CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HIST. - VOL. V. THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY
780
CHAPTER XXIII.
PHILOSOPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
Not even the briefest sketch of medieval philosophy can dispense with
a preface. Superfluous as it may seem to enquire what is meant by the
"Middle Ages," and again by "philosophy," neglect of these elementary
questions has often led to misunderstanding of those still shadowy
centuries
which lie between antiquity and ourselves. Precisely when and why the
Middle Ages were first so designated it might be hard to decide. The
presumption of some affinity between the ancient and modern world is
tolerably clear, but when this vague resemblance is tried by a variety
of
tests, the grounds for affirming it become more and more obscure. And
since our business here is only with philosophy, it may be well to
assert
at once that the ancient status of philosophy has never been reproduced.
To the Greeks, from the days of the half-legendary Pythagoras,
philosophy
meant the adoption of a considered way of life which was not the common
way of the world, and did not coincide with observance of the law. On
the one side were the authority of custom and the religion of the State;
on the other curiosity and criticism, the impulse to search for the
hidden
meaning of things and to establish a link between knowledge and life.
The original freedom of Greek philosophy must indeed be largely
attributed to the inseparable alliance between the Pagan State and the
Pagan
religion. For the official religion of the Greeks (as of the Romans) was
founded on no articulate theology and embodied in no visible Church.
The only theologians of early days were the poets. They at least gave
an account of the gods, in the form of scandalous stories ; and with
them,
therefore, rather than with popular piety, the philosophers were moved
to
quarrel when they too began to examine the cosmos and to meditate upon
the agency of the gods. Then it was that " theology ," in the
predestined
sense of that ominous word, cast its first deep shadow across the life
of
man. In answer to poetic travesties of the divine nature, Plato lightly
sketches his "outlines of theology," with their innocent appearance and
their promise of unending dispute. Aristotle in his turn, for all his
reticence on the subject of the gods, gives "theology" as an alternative
name for the "first philosophy," which posterity was to know as "meta-
physics." Whatever name be preferred, the momentous fact is that
monotheism, as an intellectual and moral doctrine, arose in
philosophical
circles beyond the range of civic religion, and without reference to the
authority of the State.
Character of Ancient Philosophy 781
The original stamp of philosophy was preserved with some difficulty
in the respectable circumstances of the Academy and the Lyceum. The
dancrer now was that a brotherhood of seekers after truth would
decrenerate
into a school of dialecticians. Philosophy languishes sadly as the trade
of professors and the sport of impertinent boys. From this fate it was
partly delivered in Greece by the march of political events. When the
career of Alexander put an end to the reality of the city-state, without
providing a substitute, less attraction was found henceforward in the
political life and more, therefore, in the theoretic. At the same time,
philosophy began to be Hellenistic rather than Hellenic. Zeno of Citium
was a portent of many things, and the tenets of Stoicism, though they
rang a little hollow at times, sounded further abroad than the voice of
the town-crier in Aristotle's diminutive metropolis. Philosophy grew
daily more like a religion, a refuge for the disconsolate and a guide
for
the perplexed. Now when there is one religion derived from a
philosophical valuation of life, and another bound up with the State but
unsupported by theology, we have before us all the elements of a
revolution
which sooner or later will overturn the world. What delayed the catas-
trophe in the ancient world was the scorn of philosophers for the vulgar
and the indifference of the State to theological speculation. It remains
to consider briefly the causes which brought this mutual disregard to an
end.
The single object of this hasty glance at the ancient world being to
secure the right line of approach to the medieval period, the story of
philosophy at Rome must be passed over, until the age when the old Latin
elements of culture are well nigh lost in a medley of Greek and oriental
ideas. Never, perhaps, would the fortunes of philosophy have been united
with those of the imperial city but for the advent of Plotinus in the third
century and the eventual adoption of Neo-Platonism as the forlorn hope
of pagan civilisation against the onset of the Christian Church. The
story of the Church in its early generations has been related many times
and with many objects. Seldom has it been presented in one of its most
genuine aspects, as a struggle with rival philosophies at a time when the
call to a spiritual life was audible to all serious men. When the Christian
society escaped from the circle of Judaism and began to grasp the full
nature of its mission, there existed only two forces sufficiently universal
to compete with it for mastery of the world, Greek philosophy and Roman
Law. The Pagan cults cannot rank as a third and equal competitor.
Neither singly nor collectively did they embody an idea capable of welding
mankind into social coherence. The imperitim, on the other hand, the
whole majestic apparatus of law and sovereignty, was a visible bond of
union, and behind it lay, to all appearance, irresistible force. Yet in the
end it was to prove easier for a Christian to mount the throne of the
Caesars than for the new doctrine of the Logos to prevail against its
philosophical rivals. The last and greatest victory of the Church was over
782 Philosophy and Theology
Neo-Platonism, when the spoils of the vanquished passed to the camp of
the victor, to be handed down as part of the armour of faith.
To set Christianity among the philosophies is not fanciful, so long as
we bear in mind that philosophy meant to the Greeks a way of life
belonging to a particular society. When we read in the Acts of the
Apostles
how Paul had once persecuted "this way," or how the convert was taken
to be further instructed in "the way,'*' we hear a language long
familiar
to Hellenes and easily intelligible to educated Romans. Where the
Christian way differed patently from the others was in making its first
appeal
to the simple and in its frank abhorrence of popular religion. For these
reasons it figures in Roman authors as a kind of odium humani generis
long before it was counted worthy of intellectual opposition. But by the
age of Plotinus and Porphyry that phase was concluded. Christianity
had now taken its place as one of the proffered ways of salvation, just
as
Gnosticism of a kind was a second, and Neo-Platonism a third. In the
school
of Plotinus we see the climax of the tendency to theologise philosophy,
and thus to fashion an exalted religion far removed from the
superstitions
of the vulgar. To this conclusion ancient philosophy had grown steadily
nearer, and this was its final legacy to the Church. No greater fiction,
then, can well be alleged as history than the assertion that the Middle
Ages corrupted the nature of philosophy by confusing it with theological
doctrine. On the contrary, the attempted distinction between theology
and philosophy was a characteristic medieval invention. For not until
the last days of Paganism did the occasion for such discrimination
arise.
For philosophy, as for political history, the arresting figure of Julian
is full of significance. Sagacious enough to learn from the Church the
secret of victory, he sought to create a bond between the religion of
the
many and the lofty speculations of the few. He failed because
Neo-Platonism, however refined as theology, possessed no means of
translating itself into a rule for the humble. Its solitary implement,
already
dull and rusty, was the allegorising of fable and myth. But the
multitude,
as Plato had foreseen, could not be saved by hidden meanings. When we
read the last book of the last Ennead, we understand how the new faith
may have failed to touch Plotinus; but when we set the unvarnished
story of the Gospel side by side with any Pagan allegory, the contrast
is
almost painfully absurd. Nevertheless, we may learn from the story of
Julian that, as Pagan philosophy had grown ever more theological, so the
Pagan State, under a Neo-Platonist Emperor, might almost have assumed
the character of an authoritative Church. To look at the same facts from
the Christian point of view, we see how the Church, by her double
victory
over the imperium of Rome and the philosophy of Greece, coumiitted
herself to the two great enterprises of the Middle Ages, the search for a
distinction between philosophy and theology, and the search for a way of
reconciling the temporal with the spiritual power. As soon as those two
The medieval problems. The Latin world 783
problems are in being, we may know, in fact, that the Middle Ages have
begun. To the Middle Ages, also, it fell -to discover, through much toil
and tribulation, that fundamentally the two problems are one.
For the student of philosophy the result of the successive blows which
shattered the Roman Empire is almost wholly comprised in the division
of civilisation into eastern and western halves. A prophet in the age of
Marcus Aurelius, or even of Trajan, might well have foretold a time when
Hellenism would have completely submerged the Latin elements of culture
carried westward by victorious generals as far as the British Isles.
Whether
such a prophecy would ever have been fulfilled it is idle to speculate.
The
fact remains that it was not. For the various reasons narrated by
historians
there came the great reaction, when the tide of Hellenism rolled back
eastwards, bearing with it the treasures of culture as well as the
imperial
throne. Even the greatest of Roman products, jurisprudence, appeared
to forsake its proper home; and while the great codification was being
accomplished at Byzantium, Roman Law in the West was becoming an
adjunct of persons rather than the voice of an independent and sovereign
society. In this cleavage of East and W^est there was, nevertheless, a
kind
of historical justice. For between the Greek and the Latin there was,
and
is, a deep and abiding antagonism. The enthusiasm of Roman authors
for Hellenic models disguised that truth for antiquity, as the ambiguity
of the term "classical" has often obscured it for ourselves. Vet the
fact
persisted, and one clear function of the Middle Ages was to make a new
revelation of Iatinita.s, barely possible until the superior light of
Hellas
was at least partially eclipsed. The contrast, perpetually recumng in
medieval authors, between Graeci and Latin'i does not rest upon
differences
of nationality or race. The true line of demarcation was always the
grammatical or literary language. The Latini were simply the
miscellaneous assemblage of peoples who used Latin as their vehicle of
literary
expression; a similar interpretation must be given to Graeci; and for
the
same reason, when we arrive in due course at the philosophers of Islam,
the single and sufficient excuse for calling them "Arabs'^ will be that
their
works were composed in the Arabic tongue. These divisions must not,
however, be interpreted too narrowly. They stood less for the
interruption
of colloquial intercourse than for wide intellectual schisms and radical
divei"sities of mind. Nothing proves this better than a scrutiny of the
several occasions, from the ninth to the thirteenth century, when some
Greek author was newly translated into Latin. We then learn that the
famous Graccia captaferum, . ., however true in antiquity, became
conspicuously false in the medieval centuries. The truth was rather that
each
translated Greek became in his turn the captive of laiinitas. He entered
a world where the very terminology was steeped in Latin associations,
and
where there flourished a spirit of auctoritas as alien from the
traditions
of Hellas as the Summa of Aquinas from the dialogues of Plato. To mark
the stages in medieval philosophy as a series of Greek invasions is not
784 The Carolingian Renaissance. John the Scot
unscientific; but we have always to add that the result was rather to
enlarge a Latin structure than to remodel it on pure Hellenic lines.
After two or three of the darkest centuries in European history the
Carolingian renaissance offers a glimmer of daylight. With Charles the
Great we see Europe awaking to the consciousness of ignorance and to
the need of regaining touch with the past. When Alcuin (ob. 804) was
summoned from England to reform the methods of school instruction,
he revived the old curriculum of the seven liberal arts, the famous
Trivium
and Quadrivium, and thus incidentally renewed the study of dialectic,
the
most durable element in European education. By his own writings, and
still more by his pupils, his educational influence was spread widely
abroad.
An attempt has been made to claim more for him. He has been hailed
as the father of Scholasticism (most ambiguous of titles), or at least
as
the progenitor of philosophy in France. It is more than doubtful,
however, if the claim can be upheld. The circle of Charles the Great
caught
eagerly at the threads of tradition and found novelty enough in ideas
far
from original. PhilosopMa itself was a name that stood for the general
culture of the liberal arts, or sometimes for dialectic in particular,
rather than
for the apprehension of grave intellectual problems. In spite,
therefore,
of the noble work of Alcuin, and in spite of the encyclopedic learning
of
his pupil Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mayence, and, as he has well
been styled, primus praeceptor Germaniae, it is not unfair to judge that
no figure of high import for philosophy emerges before the astonishing
Johannes Scottus Eriugena, court-philosopher and even, if tales be true,
court jester to Charles the Bald.
The entrance and exit of this mysterious Irishman are swift and histrionic. Appearing suddenly from one wing, he remains on the stage of France just long enough to derange the plot and bewilder the actors, before he vanishes on the other side and is lost in "confused noise without." Long afterwards we learn from William of Malmesbury that the noise was caused by his English scholars, who were busy murdering their master with the points of their pens. Doubtless they took the hint ' from John's own observation: stilus J^erreus alia parte qua scrihamuSy alia qua deleamus a fahro Jmtus est^. Uncertainty about his origin and end is, however, of small consequence. His works are with us, and the occasion of his first and last appearance in the ecclesiastical drama is notorious. Gottschalk, a man of noble birth and a reluctant follower of St Benedict, had extracted from the study of St Augustine a doctrine of "double predestination," which ensured the damnation of the wicked no less firmly than the salvation of the good. Whatever the logical difficulty of evading that conclusion, the moral danger of fatalism was so plainly threatened by it that Hincmar, the powerful and restless Archbishop of Rheims {oh. 882), was roused to vigorous action. The unhappy monk was indicted, condemned, imprisoned, and finally harried into his grave. But Gottschalk
» MPL, cxxii, 422.
John the Scot and Greek Philosophy 785
or his opinions, did not lack supporters. Assailed from many sides by
weighty rebukes, Hincmar judged it expedient to add reason to force, and
in a rash moment entrusted to John the Scot the task of demolishing
Gottschalk's position. The result was (in the year 851) the treatise on
Predestination, which defeated not only Gottschalk but Hincmar and all
parties concerned.
The knowledge of Greek, now a rare accomplishment, which John
brought with him from Ireland, stood for more than linguistic
proficiency.
His philosophy is a genuine derivation from Greek sources. Pagan and
Christian, and must be interpreted rather by the ideas of the fifth
century
than by later developments of medieval thought. In the De
Praedestinatione, it is true, he affects to rely solely on Latin
authors; whence it has
been doubtfully inferred that he had not yet acknowledged the sway of
the Pseudo-Dionysius. A more likely explanation is found in the
controversial character of the work. John's business was to turn against
Gottschalk the authorities, especially Augustine, to whom he had
appealed.
With an ingenuity almost too subtle he carries out this programme, yet
only on the surface. The force and substance of his argument belong to
neo-Platonism. Either, therefore, he was already familiar with the
Areopagite, or he must in some other way have mastered a body of
doctrine akin to the philosophy of Proclus. In any case, the refutation
of Gottschalk depends entirely on an account of the Divine Nature
developed by Plotinus and his school out of elements originally supplied
by Plato. The essence of God, His will, and His intellect, are one pure
and indivisible substance identical with goodness. From his eternal
perfection no effects but what are good can proceed. If the will of the
Creator is the necessity of the creature, yet that will is the pure
expression
of liberty, and man's necessity is but the appetite for goodness, in
which
human liberty essentially consists. How, then, shall we distinguish the
good from the bad.'' And how leave room for the freedom of decision
upon which moral responsibility depends.^ John firmly maintains the
reality of liberum arbitrium, and denies that God compels any man to be
either good or bad; but the critical question evidently is whether the
existence of evil in any real sense can be allowed. Boldly and variously
as John wTestles with his problem, he never wavers in his belief that
evil
is pure negation. Sin, death, and eternal punishment he sees as
indivisible
links in a chain, but God neither knows nor wills them. What God
foreknows he predestinates; whence, if he is said to foreknow evils
without
predestinating them, this can only be a modus locutionis, designed to
stimulate us to deeper understanding of the truth. Foreknowledge itself
is but a metaphor; for priority in time has no meaning in relation to
God, in whose life is neither past nor future, but only the eternal now.
To do justice to the argument in a few lines is impossible, but its
two-edged character and its threat to the orthodox view of sin and
punishment will easily be detected. The whole tone of the reasoning, too,
C. MED. H. VOL. v. CH. XXIII. 60
786 John's view of Reason and Authority
must have been foreign to John's contemporaries, who can hardly have
failed to see how little he trusted to familiar authorities, and how
much
to arguments derived from none knew where. It is a mistake, however,
to lay as much emphasis as some modern writers have done on John's
identification (in the first chapter) of vera philosophia with vera
religio.
In itself this was no startling novelty, nor was it a mere ruse of
debate
for John to quote the precedent of Augustine, Verus philosophus est
amator Dei ^ was Augustine's summary of the aim of philosophy : the test
by which he had tried Socrates and Plato, and found them not far from
the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus far, in fact, John was expressing a sound
historical judgment on the meaning of philosophy in the past. It is
further to be observed that the word is religio, not theologia. A simple
identification of philosophy with theology is far from his intention.
Broadly speaking, theologia always signifies for him some measure of the
divine illumination not vouchsafed outside the Catholic Church. Johannes
theologns is his title for the author of the Fourth Gospel, and all
theologi
belong to a privileged class, from which many philosophi would be
excluded.
