From the life and writings of St Thomas Aquinas, it will be argued that humility, best exemplified according to Jesus by the little child (cf. Matthew 18: 3), is necessary for the attainment of wisdom. The testimony of the Lord is faithful, giving wisdom to little ones (Psalm 18: 8). This humility, therefore, combined with the purity of heart, of which we have spoken, and the great assiduity in holy prayers, made Thomas’s soul docile and tender both to receive and to follow the impulses and illuminations of the Holy Spirit, in which the substance of contemplation consists (Pope Pius XI, Studiorum ducem (1925, for the 700th anniversary of St Thomas’s birth).