CHAPTER XXXIV SCHOLASTICISM: SPIRIT, SCOPE, AND METHOD The religious philosophy or theology of the Middle Ages is commonly called scholasticism, and its exponents are called the scholastics. The name applies most properly to the respectable academic thinkers. These, in the early Middle Ages, usually were monks living in monasteries, like St. Anselm, for instance, who was Abbot of Bec in Normandy before, to his sorrow, he was made Archbishop of Canterbury. In the thirteenth century, however, while these respected thinkers still were monks, or rather mendicant friars, they were also university professors. Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Dominicans, and their friend St. Bonaventura, who became the head of the Franciscan Order, all lectured at the University of Paris, the chief university of the Middle Ages in the domain of philosophy and theology. Moreover, as the scholastics were respectable and academic, so they were usually orthodox Churchmen, good Roman Catholics. The conduct or opinions of some of them, Abaelard for example, became suspect to the Church authorities; yet Abaelard, although his book had been condemned, kept within the Church’s pale, and died a monk of Cluny. There were plenty of obdurate heretics in the Middle Ages; but their bizarre ideas, sometimes coming down from Manichaean sources, were scarcely germane to the central lines of mediaeval thought.[419]One hears of scholastic philosophy and scholastic theology; and assuredly these mediaeval theologian-philosophers endeavoured to distinguish between the one and the other phase of the matters which occupied their minds. The distinction was intelligibly drawn and, in many treatises, doubtless affected the choice and ordering of topics. Whether it was consistently observed in the handling of those topics, is another question, which perhaps should be answered in the negative. At all events, to attempt to observe this distinction in considering the ultimate intellectual interests of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, might sap the matter of the human interest attaching to it, to wit, that interest and validity possessed by all serious effort to know—and to be saved. These were the motives of the scholastics, whether they used their reason, or clung to revelation, or did both, as they always did. Mediaeval methods of thinking and topics of thought are no longer in vogue. For the time, men have turned from the discussion of universals and the common unity or separate individuality of mind, and are as little concerned with transubstantiation as with the old dispute over investitures. But the scholastics were men and so are we. Our humanity is one with theirs. Men are still under the necessity of reflecting upon their own existence and the world without, and still feel the need to reach conclusions and the impulse to formulate consistently what seem to them vital propositions. Herein we are blood kin to Gerbert and Anselm, to Abaelard and Hugo of St. Victor, to Thomas Aquinas as well as Roger Bacon: and our highest nature is one with theirs in the intellectual fellowship of human endeavour to think out and present that which shall appease the mind. Because of this kinship with the scholastics, and the sympathy which we feel for the struggle which is the same in us and them, their intellectual endeavours, their achieved conclusions, although now appearing as but apt or necessitated phrases, may have for us the immortal interest of the eternal human. Let us then approach mediaeval thought as man meets man, and seek in it for what may still be valid, or at least real to us, because agreeing with what we find within ourselves. Being men as well as scholars, we would win from its parchment-covered tomes those elements which if they do not represent everlasting verities, are at least symbols of the permanent necessities of the human mind. Whatever else there is in mediaeval thought, as touching us less nearly, may be considered by way of historical setting and explanation. In different men the impulse to know bears different relationships to the rest of life. It sometimes seems self-impelled, and again palpably inspired by a motive beyond itself. In some form, however, it winds itself into every action of our mental faculties, and no province of life appears untouched by this craving of the mind. Nevertheless to know is not the whole matter; for with knowledge comes appetition or aversion, admiration or contempt, love or abhorrence; and other impulses—emotional, desiderative, loving—impel the human creature to realize its nature in states of heightened consciousness that are not palpable modes of knowing, though they may be replete with all the knowledge that the man has gained. These ultimate cravings which we recognize in ourselves, inspired mediaeval thought. Its course, its progress, its various phases, its contents and completed systems, all represent the operation of human faculty pressing to expression and realization under the accidental or “historical” conditions of the mediaeval period. We may be sure that many kinds of human craving and corresponding faculty realized themselves in mediaeval philosophy, theology, piety and mysticism—the last a word used provisionally, until we succeed in resolving it into terms of clearer significance. And we also note that in these provinces, realization is expression. Every faculty, every energy, in man seeks to function, to realize its power in act. The sheer body—if there be sheer body—acts bodily, operates, and so makes actual its powers. But those human energies which are informed with mind, realize themselves in ardent or rational thought, or in uttered words, or in products of the artfully devising hand. All this clearly is expression, and corresponds, if it is not one and the same, with the passing of energy from potency to the actuality which is its end and consummation. Thus love, seeking its end, thereby seeks expression, through which it is enhanced, and in which it is realized. Likewise, impelled by the desire to know, the faculties of cognition and reason realize themselves in expression; and in expression each part of rational knowledge is clarified, completed, rendered accordant with the data of observation and the laws or necessities of the mind. Human faculties form a correlated whole; and this composite human nature seeks to act, to function. Thus the whole man strives to realize the fullest actuality of his being, and satisfy or express the whole of him, and not alone his reason, nor yet his emotions, or his appetites. This uttermost realization of human being—man’s summum bonum or summa necessitas—cannot unite the incompatible within its synthesis. It must be kept a consistent ideal, a possible whole. Here the demiurge is the discriminating and constructive intelligence, which builds together the permanent and valuable elements of being, and excludes whatever cannot coexist in concord with them. Yet the intelligence does not always set its own rational activities as man’s furthest goal of realization. It may place love above reason. And, of course, its discriminating judgment will be affected by current knowledge and by dominant beliefs as to man and his destiny, the universe and God. Manifestly whatever the thoughtful idealizing man in any period (and our attention may at once focus itself upon the Middle Ages) adjudges to belong to the final realization of his nature, will become an object of intellectual interest for him; and he will deem it a proper subject for study and meditation. The rational, spiritual, or even physical elements, which may enter and compose this, his summum bonum, represent those intellectual interests which may be termed ultimate, for the very reason, that they relate to what the thinker deems his beatitude. These ultimate intellectual interests possess an absolute sanction, for the lack of which whatever lies outside of them tends to adjudge itself vain. The philosophy, theology, and the profoundly felt and reasoned piety, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries made up that period’s ultimate intellectual interests. We are not concerned with other matters occupying its attention, save as they bore on man’s supreme beatitude, which was held to consist in his everlasting salvation and all that might constitute his bliss in that unending state. The elements of this blessedness were not deemed to lie altogether in rational cognition and its processes; for the conception of the soul’s beatitude was catholic; and while with some men the intellectual elements were dominant, with others salvation’s summit was attained along the paths of spiritual emotion. Obviously, from the side of the emotions, there could come no large and lasting happiness, unless emotional desire and devotion were directed to that which might also satisfy the mind, or at all events, would not conflict with its judgment. Hence the emotional side of the ultimate mediaeval ideal was pietistic; because the mediaeval dogmatic faith regarded the emotional impulses between one human being and another as distracting, if not wicked. Such mortal impulses were so very difficult to harmonize with the eternal beatitude which consisted in the cognition and love of God. This principle was proclaimed by monks and theologians, or philosophers; it was even recognized (although not followed) in the literature which glorified the love of man and woman, but in which the lover-knight so often ends a hermit, and the convent at last receives his sinful mistress. On the other hand, reason, with its practical and speculative knowledge, is sterile when unmixed with piety and love. This is the sum of Bonaventura’s fervid arguments, and is as clearly, if more quietly, recognized by Aquinas, with whom fides without caritas is informis, formless, very far indeed from its true actuality or realization. Thus, for the full realization of man’s highest good in everlasting salvation, the two complementary phases of the human spirit had to act and function in concord. Together they must realize themselves in such catholic expression as should exclude only the froward or evil elements, non-elements rather, of man’s nature. Both represent ultimate mediaeval interests and desires; and perhaps deep down and very intimately, even inscrutably, they may be one, even as they clearly are complementary phases of the human soul. Yet with certain natures who perhaps fail to hold the balance between them, the two phases seem to draw apart, or, at least, to evince themselves in distinct expression, and indeed in all men they are usually distinguishable. Generally speaking, the conception of man’s divinely mediated salvation, and of the elements of human being which might be carried on, and realized in a state of everlasting beatitude, prescribed the range of ultimate intellectual interests for the Middle Ages. The same had been despotically true of the patristic period. Augustine would know God and the soul; Ambrose expressed equally emphatic views upon the vanity of all knowledge that did not contribute to an understanding of the Christian Faith. This view was held with temperamental and barbarizing narrowness by Gregory the Great. It was admitted, as of course, throughout the Carolingian period, although humanistically-minded men played with the pagan literature. Nor was it seriously disputed in the eleventh or twelfth century, when men began to delight in dialectic, and some cared for pagan literature; nor yet in the thirteenth when an increasing number were asking many things from philosophy and natural knowledge, which had but distant bearing on the soul’s salvation. One of these men was Roger Bacon, whose scientific studies were pursued with ceaseless energy. But he could also state emphatically the principle of the worthlessness of whatever does not help men to understand the divine truths by which they are saved. In Bacon’s time, the love of knowledge was enlarging its compass, while, really or nominally as the individual case might be, the criterion of relevancy to the Faith still obtained, and set the topics with which men should occupy themselves. All matters of philosophy or natural science had to relate themselves to the summum bonum of salvation in order to possess ultimate human interest. Therefore, if philosophy was to preserve the strongest reason for its existence, it had to remain the handmaid of theology. Still, to be sure, the conception of man’s beatitude would become more comprehensive with the expansion and