Thus philosophi saeculares is a name for the Pagan sages, and inanis
philosophia serves to describe the practice of Jews and heretics, who
cling
to the letter of the scriptures and pay no heed to the spirit. On the
other
hand, philosophia in its widest sense can cover the entire search for
wisdom,
of which theology is the highest but not the only part. No greater
libel,
certainly, can be fastened on John the Scot than to represent him as
dressing up in the garb of Christianity some Pagan philosophy in which
alone he believed. No vestige of such an intention can be traced in his
pages. He is ardently, almost passionately. Christian. What his feelings
would have been had he learned that "Dionysius" was an author never
heard of before the sixth century, and, possibly, a pupil of Proclus
(ob. 485),
it is vain to conjecture. As it is, he had probably never heard of
Proclus,
nor ever read a word of Plotinus. Plato he counts the chief of
philosophers
— the merest commonplace in Christian writers down to the end of the
twelfth century — but from the Platonic secta he more than once
dissociates
himself, and never would he have dreamed of making Plato the equal, in
his
theological knowledge, of the Greek Fathers, or Dionysius, or Augustine,
Some caution is needed, again, in describing his view of reason and
authority. For while it is common to quote from him such sayings as
auctoritas ex vera ratione processit, ratio vera nequaquam ex
auctoritate, ^
it is no less common to ignore the qualifications of the context, and to
omit altogether many other passages of a very different colour. Ratio
itself is a difficult and ambiguous term. Sometimes it comprehends all
the
operations of the mind; sometimes it means only the discursive,
dialectical reason, which stands on a permanently lower level than
tntellectus sive
animus sive mens. The last thing John would suggest is that reason, in
this
narrower sense, can find out and interpret the ways of God. His point is
^ Augustiue, De Civitate Dei, viii, 1. ^ MPL, cxxii, 613.
The charge of Pantheism 787
rather that auctoritas is valuable only in so far as it represents what the
intellect of saintly theologi has revealed. Reason itself demands our
reverence for what is above reason; it does not, however, demand blind
subservience to patristic utterances, or to the bare letter of the Scriptures,
any more than it encourages us to put our trust in petty dialectic. Vera
autoritas, says John the Scot, rectae rationi non obsistit, neque recta ratio
verae auctoritate. To force him into a rigid dilemma of reason and
authority is likely to be an anachronism only less regrettable than the
proposal to enlist him on the side of the Nominalists or the Realists. A
mind like his refuses to be imprisoned in any such antithesis. What he
believes in is the illumination of the mind with a heavenly radiance, as
easily dimmed by ratio in one way as by aiwtoritas in another.
The traditional accusation against the De Divisione Naturae — surely
one of the most remarkable books in the world — is that of Pantheism.
The charge would be more convincing if its authors would sometimes go
so far as to tell us what Pantheism means. Presumably, it implies at
least
some kind of identification or confusion of God with His creatures, some
materialisation of the Divine Nature, with loss of transcendence and the
Creator's prerogative. Now in the De Div'isione Naturae there is a rich
abundance of statements that seem to point in that direction. Nothing
could be plainer, for example, than the words, proinde non duo a seipsis
distantia debemus intelligere Deum et creaturam, sed unum et id ipsum-;
and this is but one out of many such passages. Yet no one, it is
reasonable
to suggest, who has striven to master the book as a whole, with due
appreciation of its earlier sources, will judge "Pantheism "to be other
than an
idle and empty description of the doctrines set forth by John the Scot.
The universe, as he conceived of it, is one stupendous yet graded
theophania.
God is in omnibus and supra omnia, revealed in all His creatures, yet
eternally transcending them all. They who declare that God is thus
degraded below Himself must be prepared to deny that Jesus was God
as well as man. For man is the officina omnis naturae, the perfect
microcosm; whence the Incarnation reveals, in a single flash, the whole
relation of God to the universe, even as the resurrection of Christ
displays
in a moment the reditus or reversio of all things to God. John himself
was well aware of the danger to which he exposed himself. Anticipating
the charge of Pantheism, he strove by many illustrations and analogies
to
accommodate his high and difficult thoughts to men of ruder
understanding. In this he did not succeed. When not wholly neglected,
his book
was usually suspect. After lying comparatively dormant for more than
three centuries, it was brought into fresh notoriety by the heretical
Amalric of Bene, A preliminary condemnation at Paris in 1210 was
followed in 1225 by the sentence of Honorius III, who ordered all
discoverable copies to be committed to the flames. Upon this, perhaps,
the fairest
comment is that, if Amalric and his friends had read John as carelessly
1 MPL, cxxii, 511.
2 Ib. cxxii, 678,
CH. xxiii. 50 2
788 Character of Christendom
as some of his modern critics, the action of Honorius may easily be
excused.
The false dawn of the Carolingian renaissance faded all too soon into
a second spell of darkness. Knowledge of Greek and the power of com-
paring eastern with western traditions John the Scot did not bequeath
to the following generations. His translations of Dionysius and Maximus
Confessor — sad examples of the verbum de verba method — may well have
been unintelligible, while his commentaries or glosses on Martianus
Capella
and Boethius would distinguish him less clearly from other men.
Dis-ordered and confused by the trend of political events, the Latin
world
relapsed into the confinement of a narrow circle of authors conned over
and over again, yet often imperfectly known and understood. It is
possible,
however, to draw too wide an inference from the poverty of a
philosophical
library. Paucity of materials alone will not account for mental
stagnation.
To interpret the intellectual condition of the Middle Ages we must look
rather to the vast transformation of the world, as the notion of a
civitas
Dei gradually supplanted the ideals of Pagan society. In the eyes of
Augustine the secular power, no less than the heathen religion, still
belongs
to the civitas impiorum; to possess and wield it can never be the
ambition of
the Church. Philosophy again, the property of the Greeks, though far
superior to an idolatrous religion, is only an imperfect alternative to
the
Christian life. But the course of history was too strong for these older
partitions and antagonisms.
Before the end of the fifth century Pope
Gelasius I was making his memorable pronouncement: duo quippe sunt
quibus principaliter mundus hic regitur, auctoritas sacrata Pontificum
et
regalis potestas. This royal or imperial power was henceforward to be no
Babylonish relic, but a necessary element in the life of a single,
all-embracing society. However delegated or dispersed among princes, the
temporal sovereignty must remain the sword of the spiritual, the
instrument for extending and protecting the Kingdom of God upon earth.
Authority of all kinds was gradually concentrated, until the thought of
a philosophy unrelated to dogmatic propositions became as intolerable as
the pretence of any secular power to stand outside the Church. The
Creed and the Scriptures became the official source alike of law and of
wisdom. The vis coactiva was now the appurtenance of knowledge, the
knowledge divinely imparted to the Christian society. In such a society
(no matter how much the Papal theory was disputed) the weight of
tradition could not fail to be overwhelming. From heresy to schism was
now the briefest of steps, and novelty had always to justify itself
"Many
raen,^'says John the Scot, "are roused from slumber by heretics, that
they
O may see the day of the Lord and rejoice." ^ No shrewder judgment could
be passed on the history of medieval philosophy. For most of the greater
changes were due less to original speculation, or even to the acquisition
of new materials, than to the suspicion of heresy. Opinions denounced at
1 MPL, cxxii, 369.
Medieval knowledge of Plato and Aristotle 789
first were often enough accepted on second thoughts. The power of
adapting and absorbing fresh ideas never wholly ceased to operate, but
all was governed bv the general assumption that unchanging truth was
alreadv revealed. Meanwhile, the habit of deference to tradition was
extended, almost unwittingly, to such records of Pagan knowledge as
fortune had preserved. None would have ranked a Greek philosopher with
the Scriptures, but when reverence for the past was combined with lack
of critical power, the result was to establish certain books or authors in a
position not easy to shake.
Some of the medieval limitations we may briefly illustrate by glancing
at the sources of their acquaintance with Aristotle and Plato. The first
name to be honoured is Boethius. To his translations of the Categories
(with the Isagoge of Porphyry) and the De Interpretatione together with
his own commentaries and logical treatises, was due virtually the whole
knowledge of Aristotle accessible to medieval students from the sixth
century to the middle of the twelfth. Boethius had intended to introduce
the whole of Aristotle to the Latins, and some confusion has been caused
by the more than doubtful ascription to him of translations of the rest
of
the Orgtmon, the De Anima, and the Metaphysics. It is fairly certain,
however, that before the age of John of Salisbury Aristotle was directly
represented only by two of his minor logical works, supplemented by a
few fragments of information gathered from various sources. An important
consequence, too often overlooked, was the restriction of his authority
to a very narrow sphere. In dialectic he was admittedly the master, but
in philosophy as a whole the evidence is incontestable that Plato
occupied
the highest place in general esteem. And yet, when we turn to the
medieval knowledge of Plato, we mav well be surprised at his lofty
position. For nothing of his actual writings could be studied in Latin
but
a fragment of a single dialogue, the TimaeuS.
Between the cases of Plato and Aristotle there was, however, a very
wide difference. ^Vhen Aristotle arrived in translations he was almost a
stranger; and even when the work of Boethius had raised him to
unchallenged sovereignty in the province of logic, he still was
enthroned in a
certain isolation, with little historical background and with no evident
affinity to the Christian way of life. Platonism, on the other hand, was
almost inhaled with the air. Boethius himself was a Platonist, and so
was
Porphyry. Augustine, too, never forgot his debt to the philosophy which
had delivered him from Manichaeism and carried him a long stage on the
road to Christ. To indicate all the sources of Platonism would be almost
impossible. It must suffice here to notice two from outside the
Christian ^
circle, the commentary of Chalcidius that accompanied his version of the
Timaeus, and the dissertation of Macrobius on the Somnium Scipionis.
To class Chalcidius as non-Christian is perhaps questionable, for he was
more probably a Christian than a Pagan or a Jew. His work, however,
embodies very little Christian material except an extract from Origen.
CH. XXIII.
790 The Influence of Macrobius
Dating, perhaps, from the early fourth century, it is neither independent
nor critical. The substance of it, if we accept the result of Switalski's
investigation, is derived from an earlier commentary, very possibly by the
hand of the eminent Stoic, Posidonius. The outcome is an eclectic medley
or muddle of divers authorities, gathered under the sway of the infallible
Plato. The later Platonism, we must remember, was even more than
eclectic. Its aim was to absorb and to reconcile, to appear as a summary
of all previous Greek speculation. Much of the uncritical confusion of
ideas that meets us everywhere in the Middle Ages was simply a legacy
from Chalcidius and the less intelligent followers of Plotinus in the decline
of the ancient world.
Roughly similar qualities appear in the work of Macrobius, a writer
who, late in the fifth century, had contrived to remain untouched by the
Christian influence. His detachment from the Church makes it all the
more interesting to discover in him that medievalism of mind so often
rated as a purely Christian product. In him we have already the medieval
Virgil, and along with that strange invention all the baffling mixture
of
science and nonsense that was to float about Europe for more than a
thousand years. How medieval, too, is the deference of Macrobius to the
great names of the past. Neque vero tam immemor mei, he writes, aut ita
male animatus sum, ut ex ingenio meo vel Aristoteli resistam vel adsim
Platoni.1 Yet Macrobius is far from contemptible, and the debt of the
Middle Ages to him was immense. To him was due what little was known
of Plotinus (inter philosophiae professores cum Platone princeps,2 the
fourfold classification of the virtues, the threefold gradation of Deus,
mens,
and anima, the illumination of all creatures as in an orderly series of
mirrors by the unus fulgor, the descent of the soul to its material
habitation, and its yearning for restoration to its eternal home. When
Christians
read in Macrobius of the soul's imprisonment in a vesture of clay
(indumentum testeum), of its wandering on earth as a pilgrim, of heaven
as the
true patria, of philosophy as meditatio mortis, they caught the genuine
accent of religion and welcomed Platonism as a natural ally. Actual
knowledge of the original Plato Macrobius did not greatly increase.
Behind the Somnium Scipionis, according to Schedler's recent enquiry,
lies
once more the Timaeus, as interpreted first by Porphyry and handed on
by intermediate writers to Macrobius. If that be so, it helps to account
for the frequent difficulty of deciding, when no names are mentioned,
whether a medieval writer is using Chalcidius, or Macrobius, or
sometimes
the De Consolatione of Boethius. The same brand of Platonism, with the
same tincture of new Pythagoreanism, is recognisable in all.
The lines of thought broadly indicated by Plato and Aristotle run
through the Middle Ages. From Plato came the wider inspiration and
the higher call; from Aristotle the perception of difficulties and
contradictions, with the demand for dialectical skill. Nowhere, as it
happens,
' Comm. in Somnium Scipionis, n, 15. ' lb. i, 8.
Importance of dialectic. The tenth century 791
were the defects of medieval knowledge of history more conspicuous than
in this very matter of dialectic. The most learned doctors were unaware
that dialectic had held in Plato's estimation a far higher place than
Aristotle would allow. They did not know why Aristotle himself had
sometimes preferred and sometimes rejected it, nor how far removed was
his
trivial use of it as an exercise for students from the profundity of his
dialectical analysis of moral experience. They knew just enough to
warrant
the dispute whether dialectic was properly concerned with words or with
things; and enough, unfortunately, to encourage a confusion of the ars
disserendi with the total activity of reason. During the two dark
centuries
after the appearance of John the Scot dialectic was, however, the
beacon.
We can dimly trace the rise of factions, the growth of the contest
between
dialecticians and anti-dialecticians, which was to reach its climax in
the
age of Abelard. For the rest, the condition of Europe was unfriendly to
speculation, and the flagrance of moral disorders left no leisure for
adventures of the intellect.
The tenth century is singularly barren. Scarcely a name of distinction
is recorded in the annals of philosophy, save that of Gerbert of
Aurillac
(ob. 1003), who was raised to the Papacy as Sylvester II. Even Gerbert
was
more remarkable for his skill in mathematics, and for his services to
humane
education, than for anv direct contribution to philosophy. To his pupil
and patron. Otto III, he dedicated a logical text-book with the title
Libellus de rationali et ratione uti, and he may be the author (though
the
point is disputed) of a work De Corpore et Sanguine Domini. If so, we
can credit him with a perception of the value of dialectic in
harmonising
discrepant utterances of the Fathere. Some have failed, however, to note
that his most striking observation is taken directly from John the Scot.
The art which divides genera into species, and resolves species into
genera,
is not (he says) the product of human machinations, but was discovered
by the wise in the very nature of things, where the Author of all the
arts
had placed it. This is taken verbatim from the De Divisione Naturae, 1
where it stands as a comment on the work of the Creator. Gerbert's
influence, however, did not depend exclusively on his books. His
distinction
as a teacher is indisputable, and while his personal association was
with
the cathedral-school of Rheims, he became, through his pupil Fulbert
(ob. 1028), the indirect founder of the more famous school of Chartres.
The attribution to Gerbert of a work on the Eucharist is, in any case,
an indication of the subject which did more, perhaps, than any other in
this unproductive period to stimulate curiosity and to awaken controversy
about the use and abuse of dialectic. Already in the ninth century
Paschasius Radbert and Ratramnus had earned some notoriety by their
discussion of the Blessed Sacrament; and now a larger disturbance was
created, some while after Gerbert, by the De Caena Domini of Berengar
of Tours. Devout minds not unnaturally felt a strong distaste for the
1 MPL, cxxii, 749.
792 Lanfranc and Peter Damian
analysis of a mystery, but Berengar was less sensitive. He magnified the
function of dialectic, quia confugere ad eam ad rationem est confugere,^
and thus proved himself an imperfect scholar of John the Scot, by whom
he is said to have been inspired. For if John had championed the liberty
of reason, he had also taught that even the angelic intelligences ab in-
troitu mysteriorum suos theologicos pedes, hoc est, intellectuales
ingressus
retractant.1 The most eminent critic of Berengar's "theological feet"
was
Archbishop Lanfranc (1005-1089), himself well reputed in dialectic but
disposed to restrict the art to a subordinate position. Augustine, he
allows,
had thought well of it; and, lest he should seem to be afraid of
Berengar's
weapons, he will waive his own preference for trusting to the traditions
of the Church where mysteries of the faith are concerned. He accuses
Berengar of parading his skill in disputation, and suggests that a
confession of ignorance is sometimes better than aiTogant obstinacy. The
tone
of his remonstrance is dignified and sensible. He does not look on
dialectic as necessarily hostile to the faith, but thinks it a perilous
exercise
for shallow and contentious minds.
Another contemporary name, Peter Damian (ob. 1 072), deserves to be
mentioned. Justly famed for his saintly life, Petrus peccator, as he
styled
himself, stands in the main for the monastic tendency to think more
highly of practical religion than of intellectual attempts to explain
and
justify the faith. He wrote, however, several works of theology, in one
of
which, the De Divina Omnipotentia, he discusses the use of philosophy in
"sacred disputations." It is here that he introduces the celebrated
phrase,
ancilla dominae, to denote the proper relation of dialectic to theology.
