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The scholastics, in addition to condemning commerce on the authority of the patristic texts, condemned it also on the Aristotelean ground that it was a chrematistic art, and this consideration, as we have seen above, enters into Aquinas's article on the subject.
He had passed from the extreme ranks and the strong convictions of the Oxford movement convictions of which the translation of Aquinas's Catena Aurea, still printed in the list of his works, is a memorial to the frankest form of Liberal thought. As he himself writes, we cannot give up early beliefs, much less the deep and deliberate convictions of manhood, without some shock to the character.
I have always noticed that the men who accumulate great libraries do not know much, and the men who know a great deal have very few books. Now I will wager that you have not a thousand volumes in your house, Mr. Ambrose." "Five hundred would be nearer the mark," said the vicar. "The fewer one has the nearer one approaches to Aquinas's homo unius libri," returned the squire.
But that he actually did take it for granted, he has given many clear indications in his article on Justice which leave us no room for reasonable doubt. As Father Kelleher very cogently points out, the discussion in Aquinas's article on commerce, whether it was lawful to buy cheap and sell dear, very clearly indicates that the author maintained the objective theory, because if the just price were simply determined by what people were willing to give, this question could not have arisen.
"It is Aquinas's fault," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Why didn't he use his interest to get Ladislaw made an attache or sent to India? That is how families get rid of troublesome sprigs." "There is no knowing to what lengths the mischief may go," said Sir James, anxiously. "But if Casaubon says nothing, what can I do?" "Oh my dear Sir James," said the Rector, "don't let us make too much of all this.
To which his answer was, "that he declined reading many; but what he did read were well chosen, and read so often, that he became Very familiar with them;" and said, "they were chiefly three, Aristotle's Rhetoric, Aquinas's Secunda Secundit, and Tully, but chiefly his offices, which he had not read over less than twenty times, and could at this age say without book."
To be sure, even students of Scholastic literature had no direct access to Gabirol's treatise as it was never printed and no one knew whether there were still any manuscripts of it extant or not. The only sources of information concerning Avicebron's philosophy were Aquinas's refutations, and Duns Scotus's defence, and other second-hand references in the writings of the Scholastics.
Albertus Magnus began the task, Thomas Aquinas, his greater disciple, the Maimonides of Christian philosophy, completed it. And in this undertaking Maimonides was Thomas Aquinas's model. The Guide of the Perplexed was translated into Latin not long after its composition.
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