n accord
with the universal law of nature." (_Super Sententias Quaestiones_, Bk.
4, Dist. 15, q. 2. Venice, 1580.)

Here again, then, are the same salient points we have already noticed in
the _Summa_. There is the idea clearly insisted on that the division of
property is not a first principle nor an immediate deduction from a
first principle, that in itself it is not dictated by the natural law
which leaves all things in common, that it is, however, not contrary to
natural law, but evidently in accord with it, that its necessity and its
introduction were due entirely to the actual experience of the race.

Again, to follow the theory chronologically still farther forward, St.
Antonino, whose charitable institutions in Florence have stamped deeply
with his personality that scene of his life's labours, does little more
than repeat the words of St. Thomas, though the actual phrase in which
he here compresses many pages of argument is reproduced from a work by
the famous Franciscan moralist John de Ripa. "It is by no means right
that here upon earth fallen humanity should have all things in common,
for the world would be turned into a desert, the way to fraud and all
manner of evils would be opened, and the good would have always the
worse, and the bad always the better, and the most effective means of
destroying all peace would be established" (_Summa Moralis_, 3, 3, 2,
1). Hence he concludes that "such a community of goods never could
benefit the State." These are none other arguments than those already
advanced by St. Thomas. His articles, already quoted, are indeed the
_Locus Classicus_ for all mediaeval theorists, and, though references
in every mediaeval work on social and economic questions are freely made
to Aristotle's _Politics_, it is evident that it is really Aquinas who
is intended.

Distinction of property, therefore, though declared so necessary for
peaceable social life, does not, for these thinkers, rest on natural
law, nor a divine law, but on positive human law under the guidance of
prudence and authority. Communism is not something evil, but rather an
ideal too lofty to be ever here realised. It implied so much generosity,
and such a vigour of public spirit, as to be utterly beyond the reach of
fallen nature. The Apostles alone could venture to live so high a life,
"for their state transcended that of every other mode of living"
(Ptolomeo of Lucca, _De Regimine Principio_, book iv., cap. 4, Parma,
186