variegation of the desire for knowledge. As the summum bonum of salvation prescribed the topics of ultimate intellectual interest for the Middle Ages, so the stress which it laid upon one topic rather than another tended to direct their ordering or classification, as well as the proportion of attention devoted to each one. Likewise the form or method of presentation was controlled by the authority of the Scriptural statement of the way and means of salvation, and the well-nigh equally authoritative interpretation of the same by the beatified Fathers. Thus the nature of the summum bonum and the character of its Scriptural statement and patristic exposition suggested the arrangement of topics, and set the method of their treatment in those works of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which afford the most important presentations of the ultimate intellectual interests of that time. Obvious examples will be Abaelard’s Sic et non and his Theologia, Hugo of St. Victor’s De sacramentis, the Lombard’s Books of Sentences, and the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas. It will be seen in the next chapter that the arrangement of topics in these comprehensive treatises differed from what would have been evolved through the requirements of a systematic presentation of human knowledge. Aquinas sets forth the reasons why one mode of treatment is suitable to philosophy and another to sacred science, and why the latter may omit matters proper for the former, or treat them from another point of view. The supremacy of sacred science is incidentally shown by the argument. In his Contra Gentiles[420] chapter four, book second, bears the title: “Quod aliter considerat de creaturis Philosophus et aliter Theologus” (“That the philosopher views the creation in one way and the theologian in another”). In the text he says: “The science (doctrina) of Christian faith considers creatures so far as there may be in them some likeness of God, and so far as error regarding them might lead to error in things divine.... Human philosophy considers them after their own kind, and its parts are so devised as to correspond with the different classes (genera) of things; but the faith of Christ considers them, not after their own kind, as for example, fire as fire, but as representing the divine altitude.... The philosopher considers what belongs to them according to their own nature; the believer (fidelis) regards in creatures only what pertains to them in their relationship to God, as that they are created by Him and subject to Him. Wherefore the science of the Faith is not to be deemed incomplete, if it passes over many properties of things, as the shape of the heaven or the quality of motion.... It also follows that the two sciences do not proceed in the same order. With philosophy, which regards creatures in themselves, and from them draws on into a knowledge of God, the first consideration is in regard to the creatures and the last is as to God. But in the science of faith, which views creatures only in their relationship to God (in ordine ad Deum), the first consideration is of God, and next of the creatures.” Obviously sacra doctrina, which is to say, theologia, proceeds differently from philosophia humana, and evidently it has to do with matters of ultimate importance, and therefore of ultimate intellectual interest. The passage quoted from the Contra Gentiles may be taken as introductory to the more elaborate statement at the beginning of his Summa theologiae, where Thomas sets forth the principles by which sacra doctrina is distinguished from the philosophicae disciplinae, to wit, the various sciences of human philosophy: “It was necessary to human salvation that there should be a science (doctrina) according with divine revelation, besides the philosophical disciplines which are pursued by human reason. Because man was formed (ordinatur) toward God as toward an end exceeding reason’s comprehension. That end should be known to men, who ought to regulate their intentions and actions toward an end. Wherefore it was necessary for salvation that man should know certain matters through revelation, which surpass human reason.” Thomas now points out that, on account of many errors, it also was necessary for man to be instructed through divine revelation as to those saving truths concerning God which human reason was capable of investigating. He next proceeds to show that sacra doctrina is science. “But there are two kinds of sciences. There are those which proceed from the principles known by the natural light of the mind, as arithmetic and geometry. There are others which proceed from principles known by the light of a superior science: as perspective proceeds from principles made known through geometry, and music from principles known through arithmetic. And sacra doctrina is science in this way, because it proceeds from principles known by the light of a superior science or knowledge which is the knowledge belonging to God and the beatified. Thus as music believes the principles delivered to it by arithmetic, so sacred doctrine believes the principles revealed to it from God.” The question then is raised whether sacra doctrina is one science, or many. And Thomas answers, that it is one, by reason of the unity of its formal object. For it views everything discussed by it as divinely revealed; and all things which are subjects of revelation (revelabilia) have part in the formal conception of this science; and so are comprehended under sacra doctrina, as under one science. Nevertheless it extends to subjects belonging to various departments of knowledge so far as they are knowable through divine illumination. As some of these may be practical and some speculative, it follows that sacred science includes both the practical and the speculative, even as God with the same knowledge knows himself and also the things He makes. “Yet this science is more speculative than practical, because on principle it treats of divine things rather than human actions, which it treats in so far as man by means of them is directed (ordinatur) to perfect cognition of God, wherein eternal beatitude consists. This science in its speculative as well as practical functions transcends other sciences, speculative and practical. One speculative science is said to be worthier than another, by reason of its certitude, or the dignity of its matter. In both respects this science surpasses other speculative sciences, because the others have certitude from the natural light of human reason, which may err; but this has certitude from the light of the divine knowledge, which cannot be deceived; likewise by reason of the dignity of its matter, because primarily it relates to matters too high for reason, while other sciences consider only those which are subjected to reason. It is worthier than the practical sciences, which are ordained for an ulterior end; for so far as this science is practical, its end is eternal beatitude, unto which as an ulterior end all other ends of the practical sciences are ordained (ordinantur). “Moreover although this science may accept something from the philosophical sciences, it requires them merely for the larger manifestation of the matters which it teaches. For it takes its principles, not from other sciences, but immediately from God through revelation. So it does not receive from them as from superiors, but uses them as servants. Even so, it uses them not because of any defect of its own, but because of the defectiveness of our intellect which is more easily conducted (manuducitur) by natural reason to the things above reason which this science teaches.” Thomas now shows, with scholastic formalism, that God is the subjectum of this science; since all things in it are treated with reference to God (sub ratione Dei), either because they are God himself, or because they bear relationship (habent ordinem) to God as toward their cause and end (principium et finem). The final question is whether this science be argumentativa, using arguments and proofs; and Thomas thus sets forth his masterly solution: “I reply, it should be said that as other sciences do not prove their first principles, but argue from them in order to prove other matters, so this science does not argue to prove its principles, which are articles of Faith, but proceeds from them to prove something else, as the Apostle, in 1 Corinthians xv., argues from the resurrection of Christ to prove the resurrection of us all. One should bear in mind that in the philosophic sciences the lower science neither proves its own first principles nor disputes with him who denies them, but leaves that to a higher science. But the science which is the highest among them, that is metaphysics, does dispute with him who denies its principles, if the adversary will concede anything; if he concede nothing it cannot thus argue with him, but can only overthrow his arguments. Likewise sacra Scriptura (or doctrina or sacred science, theology), since it owns no higher science, disputes with him who denies its principles, by argument indeed, if the adversary will concede any of the matters which it accepts through revelation. Thus through Scriptural authorities we dispute against heretics, and adduce one article against those who deny another. But if the adversary will give credence to nothing which is divinely revealed, sacred science has no arguments by which to prove to him the articles of faith, but has only arguments to refute his reasonings against the Faith, should he adduce any. For since faith rests on infallible truth, its contrary cannot be demonstrated: manifestly the proofs which are brought against it are not proofs, but controvertible arguments. “To argue from authority is most appropriate to this science; for its principles rest on revelation, and it is proper to credit the authority of those to whom the revelation was made. Nor does this derogate from the dignity of this science; for although proof from authority based on human reason may be weak, yet proof from authority based on divine revelation is most effective. “Yet sacred science also makes use of human reason; not indeed to prove the Faith, because this would take away the merit of believing; but to make manifest other things which may be treated in this science. For since grace does not annul nature, but perfects it, natural reason should serve faith, even as the natural inclination conforms itself to love (caritas). Hence sacred science uses the philosophers also as authority, where they were able to know the truth through natural reason. It uses authorities of this kind as extraneous arguments having probability. But it uses the authorities of the canonical Scriptures arguing from its own premises and with certainty. And it uses the authorities of other doctors of the Church, as arguing upon its own ground, yet only with probability. For our faith rests upon the revelation made to the Apostles and Prophets, who wrote the canonical books; and not upon the revelation, if there was any, made to other doctors.”[421] Mediaeval thought was beset behind and before by the compulsion of its conditions. Its mighty antecedents lived in it, and wrought as moulding forces. Well we know them, two in number, the one, of course, the antique philosophy; the other, again of course, the dogmatic Christian Faith, itself shot through and through with antique metaphysics, in the terms of which it had been formulated. These two, very dual and yet joined, antagonistic and again united, constituted the form-giving principles of mediaeval thinking. They were, speaking in scholastic phrase, the substantial as well as accidental forms of mediaeval theology, philosophy, and knowledge. Which means that they set the lines of mediaeval theology or philosophy, and caused the one and the other to be what it became, rather than something else; and also that they supplied the knowledge which mediaeval men laboured to acquire, and attempted to adjust their thinking to. Thus, through the twelfth, the thirteenth, and the fourteenth centuries, they remained the inworking formal causes of mediaeval thought; while, on the other hand, the moving and efficient causes (still speaking in scholastic-Aristotelian phrase) were the human impulses which those formal causes moulded, or indeed suggested, and the faculties which they trained. The patristic system of dogma with the antique philosophy, set the forms of mediaeval expression, fixed the distinctive qualities of mediaeval thought, furnished its topics, and even necessitated its problems—in two ways: First, through the specific substance which passed over and filled the mediaeval productions; and secondly, simply by reason of the existence of such a vast authoritative body of antique and patristic opinion, knowledge, dogma, which the Middle Ages had to accept and master, and beyond which the substance of mediaeval thinking was hardly destined to advance. The first way is obvious enough, inasmuch as patristic and antique matter palpably make the substance of mediaeval theology and philosophy. The second is less obvious, but equally important. This mass of dogma, knowledge, and opinion, existed finished and complete. Men imperfectly equipped to comprehend it were brought to it by the conviction that it was necessary to their salvation, and then gradually by the persuasion also that it offered the only means of intellectual progress. The struggle to master such a volume of knowledge issuing from a more creative past, gave rise to novel problems, or promoted old ones to a novel prominence. The problem of universals was taken directly from the antique dialectic. It played a monstrous rÔle in the twelfth century because it was in very essence a fundamental problem of cognition, of knowing, and so pressed upon men who were driven by the need to master continually unfolding continents of thought.