Less
energy, perhaps, would have been spent in remonstrance against this
apparent degradation of reason, if more attention had been paid to the
current usage of terms. Philosophia often means no more than dialectic,
and dialectic no more than a display of captious arguments. That the
Christian position as a whole (the Christian philosophy, in fact) was
irrational, Peter Damian and his contemporaries would never have
admitted.
The antithesis of ratio and auctoritas was then far less comprehensive
than the final problem, scarcely realised before the age of Aquinas,
whether
the independence of philosophy could be reconciled with the Catholic
position. To assign to dialectic a merely ancillary office is not
necessarily
obscurantism. It often meant no more than the logical commonplace,
that ratiocinatio presupposes the concession of premises. In a deeper
sense,
it meant that experience must precede the attempt to explain it, and
that
the testimony of many generations cannot easily be overthrown by a
talent
for repartee.
With the illustrious name of Anselm a new chapter begins. As a
pupil of Lanfranc he belongs chronologically (1033 -1109) to the
eleventh
century, but in mind and spirit must rank as the herald of the sustained
intellectual effort which cuhninated two centuries later in the systems
of
» Ml'L, cxxn, G68.
The work of Anselm 793
Albertus Magnus and Aquinas. For this reason he has often been saluted
as the true founder of Scholasticism, a title we should bestow with
greater
confidence, did any definition of Scholasticism command universal
assent.
Unfortunately it is not so. After much pedantic and even acrimonious
discussion we are left uncertain whether "scholastic" and "medieval"
philosophy should be identified or clearly distinguished, whether
"scholasticism" is the name of a method or of a result, whether there
was one
pre-eminently scholastic problem, and whether one particular solution
has
a right to be called scholastic. Thus is medieval philosophy, so fertile
in
distinctions, pureued by the shadow of itself. The w isest course,
perhaps,
is to stand aside from the controversy. It is agreed that the term
scholasticus (applicable either to master or to pupil) meant uncommonly
little;
it is agreed also that the great doctors of the thirteenth century may
rightly be called schoolmen. For the rest, it is enough to interpret, as
best one can, the course of events.
To call Anselm an original thinker is not to deny his obligations to
others. In the preface to the Monologium he protests that nothing in his
doctrine is out of harmony with the Catholic Fathers, especially the Blessed
Augustine. The product of his mind is, however, original inasmuch as it
is the outcome of personal experience, the fruit of profound meditation
upon the nature of his faith. "Enter into the cubicle of thy mind; shut
out all things but God and whatsoever may help thee to seek for Him;
then close the door and seek." Thus he writes in the first chapter of the
Proshgion, before expounding his proof of God's existence; and none,
perhaps, who are deaf to the exhortation will feel any force in the proof.
Fides quaerens intellectum and nisi credideritis, non intelligetis are the
formulas that meet us everywhere on his pages. Still more clearly does
he express his position in the words of the De Fide Trinitatis: qui non
crediderit, non experietur, et qui non expertus fuerit, non intelliget. The
Church, he means, had not invented new intellectual instruments, but
rather had proclaimed the advent of a new spiritual experience, itself the
condition of understanding the meaning of life. Mere rationalism, on the
other hand, could originate nothing; for reason, as discureive and critical,
depends for its materials on a higher mode of experience. On this point
at least Christianity was at one with Platonism, and Anselm himself is, on
the whole, a kind of Platonist. His Platonism, however, is derived from
Augustine, not, as some have alleged, from John the Scot; for Anselm is
by no means committed to the negative theology of Neo- Platonism, which
is the very essence of the Irish philosophers teaching. Well as he knows
that the names we apply to the Divine Nature are but shadows and symbols,
he is never possessed by that ecstasy of intellectual asceticism which glories
in the denial of attributes, and pays its last tribute to omniscience by
declaring that God Himself cannot know what He is.
Anselm's argument for the necessary existence of id quo maius cogitari
nequit is no plea for a negative abstraction. Read in connexion with the
L7
794 The ontological argument
Monologium it is seen as an attempt to clothe the One, which alone
participates in nothing, but is what it is, with the attributes of an
individual
spirit, unbounded by space and time, yet present everywhere and always,
without parts and qualities, yet containing in very essence life,
salvation,
beatitude, and all possible perfections. Nearest to God, and best able
to
serve as a mirror of His image, is mens (another link with
Neo-Platonism);
and since mens is the innermost nature of man, to "enter into the
cubicle
of the mind," shutting out all lower manifestations of being, is the
true
way of access. The formal weakness of the argument was at once detected
by the monk Gaunilo; whose objection, however, that the transition from
what exists only in intellectu to what exists also in re cannot thus be
effected, leaves Anselm quite unperturbed. The pretence that the same
argument might prove the existence of the most perfect island he declares
to be a misapprehension of the point. If his argument can be applied to
anything but the Supreme Being, he is ready to make Gaunilo a present
of the island, and to promise that it shall never vanish away.
The "ontological" argument, however, was always viewed with suspicion.
In this, as in some other respects, Anselm did not precisely anticipate
the position of later scholastics. Even his fides quaerens intellectum
does
not accurately express the method of those who afterwards made a more
exact distinction between truths demonstrable by reason and truths
revealed only to faith. Tentative steps in that direction were taken by
Anselm, but he went farther than his successors in attempting, for
example,
to arrive by reasoning at the doctrine of the Trinity; an image of
which,
following an Augustinian tradition, he discovers in the human soul.
Anselm, in fact, was not directly interested in the question whether it
was possible to concede to philosophy a province where certain problems
could be solved by reason alone. He perceived the distinction (as he
shews
in the Cur Deus homo) between seeking reasons because you do not
believe,
and seeking them because you do; but it was the latter case that chiefly
inspired his arguments, and so made him, in a certain sense, more
rationalistic than those who afterwards defined their concessions to
reason.
A fuller account of Anselm would refer to his theories of sense -
perception, judgment, the freedom of the will, and other psychological
matters.
But these are of less importance in the history of his own time than his
controversy with Roscelin, about whose doctrines, as it happens, Anselm
is
our best source of information. To call the controversy important is not
for a moment to allow that the single theme of Nominalism and Realism
is the clue to medieval philosophy. On the contrary, Roscelin is
important
because he succeeded, perhaps for the first and last time, in disturbing
the ecclesiastical arena by manufacturing a heresy out of this topic of
the
schools. In his famous Isagoge, or Introduction to the Orgamm of
Aristotle, Porphyry prepared the medieval battleground by a brief and
cautious statement which it may be worth while to quote in the Latin of
Boethius. Mox de generibus et speciebus illud quidem, sive subsistant
sive
Realism and Nominalism 795
in solis nudis intellectibus posita sint, sive subsistentia corporalia sint an
incorporalia, et utrum separata a sensibilibus posita et circa haec consistentia,
dicere recusabo. The original difference between Aristotle and Plato was
not properly a controversy about genera and species, but in the Middle
Ages the extreme "realistic" doctrine of universals was identified with
the teaching of Plato. It is, in fact, one of the bewildering accidents of
history that the Platonic "idea"" became the basis of medieval "realism,"
whereas the " idealism " of Berkeley and later philosophers has nothing to
do with either Plato or the medieval controversy. For in whatever sense we
attribute "conceptualism" to medieval logicians, it must certainly not be
in a sense that would bring them into line with an idealist philosophy
never clearly formulated before the seventeenth or eighteenth century.
Apart from the unabashed Platonists, the prevailing tendency of
medieval writers was to follow Aristotle or Boethius in holding that
universals could not "subsist" except in association with individual things.
At the same time it was freely allowed that the intellect had the power
of viewing them in abstraction from sensible things, and that the common
element in things, from which we derive the notions of genus and species,
was no mere fiction of the mind. What complicated the dispute between
Platonists and Aristotelians was the appearance of Nominalism; and what
has thrown the whole history of the subject into confusion is the belief,
originating mainly with some distinguished French scholars, that the war
of Nominalists and Realists began in the ninth century and persisted
until the close of the ^ Middle Ages. Since it is impossible here to scrutinise
the evidence, nothing more can be offered than a dogmatic assertion that
this view is untenable. Nominalism was an intellectual firework of the
age of Roscelin and Abelard; for which reason, among others, it is also
an anachronism to talk of Realism in connexion with John the Scot or
other writers of that period. Even when the nominalis secta (as John of
Salisbury was perhaps the first to call it) has been rightly dated, it is no
easy task to define and explain its doctrine. The contention that only
individual things exist in their own right is no more Nominalist than
Aristotelian. Nothing characteristic of the new sect appears until the
whole stress is laid on voces or nomina. If universals are mere flatus vocis,
if their reality is only the physical reality belonging to a percussio aeris,
then indeed we have a doctrine inconsistent alike with the Platonic Realism
and with the tradition of Boethius. Absurd as the doctrine may sound
to modem ears, it was a not unnatural product of the long-established
opinion that logic, in company with grammar and rhetoric, was primarily
concerned with words. Meanwhile the importance of Nominalism for the
twelfth century was that it re-opened the whole question of universals, split
up the camp of the anti-nominalists into factions, and produced all the
varieties of doctrine enumerated by John of Salisbury and other writers.
The logical and metaphysical problems thus brought to light were per-
fectly genuine. Much the same difficulties may be found in modem books
CH. XXIII.
796 Anselm and Roscelin
of logic, and the solutions offered do not differ fundamentally from
those
current in medieval times.
According to Anselm, Roscelin presented the world with a dilemma.
Either, he argued, the three Persons of the Trinity are one res; in
which
ease the Father and the Spirit were incarnate together with the Son: or
they are three, like three souls or three angels; in which case only
convention forbids us to speak of three Gods. The second alternative, a
kind
of Tritheism, Roscelin felt himself driven to prefer by his denial of
reality
to universals and his reduction of them to mere flatus vocis. Much in-
genuity has been wasted in arguing that Roscelin*'s doctrine was not
genuine Nominalism (whatever that may happen to be), and that Anselm
must have misrepresented the case. But where is the evidence.'' There is
none of importance but Roscelin"'s letter to Abelard, which contributes
nothing to the point, a few words by Abelard himself, who speaks of
Roscelin's "insane opinion" that voces alone could have parts or
species,
and a statement by John of Salisbury, who makes Roscelin the author of
the "exploded opinion," voces ipsas genera esse et species. What little
we
learn from these sources is at least consistent with the assertions of
Anselm.
Anselm was no fanatical heresy-hunter, and Roscelin was doubtless
sincere
in repudiating heretical intentions. But that is not the point. The
question is whether there is any ground for regarding him as a
distressed
and persecuted champion of reason ; and the answer, surely, must be that
there is none.
The flatus vocis theory, whether invented by Roscelin or by one John
the Sophist, was clearly a modernism, a heresy in dialectic, with no
support
from tradition. To translate it into Conceptualism appears to be wholly
unwarrantable; Anselm treats it rather as a kind of stupid materialism,
and gives not the slightest hint that he and Roscelin are ranged on
oppo-
site sides in an old and respectable controversy. He does not even
trouble
to define his own view of universals, but leaves us to gather what we
may
from scattered passages in his writings. Distressing as this may be to
the
historian of logic, the historian of philosophy will find in Anselm's
very
silences and omissions fresh reason for rejecting the once common
opinion
that medieval thinkers exhausted themselves for centuries in trying to
define the nature of universals. It is scarcely too much to say that
Anselm
does not care what they are, so long as the function of reason is not
simply confounded with sensuous perception. Neither things nor ideas
are mere words and breath, but in what sense things and ideas are
identical or distinct he is at no great pains to decide. The term
"Nominalism"
was not yet invented, nor the varieties of Realism yet arranged for
classification. Nevertheless, we may still find reason to doubt whether
Nominalism is exactly the right name for the doctrine propounded by
Roscelin.
Among those who once called Roscelin master was he who called no
man master for long. The stormy and romantic career of Peter Abelard
The position of Abelard 797
has won for him a kind of immortality not conceded to philosophy alone.
By his side, to claim a share in that immortality, stands the partner in his
calamities and his joys:
Poeta, volentieri
Parlerei a quei due che insieme vanno.
With all his weakness, his vanity, his almost wanton pugnacity, there
must have been in Abelard some quality of greatness, something that
forbade men to gaze on him with indifference and pass by on the other
side. He had at least the virtuosity of genius; he was born to fascinate
or to repel. ^Vherever his tent was pitched, at Paris or on the borders
of the wilderness, thither, as an old chronicler has it, paene de tota
Latinitate viri litterati confluebant. In vain was he driven into exile;
for where
the master was there was the school.
Much the same gift of attraction and repulsion has been transmitted,
it would seem, with Abelard"'s writings, to perplex the judgment of
modern
historians, and to fashion estimates of his worth non solum diversa
verum
etiam adversa, as once he said himself of the utterances of the saints.
Unfair detraction is too apt to provoke extravagant eulogy ; for to
maintain that we have in Abelard the greatest mind of the Middle Ages is
surely extravagant. A great teacher he certainly was, a shrewd and
fearless
critic, a mighty champion of dialectic, the mistress, as he declared, of
all
philosophical studies. But when we look for inspiration, for profundity
of insight, for constructive power and masterly comprehension, we find
but little to justify comparison of Abelard with John the Scot or Anselm
or Thomas Aquinas. His passion for dialectic was even a sign of his
limitations, the more conspicuous as we come to understand by closer
scrutiny that he never wholly succeeded in raising dialectic to the
level
at which it ceases to be an ingenious art of words. His theory of
universals,
which agrees neither with Roscelin's nor with contemporary realism, it
will be convenient to postpone until we have occasion to look at John of
Salisbury's review of the subject. Even apart from that vexatious
question,
Abelard exhibits clearly the disadvantages of imperfect acquaintance
with
Aristotle, and also the restricted scope of Aristotle's reputation. The
title
of Peripateticus Palatinus (i.e. of Palais), bestowed by the common
voice
on Abelard himself, is fully interpreted by his own repeated
identification
of Peripatetics with dialecticians. Peripateticorum, id est,
dialecticorum
princeps is his description of Aristotle, and of Aristotle he knew no
more
than the labours of Boethius had conveyed to the Latins six hundred
years ago. We find, accordingly, in Abelard (as in other medieval
writers)
a curious gap between his logical or dialectical opinions and the
general
character of his philosophy. It is not so much a question of positive
inconsistency as of failure to see any reason why a professed
Peripatetic
should not also be an ardent follower of Plato. For, as Platonism was
then understood, Abelard may certainly be called a Platonist. Immensely
798 The Condemnation of Abelard. His view of dialectic
influenced by Macrobius, and by what he knew of the Timaeus, he carries
Platonism freely into his Christian theology, and, when he styles Plato
maximus omnium philosophorum, we cannot doubt that he speaks with
conviction. Here, as always before the thirteenth century, the explanation
is that Aristotle, the supreme dialectician, was virtually unknown as a
physicist, a psychologist, or a metaphysician. Plato, on the other hand,
was known, through his admiring reporters, to have scaled all the heights
of speculation, and to have won the approval of many Catholic theologians.
What actually brought Abelard to trial and condemnation was neither
his general advocacy of dialectic, nor his doctrine of universals, nor
the
particular method proposed in the Sic et Non. Despite the strong
opposition, of which he tells us, to the free use of argument in the
province
of theology, he would never have furnished his enemies with adequate
weapons, had he not been lured by Macrobius into such hazardous
suggestions as the identification of the Holy Spirit with the anima
mundi,
and had he refrained from speculations on the Person of Christ which
involved him in questions beyond the range of any ancient philosopher.
How far the actual condemnations, at Soissons in 1121 and at Sens in
1140, were due to genuine concern for the faith, and how far to personal
hostility, it is difficult to tell. A man who ridiculed his masters,
such as
William of Champeaux and Anselm of Laon, besides imperilling the
reputation of other accredited teachers, such as Alberic of Rheims,
could
not hope to tread with impunity even on the borders of heresy. Yet the
case of St Bernard of Clairvaux, the chief instigator of the second
prosecution, is different. Bernard was a great man, a saint and a
mystic, sharply
touched, no doubt, with the defects of his qualities, but neither petty
nor
insincere. His own unique position could scarcely be shaken by Abelard;
and just as it is fair to Abelard to believe in the sincerity of his
faith, so
is it fair to Bernard to allow that he had considerable reasons for
regarding
as a pestilent fellow one who caused trouble always and everywhere, and
who apparently encouraged his pupils to think that the rudiments of
philosophy were enough to reveal to them the secrets of heaven and
earth.
