I cannot but think that the substitution of Aristotle for Plato and Saint Augustine was a mistake from the Christian point of view. Plato’s temperament was more religious than Aristotle’s, and Christian theology had been, from almost the first, adapted to Platonism. Plato had taught that knowledge is not perception, but a kind of reminiscent vision; Aristotle was much more of an empiricist. Saint Thomas, little though he intended it, prepared the way for the return from Platonic dreaming to scientific observation.