[422] This is an instance of a problem transmitted from the past, but blown up to extraordinary importance by mediaeval intellectual conditions. So throughout the whole scholastic range, attitude and method alike are fixed by the fact that scholasticism was primarily an appropriation of transmitted propositions. In considering the characteristics of mediaeval thought, it is well to bear in mind these diverse ways in which its antecedents made it what it was: through their substance transmitted to it; through the receptive attitude forced upon men by existing accumulations of authoritative doctrine, and the method entailed upon mediaeval thought by its scholastic rather than originative character. Also one will not omit to notice which elements came from the action of the patristic body of antecedents, rather than from the antique group, and vice versa. Since the antique and patristic constituted well-nigh the whole substance of philosophy and theology in the Middle Ages, a separate consideration of what was thus transmitted would amount to a history of mediaeval thought from a somewhat unilluminating point of view. On the other hand, one may learn much as to the qualities of mediaeval thought from observing the attitudes of various men in successive centuries toward Greek philosophy and patristic theology. The Fathers had used the concepts of the former in the construction of their systems of acceptance of the Christian Faith. But the spirit of inquiry from which Greek philosophy had sprung, was very different from the spirit in which the Fathers used its concepts and arguments, in order to substantiate what they accepted on the authority of Scripture and tradition. It is true that Greek philosophy in the Neo-Platonism of Porphyry and Iamblicus was not far from the patristic attitude toward knowledge. But the spirit of these declining moods of Neo-Platonism was not the spirit which had carried the philosophy of the Greeks to its intellectual culmination in Plato and Aristotle, and to its attainment of the ethically rational in Stoicism and the system of Epicurus. Thus patristic thinking was essentially different in purpose and method from the philosophy which it forced to serve its uses; and the two differed by every difference of method, spirit, and intent which were destined to appear among the various kinds of mediaeval thinkers. But the difference between Greek philosopher and Church Father was deeper than any that ever could exist among mediaeval men. Some of the last might be conventionally orthodox and passionately pious, while others cared more distinctly for the fruits of knowledge. But even these could not be as Greek philosophers, because they were accustomed to rely on authority, and because they who drew their knowledge from an existing store would not have the independence and originality distinguishing the Greeks, who had created so much of that store from which they drew.[423] Moreover, while neither Plato’s inquiry for truth, nor Aristotle’s catholic search for knowledge, was isolated from its bearing on either the conduct or the event of life, nevertheless with them rational inquiry was a final motive representing in itself that which was most divinely human, and so the best for man.[424] But with the philosophers of the Middle Ages, it never was quite so. For the need of salvation had worked in men’s blood for generations. And salvation, man’s highest good, did not consist in humanly-attained knowledge or in virtue won by human strength; but was divinely mediated and had to be accepted upon authority. Hence, even in the great twelfth and thirteenth centuries, intellectual inquiry was never unlimbered from bands of deference, nor ever quite dispassionately rational or unaffected by the mortal need to attain a salvation which was bestowed or withheld by God according to His plan authoritatively declared. Accordingly all mediaeval variances of thought show common similitudes: to wit, some consciousness of need of super-rational and superhuman salvation; deference to some authority; and finally a pervasive scholasticism, since mediaeval thought was of necessity diligent, acceptant, reflective, rather than original. One will be impressed with the formal character of mediaeval thought. For being thus scholastic, it was occupied with devising forms through which to express, or re-express, the mass of knowledge proffered to it. Besides, formal logic was a prominent part of the transmitted contents of antique philosophy; and became a chief discipline for mediaeval students; because they accepted it along with all the rest, and found its training helpful for men burdened with such intellectual tasks as theirs. Within the lines of these universal qualities wind the divergencies of mediaeval thought; and one will notice how they consist in leanings toward the ways of Greek philosophy, or a reliance more or less complete upon the contents and method of patristic theology. One common quality, of which we note the variations, is that of deference to the authority of the past. The mediaeval scholar could hardly read a classic poet without finding authoritative statements upon every topic brushed by the poet’s fancy, and of course the matter of more serious writings, history, logic, natural science, was implicitly accepted. If the pagan learning was thus regarded, how much more absolute was the deference to sacred doctrine. Here all was authority. Scripture was the primary source; next came the creed, and the dogmas established by councils; and then the expositions of the Fathers. Thus the meaning of the authoritative Scripture was pressed into authoritative dogma, and then authoritatively systematized. The process had been intellectual and rational, yet with the driven rationality of Church Fathers struggling to formulate and express the accepted import of the Faith delivered to the saints. Authority, faith, held the primacy, and in two senses, for not only was it supreme and final, but it was also prior in initiative efficiency. Tertullian’s certum est, quia impossibile est, was an extreme paradox. But Augustine’s credimus ut cognoscamus was fundamental, and remained unshaken. Anselm lays it at the basis of his arguments; with Bernard and many others it is credo first of all, let the intelligere come as it may, and as it will according to the fulness of our faith. The same principle of faith’s efficient primacy is temperamentally as well as logically fundamental with Bonaventura. Here then was a first general quality of mediaeval thought: deference to authority. Now for the variances. Scarcely diverging, save in emphasis, from Augustine and Bonaventura, are the greatest of the schoolmen, Albert and Thomas. They defer to authority and recognize the primacy of faith, and yet they will, with abundant use of reason, deliminate the respective provinces of grace and human knowledge, and distinguish the absolute authority of Scripture from the statements even of the saints, which may be weighed and criticized. In secular philosophy, these two will, when their faith admits, accept the views of the philosophers—Aristotle above all—yet using their own reason. They are profoundly interested in knowledge and metaphysical dialectic, but follow it with deferential tempers and believing Christian souls. Outside the company of such, are men of more independent temper, whose attitude tends to weaken the principle of acceptance of authority in sacred doctrine. The first of these was Eriugena with his explicit statement that reason is greater than authority; yet we may assume that he was not intending to impugn Scripture. Centuries later another chief example is Abaelard, whose dialectic temper leads him to wish to prove everything by reason. Not that he stated, or would have admitted this; yet the extreme rationalizing tendency of the man is projected through such a passage as the following from his Historia calamitatum, where he alludes to the circumstances of the composition of his work upon the Trinity. He had become a monk in the monastery of St. Denis, but students were still thronging to hear him, to the wrath of some of his superiors. “Then it came about that I was brought to expound the very foundation of our faith by applying the analogies of human reason, and was led to compose for my pupils a theological treatise on the divine Unity and Trinity. They were calling for human and philosophical arguments, and insisting upon something intelligible, rather than mere words, saying that there had been more than enough of talk which the mind could not follow; that it was impossible to believe what was not understood in the first place; and that it was ridiculous for any one to set forth to others what neither he nor they could rationally conceive (intellectu capere).” And Abaelard cites the verse from Matthew about the blind leaders of the blind, and goes on to tell of the success of his treatise, which pleased everybody, yet provoked the greater envy because of the difficulty of the questions which it elucidated; and at last envy blew up the condemnation of his book, at the Council of Soissons, in the year of grace 1121.[425] Here one has the plain reversal. We must first understand in order to believe. Doubtless the demands of Abaelard’s students to have the principles of the Christian Faith explained, that they might be understood and accepted rationally, echoed the master’s imperative intellectual need. Not that Abaelard would breathe the faintest doubt of these verities; they were absolute and unquestionable. He accepted them upon authority just as implicitly (he might think) as St. Bernard. Herein he shows the mediaeval quality of deference. But he will understand with his mind the profoundest truths enunciated by authority; he will explain them rationally, that the mind may rationally comprehend them. Men of an opposite cast of mind foresaw the outcome of this rationalization of dogma more surely than the subtle dialectician for whom this process was both peremptory and proper. And the Church acted with a true instinct in condemning Abaelard in spite of his protestations of belief, just as with a like true instinct Friar Bacon’s own Franciscan Order looked askance on one whose mind was suspiciously set upon observation and experiment—and cavilling at others. Celui-ci tuera cela! The ultra-scientific spirit is dangerous to faith—and Bacon’s asseverations that no knowledge was of value save as it helped the soul’s salvation, was doubtless regarded as a conventional insincerity. Yet Roger Bacon had his mediaeval deferences, as will appear.