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Antiquity itself discerned the preeminence of the contemplative as against the active attitude. The magnificent words of Aristotle regarding the dianoetic (cognitional) virtues in the conclusion of his Nicomachean Ethics sufficiently testify to this. But ancient thought erroneously limited contemplation to the cognitional sphere. This identification contains a twofold error. In the first place, every search for knowledge does not imply contemplation. The scientist who is tensely working for definite results, who strides from fact to fact in order to solve a given problem, is not doing his researches with a contemplative intent. Only the intuitive penetration of the essence of a thing and the conscious dwelling in a truth already established, are truly contemplative attitudes. Secondly, contemplation embraces not only cognition but also the conscious state of being affected by a value; dwelling in the bliss derived from the light of beauty and goodness. The frui1 the enjoyment of value, the absorption in beauty—these are attitudes purely contemplative in nature. Many of our emotional acts have a contemplative character. Responses of joy, love, and adoration are typical embodiments of contemplation. Thus, Mary Magdalene not only listened to the words of Our Lord but in loving adoration immersed herself in the beatific presence of Jesus.

We contemplate ends, not means

In order to describe the characteristics of contemplation, we may start from its contrast with the position we take towards the means when engaged in a purposive activity. In all such activities our inward appreciation of the end is strictly differentiated from our relation to the means. Suppose we wish to meet someone, and for that purpose betake ourselves to a certain place. Meeting that person, or the performance of a definite task in this connection, constitutes our end. Walking to the place in question—or taking a train for that destination, buying tickets, etc.—are means pure and simple. It is the end that directs our steps, governs our activity, coordinates our thoughts and movements; it represents the telos and the thematic meaning of our enterprise. The means are mere points of passage as it were; they are merely used; none of them becomes thematic except in the context of its usefulness for the end. We are not intent on them as such, nor do we take any one of them seriously as a whole, in its essence; we are only interested in them according to their serviceableness for our purpose.

The structural difference between our attitude towards the end and towards the means is obvious. The strict attitude of uti, of using something, as applied to the means within a system of action, is the exact opposite of the contemplative attitude. It embodies the specifically pragmatic way of treating an object, characterized by the fact that our proper attention belongs to something other than the object with which we are now dealing, namely, to our object in the sense of our end or purpose. The immediate objects of our activity, with which we deal in terms of uti, play a merely instrumental (and transitory) role. On the other hand, full attention to an object as such, or an interest taken in its essential character as a whole, constitutes a first mark of contemplation.

Certainly, as a formal principle of our attitude, the difference between our relation to the end and to the means is always present. Yet, when the end itself is subordinated to a greater whole, which in its turn is governed by another supreme end, that difference becomes a merely relative one. Such is the case, for instance, when our meeting a certain person or our execution of a certain task—for which purpose we are to betake ourselves to a specified place—is again meant to subserve some other purpose.

But even if there is no such successive subordination of aims—if, that is to say, our given purpose is not incorporated into a superior teleology but represents a relatively final end, the conclusion of a chain of meaning—even then, with