But the time has gone by for taking sides in this unhappy quarrel. Our
business is only to enquire what Abelard did, or failed to do, for
philosophy
in an age when it was as hard to distinguish philosophy from theology as
to disentangle the State from the Church.
On the whole he must stand or fall by his services to dialectic, the
chosen object of his perpetual enthusiasm. To what lengths he went in
magnifying its importance (even though he inveighs at times against its
abuse) we may gather from his thirteenth epistle, where he argues that
logic, as derived from logos, and thus connected with the verbum Dei, is
pre-eminently the Christian science. Jesus Christ was the Logos
incarnate,
and logic was the wisdom promised to the disciples, the os et sapientia
which their enemies would be unable to resist. Christ prepares for them,
says Abelard, an armour of reasons, qua in disputando summi efficianiur
The Sic et Non 799
logici. And who is ignorant, he adds, that Our Lord Himself convinced
the Jews by frequent disputations ? Rarely has the fundamental ambiguity
of the word logos been better illustrated than by this passage, or
indeed
by the whole work of Abelard. Natural as it seems to suppose him to be
upholding the sacred cause of reason and the mission of philosophy as a
fearless search for the truth, he is never, at least in his eulogies of
dialectic,
more than half way towards that position. Dialectic remains for him the
ars disputandi, by which you sharpen your wits to detect fallacies, and
learn to know a good argument from a bad. Much service, indeed, may
thus be rendered to the cause of truth ; for how can truth and falsity
be
distinguished by one whom sophistical reasoning may deceive.'*
Nevertheless, the gulf between the art of reasoning without fallacy and
the real
inquisition of truth is formidable and wide, too wide, one is forced to
admit, for any bridge of Abelard's construction. A fairer criticism
would
be that he did not try to span it. He glorified dialectic and believed
that all theological questions should be freely debated. Again, he
believed
that Gentile philosophers, if not actually inspired from heaven, should
at
least be allowed to bring their treasures of knowledge into the house of
the Lord. But the plea for an unfettered use of dialectic and the plea
for (let us roughly call it) a Platonised theology were very imperfectly
unified in Abelard's mind.
The Sic et Non, Abelard's most famous exposition of method, is
chiefly remarkable for its prologue. Dialectic being the proper solvent
of
contradictions, he proposes to apply it to a long list of apparent
discrepancies, some of them found in the canonical books of Scripture,
others in
the teaching of the Fathers and the Saints. His rules of procedure are
various. We must beware of apocryphal books and sayings; we must note
that the Fathers (Augustine, for instance) sometimes retracted their
earlier views, sometimes quoted opinions not endorsed by themselves,
sometimes adapted or modified their precepts to suit special cases.
Especially must we take into account the diveree meanings of words and
their various usage by different authors. If, however, there remain,
after
all these precautions, certain contradictions beyond the help of
dialectic,
we must first balance and compare the authorities, and then firmly take
our stand with the best. Not even prophets and apostles were infallible;
much more, then, must errors be expected in the doctrines of ordinary
men. Abelard does not, however, admit that the Scriptures can err.
When we seem to detect absurdities on the sacred pages, we must
attribute
them to bad manuscripts, to faulty intei-pretations, or to deficiencies
in
our own intelligence. Outside the Old and New Testaments, on the
other hand, we have perfect freedom of judgment, and when dialectic
has done its best for the Fathers, we retain our right to dissent from
their
doctrine.
The sanity and good sense of these principles has not prevented much
uncertainty as to their ultimate intention. But while it is possible to hold
800 Abelard and authority. Hugh of St Victor
that Abelard's real aim was the destruction of authority, it is more
reasonable to credit him with the true purpose of the dialectician, the
removal of apparent contradictions and the establishment of truth on a
critical basis. For all his love of contention, Abelard was no mere
rebel
or anarchist. In his own way he had a sincere respect for authority. He
believed that truth was inherent in the tradition of the Church, but he
did not believe in the promiscuous swallowing of contradictions. We
should do injustice, therefore, to his dialectical acumen, if we
supposed
him to have piled up a mass of affirmations and negations with no other
design but to discredit the testimony of the past. Even when his candour
and the excellence of his intentions are freely admitted, it is easy
enough,
if we please, to disparage Abelard's performance. The application of his
method to a long array of theological problems is strangely barren of
result. Again and again he simply opposes the sic and the non^ without
attempting any critical solution. Here, too, and elsewhere in his
writings,
he fails to advance much beyond the verbal or linguistic aspect of the
dialectical art. The presentation of opposite views, quite apart from
verbal
ambiguities, as complementary to one another, and hence as equally true
or equally false, is somewhat beyond his range. And again, the
originality
of his method has been challenged. Bernold of Constance (ob. 1100),
lately
resuscitated by Grabmann, seems to have adopted much the same procedure;
while the influence of Ivo of Chartres and the canonists has also to
be considered. Equally doubtful is it how far the dialectical method of
subsequent theologians was due to imitation of Abelard, and how far to
the recovery of Aristotle's Topics. On no hypothesis, however, can the
weight of Abelard's contribution to intellectual progress be fairly
denied.
His stimulus to slumbering dogmatists was invaluable; his courage in
attacking difficulties was an example to the timorous; in the number
and eminence of his pupils his high distinction of mind is loudly
proclaimed.
From Abelard it will be convenient to pass to one of his contemporaries,
whose influence, very different in quality, was perhaps equally great.
Hugh of St Victor (c. 1096-1141), the most distinguished of a group of
men attached to the same religious foundation at Paris, is seldom named
without expressions of the deepest respect. So far as he allows himself
to
appear in his writings, we cannot fail to get a delightful impression of
his character, if only because he has the rare gift of wearing humility
without affectation, as a kind of natural charm. By temperament he was
a genuine mystic. "Principium in lectione, consummatio in meditatione"1
was
his motto, and the nature of our subject perhaps forbids us to disturb
his
meditations. Nor will it be possible to examine his theological
master-piece, the De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei. But Hugh was not
only a
mystic, nor merely, in the restricted sense, a theologian. In him were
united, says St Bonaventura, the gifts derived from Augustine, from
1 MPL, cLxxvi, 772.
Hugh's account of Logic 801
Gregory the Great, and from Dionysius the Areopagite. In reasoning, in
preaching, in contemplation he was equally proficient; to which we may
add that in his Didascalicon he has left us a valuable document on the
nature of philosophy, its divisions and ultimate goal. This book betrays,
in the first place, a wide and generous appetite for knowledge. Omnia
disce, he urges; videbis postea nihil esse superfluum. Coarctata scientia
iucunda non est.1 His own diligence as a schoolboy he paints in pleasing
colours ; and already, perhaps, he was noting the weakness of teachers who
would not stick to their subject, but wandered away into variations too
weighty for their theme. Non omnia dicenda sunt quae dicere possumus,
ne minus utiliter dicantur ea quae dicere debemus".2
Classification and definition of subjects within the whole field of
knowledge form the main purpose of the Didascalicon. The fourfold
partition into theorica, practica, mechanica, and logica is remarkable for
the inclusion of mechanica (divided into seven arts and crafts), but is not,
in that respect, original. Grabmann has found the same division in an
unpublished work by Radulphus Ardens, who is last heard of in 1101. So
much, in fact, is common to the two writers that it is difficult to believe
in their complete independence. An even greater debt to Boethius must
be acknowledged. From him Hugh borrows the threefold division,
anciently though wrongly ascribed to Plato, upon which mechanica is
grafted; and from him, in the main, come the subdivisions of theorica and
practica, with their reminiscences of Aristotle, as well as of other sources
familiar to Boethius. Much of the detail we must be content to pass over,
but it is worth while to look rather narrowly at Hugh's conception of
logic, which is not the less interesting because here too the authority of
Boethius is preponderant.
Hugh of St Victor remarks and lays bare the historic ambiguity
which, after perplexing so many medieval logicians, has not yet ceased to
haunt their modern successors. The Greek logos, he says, means either
sermo or ratio whence logic may be called sermotionalis sive rationalis
scientia. Sermotionalis is the wider term, because it includes grammar,
as well as dialectic and rhetoric, among the species of the genus. Logic
covers, in fact, the entire field of sermones, and by sermones is meant the
mutuae locutiones of mankind, which existed long before thev were
governed by any science or art. Not only logic, but all sciences, as Hugh
observes, existed in practice before they were reduced to rule. In the
order of time logic arose later than the other parts of philosophy, but in
the order of studies it should precede them. Just because it does not deal
with res, it is indispensable to those who would enquire de rerum natura.
Without its aid they will be likely to go astray, by assuming that results
established in sermonum decursu must always hold good in the nature of
things. Now all this is taken, often word for word, from Boethius^. It
' MPL, CLxxvi, 801. 2 7j ci^xvi, 770. ^ jf,^ clxxvi, 749.
* Cf. Boethius, In Istigogen Porphyrii Commenta. Editio secunda, i, 2.
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. XXIII.
802 The influence of Boethius
expresses, too, the most general and persistent conception of logic in
the
Middle Ages; and whenever we, with our modern ideas, are tempted to
wander away in the direction of metaphysics and the wider theory of
knowledge, we begin to lose touch with an age that thought of logic as
sermotiojialis^ as a study rather of words and speech than of things.
How, then, does the logician deal with sermones? Not as the
rhetorician, whose business is persuasion, nor as the grammarian, who is
interested in the structure and inflexion of words. The object of his
study
is what Hugh calls intellectus ^ a term to be clearly distinguished from
voces. Words as voces are only sounds of the particular kind produced in
human speech and analysed by the grammarian. IntellectuS are much
more than this. The worst translation of the word would be "concepts";
the best, perhaps, is "meanings." Thus when Hugh is explaining the
inter-relation of mathematics, logic, and physics, he remarks that only
physics de rebus agit, ceterae omnes de intellectibus rerum 1: a
statement to
be explained with reference to the power of abstraction possessed by the
human mind, and illustrated, though not precisely in the same way, by
both logic and mathematics. The mathematician can examine the line
and the surface by ignoring one or two dimensions; the logician can
attend only to the fact of likeness, neglecting the properties of things
in
their concreteness. And thus it is, says Hugh, that the logician comes
to
consider genera and species. No discussion of the familiar controversy
is
offered in this context; we can only assume that, if Hugh had chosen to
proceed further, he would have continued to follow Boethius. In that
case he would have paid no heed to Nominalism, a heresy unknown to
Boethius, and probably would have declined to discuss the metaphysics of
Plato. He would only have defended the right of the intellect to discern
what he calls intellectus, and would have refused to condemn the
mathematical line or the logical genus as figments, merely because they
were not
concrete things such as the physicist examines.
More personal, and perhaps more interesting, than the account of
logic are Hugh's general appreciation of philosophy and his usage of the
term theologia. Even here it is not easy to shake off Boethius; for in
some
passages of the Didascalicon "theology" bears only the meaning derived
by Boethius from an assortment of Greek philosophers, without reference
to Christian doctrine. There is also a strange and difficult allusion to
John
the Scot, whom Hugh describes as "theologian of our times" (i.e. of the
Christian era), but classes with Linus among the Greeks and with Varro
among the Latins'*. Nor, again, is philosophia a name without ambiguity.
It may denote a complete and almost religious devotion to the pursuit of
knowledge, involving renunciation of the world. Omnis mundus
philoso-phantibus exsilium est, Hugh writes in one place, and adds that
he himself
had known this exile from his youth up.3 At other times, however, he
seems to disparage philosophy, as when he declares that, in comparison
1. MPL, cLXxvi, 768.
2. Ib. clxxvii, 706.
3. Ib. cucxvii, 778.
Allegory and dialectic 803
with the Scriptures, the books of the philosophers are but a white-
washed
wall of mud, gay with the tinsel of eloquence and the specious pretence
of truth. The superiority of Scripture is shewn by the richer and more
numerous senses hidden under its surface. As an allegorist, Hugh of St
Victor is not extravagant; for at least he insists on the need of
understanding the literal or historical sense as the foundation of all
other
meanings. Yet by allegory he understands something more complicated
than diversity of meanings in words. Not only words but things have an
inner significance. The philosopher, he says, solam vocum novit
significationem, sed excellentior valde est rerum significatio quam
vocum.1 The
higher way, he proceeds to explain, lies through vox to intellectus,
through
intellectus to res, and thence through the inward and unspoken ratio or
verhum to the knowledge of truth. Whether Hugh's various judgments
can be reconciled is very questionable, but his constant advocacy of all
human knowledge forbids us to suppose that he ever desires to condemn
philosophy as verbal trifling. His point is that the meaning of the
world
disclosed by philosophy falls short of the mystical insight which
pierces
the veil of phenomena and passes through "history'^ to the revelation of
God.
Hugh's praise of allegory is important, finally, as marking the point
of his opposition to Abelard, and his reasons for rejecting the method of
the Sic et Non. Though Abelard is never mentioned in the Didascalicon,
there is one probable and one almost certain allusion to him. The first is
the rebuke to those who "wrinkle up their nose" in scorn at the teachers
of divinity, as though the subject were too simple to require the aid of
instructed masters. The second and more important is the chapter in
which allegorical interpretation is proposed as the true way of removing
apparent contradictions in Scripture. The surface of the divine page
offers many discrepancies; spiritualis autem intelligentia nullam admittit
repugnantiam, in qua diversa multa, adversa nulla esse possunt.2 The
reference to Abelard in the last words can hardly be mistaken. Strange
as it may seem to us now, the allegorising of Scripture was for many
centuries the only kind of "higher criticism " known to the Church. Hugh
of St Victor still believes in it, because he is a mystic; Abelard prefers to
substitute dialectic, because he is a logician. Yet the contrast between
the two men must not be exaggerated. Both believe in the infallibility
of Scripture when rightly interpreted; and, as Hugh has a genuine
enthusiasm for mundane philosophy, so Abelard in his turn is far from
repudiating the principle that all other kinds of knowledge are subservient
to the scientia divina.
The rapid convergence of the Peripatetic and Victorine streams is
illustrated in the Summa Sententiarum long ascribed to Hugh of St Victor
himself, and in the more famous Libri Sententiarum IV of Peter the
Lombard, who came from Italy to Paris about 1139, was advanced to the
1. MPL, • Lxxvi, 790.
2 Ib. CLxxvi, 802.
CH. xxiii. 51 — 2
804 Peter the Lombard
bishopric of that city in 1159, and died not later than 1164. Literature
of the Sententia type was by no means the invention of him who secured
the title of Magister Sententiarum. Much the same meaning of Seritentia
can be traced back at least as far as Isidore of Seville, and more
recently
there had been great development of the method by Abelard''s masters or
opponents, Anselm of Laon, William of Champeaux, and Alberic of
Rheims, as well as by the canonist Irnerius (or Guarnerius), who
composed,
early in the twelfth century, a book of Sentences compiled from
Augustine
and other authorities. Broadly speaking, the collections of Sententiae
form
a stage between the ancient Florilegia or Catenae and the systematic
Summae of the thirteenth century. The massing of authoritative
statements with a view to establishing truth by consensus of witnesses
led
gradually to two results, the formation of an orderly scheme for the
exposition of theology and the emergence of antitheses demanding the
skill of the dialectician. Peter the Lombard was no original genius; we
cannot even be sure that he M'as a man of exceptional learning; for,
after
the manner of the Middle Ages, he borrowed freely and without acknow-
ledgment from the Decretum of Gratian, from Abelard and Hugh of St
Victor, and from any other convenient treasury of sources. Nevertheless,
he outran all competitors in his own kind of compilation, and finally
established himself as the very text of theological education, upon
which
innumerable masters and students were to furnish the commentary. For
the development of philosophy his chief importance lies in his frank
submission to the influence of Abelard, whose lectures he probably had
heard. The result was that the pupil, rather than the master, was
responsible for the triumph of the dialectical method in later theology.
The triumph was not achieved, however, without a struggle, prolonged
for more than fifty years after Peter the Lombard's death. Certain
propositions in his Christology were easily open to attack, and were, in
fact,
so questionable that regular exponents of his treatise afterwards made
a practice of omitting them. But the main opposition sprang from
anti-dialecticians of the Victorine School. Shortly before the Third
Lateran
Council of 1179 Walter of St Victor wrote a violent pamphlet Contra
quattuor labyrinthos Franciae: the four offenders being Abelard, Peter
the Lombard, Gilbert de la Porree, and Peter of Poitiers, an ardent
follower of the Lombard, who had published his own five books of
Sententiae before 1175. Other sources of hostility to the Master were
the
unknown writer of the Liherde vera Pkilosophia and the celebrated
mystic,
Joachim of Flora (ob. 1202). But Joachim himself was too suspect to
bring
home a charge of heresy against another, and the end of the matter, so
far as the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 could end it, was the
condemnation of Joachim and the official recognition of Peter the
Lombard. A
considerable step was thus taken towards the conciliation of ratio and
atictoritas, even though ratio still meant little more than the free use
of
dialectic, and auctoritas was still but vaguely defined.