[426] Neither one extreme view nor the other was to represent the attitude of thoughtful and believing Christendom; not William of St. Thierry and St Bernard, nor yet (on these points) Abaelard and Friar Bacon should prevail; but the all-balancing and all-considering Aquinas. He will draw the lines between faith and reason, and bulwark them with arguments which shall seem to render unto reason the things of reason, and unto faith its due. Yet it is actually Roger Bacon who accuses Thomas of making his Theology out of dialectic and very human reasonings. It was true; and we are again reminded how variant views shaded into each other in the Middle Ages, and all within certain lines of similarity. Practically all mediaeval thinkers defer to authority—more or less; and all hold to some principle of faith, to the necessity of believing something, for the soul’s salvation. There is likewise some similarity in their attitudes toward intellectual interests. For all recognized their propriety, and gave credit to the human desire to know. Likewise all saw that salvation, the summum bonum for man, included more than intellection; and felt that it held some consummation of other human impulses; that it held love—the love of God along with the intellectual ardour of contemplation; and well-nigh all recognized also that the faith held mystery, not to be solved by reason. Thus all were rational—some more, some less; and all were devotional and believing, pietistic, ardent—some more, some less; according as the intellectual nature dominated over the emotional, or the emotions quelled the conscious exercise of reason, yet reached out and upward from what knowledge and reason had given as a base to spring from. Thus the mediaeval spirit, variant within its lines of likeness; and of a piece with it was the field it worked in, which made its range and scope. Here as well, a saving knowledge of God and the soul was central and chief among all intellectual interests. None denied this. Augustine, the universal prototype of the mediaeval mind, had cried, “God and the soul, these will I know, and these are all.” But wide had been the scope of his knowledge of God and the soul; and in the centuries which hung upon his words, wide also was the range of knowledge subsumed under those capitals. How would one know God and the soul? Might one not know God in all His universe, in the height and breadth thereof, and backwards and forwards through the reach of time? Might not one also know the soul in all its operations, all its queries and desires; would not it and they, and their activities, make up the complementary side of knowledge—complementary to the primal object, God, known in His eternity, in His temporal creation, in His everlasting governance? Wide or narrow might be the intellectual interests included within a knowledge of God and the soul. And while many men kept close to the centre and saving nexus of these potentially universal themes, others might become absorbed with data of the creature-world, or with the manifold actions of the mind of man, so as to forget to keep all duly ordered and connected with the central thought. So the search for knowledge might roam afield. Likewise as to its motive; practically with many men it was, in itself, a joy and end; although they might continue to connect this end formally with the salvation of the soul. Roger Bacon of a surety was such a one. Another was Albertus Magnus. The laborious culling of twenty tomes of universal knowledge surely had the joy of knowing as the active motive. And Aquinas too; no one could be such an acquisitive and reasoning genius, without the love of knowledge in his soul. Yet Thomas never let this love point untrue to its goal of research and devotion, to wit, sacred doctrine, theology, the Christian Faith in its very widest compass, yet in its unity of saving purpose. In Thomas Aquinas the certitude of faith, the sense of grace, the ardour of love, never quenched the conscious action of the reasoning and knowing mind; nor did reasoning quench devotion. A balance too, though perhaps with one scale higher than the other, was kept by Bonaventura, whose mind had reason’s faculty, but whose heart burned perpetually toward God. Another rationally ardent soul was Bonaventura’s intellectual forerunner, Hugo of St. Victor. In these men intellect did not outstrip the fervours of contemplation. But such catholic balance did not hold with Abaelard and Bacon, who lacked the pietistic temperament. With others, conversely, the strength of the pietistic and emotional nature overbore the intellect; the mind was less exacting; and devotional ardour used reason solely for its purposes. The mightiest of these were Bernard and Francis. To the same key might chime the woman, St. Hildegard of Bingen. We narrow down from these to hectic souls content with a few thoughts which serve as a basis for the heart’s fervours. The varying attitudes of mediaeval thinkers toward reason and authority, and even their different views upon the limits of the field of salutary knowledge, are exemplified in their methods, or rather in the variations of their common method. Here the factors were again authority and the intellect which considers the authority, and in terms of its own rational processes reacts upon the proposition under view. The intellect might simply accept authority; or, on the other hand, it might, through dialectic, seek a conclusion of its own. But midway between a mere acceptance of authority, and the endeavour of dialectic for a conclusion of its own, there is the reasoning process which perceives divergence among authorities, compares, discriminates, interprets, and at last acts as umpire. This was the combined and catholic scholastic method. It contained the two factors of its necessary duality; and its variations (besides the gradual perfecting of its form from one generation to another) consisted in the predominant employment of one factor or the other. The beginning was in the Carolingian time, when Rabanus compiled his authorities from sources sacred and profane, scarcely discriminating except to maintain the pre-eminence of the sacred matter. His younger contemporary, Eriugena, was a translator of his own chief source, Pseudo-Dionysius, him of the Hierarchies, Celestial and Ecclesiastical. Yet he composed also a veritable book, De divisione naturae, in which he put his matter together organically and with argument. And while professing to hold to the authority of Scripture and the Fathers, he not only took upon himself to select from their statements, but propounded the proposition that the authority which is not confirmed by reason appears weak. Eriugena made his authorities yield him what his reason required. His argumentative method became an independent rehandling of matter drawn from them. It was very different from the plodding excerpt-gathering of Rabanus. We pass down the centuries to Anselm. Contemplative and religious, his reverence for authority was unimpaired by any conscious need to refashion its meaning. Though he possessed creative intellectual powers, they were incited and controlled by his deep piety. Hence his works were constructed of original and lofty arguments, but such as did not infringe upon either the efficient or the final priority of faith. With Abaelard of many-sided fame the duality of method becomes explicit, and is, if one may say so, set by the ears. On the one hand, he advances in his constructive theological treatises toward a portentous application of reason to explain the contents of the Christian Faith; on the other, somewhat sardonically, he devises a scheme for the employment and presentation of authorities upon these sacred matters, a scheme so obviously apt that once made known it could not but be followed and perfected. The divers works of a man are likely to bear some relation and resemblance to each other. Abaelard was a reasoner, more specifically speaking, a dialectician according to the ways of Aristotelian logic. And in categories of formal logic he sought to rationalize every matter apprehended by his mind. Swayed by the master-interest of the time, he turned to theology; and his own nature impelled him to apply a constructive dialectic to its systematic formulation. The result is exemplified in the extant portion of his Theologia (mis-called Introductio ad Theologiam), which was condemned by the Council of Sens in 1141, the year before the master’s death. The spirit of this work appears in the passage already quoted from the Historia calamitatum, referring to what was substantially an earlier form of the Theologia.[427] The Theologia argues for a free use of dialectic in expounding dogma, especially in order to refute those heretics who will not listen to authority, but demand reasons. Like Abaelard’s previous theological treatises, it is filled with citations of authority, principally Augustine; and the reader feels the author’s hesitancy to reveal that dialectic is the architect. Nor, in fact, is the work an exclusively dialectic structure; yet it illustrates (if it does not always inculcate) the application of the arguments of human reason to the exposition and substantiation of the fundamental and most deeply hidden contents of the Christian Faith. Obviously Abaelard was not an initiator here. Augustine had devoted his life to fortifying the Faith with argument and explanation; Eriugena, with a far weaker realization of its contents, had employed a more distorting metaphysics in its presentation; and saintly Anselm had flown his veritable eagle flights of reason. But Abaelard’s more systematic work represents a further stage in the application of independent dialectic to dogma, and an innovating freedom in the citation of pagan philosophers to demonstrate its philosophic reasonableness. Nevertheless his statement that he had gathered these citations from writings of the Fathers, and not from the books of the philosophers (quorum pauca novi),[428] shows that he was only using what the Fathers had made use of before him, and also indicates the slightness of his independent knowledge of Greek philosophy. On the other hand, Abaelard’s way of presenting authorities for and against a theological proposition was more distinctly original. He seems to have been the first purposefully to systematize the method of stating the problem, and then giving in order the authorities on one side and the other—sic et non; as he entitled his famous work. But the trail of his nature lay through this apparently innocent composition, the evident intent of which was to emphasize, if not exaggerate, the opposition among the patristic authorities, and without a counterbalancing attempt to show any substantial accord among them. This, of course, is not stated in the Prologue, which however, like everything that Abaelard wrote, discloses his fatal facility of putting his hand on the raw spot in the matter; which unfortunately is likely to be the vulnerable point also. In it he remarks on the difficulty of interpreting Scripture, upon the corruption of the text (a perilous subject), and the introduction of apocryphal writings. There are discrepancies even in the sacred texts, and contradictions in the writings of the Fathers. With a profuse backing of authority he shows that the latter are not to be read cum credendi necessitate, but cum judicandi libertate. Assuredly, as to anything in the canonical Scriptures, “it is not permitted to say: ‘The Author of this book did not hold the truth’; but rather ‘the codex is false or the interpreter errs, or thou dost not understand.’ But in the works of the later ones (posteriorum, Abaelard’s inclusive designation of the Fathers), which are contained in books without number, if passages are deemed to depart from the truth, the reader is at liberty to approve or disapprove.” This view was supported by Abaelard’s citations from the Fathers themselves; and yet, so abruptly made, it was not a pleasant statement for the ears of those to whom the writings of the holy Fathers were sacred. Nothing was sacred to the man who wrote this prologue—so it seemed to his pious contemporaries. And who among them could approve of the Prologue’s final utterance upon the method and purpose of the book? “Wherefore we decided to collect the diverse statements of the holy Fathers, as they might occur to our memory, thus raising an issue from their apparent repugnancy, which might incite the teneros lectores to search out the truth of the matter, and render them the sharper for the investigation. For the first key to wisdom is called interrogation, diligent and unceasing.... By doubting we are led to inquiry; and from inquiry we perceive the truth.” To use the discordant statements of the Fathers to sharpen the wits of the young! Was not that to uncover their shame? And the character of the work did not salve the Prologue’s sting. Abaelard selected and arranged his extracts from pagan as well as Christian writers, and prepared sardonic titles for the questions under which he ordered his material. Time and again these titles flaunt an opposition which the citations scarcely bear out. For example, title iv.: “Quod sit credendum in Deum solum, et contra”—certainly a flaming point; yet the excerpts display merely the verb credere, used in the palpably different senses borne by the word “believe.” There is no real repugnancy among the citations. And again, in title lviii.: “Quod Adam salvatus sit, et contra”—there is no citation contra. And the longest chapter in the book (cxvii.) has this bristling title: “De sacramento altaris, quod sit essentialiter ipsa veritas carnis Christi et sanguinis, et contra.” Because of such prickly traits the Sic et non did not itself come into common use. But the suggestions of its method once made, were of too obvious utility to be abandoned. First, among Abaelard’s own pupils the result appears in Books of Sentences, which, in the arrangement of their matter, followed the topical division not of the Sic et non, but of Abaelard’s Theologia, with its threefold division of Theology into Fides, Caritas, and Sacramentum.