[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Augustine and Aquinas and the Idea of a Mixed Constitution
Ideas on mixed constitution begin with the Greeks. Its origin is connected with what may be called the secularity of the mind. Instead of projecting themselves into the sphere of religion, like the peoples of India and Judea, instead of taking this world on trust, and seeing it by faith, they took their stand in the realm of thought, and daring to wonder about things visible, they attempted to conceive of the world in the light of reason.
A different attitude towards democracy is apparent when we turn to the mixed constitution; and here, indeed, a totally new aspect of Augustine's whole thought is revealed. As yet we have never left the pure ideal; though we may have been dealing with actual States, it has still been with us, as the standard for their classification, or the source of their derivation. (Mason Hammond 1966) But in the mixed constitution it is Augustine's aim to construct a half-way house between the actual and the ideal; and here the ideal is not suspended in judgment over actual States, but modified to a degree, which will permit of a counter-modification of actual States sufficient to meet its demands.
The State of the mixed constitution is a "sub-ideal" State, near enough to actual conditions to be readily incorporated into actual life. From another point of view the change marked by the mixed constitution is still more striking. Hitherto, whatever the subject under discussion, there has been one fundamental thought -- the conception of politics as an art, and, as an art, demanding a wise practitioner, unfettered by any mixed constitution. But the last work of Augustine's life is called "the mixed constitution" and the last effort of his imagination is the construction of a State where constitution is supreme......