John of Damascus. John of Salisbury 805
Incidentally we may note that Walter of St Victor's attack was
directed also against the work of John of Damascus (ob. 750), known to
the Latins as the De Fide Orthodoxa, and newly translated from the
Greek (as the result of a visit to Constantinople) by Burgundio of Pisa.
In the Lombard's Sentences only some twenty-six citations of the "St
Thomas of the East" have been discovered, and these are all taken from
a section of the third book, relating to the Incarnation. As it came to
be
more fully known, the vogue of the De Fide Orthodoxa steadily increased,
not least because the author's sympathy with Aristotelianism recommended
him to the great doctors of the thirteenth century and supported
their practice.
The intellectual condition of the twelfth century is nowhere so
perfectly
reflected as in the writings of John of Salisbury, the vir pleheius et
indoctus
who rose to be secretary to three Archbishops of Canterbury (including
Becket), the intimate friend of Hadrian IV, the associate and critic of
all
the great teachers of the age, before he died, as Bishop of Chartres, in
1180. Traveller, scholar, gentleman, good Christian, and good man of
the world, he has left behind him in the agreeable latinity of the
Policraticus and the Metalogicus an impression of medieval life more
illuminating
than fifty treatises on logic, and more significant of what philosophy
then really meant. In particular we owe to John of Salisbury a large
part of our acquaintance with the school of Chartres, the most brilliant
example of the old cathedral-school, now about to be superseded by the
stiidium generale, or University. To say that he personally belonged to
this school would, however, be inaccurate. He spent some years there
and venerated its masters, but he learned also of Abelard, Robert of
Melun,
Alberic of Rheims, and many others outside the precincts of Chartres;
nor
is there anything in his works to prove his formal adherence to the
characteristic tenets of the school. What makes his testimony so
invaluable is just his gift of intellectual detachment and his distaste
for the fury
of the partisan. In politics, that is to say, in his estimate of the
spiritual
and the temporal power, it is otherwise; for his hierarchical opinions
are
definite and strong. Nor is he ever restrained by love of compromise
from
expressing the frankest of judgments on controvei'sies of the day, much
less from lively denunciation of Philistines and fools. Yet, as he
passes
from one seat of learning to another, he combines an honest respect for
the teachers with the privilege of smiling at the school. Thus, for
example,
does he return after many years to Mount St Genevieve, to see how his
friends are faring, and finds them still, as he says, at the same old
questions, with not one little propositiuncula annexed to the familiar
stock in
trade. With the same aloofness, he admires Abelard, but laughs at his
theory of universals; he reveres Bernard, the senex Carnotensis, but
keeps
clear of the Platonised ideas, and is aware that the master's hope of
reconciling Plato and Aristotle is vain.
With justice, then, did John of Salisbury profess himself an Academic;
806 John of Salisbury and philosophy
by which, it is well to add, he did not mean a Platonist, He knew that the Sceptics had captured the Academy, and attributes the rise of Scepticism to the Aristotelian criticism of Plato, He did not understand the return of the Platonists to their ancient home, and when he names Plotinus, lamblichus, and Porphyry as the most distinguished of the Academics, he betrays the gaps in his knowledge of history. About his own position, however, he is perfectly clear. What he professes is the "Academic or Sceptical Philosophy,'' as Hume called it, not the Platonism of Chalcidius and Macrobius, or of his own contemporaries and friends. His Academicism does not mean extravagant distrust of reason, but chiefly a spirit of tolerant criticism, distaste for dogmatic obstinacy, and disinclination to swear allegiance in verba magistri. Had his bent been for mathematics, he might almost have anticipated the great saying of Pascal, that a man should be three things, a good mathematician, a good sceptic, and a humble follower of Jesus Christ.
Thanks largely to his cool and sceptical temper, we can readily learn
from John of Salisbury what an utter misconception of the Middle Ages
it is to confound the history of philosophy with the history of logic,
or
to oppose philosophy to the life of religion. As is shewn by the very
title
of his longest work, Policratici, sive de nugis Curialmm et vedigiis
Philoso-
phorum Libri VIII, the world is roughly divided for him into the foolish
and the wise. On the one side is the life of the courtier, a life
devoted to
hunting and gambling, or to laughing at actors and buffoons; on the
other
is the call to the higher life of the mind. The alternatives are plain
and
mutually repellent; qui curialium ineptias induit, et philosophi vel
boni
viri officium pollicetur, Hermaphroditus est.1 All who respond to the
serious call are philosophers, and therefore John of Salisbury's
friends.
And what is philosophy? Not the product of copia litterarum, but the
choice of an arduous way. In its ancient sense, philosophy, as he says,
pulsat ad ostium ; and when the door of wisdom is opened, the soul is
illumined with the "light of things," and the name of philosophy
vanishes away. But that illumination is for the future. Philosophy in
this world is the viaticum of the few who content themselves with
following a road
that leads to no worldly advantage. As to where and how the true road
is to be found, John himself is not doubtful. The philosopher, as Plato
had taught, is cultor Dei, and the end of all philosophy is the
enlargement
of charity. But in this respect no Christian is inferior to Plato; the
rule
of Christ surpasses the wisdom of antiquity; the vita claustralium out
does
the practice of all the schools.
Philosophia quid est nisi fons, via, duxque salutis,
Lux animae, vitae regula, grata quies?
So he asks in the Entheticus, and adds in the sad doggerel of that discursive poem:
Non valet absque fide sincere philosophari. 2
1 Policraticus, v, 10.
2 Entheticus, 277-278 and 319.
John and the controversy about Universals 807
Armed with this firm conviction, John goes forth to the defence and
criticism of logic. By logic he understands, in the first instance, very
much
what we found in Hugh of St Victor. He notes the same quality of sermo
and ratio as translations of logos ^ and insists, like Hugh, on the
close alliance of logic with eloquence and grammar; not indeed because
he deems
logic a science of words, but because he has learned from Bernard of
Chartres and William of Conches to believe in humane education as the
first safeguard against arid disputes. In his championship of logic he
has,
in fact, to steer a difficult course between the scurrilous mockers,
personified
under the pseudonym of Cornificius, and the so-called puri philosophi,1
who
identify philosophy with logic and disdain every other branch of
knowledge. No modern critic of the Middle Ages has exposed so
remorselessly
the ineptitude of wrangling about trifles, the emptiness of logic
divorced
from natural and moral science. As an introduction to further studies
logic is excellent; in isolation it is exsanguis et sterilis.2 The teachers
grow old in the exercises of boys; the boys (hesterni pueri, magistri
hodierni) escape to-day from the rod, and to-morrow assume the gown
and mount the cathedra.3 The world is crowded with half-educated
wiseacres, the schools with Peripatetics whose Peripateticism consists only
in walking about.
After these caustic criticisms it is no surprise to find that John of
Salisbury puts the whole controversy about universals into its proper
and subordinate place. Far from being the sum of philosophy, this
fashionable topic of the schools serves chiefly to provoke the emulous
ingenuity of lecturers, no one of whom is content to agree with his
predecessors or to remain within the bounds proposed by Boethius.
John's own solution and the many varieties of Realism we have no space
to examine. His main anxiety is to prevent the reduction of any part of
philosophy to a conflict of words. For this reason he dislikes any
verbalist
theory of universals, and speaks with some contempt of Roscelin and
Abelard. His distinction between the two is that Roscelin had talked of
voces, Abelard of sermones,4 a term not adequately explained in the
Metalogicus, but further illustrated by a parallel passage in the
Policraticus, where an evident allusion to Roscelin is followed by a
mention of
those qui indifferenter nomina pro rebus vel res pro nominibus
posuerunt.5
If, then, sermones are not simply voces but nomtna, it would seem that
Abelard rather than Roscelin was the true nominalist. Whatever the
exact import of Abelard's view, John declines to take it seriously, but
offers to excuse its author on the ground that an elementary book like
the
Categories had perhaps to be taught in an elementary manner 6 In no case
is there room for the opinion that Abelard was a conceptualist. That
opinion (which arose partly from the wrong attribution to Abelard of a
treatise De Generibus et Speciebus) is sufficiently refuted by John
himself,
1 Metalogicus, ii, 6.
2 Ib. II, 20.
3 Ib. I, 25.
* Ib. II, 17.
5 Policraticus, Vii, 12.
^ Metalogicus, III, 1.
808 The new Aristotelian logic
when he passes immediately from Roscelin and Abelard to a third
non-realist theory, in which the universal is called a notio or
intellectus et
simplex animi conceptio. Here, if anywhere, we must look for
Conceptualism, and not in the doctine of Abelard.
From John of Salisbury, lastly, we receive our first clear impression of
the "new logic," already known in some measure to his senior
contemporaries, Otto of Freising, Thierry of Chartres, and Adam du Petit
Pont.
The translation of the Organon by James of Venice is assigned to the
year 1128, some thirty years before the Metalogicus was written; but
John
himself used another version, probably by Henry Aristippus of Catania,
distinguished also as a translator of Plato, The effect of recovering
the
Analytics, the Topics and the Sophistici Elenchi may be considered in
two
relations, to the general conception of logic and to the reputation of
Aristotle. Hitherto, as we have often had occasion to remark, logic, in
the character of dialectic, had hovered on the borderland between
reasoning and discourse, while Aristotle had been simply the great
dialectician.
But now it began to be understood that the traditional Aristotelian
books
were but elementary prefaces to the dialectical treatises, and, that the
whole of dialectic must fall into a minor position, as compared with the
ars demonstrandi or method of science. "The philosopher," says John of
Salisbury, "who uses demonstration has his business with truth, the
dialectician with opinion, the sophist with the bare appearance of
probability." ^
The Posterior Analytics ^ evidently, were found very difficult, and John
speaks of them with the most cautious respect. The art of demonstration,
he says, has fallen into almost complete disuse. It survives only in
mathematics, especially in geometry ; "sed et huius disciplinae non est
celebris usus
apud nos, nisi forte in tractu Ibero vel confinio Africae." 2
Mathematics, in
other words, were studied only by the Arabs or their neighbours.
The revolution in logic, we should gather from John of Salisbury,
magnified the reputation of Aristotle without radically altering its
character. As urbs stands for Rome and poeta for Virgil, so the name of
philosophus is reserved by common consent for Aristotle."3 On the
authority
of Burgundio of Pisa, John adds in another place that Aristotle's
prescriptive right to the name was based on his skill in demonstration,
the
art most highly esteemed by the Peripatetics^ It would be wrong,
however, to infer from this anticipation of the title so freely employed
in the
thirteenth century that Aristotle had already usurped the throne of
Plato.
John's personal estimate of "the philosopher" reflects his attitude
towards
logic in general. Refusing to treat any utterance of Aristotle's as
sacrosanctum, he accuses him (with how much knowledge.'^) of many errors
in
natural and moral philosophy". Even in logic he does not count him
infallible, but notes his deficiencies, and believes it possible for
modern
teachers to improve on his handling of some parts of the subject. John,
* Metalogicus, ii, 6
^ Ib. iv, 6.
^ Policraticus, vii, 6.
* Metalogicus, iv, 7.
* Ib. iv, 27.
The School of Chartres. Gilbert de la Porree 809
indeed, is at all times a champion of the modemi. He sympathises with
Abelard's difficulty in getting a hearing for any doctrine not
sanctioned
by antiquity, and insists that respect for old authors should not hamper
the critical exercise of reason. On the other hand, he does maintain
that
Aristotle is peerless in logic, and defends the study of the Categories
and
the Sophistici Elenchi against unintelligent critics, among whom he
mentions some followers of Robert of Melun*. On the whole, Aristotle
remains where he was, the prince of logicians, without as yet any claim
to
wider dominion. Down to the end of the twelfth century or even later,
none but the " pure philosophers" were disposed to exalt the pupil above
the master. The rest of the world would have endorsed the verdict of the
Policraticus, where John describes Plato, with all deference to the
Aristotelians, as totius philosophiae princeps.2
The Platonism for which the school of Chartres was conspicuous meant,
apparently, not much more than the traditional Platonism of the Timaeus
with its sundry exponents. The Phaedo and the Meno^ which had been
translated by Henry Aristippus of Catania (ob. 1162), produced no
immediate effect on the interpretation of Plato. The Chartres account of
universals, for example, identified them with the Platonic ideas, and
understood idea in the sense of exemplar aeternum, a sense traditional
in
the Latin interpretation of the Timaeus, but certainly not derived from
the Phaedo. And again, when followers of Bernard of Chartres, such as
William of Conches, strayed on to dangerous theological ground, they
were inclined to imitate Abelard in Platonising the Trinity and in
identifying the Holy Spirit with the anima mundi. Perhaps it was the
reminiscence of Abelard, as well as the widespread influence of
Chartres,
that caused fresh anxiety to ecclesiastical authority. The most famous
disturbance connected with any scholar of Chartres was the trial of
Gilbert
de la Porree (ob. 1154), the learned and venerable Bishop of Poitiers,
himself sufficiently distinguished to rank as the founder of a school.
The story
of the trial, which took place at Rheims in 1148, is related by Otto of
Freising and by John of Salisbury in his Historia Pontificalis. John was
present throughout the proceedings, as were also Peter the Lombard,
Robert of Melun, and other prominent divines, some to support St Bernard
(once more the chief prosecutor), others to aid in the defence of the
bishop.
On this occasion Bernard fell short of victory. His followers refused to
confess the defeat, but Gilbert returned safely to his diocese and was
immune from all further attacks.
Apart from this political incident, the fame of Gilbert rests chiefly
on his exposition of the theology of Boethius, and on his Liber de Sex
Principiis, a logical text-book more highly esteemed than any other
composed in the Middle Ages. For the most part Gilbert sticks to the
"old
logic," though there is some evidence of his acquaintance with the
"new."
He refers in one place to the Analytics, and his commentary on the De
1 Metalogicus, rv, 24.
2 Policraticus, i, 6.
CH. xxiii.
810 Intellectual progress in the twelfth century
Trinitate of Boethius perhaps implies more knowledge of Aristotle than
could well be derived from the more elementary treatises. His treatment
of time and space has even been thought to involve some reference to the
Physics^ but that is improbable. So again, his theory of universals, which
he called formae nativae, does not agree with the ordinary Platonism. A
forma nativa is an exemplum inherent in created things, related to the
exemplar in the Creator's mind as eidos to idea.1 The origin of such a view
might well be Aristotelian, but the evidence is not clear.
Passing over with regret many other names associated more or less closely with the teaching of Chartres, we have space only to raise the general question, whether in the course of the twelfth century much advance was made towards a wider conception of philosophical problems. A certain restlessness and a certain feeling of expansion, greatly assisted by the enlargement of logic, there undoubtedly is. At the beginning of the centuryAdelard of Bath was wanderingfromcountry to country andrealising the advantage of visiting different schools. In Spain he learnt enough Arabic to make a translation of Euclid, and to acquire some notion of the uses of mathematics for the purposes of scientific measurement. His general outlook, however, is reminiscent of what John of Salisbury imputes to Bernard of Chartres. At the close of the same century, Alan of Lille (Alanus de Insulis), who survived till 1203, is far from suspecting the immediate advent of a great intellectual revolution. He deserves to be remembered, if only for his saying: sed quia auctoritas cereum habet nasum, id est, in diversum potest flecti, rationibus roborandum est.2 In his own age he won the title of doctor universalis by his manifold learning; in modern times his taste for a rigid, quasi-mathematical method has suggested a comparison with Spinoza. Yet his appetite for novelty was not striking. The first of the Latins to cite the Liber de Causis, he is but little affected by the peculiar qualities of that work. The new logic, far from arousing his enthusiasm, seems rather to have persuaded him that Aristotle loved to wrap himself in majestic obscurity. Thus, without disparaging his work, which deserves a much fuller 'account, we may fairly infer from his case that in the last hours of the twelfth century it was possible for a man of the highest reputation to enjoy no premonition of the great movement of thought which the coming century was immediately to witness.