[429] But the arrangement of the Theologia was not made use of in the best and most famous of these compositions, Peter Lombard’s Sententiarum libri quatuor. This work employed the method (not the arrangement) of the Sic et non, and expounded the contents of Faith methodically, “Distinctio” after “Distinctio,” stating the proposition, citing the authorities bearing upon it, and ending with some conciliating or distinguishing statement of the true result. In canon law the same method was applied in Gratian’s Decretum, of which the proper name was Concordia discordantium canonum. These Books of Sentences have sometimes been called Summae, inasmuch as their scope embraced the entire contents of the Faith. But the term Summa may properly be confined to those larger and still more encyclopaedic compositions in which this scholastic method reached its final development. The chief makers of these, the veritable Summae theologiae, were, in order of time, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas. The Books of Sentences were books of sentences. The Summa proceeded by the same method, or rather issued from it, as its consummation and perfect logical form; thus the scholastic method arrived at its highest constructive energy. In the Sentences one excerpted opinion was given and another possibly divergent, and at the end an adjustment was presented. This comparative formlessness attains in the Summa a serried syllogistic structure. Thomas, who finally perfects it, presents his connected and successive topics divided into quaestiones, which are subdivided into articuli, whose titles give the point to be discussed. He states first, and frequently in his own syllogistic terms, the successive negative arguments; and then the counter-proposition, which usually is a citation from Scripture or from Augustine. Then with clear logic he constructs the true positive conclusion in accordance with the authority which he has last adduced. He then refutes each of the adverse arguments in turn. Thus the method of the Sentences is rendered dialectically organic; and with the perfecting of the form of quaestio and articulus, and the logical linking of successive topics, the whole composition, from a congeries, becomes a structure, organic likewise, a veritable Summa, and a Summa of a science which has unity and consistency. This science is sacra doctrina, theologia. Moreover, as compared with the Sentences, the contents of the Summa are enormously enlarged. For between the time of the Lombard and that of Thomas, there has come the whole of Aristotle, and what is more, the mastery of the whole of Aristotle, which Thomas incorporates in a complete and organic statement of the Christian scheme of salvation.[430] [Pg 308-310]
CHAPTER XXXV CLASSIFICATION OF TOPICS; STAGES OF EVOLUTION I. Philosophic Classification of the Sciences; the Arrangement
of Vincent’s Encyclopaedia, of the Lombard’s Sentences, of
Aquinas’s Summa theologiae.
II. The Stages of Development: Grammar, Logic, Metalogics. I Having considered the spirit, the field, and the dual method, of mediaeval thought, there remain its classifications of topics. The problem of classification presented itself to Gerbert as one involved in the rational study of the ancient material.[431] But as scholasticism culminated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the problem became one of arrangement and presentation of the mass of knowledge and argument which the Middle Ages had at length made their own, and were prepared to re-express. This ordering was influenced by a twofold principle of classification; for, as abundantly shown by Aquinas,[432] theology in which all is ordered with reference to God, will properly follow an arrangement of topics quite unsuitable to the natural or human sciences, which treat of things with respect to themselves. But the mediaeval practice was more confused than the theory; because the interest in human knowledge was apt to be touched by motives sounding in the need of divine salvation; and speculation could not free itself of the moving principles of Christian theology. On the other hand, an enormous quantity of human dialectic, and a prodigious mass of what strikes us as profane information, or misinformation, was carried into the mediaeval Summa, and still more into those encyclopaedias, which attempted to include all knowledge, and still were influenced in their aim by a religious purpose.[433] As the human sciences came from the pagan antique, the accepted classifications of them naturally were taken from Greek philosophy. They followed either the so-called Platonic division, into Physics, Ethics, and Logic,[434] or the Aristotelian division of philosophy into theoretical and practical. The former scheme, of which it is not certain that Plato was the author, passed on through the Stoic and Epicurean systems of philosophy, was recognized by the Church Fathers, and received Augustine’s approval. It was made known to the Middle Ages through Cassiodorus, Isidore, Alcuin, Rabanus, Eriugena and others. Nevertheless the Aristotelian division of philosophy into theoretical and practical was destined to prevail. It was introduced to the western Middle Ages through BoËthius’s Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge,[435] and adopted by Gerbert; later it passed over through translations of Arabic writings. It was accepted by Hugo of St. Victor, by Albertus Magnus and by Thomas, to mention only the greatest names; and was set forth in detail with explanation and comment in a number of treatises, such as Gundissalinus’s De divisione philosophiae, and Hugo of St. Victor’s Eruditio didascalica,[436] which were formal and schematic introductions to the study of philosophy and its various branches. The usual subdivisions of these two general parts of philosophy were as follows. Theoretica (or Theorica) was divided into (1) Physics, or scientia naturalis, (2) Mathematics, and (3) Metaphysics or Theology, or divina scientia, as it might be called. Physics and Mathematics were again divided into more special sciences. Practica was divided commonly into Ethics, Economics, Politics, or into Ethics and Artes mechanicae. There was a difference of opinion as to what to do with Logic. It had, to be sure, its position in the current Trivium, along with grammar and rhetoric. But this was merely current, and might not approve itself on deeper reflection. Gundissalinus speaks of three propaedeutic sciences, the scientiae eloquentiae, grammar, poetics, and rhetoric, and then puts Logic after them as a scientia media between these primary educational matters and philosophy, i.e. the whole range of knowledge, theoretical and practical. Again, over against philosophia realis, which contains both the theoretica (or speculativa) and the practica, Thomas Aquinas sets the philosophia rationalis, or logic; and Richard Kilwardby opposes logica, the scientia rationalis, to practica, in his division.[437] The last-named philosopher was the pupil and then the hostile critic of Aquinas, and also became Archbishop of Canterbury. He was the author of a careful and elaborate classification of the parts of philosophy, entitled De ortu et divisione philosophiae.[438] In it, following the broad distinction between res divinae and res humanae, Kilwardby divides philosophy into speculativa and practica. Speculativa is divided into naturalis (physics), mathematica, and divina (metaphysics). He does not divide the first and third of these; but he divides mathematica into those sciences which treat of quantity in continuity and separation respectively (quantitas continua and quantitas discreta). The former embrace geometry, astronomy and astrology, and perspective; the latter, music and arithmetic. Practica, which is concerned with res humanae, is divided into activa and sermocinalis: because res humanae consist either of operationes or locutiones. The activa embraces Ethics and mechanics; the scientia sermocinalis embraces grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Such are Kilwardby’s bare captions; his treatise lengthily treats of the interrelations of these various branches of knowledge. An idea of the scholastic discussion of the classification of sciences may be had by following Albertus Magnus’s ponderous approach to a consideration of logic: whether it be a science, and, if so, what place should be allotted it. We draw from the opening of his liber on the Predicables,[439] that is to say, his exposition of Porphyry’s Introduction. Albert will consider “what kind of a science (qualis scientia) logic may be, and whether it is any part of philosophy; what need there is of it, and what may be its use; then of what it treats, and what are its divisions.” The ancients seem to have disagreed, some saying that logic is no science, since it is rather a modus (mode, manner or method) of every science or branch of knowledge. But these, continues Albertus, have not reflected that although there are many sciences, and each has its special modus, yet there is one modus common to all sciences, pertaining to that which is common to them all: the principle, to wit, that through reason’s inquiry, from what is known one arrives at knowledge of the unknown. This mode or method common to every science may be considered in itself, and so may be the subject of a special science. After further balancing of the reasons and authorities pro and con, Albertus concludes: “It is therefore clear that logic is a special science just as in ironworking there is the special art of making a hammer, yet its use pertains to everything made by the ironworker’s craft. So this process of discovering the unknown through the known, is something special, and may be studied as a special art and science; yet the use of it pertains to all sciences.” He next considers whether logic is a part of philosophy. Some say no, since there are (as they say) only three divisions of philosophy, physics, mathematics, and metaphysics; others say that logic is a modus of philosophy and not one of its divisions. But, on the contrary, it is shown by others that this view of philosophy omits the practical side, for philosophy’s scope comprehends the truth of everything which man may understand, including the truth of that which is in ourselves, and strives to comprehend both truth and the process of advancing from the known to a knowledge of the unknown. These point out that “... the Peripatetics divided philosophy first into three parts, to wit, into physicam generaliter dictam, and ethicam generaliter dictam and rationalem likewise taken broadly. I call physica generaliter dicta that which embraces scientia naturalis, disciplinalis, and divina (i.e. physics in a narrower sense, mathematics which is called scientia disciplinalis, and metaphysics which is scientia divina). And I call ethica, that which, broadly taken, contains the scientia monastica, oeconomica and civilis. And I call that the scientia rationalis, broadly taken, which includes every mode of proceeding from the known to the unknown. From which it is evident that logic is a part of philosophy.” And finally it may be shown that “if anything is within the scope of philosophy it must be that without which philosophy cannot reach any knowledge. He who is ignorant of logic can acquire no perfect cognition of the unknown, because he is ignorant of the way in which he should proceed from the known to the unknown.” From these latter arguments, approved by him and in part stated as his own, Albertus advances to a classification of the parts of logic, which he makes to include rhetoric, poetics, and dialectic, and to be demonstrative, sophistical or disputatious, according to the use to which logic (broadly taken) is applied and the manner in which it may in each case proceed, in advancing from the known to some farther ascertainment or demonstration.