, I, 85,3):
Intentio naturae est ad speciem, non autem ad individuum, nec ad genus.
More extensively quoted: "Thus it is that the ultimate intention of nature is to the species, and not to the individual or the genus: because the form is the end of the generation, while matter is for the sake of the form" (Op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 492-493).
It is not difficult to see that this is the philosopher speaking.
But we must also listen to the "other" Thomas; that is, the Thomas so profoundly influenced by Christianity, the man who has learned to know the tremendous momentum of the individual. And no sooner has he started to speak than the following message comes through, a message which would have amazed Plato, and even Aristotle:
On the other hand, incorruptible substances survive, not only in the species, but also in the individual; wherefore even the individuals are included in the chief purpose of nature. (Etiam ipsa individua sunt de principali intentione nature.)
This was the original plan of the Creator Jesus Christ for his creatures, so Thomas's words express the triumphant victory, not only of a redemptive spirituality inherent in Christianity (carrying us all the way to the majestic eschatological act of the resurrection), but also at the same time, an equally triumphant victory of a simple everyday human realism, a realism of the ingenuous child: that is, the victory, in sound human minds, of the concrete individual, short and sweet, over the "species" as a theoretical abstraction: that is, the victory of a humble, human, commonsense recognition of individual things as worthy realities, over some vain intellectualistic exclusiveness, recognizing abstract categories, only, as perfectly worthy.
To the Christian schoolman Thomas there existed, of course, only one solution, hitherto discovered, to the following problem: "How can life on this planet be truly perpetuated?" And that was the solution offered by biblical revelation, namely a resurrection. But where should he ever have heard about any such thing as a "Resurrection of whole species"? Excuse the absurdity of that question. The resurrection proclaimed by the Gospel was a resurrection of the individual, of course. For, just as human birth and human death, human sin and human redemption, are no collective matter, but an individual matter; thus resurrection, too, is a highly individual matter.
To be sure, the value and importance of the individual is not an invention of the Renaissance, as some seem to believe. A full appreciation of the individual is rather exactly as old as Christianity.
But is this pervading individualism a true characteristic of the Middle Ages? Has it pressed its stamp upon the whole period, upon its general history of ideas? You might as well ask, "Has Christianity pressed its stamp upon that period, upon the trend of its ideas?" Yes and no. As compared to modern times, definitely yes.
In his forceful description of "Le Personalisme Chrétien", a chapter of his Esprit de la Philosophie Médiévale, Etienne Gilson has shown how it becomes an essential characteristic of the spirit of Christian philosophy in the Middle Ages to accentuate the value and prime importance of individual personality--both in the conception of the Godhead and in the conception of man in his relation to that Godhead.
One point is bound to receive principal emphasis in our study at this stage. What is the deeper attitude towards a spirit of alterocentricity and true totality in the Middle Ages, as compared to other epochs of human history?
Here we have come to the conclusion that Thomas, for instance, had something which may safely be taken as a genuine medieval characteristic in comparison with the increasing tendencies of more modern times. That brilliant genius of speculative intellect still had an implicit belief, of a veritable child, in something outside himself and higher than himself--something absolutely dependable, something absolutely perfect, something filling human life with true meaning.
We have mentioned the "individualist" Thomas and the "biologist" Thomas.
"Not much to boast of, that individualism there!" might be the sneering objection from some particularly independent spirit of the following period. The Renaissance, we know, despised almost everything in those preceding "dark" and "uncultivated" inter-regnum centuries, which they called the "Middle Ages".
"Not much to boast of that biology either!" might be the sneering objection of some advanced evolutionist of superior scientific training in the universities of hypermodern times.
Indeed, how could we leave Thomas Aquinas, the "mediocre individualist" and the "mediocre biologist" of the Middle Ages, without first comparing not his learning, but rather just his spirit to that of a much later period?
Of course, we could not expect the Middle Ages to have a learning approximately as elevated as that of modern times. But we could expect modern times to have a spirit approximately as elevated as that of the Middle Ages. Or should those values necessarily be in inverse ratio to each other?