If only by weight of materials, the thirteenth century stands apart
from those through which we have rapidly travelled. The briefest
catalogue of names such as Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Thomas
Aquinas, Bonaventura, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, is enough to banish
the thought of any detailed analysis. The only practicable course will
be
to sketch the line of development and the general character of the
problems
with which these and other authors, only less famous, were engaged.
Nearly eight centuries had passed since Boetliius presented Aristotle to
1 John of Salisbury, Metalogicus, II, 17.
2 MPL, cox, 333.
The new Aristotle at Paris. The translations 811
the Latins, but during the whole of that period less had happened to
dis-
turb the intellectual atmosphere than was now to be accomplished in a
single generation by the Aristotelian invasion of Paris. Customary and
right as it is to place the name of Aristotle in the foreground, it
would
be idle to pretend that the mere recovery of his writings was enough to
ac-
count for all the subsequent events. AVithout the organisation of
studies
in the new universities, and without the intervention of the Friars in
educational and ecclesiastical politics, the story of the thirteenth
century
must have been very different. And again, it is difficult to exaggerate
the importance of another fact, the conjunction of the new Aristotle
with
an interpretation of him developed by a series of Muslim philosophers,
whose object had not been to keep on terms with Christian orthodoxy,
but to avoid open collision with the Koran. The fragments of Arabian
mathematics and medicine which had drifted from time to time into the
Latin world had brought no anticipation of the tumult immediately
aroused by the commentaries of Avicenna and Averroes. The roughly
established modus Vivendi with Pagan philosophy was of no avail when
there suddenly appeared a new Aristotle, the author of a vast and com-
prehensive system, in which were contained, if the Muslims could be
trusted, many doctrines incompatible with the Christian position. And
most of this was brought about by the enterprise of a Christian,
Arch-bishop Raymond of Toledo, who had instituted, in the second quarter
of
the twelfth century, a college of translators under the supervision of
Dominic Gundisalvi, himself the author of a De Divisione Philosophiae
and other philosophical works.
The unparalleled importance of translations in the Middle Ages was
not diminished by the prevalence of a single literary language among the
peoples of the West. Absence of linguistic barriers between the scholars
of different European countries may even have helped to strengthen the
frontiers dividing the larger units of culture denoted as the Arabs, the
Latins, and the Greeks. We cannot, however, pursue that complicated
question, but must be content to glance at the golden age of
translators,
which began early in the twelfth century and lasted about a hundred and
fifty years. Visits of Western scholars to Byzantium had produced the
translations of the Organon and of John of Damascus; another centre
was the court of Palermo, where Greek and Arabic learning were united;
but the widest diffusion of Muslim knowledge came from Toledo, and it
is necessary to enquire how far the Latin Aristotelianism was affected
by
the mediation of the Arabic language. The storv, once lightly bandied
about, that the medieval Aristotle was only a Latin parody of an Arabic
version of a Syrian translation of a Greek original is little more than a
fable. It is true that the Muslims were first introduced to Aristotle by
Syrians, chiefly Nestorian Christians; it is true also that Arabic
Aristotelianism was coloured to the last by the commentators, such as
Alexander
of Aphrodisias, who had influenced the Syrians. But long before there
was
812 Translations from Greek and from Arabic
any question of extensive Muslim influence on the Latins, direct trans-
lations of Aristotle from Greek into Arabic had been made in abundance.
The name of "philosophers," in the Arabic transcription of the word, was
especially applied to those who had studied Greek originals; and among
these "philosophers" were the whole series of writers, beginning with
Kindl
in the ninth century, whose names we encounter in the works of the Latin
schoolmen. Strange to say, the most famous of all (at least in Latin
estimation), Ibn Rushd or Averroes {ob. 1198), was an exception to the
rule.
For it is said that he never thought it worth while to learn Greek. If
that be so, we must suppose that he saw no reason, after three centuries
of Aristotelian scholarship, to doubt the adequacy of the Arabic trans-
lations. It was left for his Latin critics to entertain that doubt.
While the relation of the Latins to the Arabs is, at first sight,
analogous to that of the Arabs to the Syrians, further scrutiny of the
facts
does not strengthen the analogy. There never was a time when the Latins
depended entirely on translations from the Arabic; there never was a
time when the Muslim inferences from Aristotle were not disputed and
opposed; least of all was there a time when Christians could imitate
' Muslims in taking Aristotle as an infallible authority. To adopt that
attitude was, in fact, to be an Averroist; and Averroism,as we shall
see,
was a movement destructive of all that Christian philosophers were
striving
to establish.
Now that the earlier researches of Jourdain have been supplemented
by Grabmann and other recent scholars, it is possible to speak with some
confidence about the translations of Aristotle used by the Latins. No
simple generalisation can be accurate, for the case of each of Aristotle's
works has to be separately considered. Yet on the whole it is safe to
maintain that translations from the Greek relieved the schoolmen of
-> undue dependence on the Arabs, and enabled them, thus far at least, to
form an independent judgment on the meaning of Aristotle. To illustrate
the facts from a few of the more important works, we find that the earliest
version of the Metaphysics (containing only Books i-iii and a small part
of iv) came to Paris from Byzantium before 1210. Next to arrive (ap-
parently before 1217) was a translation from the Arabic ascribed to
Gerard of Cremona. This, too, was imperfect, for it omitted altogether
Books K, M, and N, and mixed up the first book with the second. With
this, however, the Latins had to content themselves until after 1260, when
a Graeco-Latin version of the first twelve books, probably by William of
Moerbeke, was put into circulation. Upon these twelve books St Thomas
wrote his commentary, the last two being still untranslated when he saw
a Greek manuscript of the whole fourteen in 1270. The history of the
Nicomachean Ethics is rather similar: first a Graeco-Latin version of
three books, disguised as four; then, in 1240, a paraphrase from the
Arabic by Herman the German ; lastly a full translation from the
Greek, often explicitly attributed to Robert Grosseteste {ob. 1253), but
Character of medieval translations. Roger Bacon 813
more probably, in Grabmann's opinion, by William of Moerbeke. Both
the Physics and the De An'ima were known first in Graeco-Latin versions,
while the Politics, a book neglected by the Arabs, was derived only from
the Greek. Evidently, then, it would be less than a half-truth to say that
the Latins depended on second-hand translations for access to those works
of Aristotle which most deeply affected their thought. It remains to ask
whether the quality of the translations was such as to debar them from
a sound understanding of the text.
To claim distinction of style for the medieval translations would
indeed be courageous. Their rudeness, however, was perfectly deliberate.
It was not due to inability to write Latin, but to a frank mistrust of
elegance where the sole object was to get an exact reproduction of the
original. This they imagined they would best secure by simply replacing,
so far as possible, every Greek word by its Latin equivalent. For
reasons
then potent, but now no longer operative, they demanded the letter
rather than the spirit; not a transformation of idiom into idiom, but
a raw and formless text. The task of the translators may have been
wrongly conceived, but in its way it was faithfully done. The belief,
still
extant in some quarters, that the medieval understanding of Aristotle
was hopelessly vitiated by faulty translations is unsupported by the
facts.
The prime author of this libel was Roger Bacon, whose bitter
denunciations, often repeated as oracles, were in truth the product of
ignorance
and spleen. Bacon's judgments on the translation and study of Aristotle
range over a quarter of a century, from about 1266 to 1292. Starting
from the excellent principle that a translator requires both a knowledge
of the languages and an understanding of the sciences concerned, he
repeatedly declares that only Boethius possessed the first
qualification,
only Robert Grosse teste the second. And here at once we begin to sus-
pect him. For Grosseteste's scientific attainments, as Bacon knew, were
in mathematics and optics, neither of which would have helped him in
the least to understand the gieater part of Aristotle.
The rest of the translators, Bacon continues, were ignorant of science,
of Greek, and even of Latin. The result of their labours was erroneous
and unintelligible; so great, indeed, was the consequent misapprehension
of Aristotle that it would have been better for all his works to be burnt.
In the Opus Tertium (cap. 25), composed not later than 1268, Bacon had
not yet heard of William of Moerbeke, but in the later Compendium Studii
PMlosophiae he attacks him, under the name of William the Fleming,
with peculiar venom, and thinks him no better than Gerard of Cremona,
Herman, or Michael the Scot (the three chief translators from the
Arabic), or than any of the pretended experts in Greek. WiUiam of
Moerbeke {oh. 1286), Archbishop of Corinth during the last years of his
life, was actually the most important of the translators, if only because
so much of his work was instigated by Thomas Aquinas, when both were
attached to the court of Urban IV. His dated works, which include
814 The weaknesses of Bacon. Muslim influence
translations of Proclus, Simplicius, Galen, and Hippocrates, cover the
period from 1260 to 1280. As it happens, only one of his Aristotelian
translations (the De Partibus Animalium) is dated, and there is also
some
uncertainty how far he made use of earlier versions. We know, however,
that he was the first translator in that age of the Politics^ and we
know
that a scholar of Susemihl's rank thought it worth while to print this
translation with his own edition of the text. Bacon's judgment on
William of Moerbeke has, in fact, no more value than a spiteful review
in a modem periodical of a book which the reviewer has omitted to read.
Not even on sheer questions of fact can Bacon be trusted. He invents,
for example, an intimacy between Gerard of Cremona and Herman the
German, though one of them was about eighty-five years senior to the
other. It is more than doubtful, too, if he is accurate in his account
of
Robert Grosseteste, one of the very few among his contemporaries whom
he deigned to admire. Depreciation of other men was a passion with him,
almost a disease. He was out of sympathy with the whole Aristotelian
movement, and out of humour with all the world. As to the contemporary
interpretation of Aristotle, his verdict is yet more ludicrous than his
contempt for the translations. With all the disadvantages from which
they
inevitably suffered, Albertus Magnus and his still more famous pupil
were
two of the greatest Aristotelians the world has yet seen. Bacon himself
was incompetent to judge them, but he resented the intellectual
dictatorship, as he thought it, of Albert, and attacked him with such
animosity
that the great Dominican was moved at last to administer a weighty
rebuke. To Bacon, at least, he is thought to be referring, when he
speaks
of those who seek a solace for their own indolence by looking only for
objects to attack; who resemble the humor fellis that spreads through a
body, by provoking all other students to bitterness and forbidding them
in dukedine societatis quaerere veritatem^. As a critic of others Bacon
well
deserves the rebuke; it is fortunate that, as an original thinker, he
still
can deserve our respect.
The comparative freedom of the Latins in the matter of translations
by no means released them from conflict with the Muslim interpretation
of Aristotle. From the first, apparently, the trouble caused by the new
material was aggravated by the use of certain commenta, which were in-
cluded in the prohibition of Aristotle at Paris in 1210. Whether the
reference was to Avicenna or to Averroes, it is certain that the entire
history of Aristotelianism at Paris is bound up with the claim of the
Arabs to be the authentic exponents. Some indication, therefore, however
slight and meagre, must be given of the character and position of philo-
sophy in Islam. Why there should ever have been room for intellectual
complications in that system is much less obvious than in the case of the
Christian Church. The unitarian God of Mahomet could have a Prophet
but not a Son. He dwelt apart from His creatures, neither incarnate nor
1 Cf. Maiidonnet, Siger de Brabant, Part i, p. 246.
Character of Muslim philosophy 815
immanent, a lonely presence in the desert which no man could cross. Such
a creed mij^ht have continued to satisfy the Arabs of the peninsula,
and,
if Islam had remained in that primitive condition, it would have made
no impression on the world. As soon, however, as it came into contact
with Svrian, Persian, and Bvzantine civilisation, it had to choose
between
adapting itself to a higher order of ideas and perishing altogether.
Educated minds, when they began to reflect on the message of the
Prophet,
were not slow to discover in the Koran and its contents sufficient
material
for philosophic doubt. Was the sacred book itself created, or co-eternal
with the Creator? Did not the Word or Wisdom of God resemble the
Nous of the philosophers or the Logos of the Christians? Had God
eternal attributes, or would their existence be incompatible with His
absolute unity? Could the freedom of man be maintained against the
Divine Omniscience?
The first debates on these topics date from early times, even before
John of Damascus, as an official at the court of the Umayyads, pronded
a curious link between Christian and Muslim thought. The great age,
however, both of translations and of philosophy began with the Abbasids
and the founding of Baghdad, where the patronage of Nestorian phvsicians
by Mansur and Ma'mun led to the institution of a school of medicine and
philosophy. The sect of the Mu'tazilites (once fanatical defenders of
the
unity of God) now became prominent in speculation, and from their ranks
arose Kindi (06. c. 873), the father of a notable line of philosophers,
and
himself almost the only one of them who was an Arab by race. In him
we observe already the main characteristics which persisted down to
Averroes, the last of the line. The predominance of Aristotle had been
established from the first. From the first, too, the interpretation of
Aristotle had borne the stamp of Neo-Platonism. Perhaps the most sur-
prising example of this is the general reception of the Theology of
Aristotle as a genuine work. Actually an abridgment of Enneads iv-vi, it
was accepted as Aristotelian by Kindl, Farabl, and many others, who
must,
as it seems to us, have been blind to the enormous gulf between the
minds
of Aristotle and Plotinus. Or were they, after aU, so blind as we think?
Plotinus himself might have dissented. The interpretation of Aristotle
has always been determined by the interests and the methods of criticism
belonging to some particular age. It is a question of emphasis, of the
relative appreciation of his various works, of the special points
selected
for discussion. All ages have recognised the great logician, but what a
vast difference it makes whether you take Aristotle as primarily an
astronomer, a theologian, a political thinker, or a biologist.
The Arabs, beginning with Kindi, fastened especially upon the theory
of the intellect in the De Anima. There, in a few brief and difficult
statements, they found the origin of all the disputes about the intellectus
agens and the intellectum possibilis, with other complications too technical
to mention. Here too was the most patent opportunity for fusing together
CH. XXIII.
816 Farabi and Avicenna
Platonist and Aristotelian doctrines. For Aristotle had certainly hinted
that mind or spirit in its highest manifestations might be independent of
bodily organs, perpetually active, immortal. Its energy was not a form
of motion, and therefore not inseparably linked with time. How, then,
could such an activity belong, like other psychical functions, to the life
of the individual.'^ From this question it was but a short step to the
identification of the intellectus agens with the nous of Plotinus, understood
as the manifestation of God. The wisdom of man thus becomes a divine
illumination, undefiled and imperishable, indifferent to the accident of
death. Such, in roughest expression, was the line of thought along which
the Arabs advanced towards the denial of personal immortality, and
thus to conflict with the Catholic faith.
In the opinion of many Arabic writers and scholars, the most original
of the Muslim thinkers was Farabi (ob. 950), who in the course of his life
is heard of in Egypt, at Damascus, and at Baghdad. Especially famous
for his commentaries on the Organon,, with which the Arabs associated
(not without reason) the Rhetoric and the Poetics^he wrote also on almost
every part of Aristotle's system, on the Laws of Plato, on mathematics
and music. Though his view of the intellectus agens was similar in principle
to Kindi's, he is said to have regarded Aristotle's doctrine as a proof of
the immortality of the soul. And here we may note that, down to Farabi's
time, there was no perceptible breach between the philosophers and
orthodox Islam. Plato and Aristotle were welcomed at first as a kind of
second revelation, harmonious with the official revelation of the Koran.
Yet the connexion of philosophy with sectarianism was early; the Shi'ites
were more given to speculation than the Sunnis, and from the time of
FarabI onwards there was a gradual tendency towards the conversion of
philosophy into an esoteric wisdom, remote from the orthodox profession
of faith.
The last of the Asiatic philosophers, and, next to Averroes, the most
notorious among the Latins, was Ibn Sina or Avicenna (ob. 1036), who
passed through law and medicine to metaphysics, where he is said to have
owed his first understanding of Aristotle to Farabrs books. Among other
things, he interested himself in the theory of universals, and formulated
distinctions between the genus ante res, in rebus, and post res. In the
main, however, he resembled the other Muslims in affecting the Christians
chiefly by his doctrine of the intellect. Before Avicenna's day the position
of the philosophers, in the special sense of followers of the Greek tradition,
had become decidedly ambiguous. Two other kinds of teachers had now
to be reckoned with, first the Sufis or mystics, secondly the orthodox
scholastics (as it is convenient to call them), who did not wholly contemn
philosophy but proposed to subordinate it strictly to the teaching of the
Koran. Upon the Sufis we can make only one observation, that they were
certainly touched by Neo-Platonistic influence. The other school, whose
aim might be loosely compared with Anselm's fides quaerens intellectum,
Algazel, Averroes, Avencebrol 817
was represented first by Ash'ari, a contemporary of FarabI, afterwards,
in the period between Avicenna and Averroes, by Ghazall or Algazel
(ob. 1111). While the relation of Algazel's teaching to Islamic orthodoxy
scarcely concerns us, there is a real significance for the later Western
scholasticism in his determined opposition to the professional philosophers.
