The spirit of Thomas Aquinas. ↩

The stairway of Jacob’s dream, with its angels ascending and descending. ↩

Whoever should refuse to gratify thy desire for knowledge, would no more follow his natural inclination than water which did not flow downward. ↩

Albertus Magnus, at whose twenty-one ponderous folios one gazes with awe and amazement, was born of a noble Swabian family at the beginning of the thirteenth century. In his youth he studied at Paris and at Padua; became a Dominican monk, and, retiring to a convent in Cologne, taught in the schools of that city. He became Provincial of his Order in Germany; and was afterward made Grandmaster of the Palace at Rome, and then Bishop of Ratisbon. Resigning his bishopric in 1262, he returned to his convent in Cologne, where he died in 1280, leaving behind him great fame for his learning and his labor.