Saint Thomas Aquinas – 'The Dumb Ox'

In other words, the essence of the Thomist common sense is that two agencies are at work; reality and the recognition of reality; and their meeting is a sort of marriage

That strangeness of things, which is the light in all poetry, and indeed in all art, is really connected with their otherness; or what is called their objectivity

All things are; but among the things that are is the thing called difference, quite as much as the thing called similarity.

assification of unique units; or in the difficulty of recognising variety while admitting unity. The first of these three is called debate about flux or formless transition; the second is the debate about Nominalism and Realism, or the existence of general ideas; the third is called the ancient metaphysical riddle of the One and the Many

They dissolve the stick or the stone in chemical solutions of scepticism; either in the medium of mere time and change; or in the difficulties of classification of unique units; o

r in the difficulty of recognising variety while admitting unity

In other words, it is impossible even to say that the change is for the better, unless the best exists somewhere, both before and after the change

In other words, they agree with Aquinas that there is everywhere potentiality that has not reached its end in act

Looking at Being as it is now, as the baby looks at the grass, we see a second thing about it; in quite popular language, it looks secondary and dependent. Existence exists; but it is not sufficiently self-existent; and would never become so merely by going on existing

because what we see does not satisfy us or explain itself, it is not even what we see