As the author of the Destruction of the PJiilosophers (to which Averroes
afterwards replied with the Destruction of the Destrudion), he not only
denounced as heretical certain specific doctrines, such as the eternity of
the world, but flatly refused to allow the independent status of philosophy.
Philosophy, he contended, could not be a mode of revelation; it could
not enunciate fii-st principles at once explanatory of the origin of things
and compatible with orthodox beliefs. Reasoh could serve religion only
in the way of exposition, just as it might be of use to any special science,
or in the management of ordinary affairs.
Now this was the true battleground of philosophers and theologians at Paris in the thirteenth century; and the character of the struggle was predetermined much less by the old Latin antithesis of ?atio and auctoritas than by the defined antagonism between the school of Algazel and the school of Averroes. Moreover, it was not the fear of Islam that worked so profoundly upon the reasoning of Albertus Magnus and Aquinas, but the fear of doctrines which Islam was on the verge of rejecting. For Aver- roes in the West marked the decline of Muslim philosophy, already long decadent in the East. He owes his fame, first to Jewish thinkers, who, like the Christians and the Muslims, had their own problem of reconciling philosophy with "the book"; secondly to Latin universities, which both accepted him as the supreme commentator on Aristotle and cherished, as the most alluring of heresies, doctrines invented or renewed for the con- fusion of Algazel's disciples. Averroes, therefore, is rightly studied in connexion with Latin Averroism, to which we shall shortly return. As to the Jews,by their active minds and roving habits they played an important part as carriers of learning from place to place, but as philosophers they hardly constitute a class distinct from the Arabs. The Fons Vitae of Avencebrol (ob. 1058), a Neo-Platonist work in the Arabic style, translated by John the Spaniard and Dominic Gundisalvi, was widely quoted by Christian authors, not least by Duns Scotus, who perhaps took Avencebrol to be a Christian, and openly adhered to his doctrine of matter. The other Jewish name of high repute among the Latins was Moses ben Maymun (Maimonides or Rabbi Moses), best known for his authorship of the Guide of the Perplexed. He was contemporary with Averroes (outliving him by only six years) and one of his warmest admirers. As may be seen in a treatise of doubtful origin, the De Erroribus Philosophorum, the Latins came to class his errors with those of Averroes, Algazel, and the rest of the Arabs ^
The stages in the development of Aristotelianism at Paris are marked
by some definite dates. Precisely when the new books were first read in
^ Cf. Mandounet, Siger de Brabant, Part u, pp. 21-24.
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. XXIII. 52
818 Aristotelianism and the University of Paris
public we do not know, but in 1210 a provincial council formally inter-
dicted public or private study of the lihri de natnrali philosophia, with
commentaries thereon; and in 1215 the papal legate, Robert de Cour(^on,
renewed the prohibition in the words, non legantur lihri Aristotelvi de
metaphysica et de naturali philosophia^ nee summae de eisdeni. It is doubtful
here whether the mention of metaphysics implies a difference between the
first and the second decree. The term metaphysica would be unfamiliar
before the diffusion of Aristotle's book, and the older usage of physica or
Tiaturalis philosophia would cover many questions afterwards called meta-
r physical. In 1231, after the dispersion of the university, Gregory IX
repeated the prohibition, but at the same time entrusted William of
Auxerre and two colleagues with the task of expurgating Aristotle for
use in the schools. Nothing came of this impossible project, and the
prohibition remained formally valid, to be renewed once more by Urban IV
in 1263. Meanwhile practice moved more rapidly than law. Outside Paris,
to judge from the example of Toulouse in 1229, free study of Aristotle
had always been possible. At Paris itself some regulations of 1252
mention only the De Anima in addition to the Logic, but in March 1255
the Faculty of Arts laid down a course of study which boldly included
the Physics, the Metaphysics, and practically all the translated works.
This defiance of papal authority provoked no reply until 1263. Even
then we may safely presume that the action of Urban IV was only pro-
visional; for now he was reviving on a grander scale the attempt of
Gregory IX to produce a critical version of Aristotle, invoking to his aid
the greatest of Christian commentators, St Thomas Aquinas, who just at
this time was encouraging William of Moerbeke to produce his new
translations.
The history of Aristotelianism in the thirteenth century is, in one of
its aspects, the history of a political struggle in the University of
Paris,
too intricate for analysis in this chapter. As a convenient
simplification of
the facts, we may concentrate our attention upon the Order of Preachers,
a society which in its earlier phases was by no means inclined to
champion
the cause of any Pagan philosopher. In libris gentilium et philosophorum
non studeant fratres. So says an ordinance of 1228, with the object of
confining the studies of the brethren to theology. The author of the
revolution which brought the Dominicans into the front rank of
Aristotelians was the illustrious Albert of Cologne {ph. 1280), who
taught at
Paris from 1245 to 1248, and was occupied for some forty years
altogether
in the production of his monumental works. Except during his lifetime,
the fame of this great man has always been a little overshadowed by that
of his pupil Aquinas {ph. 1274), whose greater command of expository
method makes him easier of access. Rash indeed would it be to say that
Albert was the more remarkable of the two, but in the direction of
experimental science he went farther, and to him, as the pioneer, fell
the enterprise of making all parts of Aristotle intelligible to the
Latins.
Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, and Averroism 819
Impatient of the "brute animals" who attacked the use of philosophy and
blasphemed everything of which they were ignorant, he saw that the study
of Aristotle could not be prohibited, and already, perhaps, while teaching
at Paris, discerned the seeds of AveiToism which he was afterwards (in
1256) invited by Alexander IV to refute.
Averroism it was again, not merely as a local phenomenon, but as the
climax of the whole Arabian interpretation of Aristotle, that moved
Aquinas to continue his master's work in his own deep and searching
exposition of the principal books. The task before him was one of
un-paralleled complexity, such as only a man of boundless courage,
unfailing
candour, and exceptional powers of mind could have faced. Now for the
first time in the history of the Middle Ages, or indeed in the history
of
the world, was it imperative to delimit the provinces of philosophy and
theology, and at the same time to vindicate the unity of truth. On the
one hand, St Thomas was perfectly convinced that no truth discoverable
by reason could be inconsistent with the Christian revelation; on the
other hand, he was equally assured that the truths of revelation were
accessible only to a mode of experience not commonly described as
reason,
and inseparable from the history and authority of the Church. What he
had primarily to combat was not atheism, nor even any avowed heresy
in dogma, but the impudent sophism, borrowed by certain Christians
from the Muslims, that there can or must be two kinds of truth; so that,
when the voice of reason or philosophy conflicts with the voice of
authority
and faith, we may legitimately hearken to both. Or if few quite
professed
that absurdity, the alternative was to insinuate that reason would often
oblige us to believe one thing, were not its opposite enjoined on us by
faith.
Aquinas took a wide view of his problem. He did not restrict himself
to the Latin Averroists, against whom he wrote the De Unitate
Litellectus
in 1270, but went back to the higher sources of the mischief. By one
of the most amazing accidents in history it had fallen to Aristotle,
some
fifteen centuries after his death, to stand as the representative of
human
reason. By another accident it was given to the Arabs to work out a
systematic interpretation, and then to hand it over to the Latins. Now
Aquinas, no less than Albert, was deeply interested in Aristotle, and
not
in the least afraid of his opinions. He might even, in the peculiar
circum-
stances of the time, have agreed with the Averroists that the general
liberty
of speculation was summed up in the free study of Aristotle. It is
ludicrous, however, to suppose that he took Aristotle to be infallible.
Except
in the last decadence of scholasticism, the only people who ever did
that
were the Averroists and the Muslims. For the most part St Thomas was
not occupied in proving the rightness or wTongness of Aristotle, but in
criticising the Arabian interpretation of him, relatively to such
questions
as the eternity of the world, the individuality of the immortal
intellect,
and the alleged subjection of the human will to planetary influences.
Like
CH. XXXII, 52 2
820 The merits and the limitations of Aquinas
a good Aristotelian, he perceived that in arguing contra Gentiles he must
conduct the discussion on a basis accepted by his opponents. There could
be no question of "authority"; for, as he says, Mahumetistae et pagani non
conveniunt nobiscum in auctoritate alicuius Scripturae . . . unde necesse est ad
naturalem rationem recurrere, cui omnes assentire coguntur.1 Now by
"natural reason" the Muslims understood primarily, if not solely, the
philosophy of Aristotle; and from that philosophy they had extracted
inferences damaging to the Christian position ; not indeed to the doctrines
of the Trinity and the Incarnation — for on these points Aristotle could
have nothing to say — but to the belief in moral responsibility and the
immortality of the soul. To St Thomas, therefore, the alternatives were
to reject the Muslim interpretation, or to prove that Aristotle himself
was wrong. He does not choose either course to the total exclusion of
the other, but to a large extent he argues that Averroes and Avicenna
had misrepresented the master of their allegiance.
Whether Aquinas proves his case to the satisfaction of modern critics
may be disputable, but he certainly marshals an array of arguments that
none of his contemporaries was likely to defeat. Along with his
elucidation of Aristotle he examines the still wider problem of the
whole relation
of reason to faith; upholding in his own sense a duplex veritatis moduS,
which yet avoids the duplicity of believing contradictory propositions
on
different grounds, and is, in effect, a plea for the unity of truth. If,
once
more, we may doubt whether the conditions of the age permitted him to
arrive at a final appreciation of all the difficulties, none can
reasonably
doubt the candour of his intention, the subtlety of his intuitions, or
the
astonishing range and lucidity of his mind. Similar merits and similar
inevitable deficiencies are revealed in his general understanding of
Aristotle. He was no biologist, no physicist,- no astronomer. He could
not
discriminate between paths of science where Aristotle had gone
hopelessly
astray, and other paths where he had advanced almost to the verge of
modern
achievement. Like the commentators of all ages, not excluding our own,
he was strongest within the bounds of his own experience, and weakest
where his sympathy failed. To the last he was hampered by ignorance of
history. Often as he contested Neo-Platonist interpretations, he was far
from disengaging Aristotle from later accretions. He knew, for example
(with the help of William of Moerbeke), that the Liber de Causis, widely
received as Aristotelian, was in fact an excerpt from Proclus; and yet
he
could make the almost staggering assertion that "Dionysius," in contrast
to Augustine and others, fere ubuque sequitur Aristotelem.^ This, it is
true,
he says in an early work, and perhaps in later life he might have
hesitated
to repeat it. But neither by Aquinas, nor by anyone else in that
century,
was Aristotle fully divested of the Neo-Platonist garments in which the
' Summa contra Gentiles, i, 2.
2 Cf. Mandoniiet, Siger de Brabant. Part 1, p. 43, note 2.
Averroism and Siger of Brahant 821
course of history had clothed him. Yet after all these criticisms, to which others might be added, it remains incontestable that every modem student of Aristotle has much to learn from the exposition of Aquinas.
Averroism proper, as distinct from the general influence of the Arabs,
is not heard of before the second half of the century. Moreover, when
Albert wrote his De Unitate Intellectus contra Averroem in 1256, he
appears to be attacking a tendency rather than actual teachers at Paris.
Siger of Bmbant is first mentioned in 1266, and the firet official
condemnation of Averroism occurs in 1270. Before that date, either in
the
autumn of 1268 or in the spring of 1269, Aquinas returned from Italy
to Paris, where he remained until 1272. The resumption of a professorial
chair by a Dominican (for Aquinas had taught at Paris for some years
before 1260) was so unusual that we must attribute it to the manifold
difficulties in which the Order was involved. Among these were the
constant hostility of the seculars to the regulars, differences with the
Franciscans and the "Augustinian" theologians, and finally the emergence
of Averroism, a movement complicated bv the attempt to involve the
general credit of Peripateticism with the errors of Siger of Brabant. St
Thomas, accordingly, had both to publish his De Unitate Intellectus as
an
answer to Siger's De Anima Intellectiva, and to protect the freedom of
Aristotelian study against critics who still, perhaps, might appeal to
Urban's decree of 1263. Evidence to the same effect is furnished bv a
work discovered and printed by Mandonnet, the De Quindecim Problematibus
of Albertus Magnus, composed in answer to a letter of enquiry
by Giles of Lessines. Of these fifteen problems the first thirteen are
identical with the propositions condemned at Paris (10 December 1270),
while the last two suggest an attempt to involve Aquinas in the downfall
of the Averroists.
From a survey of the thirteen condemned propositions we gather that
four main questions were prominent, the unity of the intelligence in all
men, the eternity of the world, the freedom of the will, the knowledge
and providence of God. A more drastic reduction might leave only the
first of the four as of primary importance in 1270; for it seems that
this
had spread beyond philosophical circles, in its practical bearing on
moral
responsibility and personal salvation. While it is impossible here to
discuss so intricate a problem, or to compare the Averroist and
Dominican
readings of the De Anima, it is necessary to remark that Averroes had
advanced beyond the position of Avicenna and his predecessors. The
others had removed from human conditions only the intellectus agens
which might even be identified with God ; but Averroes converted also
the intellectus possibilis into a "separate substance," and declared it
to be
unis in omnibus hominibis.1 Opposed as he was to both these
interpretations of Aristotle, St Thomas was aware that even Catholic
doctors had
identified the intellectus agens with God, in which case it would
rightly
* Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, ii, 69 and 73.
822 Opposition to Thomism
be excluded from human personality. Averroes, however, was clearly
beyond the pale; for, since nothing in God can be merely potential, to
affirm the unity of the intellectus possihilis is to deny the individuality
of man.
Averroism was defeated, and Siger of Brabant, condemned again by
the Inquisition of France in October 1277, passed his last years in
Italy,
as the prisoner of the Roman curia. There he perished, as the story
goes,
by the hand of a half-insane assassin, and thereafter was honourably
translated to Dante's Paradiso. The subsequent fortunes of Averroism
we cannot pursue. More important for the moment was the renewed
attack on Aristotelianism in general, which gained a passing triumph in
1277. The mighty efforts of Albert and Thomas, with the favour of one
or two Popes, had checked but not destroyed the force of the opposition.
The currents of philosophical thought, not to say political faction,
were
numerous. The secular clergy, always jealous of the friars, did not
shine
in the use of intellectual weapons. If Roger Bacon, writing in 1271, can
be trusted, they had failed to produce a single theological or
philosophical
treatise for the space of forty years. They merely took doctrinal
questions
as a convenient pretext for attack. Against that kind of onslaught the
two Orders were united, but in other respects they tended to drift
apart.
Bonaventura and Aquinas were so happily united by personal friendship
that they might have stood as models to an earlier Fra Angelico for the
meeting of Francis and Dominic. Yet it is Bonaventura who best expresses
the difference of temper between the two societies, when he says
that the Preachers principaliter intendunt speculationi, et postea
unctioni,
the Friars Minor principaliter unctioni et postea speculationi.1 Even St
Thomas, who was far from devoid of sympathy with mysticism, would
hardly have written the Itinerarkim mentis in Deum.
Something more, or less, than "unction*" is required, however, to
account for the attitude of John Peckham, the Franciscan Archbishop of
Canterbury, who, besides attempting to implicate Aquinas with the
heresies of Siger, went to the length of protesting that nothing was
common to the two Orders but the bare foundations of the faith. So wide
a division could only be affirmed in so far as the Franciscans identified
themselves with the party sometimes called Augustinian. On the whole,
and with many reservations, it is true that the Franciscan doctors looked
askance at the Aristotelian movement. Roger Bacon, no doubt, falls
outside all generalisations. Much as he disliked the ascendency of Albert,
he was too much of an individualist to act merely as the partisan of one
society against another. But a general review of the most distinguished
Franciscan writers, from Alexander of Hales (who was not, it seems, the
author of the Summa which bears his name) to Duns Scotus, would justify
the opinion that by their influence alone Aristotle would never have
secured the supremacy among philosophers. That supremacy was claimed
1 Mandonnet, op. cit. Part i, p. 98.
England and Thomism. Philosophy and the Church 823
for him neither by the earlier Middle Ages, nor yet by the thirteenth
century as a whole, but only by the great Dominican masters, assisted
undoubtedly by the Averroists whom, on some vital points, they felt
bound to oppose. The delayed but eventual triumph of Thomism (never
perfectly accomplished, one might add, until the revival in the nineteenth
century) has too often cast back a false light on the age of St Thomas
himself. Opposition, not merely to him but to Aristotle, was then fi-equent
and bitter. A casual but interesting example is found in the Summa, of
unknown authorship, which Baur has printed in the same volume with the
works of Grosseteste. The writer, a man of strong intelligence and far
from ignorant of Aristotle, has some exceedingly sharp things to say about
him. In particular, he dismisses as ineffective the whole Aristotelian
criticism of the Platonic "ideas," and hints pretty strongly that Aristotle
was often as much moved by prejudice as by rational judgment.