[440] Soon after this, in discussing the subject of this science, Albertus points out how logic differs from rhetoric and poetics, although with them it may treat of sermo, or speech, and be called a scientia sermonalis; for, unlike them, it treats of sermo merely as a means of drawing conclusions, and not in and for itself. From the purely philosophical division of the sciences we pass to the hybrid arrangement adopted by Vincent of Beauvais, who died in 1264. This man was a prodigious devourer of books, and for a sufficient pabulum, St. Louis set before him his collection of twelve hundred volumes. Thereupon Vincent compiled the most famous of mediaeval encyclopaedias, employing in that labour enormous diligence and a number of assistants. His ponderous Speculum majus is drawn from the most serviceable sources, including the works of Albertus, his contemporary, and great scholastics like Hugo of St. Victor, who were no more. It consisted of the Speculum naturale, doctrinale, and historiale; and a fourth, the Speculum morale, was added by a later hand.[441] Turning its leaves, and reading snatches here and there, especially from its Prologues, we shall gain a sufficient illustration of the arrangement of topics followed by this writer, whose faculties seem to drown in his shoreless undertaking.[442] In his turgid generalis prologus to the Speculum naturale, Vincent presents his motives for collecting in one volume “... certain flowers according to my modicum of faculty, gathered from every one I have been able to read, whether of our Catholic Doctors or the Gentile philosophers and poets. Especially have I drawn from them what seemed to pertain either to the building up of our dogma, or to moral instruction, or to the incitement of charity’s devotion, or to the mystic exposition of divine Scripture, or to the manifest or symbolical explanation of its truth. Thus by one grand opus I would appease my studiousness, and perchance, by my labours, profit those who, like me, try to read as many books as possible, and cull their flowers. Indeed of making many books there is no end, and neither is the eye of the curious reader satisfied, nor the ear of the auditor.” He then refers to the evils of false copying and the ascription of extracts to the wrong author. And it seems to him that Church History has been rather neglected, while men have been intent on expounding knotty problems. And now considering how to proceed and group his various matters, Vincent could find no better method than the one he has chosen, “to wit, that after the order of Holy Scripture, I should treat first of the Creator, next of the creation, then of man’s fall and reparation, and then of events (rebus gestis) chronologically.” He proposes to give a summary of titles at the end of the work. Sometimes he may state as his own, things he has had from his teachers or from very well-known books; and he admits that he did not have time to collate the gesta martyrum, and so some of the abstracts which he gives of these are not by his own hand, but by the hand of scribes (notariorum). Vincent proposes to call the whole work Speculum majus, a Speculum indeed, or an Imago mundi, “containing in brief whatever, from unnumbered books, I have been able to gather, worthy of consideration, admiration, or imitation as to things which have been made or done or said in the visible or invisible world from the beginning until the end, and even of things to come.” He briefly adverts to the utility of his work, and then gives his motive for including history. This he thinks will help us to understand the story of Christ; and from a perusal of the wars which took place “before the advent of our pacific King, the reader will perceive with what zeal we should fight against our spiritual foes, for our salvation and the eternal glory promised us.” From the great slaughter of men in many wars, may be realized also the severity of God against the wicked, who are slain like sheep, and perish body and soul.[443] As to nature, Vincent says: “Moreover I have diligently described the nature of things, which, I think, no one will deem useless, who, in the light of grace, has read of the power, wisdom and goodness of God, creator, ruler and preserver, in that same book of the Creation appointed for us to read.” Moreover, to know about things is useful for preachers and theologians, as Augustine says. But Vincent is conscious of another motive also: “Verily how great is even the humblest beauty of this world, and how pleasing to the eye of reason diligently considering not only the modes and numbers and orders of things, so decorously appointed throughout the universe, but also the revolving ages which are ceaselessly uncoiled through abatements and successions, and are marked by the death of what is born. I confess, sinner as I am, with mind befouled in flesh, that I am moved with spiritual sweetness toward the creator and ruler of this world, and honour Him with greater veneration, when I behold at once the magnitude, and beauty and permanence of His creation. For the mind, lifting itself from the dunghill of its affections, and rising, as it is able, into the light of speculation, sees as from a height the greatness of the universe containing in itself infinite places filled with the divers orders of creatures.” Here Vincent feels it well to apologize for the limitlessness of his matter, being only an excerptor, and not really knowing even a single science; and he refers to the example of Isidore’s Etymologiae. He proceeds to enumerate the various sources upon which he relies, and then to summarize the headings of his work; which in brief are as follows: The Creator. The empyrean heaven and the nature of angels; the state of the good, and the ruin of the proud, angels. The formless material and the making of the world, and the nature and properties of each created being, according to the order of the Works of the Six Days. The state of the first man. The nature and energies of the soul, and the senses and parts of the human body. God’s rest and way of working. The state of the first man and the felicity of Paradise. Man’s fall and punishment. Sin. The reparation of the Fall. The properties of faith and other virtues in order, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the beatitudes. The number and matter of all the sciences. Chronological history of events in the world, and memorable sayings, from the beginning to our time, with a consideration of the state of souls separated from their bodies, of the times to come, of Antichrist, the end of the World, the resurrection of the dead, the glorification of the saints and the punishments of the wicked. One may stand aghast at the programme. Yet practically all of it would go into a Summa theologiae, excepting the human history, and the matter of what we should call the arts and sciences! A programme like this might be handled summarily, according to the broad captions under which it is stated; or it might be carried out in such detail as to include all available information, or opinion, touching every part of every topic included under these universal heads. The latter is Vincent’s way. Practically he tries to include all knowledge upon everything. The first of his tomes (the Speculum naturale) is to be devoted to a full description of the forms and species of created beings, which make up the visible world. Yet it includes much relating to beings commonly invisible; for Vincent begins with a treatment of the angels. He then passes to a consideration of the seven heavens; and then to the physical phenomena of nature; then on to every known species of plant, the cultivation of trees and vines, and the making of wine; then to the celestial bodies, and after this to living things, birds, fishes, savage beasts, reptiles, the anatomy of animals,—and at last comes to man. He discusses him body and soul, his psychology, and the phenomena of sleep and waking; then human anatomy—nor can he keep from considerations touching the whole creation; then human generation, and a description of the countries and regions of the earth, with a brief compendium of history until the time of Antichrist and the Last Judgment. Of course he is utterly uncritical, even the pseudo-Turpin’s fictions as to Charlemagne serving him for authority. Vincent’s Prologue to his second tome, the Speculum doctrinale, briefly mentions the topics of the tota naturalis historia, contained in his first giant tome. In that he had brought his matter down to God’s creation of humana natura, omnium rerum finis ac summa—and its spoliation (destitutio) through sin. Humana natura as constituted by God, was a universitas of all nature or created being, corporeal and spiritual. Now “in this second part, in like fashion we propose to treat of the plenary restitution of that destitute nature.... And since that restitution, or restoration, is effected and perfected by doctrina (imparted knowledge, science), this part not improperly is called the Speculum doctrinale. For of a surety everything pertaining to recovering or defending man’s spiritual or temporal welfare (salutem) is embraced under doctrina. In this book, the sciences (doctrinae) and arts are treated thus: First concerning all of them in general, to wit, concerning their invention, origin, and species; and concerning the method of acquiring them. Then concerning the singular arts and sciences in particular. And here first concerning those of the Trivium, which are devoted to language (grammar, rhetoric, logic); for without these, the others cannot be learned or communicated. Next concerning the practical ones (practica), because through them, the eyes of the mind being clarified, one ascends to the speculative (theorica). Then also concerning the mechanical ones; since, as they consist in making (operatio), they are joined by affinity to the practica. Finally concerning the speculative sciences (theorica), because the end and aim (finis) of all the rest is placed by the wise in them. And since (as Jerome says) one cannot know the power (vis) of the antidote unless the power of the poison first is understood, therefore to the reparatio doctrinalis of the human race, the subject of the book, something is prefixed as a brief epilogue from the former book, concerning the fall and misery of man, in which he still labours, as the penalty for his sin, in lamentable exile.” So Vincent begins with the fall and misery of man; the peccatum and the supplicium. Then he proceeds to discuss the goods (bona) which God bestows, like the mental powers, by which man may learn wisdom, and how to strive against error and vice, and be overcome solely by the desire of the highest and immutable good. He speaks also of the corporeal goods bestowed on man, and the beauty and utility of visible things; and then of the principal evils;—ignorance which corrupts the divine image in man, concupiscence which destroys the divine similitude, sickness which destroys his original bodily immortality. “And the remedies are three by which these three evils may be repelled, and the three goods restored, to wit, Wisdom, Virtue, and Need.” Here we touch the gist of the ordering of topics in the Speculum doctrinale, which treats of all the arts and sciences: “For the obtaining of these three remedies every art and every disciplina was invented. In order to gain Wisdom, Theorica was devised; and Practica for the sake of virtue; and for Need’s sake, Mechanica. Theorica driving out ignorance, illuminates Wisdom; Practica shutting out vice, strengthens Virtue; Mechanica providing against penury, tempers the infirmities of the present life. Theorica, in all that is and that is not, chooses to investigate the true. Practica determines the correct way of living and the form of discipline, according to the institution of the virtues. Mechanica occupied with fleeting things, strives to provide for the needs of the body. For the end and aim of all human actions and studies, which reason regulates, ought to look either to the reparation of the integrity of our nature or to alleviating the needs to which life is subjected. The integrity of our nature is repaired by Wisdom, to which Theorica relates, and by Virtue, which Practica cultivates. Need is alleviated by the administration of temporalities, to which Mechanica attends. Last found of all is Logic, source of eloquence, through which the wise who understand the aforesaid principal sciences and disciplines, may discourse upon them more correctly, truly and elegantly; more correctly, through Grammar; more truly through Dialectic; more elegantly through Rhetoric.”