In England, and at Oxford, where this Stimma may probably have been composed, the Franciscans were especially strong.
Encouraged by
Grosseteste (not himself a member of the Order) and by the example of
his writings, they gave more attention to mathematics and optics than to
the wider problems of philosophy that chieHy exercised the Dominicans
of Paris. But there must also have been something in the English air
inimical to Thomism. For not onlv the Franciscan Archbishop, John
Peckhara, but his Dominican predecessor, Robert Kilwardby (author of
an interesting work on the Division of Philosophy), persuaded Oxford to
condemn a number of propositions maintained bv St Thomas. His action
was a sequel to the larger affair at Paris in March 1277, when the various
forces opposed to the Dominicans united under fitienne Tempier, the
Chancellor of the University, to secure the condemnation of no less than
219 propositions, some of them imputable only to Siger and the Averroists, others common to Aquinas and all the Peripatetics.
What was the meaning of this undiscriminating violence.'^ Behind the
political struggle there was doubtless some genuine apprehension of a
fatal schism between philosophy and the authority of the Church, The
system of Catholicism, as it was slowly shaped and consolidated in the
Middle Ages, pointed to the indivisible union of all Christians in a
single
society, ideally as wide as the world. To the realisation of such an
ideal
the existence of Jews, Muslims, and Pagans was the most patent obstacle,
but also the most superficial. More serious was the breach between the
Greeks and the Latins, for that touched the internal principles upon
which the Christian society was founded. More vital even than doctrinal
unity was the maintenance of the claim by which alone the Church had
succeeded in absorbing into herself the finer essence of Graeco-Roman
civilisation. The substance of that claim was the possession of first
principles comprehensive enough to supersede Greek philosophy, and to
serve as the ultimate source of morality and law. Once allow the
possibility of explaining the world without reference to the
propositions of the
CH. XXIII.
824 The Relation of Reason to Faith
Creed, or of governing mankind without reference to the lex divina, and
the whole structure of the Church must be threatened with collapse. The
liberty of the sciences, therefore, and the liberty of princes were on
the
same plane; they were liberties conceded by the Church — liberties to
arrive at any conclusions and to take any administrative measures not
in-
compatible with the Christian presuppositions.
Such being the remorseless logic of the situation, the search for means
of avoiding it persistently continued. After many makeshifts and
evasions
of the issue, it became clear at last to the acuter minds of the
thirteenth
century that only one solution was possible. If it could be shewn that
the
work of reason in the whole field of science could be accomplished
without possible collision with the faith ; if, in other words, there
was a duplex
veritatis modus consistent with intellectual honesty, then intolerable
tyranny and disastrous revolution could alike be avoided. To make good
this solution was the policy of Aquinas. Sincerely convinced that human
reason could neither prove nor disprove the doctrines peculiar to
Christianity, he proceeded to infer that all arguments destructive of
the faith
were spurious products of reason, which genuine philosophy could refute
without appeal to authority. At the same time he allotted a wide
province
to reason, and believed it possible to demonstrate the principles of
Theism
and of theistic morality by the arguments relative to God, freedom,
and immortality which Kant afterwards declared to be invalid. In the
age of Aquinas there was neither a Kant nor even a magnified Gaunilo,
but there were conservatives who mistrusted these new lines of division,
and who failed to see that a position tenable in the days of Augustine,
or even of Anselm, might be far from impregnable to the onslaught of
Averroes, With the conservatives were allied the alarmists, who held
that
Aquinas himself was betraying the citadel by inviting reason to occupy
the outworks. In their eyes a Peripatetic was no better than an
Averroist ;
both alike deserved the penalty of traitors within the camp. The
cleavage
of parties and the hardening of the distinction between theology and
philosophy must have been assisted by the organising of Faculties within
the University. The control of philosophy belonged to the Faculty of
Arts ; the theologians, therefore, were clearly not philosophers. Hence,
when Albert the Great, as a friar, was attacked by the students of
theology,
it was the artists who rushed in crowds to his support. So anomalous a
position could not long be maintained. Sooner or later the lines of
intellectual division would follow pretty closely the division of
Faculties,
with results that, without returning to the Middle Ages, we can readily
imagine.
Among those swept away, a little ironically, with the 219 propositions
was the unfortunate Roger Bacon. If he was to be engulfed in the company
of so many Peripatetics, it seems a pity that, instead of railing at Albert,
he did not collaborate with him for the advancement of chemistry and
physics. We must beware, however, of misinterpreting either the position
The fate of Roger Bacon. His philosophy 825
of Bacon or the causes of his downfall. It would be unhistorical to
suppose
that advocacy of mathematics, or prophecies of flying-machines and other
marvels, would have brought him to captivity. Whatever the value of his
contributions to science (about which the specialists are a little
frigid),
no school of thought then suspected that geometry or optics or the
propagation of force by "multiplication of species" were going to
undermine
the Church. Bacon, like Abelard, may have damaged himself by making
enemies, and by his monotonous dispraise of authority ; but where he
seems definitely to have stumbled was in the field of astrology. The
state of astronomy at the time permitted it to be a quasi-scientific
question whether the fortunes and even the characters of men might not
be shaped by celestial impressions. Bacon himself agreed with Aquinas
and other educated men in denying that the freedom of the will could
thus be affected, and in avoiding the more childish superstitions. The
attack on him was probably no more intelligent than the refusal to
discriminate between Aquinas and the Averroists. In the hour of
triumphant faction a few rash or ambiguous expressions would be
evidence enough. Deplorable as the result was, we have no more right
to accuse the whole age of persecuting science than we have to argue
from
Bacon's own effort to prove the utility of mathematics to theology that
he saw no intrinsic value in theoretical reasoning. In any case, it is
an
anachronism either to look for a new philosophy of the world in the
scientific tastes of Bacon, or to interpret his overthrow as mere
hostility
to the study of natural phenomena. A still greater absurdity would be
to suppose that Bacon's praise of experience and experiment brought
upon him the wrath of Aristotelians.
Rightly to estimate Bacon's worth as a philosopher is, however, a very
difficult task. The combative spirit which enraged his contemporaries
has endeared him, perhaps unduly, to modern readers with little
sympathy for the temper of the Middle Ages. Similarly, his references to
actual or possible devices of mechanics and chemistry have won for him
more credit as an inventor than he would have claimed for himself. Our
concern, however, is rather with his general estimate of knowledge, and
with his broader relations to the intellectual attitude of his times.
And
here we find that, in some respects, his mind was provincial, or even
reactionary, while in others he certainly had a vision of the future
sicut in
aenigmate, non facie adfaciem. His provincialism appears in his failure
to appreciate the higher contemporary thought, or to perceive the
direction
in which minds really more critical than his own were moving. Much of
his criticism, as for example in the De Viciis contractis in studio
TheologiaCy
is singularly barren, if we suppose it to refer to such men as Albert
the
Great or Thomas Aquinas. They in their turn might well have objected
that Bacon's whole conception of philosophy was obsolete. They would not
formally have disputed his statement that the chief and final intention
of philosophers was circa divinam et angelorum cognitionem. . . cum
contemptu
826 Bacon's titles to fame
bonorum istius vitae temporalis, ut pervenirent ad statum futurae
beatitudinis, but they might fairly have replied that amiable
commonplaces
were no substitute for a real delineation of the provinces of theology
and
human reason. Bacon is, in fact, reactionary in his extravagant
subordination of philosophy to theology. He reverts to a position barely
tenable
in the thirteenth century unless supported by fresh arguments, and he
appears to be imperfectly acquainted with the greatest controversy of
his
age.
Again, his praise of "mathematics" as an aid to civil and religious
government is so mixed up with the puerilities of astrology and alchemy
that his pretence of superiority to his times in this respect is far
from
convincing. On the other hand, there are many glimpses of genuine
insight in his enthusiasm for linguistic studies, in his anticipation of
the
manifold uses of geography, and in his constant emphasis on the
importance
of experimental method. Very often he speaks of scientia experimentalis
as a separate science rather than as a general method employed by
natural
philosophy; and in the Opus Tertium he makes the significant statement:
naturalis enim philosophus narrat et arguit, sed non experitur. He
maintains, nevertheless, that experiment or experience is required to
verifv all
the sciences; nor can we reasonably complain if he is not yet in a
position
to discriminate between the more and the less experimental departments
of knowledge. What we clearly discern in Bacon, when we get behind his
peevishness, his superstitions, and his arrogance, is a profound
discontent
with the existing state of knowledge, a conviction that no further
advance
is possible except by a kind of intellectual return to Nature. In this
he
was indubitably right, and in this, rather than in actual achievement,
lies
his title to fame. At all times, too, he was hampered by his conflict
with
authority. Many of his books have the character of an apologia. He is
desperately anxious to refute the slanders of his enemies, and to
persuade
Pope Clement IV that his philosophy is orthodox and profitable. Had
he worked in a calmer atmosphere, and in harmony with the chiefs of his
Order, it is probable that he would have left us a higher impression of
his powers.
The imprisonment of Bacon was a political incident, in the same sense
that the trials of Gottschalk, Abelard, and Gilbert de la Porree, or the
prohibitions of Aristotle, Averroism, and Peripateticism were political
incidents.
For the Church was, in theory and in fact, a political society
based on first principles, and pledged therefore to test every movement
of thought by its probable effect on the faith and conduct of Christians.
Liberty of opinion we now take to be the foundation of all other liberties;
interference with it we stamp as an act of tyranny or, at best, as a dangerous
experiment. But that is because we are governed by opinion and desire
no other master. The medieval Church, on the other hand, claimed to
be governed by knowledge, and that makes all the difference in the world.
That, too, is why the significance of the proposed division between theology
The final aim of medieval philosophy 827
and philosophy was graver than even an Aquinas could suspect. The scope
of this chapter has excluded political thought in the more restricted
sense,
but facts like the growth of Canon Law, the revival of Roman
jurisprudence, the rise of nations and communes, the struggle of Empire
and
Papacy, and the appearance of such a book as Marsilius of Padua's
Defensor Pacis are intimately connected with medieval philosophy. In the
last chapter of his Monarchia Dante supports his plea for an independent
Empire by the analogous independence of philosophy. To the Pope belong
revealed truths and the theological virtues; to the Emperor moral virtue
and the inventions of reason. That Dante grasped the whole possibilities
of his argument is improbable; for no such division could be effective
before the rise of the modem State, nor even then until the State had
renounced the care of theology, only to find that philosophy had
likewise
vanished from its counsels. The heroic attempt of Aquinas to define a
sphere for philosophy without detriment to the sovereign rights of
theology
was simplv one expression of the whole medieval struggle so to adjust
the
temporal power to the spiritual as to create a dominion of political
freedom
within the higher sovereignty of the Church. The project, we may hold,
was impossible. It is certain, at least, that it failed.
Yet this failure was the last and greatest achievement of medieval
philosophy. Later developments, such as the rivalry of Thomists and
Scotists, with all their wrangles about matter and form, universals and
individuals, have their interest for students, but small importance for
the
historical movement of the world. When we gaze on the solid line of
folios attributed to Duns Scotus (ob. 1308) it seems almost incredible
that
his life can have lasted — according to a common estimate — no more than
thirty-four years. Even if the correct figure be a little larger, his
youth
is perhaps a fact to be remembered in estimating the quality of his
work.
For in Duns Scotus we cannot but recognise something of that joy in
destruction attributed by Plato to young men attacked by the first fever
of dialectic. It was his distinguished fate to found a school strong
enough
for a time to divide the world with the Thomists. The Franciscans
adopted him as their champion and magnified his prestige. Modern
readers, however, who stand apart from medieval factions, will be slow
to recognise in Duns Scotus a serious intellectual rival to Thomas
Aquinas.
In method, in perspicuity, in dignity and breadth of mind he is plainly
inferior. To charge him with insincerity would be uncharitable, but he
strikes us as a man determined at all hazards to take up original
positions,
and therefore to seek with all his notorious "subtlety" for points of
distinction between his own and other views. The result in most cases is
that his divergence from Aquinas and other doctors turns out to be
smaller than his statements would suggest.
On the fundamental question of the relation of philosophy to theology
he proposes a much sharper division than was approved by St Thomas.
When any truth is enunciated as an article of faith, it is inexpedient, he
828 Duns Scotus and his philosophy
says, to attempt a demonstration of it. The effect of your demonstration
on the faithful will be to deprive them of the merit of faith, while to
the
infidel you will provide an opportunity of declaring that Christians are
driven by lack of faith to fall back on argument. It would thus be
improper to prove by reason that God exists, that God is one, or that
the
soul is immortal. Duns Scotus fails, however, to work out the
consequences
of his own hypothesis. He is far from meaning that faith is irrational,
but equally far from grasping the importance of philosophical monotheism
as a preparation for Christian doctrine, or from perceiving the danger
of
sheer obscurantism involved in his own contention. Nor does he deal with
Aquinas' point that, since few men have leisure, or inclination, or
ability
to be philosophers, the bulk of mankind will be obliged to receive in
the
form of faith propositions which a few may be able to establish by
reasoning. On the other hand, Duns Scotus goes quite as far as Aquinas
in claiming for theology an interest in every branch of knowledge, not
excluding geometry, and also in exalting the power of the intellect for
the general purpose of arriving at truth. Theology, he maintains, is
practical rather than speculative, but the practical consequences of
Christian dogmas, as he explains them, would never have been questioned
by
Aquinas. In a word. Duns Scotus proposes a new division of provinces
but does not adequately defend it. He tends to exalt will above
intellect,
but Math the difficulties of their inter-relation he does not grapple
half
so closely as Aquinas.
Perhaps the most conspicuous point of difference between Duns Scotus
and his contemporaries was his doctrine of matter. Entirely free from
materialism in any sense that would make matter independent of the
Creator, he insists, nevertheless, that all created beings, the spiritual no
less than the corporeal, have matter as well as form in their composition.
To support this doctrine he makes an important distinction between
metaphysical and physical matter. He supposed that Pythagoras and
some of the early Greek philosophers had thought of matter
metaphysically, but he assigned to physics and natural philosophy, not
the materia
prima, but only the secundo prima, w hich is the substratum of
generation
and corruption. In its metaphysical sense matter need not be localised,
and he excused himself from answering the question iihi est? Thus even
the angelic nature contains matter in its being, and since Aquinas had
allowed to the angels a kind of potentia, Duns Scotus is obliged to deny
that the existence of matter is merely potential. How it can exist actu,
without being actus alicuius, he finds it difficult to explain, but such
is
his doctrine. And further, since the whole universe of creatures has
been
developed out of this metaphysical substratum by progressive
differentiation, the Thomist doctrine of matter as the causa
individuationis must
be rejected. Incidentally the angels thus recover the privilege of
l>eing
individuals without constituting a species apiece. What individuality
is,
and how it arises, Duns Scotus exhausts his ingenuity to explain. He
The coming revolutions in thought 829
was doubtless right in suspecting that the puzzle could not be solved
through the simple alternatives of matter and form. He perceived also
that an individual could not be defined by negatives, and that there must
be some positive quality involved in numerical distinction. If in the end
his own doctrine only led to the thesis that hoc est hoc on account of
haecceitas, we must still hesitate before we throw stones at him. For in
the monstrous jargon of some modern philosophies a word like "thisness""
has an air of almost classical refinement.
Impossible as it is to do justice in a page or two to the comprehensive
knowledge of Duns Scotus or to his intellectual acumen, it is not unjust
to deny that he is author of any momentous reform in philosophv. Rather
does he testify, like Roger Bacon, though in very different style, to
the
approaching exhaustion of medieval thought. The air of finality that
hangs over the weighty pages of Aquinas has a prophetic significance.
For the work of Aquinas, consummate in its kind, had exhausted the
materials then existing for the edifice of philosophy, though not the
ingenious art of arranging them in new patterns. The great age of
dialectic had vanished with the rebirth of Aristotle; the age of
Aristotelianism
was to perish in still greater revolutions. Alike in politics and in
science
more portentous questions were soon to be uttered: whether a society
founded on an immutable gospel could find room for the modern State,
and whether a scientia experimentalis beyond the dreams of Roger Bacon
could be reconciled with an infallible Church.
END OF VOLUME V.