[444] Thus the entire round of arts and sciences is connected with man’s corporeal and spiritual welfare, and is made to bear directly or indirectly on his salvation. All constitutes doctrina, and by doctrina man is saved. This is the reason for including the arts and sciences in one tome, rightly called the Speculum doctrinale. We need not follow the detail, but may view as from afar the long course ploughed by Vincent through his matter. He first sketches the history of antique philosophy, and then turns to books and language, and presents a glossary of Latin synonyms. Book II. treats of Grammar, Book III. of Logic, Book IV. of Practica scientia or Ethica, first giving pagan ethics and then passing on to the virtues of the monastic life. Book V. is a continuation of this subject. Book VI. concerns the Scientia oeconomica, treating of domestic economy, then of agriculture. Books VII. and VIII. take up Politica, and, having discussed political institutions, proceed to a treatment of law—the law of persons, things, and actions, according to the canon and the civil law. Books IX. and X. consider Crimes—simony, heresy, perjury, sacrilege, homicide, rape, adultery, robbery, usury. Book XI. is more cheerful, De arte mechanica, and tells of building, the military art, navigation, alchemy, and metals. Book XII. is Medicine, and Books XIII. and XIV. discuss Physics, in connection with the healing art. Book XV. is Natural Philosophy—animals and plants. Book XVI., De mathematica, treats of arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy, and metaphysics cursorily. Book XVII. likewise thins out in a somewhat slight discussion of Theology, which was to form the topic of the tome that Vincent did not write. But Vincent did complete another tome, the Speculum historiale. It is a loosely chronological compilation of tradition, myth, and history, with discursions upon the literary works of the characters coming under review. It would be tedious to follow its excerpted presentation of the profane and sacred matter. We may leave Vincent, with the obvious reflection that his work is a conglomerate, both in arrangement and contents. It has the pious aim of contributing to man’s salvation, and yet is an attempted universal encyclopaedia of human knowledge, much of which is plainly secular and mundane. The monstrous scope and dual purpose of the work prevented any unity in method and arrangement. More single in aim, and better arranged in consequence, are the Sentences of Peter Lombard and the Summa theologiae of Aquinas. For although their scope, at least the scope of the Summa, is wide, all is ordered with respect to the true aim of sacra doctrina, just as Thomas explained in the passage which we have already given. The alleged principle of the Lombard’s division strikes one as curious; yet he got it from Augustine: Signum and res—the symbol and the thing: verily an age-long play of spiritual tendency lay back of these contrasted concepts. Christian doctrina related, perhaps chiefly, to the significance of signa, signs, symbols, allegories, mysteries, sacraments. It was not so strange that the Lombard made this antithesis the ground of his arrangement. Quite as of course he begins by saying it is clear to any one who considers, with God’s grace, that the “contents of the Old and New Law are occupied either with res or signa. For as the eminent doctor Augustine says in his Doctrina Christiana, all teaching is of things or signs; but things also are learned through signs. Properly those are called res which are not employed in order to signify something; while signa are those whose use is to signify.” Then the Lombard separates the sacraments from other signa, because they not only signify, but also confer saving aid; and he points out that evidently a signum is also some sort of a thing; but not everything is a signum. He will treat first of res and then of signa. As to res, one must bear in mind, as Augustine says, that some things are to be enjoyed (fruendum), as from love we cleave to them for their own sake; and others are to be used (utendum) as a means; and still others to be both enjoyed and used. “Those which are to be enjoyed make us blessed (beatos); those which are to be used, aid us striving for blessedness.... We ourselves are the things which are both to be enjoyed and used, and also the angels and the saints.... The things which are to be enjoyed are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and so the Trinity is summa res.” So the Lombard’s first two Books consider res in the descending order of their excellence; the third considers the Incarnation, which, if not itself a sacrament, and the chief and sum of all sacraments, is the source of those of the New Law, considered in the fourth Book. The scheme is single and orderly; the difficulty will be in actually arranging the various topics within it. Endeavouring to do so, the Lombard in Book I. puts together the doctrine of the Trinity, the three Persons composing it, and their attributes and qualities. Book II. considers in order, the Angels, and very briefly, the work of the Six Days down to the creation of man; then the Christian doctrina as to man is presented: his creation and its reasons; the creation of his anima; the creation of woman; the condition of man and woman before the Fall; their sin; next free-will and grace. Book III. treats of the Incarnation, in all the aspects in which it may be known, and of the nature of Christ, His saving merit, and the grace which was in Him; also of the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, the seven gifts of the Spirit, and the existence of them all in Christ. Book IV. considers the Sacraments of the New Law: Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, extreme unction, ordination to holy orders, marriage. It concludes with setting forth the Resurrection and the Last Judgment.The first chapters of Genesis were the ultimate source of the Lombard’s actual arrangement. And the Summa will follow the same order of treatment. One may perceive how naturally the adoption of this order came to Christian theologians by glancing over Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram.[445] This Commentary was partially constructive, and not simply exegetical; and afforded a cadre, or frame, of topical ordering, which could readily be filled out with the contents of the Sentences or even of the Summa: God, in His unity and trinity, the Creation, man especially, his fall, the Incarnation as the saving means of his restoration, and then the Sacraments, and the final Judgment unto heaven and hell. One may say that this was the natural and proper order of presenting the contents of the Christian sacra doctrina. So the great Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas adopts the same order which the Lombard had followed. The Pars prima begins with defining sacra doctrina.[446] It then proceeds to consider God—whether He exists; then treats of His simplicitas and perfectio; next of His attributes; His bonitas, infinitas, immutabilitas, aeternitas, unitas; then of our knowledge of Him; then of His knowledge, and therein of truth and falsity; thereupon are considered the divine will, love, justice, and pity; the divine providence and predestination; the divine power and beatitude. All this pertains to the unitas of the divine essence; and now Thomas passes on to the Trinitas personarum, or the more distinctive portions of Christian theology. He treats of the processio and relationes of the divinae Personae, and then of themselves—Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and then of their essential relationship and properties. Next he discusses the missio of the divine Persons, and the relations between God and His Creation. First comes the consideration of the principle of creation, the processio creaturarum a Deo, and of the nature of created things, with some discussion of evil, whether it be a thing. Among created beings, Thomas treats first of angels, and at great length; then of the physical creation, in its order—the work of the six days, but with no great detail. Then man, created of spiritual and corporeal substance—his complex nature is to be analysed and fathomed to its depths. Thomas discusses the union of the anima ad corpus; then the powers of the anima, in generali and in speciali—the intellectual faculties, the appetites, the will and its freedom of choice; how the anima knows—the full Aristotelian theory of cognition is given. Next, more specifically as to the creation of the soul and body of the first man, and the nature of the image and similitude of God within him; then as to man’s condition and faculties while in a state of innocence; also as to Paradise. This closes the treatment of the creatio et distinctio rerum; and Thomas passes to their gubernatio, and the problem of how God conserves and moves the corporeal and spiritual; then concerning the action of one creature on another, and how the angels are ranged in hierarchies, and although purely spiritual beings, minister to men and guard them; then concerning the action of corporeal things, concerning fate, and the action of men upon men. Here ends Pars prima. The first section of the second part (Prima secundae) begins. In a short Prologue Thomas says: “Because man is made in the image of God, that is, free in his thought and will, and able to act through himself (per se potestativum), after what has been said concerning the Exemplar, God, and everything proceeding from the divine power according to His will, it remains for us to consider His image, to wit, man, in so far as he is the source or cause (principium) of his own works, having free-will and power over them.” Hereupon Thomas takes up in order: the ultimate end of man; the nature of man’s beatitude, and wherein it consists, and how it may be attained; then voluntary and involuntary acts, and the nature and action of will; then fruition, intention, election, deliberation, consent, and actions good and bad, flowing from the will; then the passions; concupiscence and pleasure, sadness, hope and despair, fear, anger; next habits (habitus) and the virtues, intellectual, cardinal, theological; the gifts of the Spirit, and the beatitudes; the vices, and sin, and penalty. Thereupon it becomes proper to consider the external causes (principia) of acts: “The external cause (principium) moving toward good is God; who instructs us through law, and aids us through grace. Therefore we must speak, first of law, then of grace.” So Thomas discusses: the essentia of law, and the different kinds of law—lex aeterna, lex naturalis, lex humana—their effect and validity; then the precepts of the Old Law (of the Old Testament); then as to the law of the Gospel and the need of grace; and lastly, concerning grace and human merit. The Secunda secundae (the second division of the second part) opens with a Prologue, in which the author says that, having considered generally the virtues and vices, and other things pertaining to the matter of ethics, it is needful to consider these same matters more particularly, each in turn; “for general moral statements (sermones morales universales) are less useful, inasmuch as actions are always in particularibus.” A more special statement of moral rules may proceed in two ways: the one from the side of the moral material, discussing this or that virtue or vice; the other considers what applies to special orders (speciales status) of men, for instance prelates and the lower clergy, or men devoted to the active or contemplative religious life. “We shall, therefore, consider specially, first what applies to all conditions of men, and then what applies to certain orders (determinatos status).” Thomas adds that it will be best to consider in each case the virtue and corresponding gift, and the opposing vice, together; also that “virtues are reducible to seven, the three theological,[447] and the four cardinal virtues. Of the intellectual virtues, one is Prudence, which is numbered with the cardinal virtues; but ars does not pertain to morals, which relate to what is to be done, while ars is the correct faculty of making things (recta ratio factibilium).[448] The other three intellectual virtues, sapientia, intellectus, et scientia, bear the names of certain gifts of the Holy Spirit, and are considered with them. Moral virtues are all reducible to the cardinal virtues; and therefore, in considering each cardinal virtue, all the virtues related to it are considered, and the opposite vices.” This classification of the virtues seems anything but clear. And perhaps the weakest feature of the Summa is this scarcely successful ordering, or combination, of the Aristotelian virtues with those more germane to the Christian scheme. However this may be, the author of the Summa proceeds to consider in order: fides, and the gifts (dona) of intellectus and scientia which correspond to the virtue faith; next the opposing vices: infidelitas, haeresis, apostasia, blasphemia, and caecitas mentis (spiritual blindness). Next in order come the virtue spes, and the corresponding gift of the Spirit, timor, and the opposing vices of desperatio and praesumptio.[449] Next, caritas, with its dilectio, its gaudium, its pax, its misericordia, its beneficentia and eleemosyna, and its correctio fraterna; then the opposite vices, odium, acedia, invidia, discordia, contentio, schisma, bellum, rixa, seditio, scandalum. Next the donum sapientiae, and its opposite, stultitia; next, prudentia, and its correspondent gift, consilium; and its connected vices, imprudentia, negligentia, and its evil semblances, dolus and fraus. Says Thomas: Consequenter post prudentiam considerandum est de Justitia. Whereupon follows a juristic treatment of jus, justitia, judicium, restitutio, acceptio personarum; then homicide and other crimes recognized by law. Then come the virtues, connected with justitia, to wit, religio, and its acts, devotio, oratio, adoratio, sacrificium, oblatio, decimae, votum, juramentum; then the vices opposed to religio: superstitio, idolatria, tentatio Dei, perjurium, sacrilegium, simonia. Next is considered the virtue of pietas; then observantia, with its parts, i.e. dulia (service), obedientia, and its opposite, inobedientia. Next, gratia (thanks) or gratitudo, and its opposite, ingratitudo; next, vindicatio (punishment); next, veritas, with its opposites, hypocrisis, jactantia (boasting), and ironia; next, amicitia, with the vices of adulatio and litigium. Next, the virtue of liberalitas, and its vices, avaritia and prodigalitas; next, epieikeia (aequitas). Finally, closing this discussion of all that is connected with Justitia, Thomas speaks of its corresponding gift of the Spirit, pietas. Now comes the third cardinal virtue, Fortitudo—under which martyrium is the type of virtuous act; intimiditas and audacia are the two vices. Then the parts of Fortitudo, to wit, magnanimitas, magnificentia, patientia, perseverantia, and the obvious opposing vices. Next, the fourth cardinal virtue, Temperantia, its obvious opposing vices, and its parts, to wit, verecundia, honestas, abstinentia, sobrietas, castitas, clementia, modestia, humilitas, and the various appropriate acts and opposing vices related to these special virtues. So far,[450] Thomas has been considering the virtues proper for all men; and now he comes to those specially pertaining to certain kinds of men, according to their gifts of grace, their modes of life, or the diversity of their offices, or stations. Of the special virtues related to gifts of grace, the first is prophetia, next raptus (vision), then gratia linguarum, and gratia miraculorum. After this, the vita activa and contemplativa, with their appropriate virtues, are considered. And then Thomas proceeds to speak De officiis et statibus hominum, and their respective virtues. Here ends the Secunda secundae, and Pars tertia opens with this Prologue: “Inasmuch as our Saviour Jesus Christ (as witnesseth the Angel, populum suum salvum faciens a peccatis eorum) has shown in himself the way of truth, through which we are able to come to the beatitude of immortal life by rising again, it is necessary, for the consummation of the whole theological matter, after the consideration of the final end of human life, and of the virtues and vices, that our attention should be fixed upon the Saviour of all and His benefactions to the human race. “As to which, first one must consider the Saviour himself; secondly, His sacraments, by which we obtain salvation; thirdly, concerning the end (finis), immortal life, to which we come by rising again through Him. “As to the first, one has to consider the mystery of the Incarnation, in which God was made man for our salvation, and then those things that were done and suffered by our Saviour, that is, God incarnate.” This Prologue indicates sufficiently the order of topics in the Pars tertia of the Summa, through Quaestio xc., at which point the hand of the Angelic Doctor was folded to eternal rest. He was then considering penance, the fourth in his order of Sacraments. All that he had to say as to the person, and attributes, and acts and passion of Christ had been written; and he had considered the Sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and the eucharist; he was occupied with poenitentia; and still other sacraments remained, as well as his final treatment of the matters which lie beyond the grave. So he left his work unfinished, and, in spite of many efforts, unfinishable by any of his pupils or successors.[451] II Inasmuch as the matter of their thoughts was transmitted to the men of the Middle Ages, and was not drawn from their own observation or constructive reasoning, the fundamental intellectual endeavour for mediaeval men was to apprehend and make their own, and re-express. Their intellectual progress followed this process of appropriation, and falls into three stages—learning, organically appropriating, and re-expressing with added elements of thought. Logically, and generally in time, these three stages were successive. Yet, of course, they overlapped, and may be observed progressing simultaneously. Thus, for example, what was known of Aristotle at the beginning of the twelfth century was slight compared with the knowledge of his philosophy that was opened to western Europe in the latter part of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth. And while, by the middle of the twelfth century, the elements of Aristotle’s logic had been thoroughly appropriated, the substantial Aristotelian philosophy had still to be learned and mastered, before it could be reformulated and re-expressed as part of mediaeval thought.Looking solely to the outer form, the three stages of mediaeval thought are exemplified in the Scriptural Commentary of the later Carolingian time, in the twelfth-century Books of Sentences, and at last in the more organic Summa theologiae. With this significant evolution and change of outer form, proceeded the more substantial evolution consisting in learning, appropriating, and re-expressing the inherited material. In both cases, these three stages were necessitated by the greatness of the transmitted matter; for the intellectual energies of the mediaeval period were fully occupied with mastering the data proffered so pressingly, with presenting and re-presenting this superabundant material, and recasting it in new forms of statement, which were also expressions, or realizations, of the mediaeval genius. So the mediaeval product may be regarded as given by the past, and by the same token necessitated and controlled. But, on the other hand, each stage of intellectual progress rendered possible the next one. The first stage of learning is represented by the Carolingian period, which we have considered. It was then that the patristic material was extracted from the writings of the Fathers, and rearranged and reapplied, to meet the needs of the time. The mastery of this material had scarcely made such vital progress as to enable the men of the ninth and tenth and eleventh centuries to re-express it largely in terms of their own thinking. In the ninth century, Eriugena affords an extraordinary exception with his drastic restatement of what he had drawn from Pseudo-Dionysius and others; and at the end comes Anselm, whose genius is metaphysically constructive. But Anselm touches the coming time; and the springs of Eriugena’s genius are hidden from us. As for the antique thought during these Carolingian centuries, Eriugena dealt in his masterful way with what he knew of it through patristic and semi-patristic channels. But let us rather seek it in the curriculum of the Trivium and Quadrivium. What progress Gerbert made in the Quadrivium, that is, in the various branches of mathematics which he taught, has been noted, and to what extent his example was followed by his pupil Fulbert, at the cathedral school of Chartres.[452] The courses of the Trivium—grammar, rhetoric, logic—demand our closer attention; for they were the key of the situation. We must keep in mind that we are approaching mediaeval thought from the side of the innate human need of intellectual expression—the impulse to know and the need to formulate one’s conceptions and express them consistently. For mediaeval men the first indispensable means to this end was grammar, including rhetoric, and the next was logic or dialectic. The Latin language contained the sum of knowledge transmitted to the Middle Ages. And it had to be learned. This was true even in Italy and Spain and France, where each year the current ways of Romance speech were departing more definitely from the parent stock; it was more patently true in the countries of Teutonic speech. Centuries before, the Roman youth had studied grammar that they might speak and write correctly. Now it was necessary to study Latin grammar, to wit, the true forms and literary usages of the Latin tongue, in order to acquire any branch of knowledge whatsoever, and express one’s corresponding thoughts. And men would not at first distinguish sharply between the mediating value of the learned tongue and the learning which it held.[453] Thus grammar, the study of the Latin language, represented the first stage of knowledge for mediaeval men. This was to remain true through all the mediaeval centuries; since all youths who became scholars had to learn the language before they could study what was contained in it alone. One may also say, and yet not speak fantastically, that grammar, the study of the correct use of the language itself, corresponded spiritually with the main intellectual labour of the Carolingian period. Alcuin’s attention is commonly fixed upon the significance of language, Latin of course. And the labours of his pupil Rabanus, and the latter’s pupil Walafrid, are as it were devoted to the grammar of learning. That is to say, they read and endeavour to understand the works of the Fathers; they compare and collate, and make volumes of extracts, which they arrange for the most part as Scripture commentaries; commentaries, that is, upon the significance of the canonical writings which were the substance of all wisdom, but needed much explication. Such works were the very grammar of knowledge, being devoted to the exposition of the meaning of the Scriptures and the vast burden of patristic thought. A like purpose was evinced in the efforts of the great emperor himself to re-establish schools of grammar, in order that the Scriptures might be more correctly understood, and the expositions of the holy Fathers. In fine, just as knowledge of the Latin tongue was the end and aim of grammar, so a correct understanding of what was contained in Latin books was the aim of the intellectual labours of this period. It all represented the first stage in the mediaeval acquisition of knowledge, or in the presentation or expression of the same; and thus the first stage in the mediaeval endeavour to realize the human impulse to know. The next course of the Trivium was logic; and likewise its study will represent truly the second stage in the mediaeval realization of the human impulse to know, to wit, the second stage in the appropriation and expression of the knowledge transmitted from the past. We have spoken at some length of the logical studies of Gerbert, and his endeavours to adjust his thinking and classify the branches of knowledge by means of formal logic.[454] Those discussions of his which seem somewhat puerile to us, were essential to his endeavours to formulate what he had learned, and present it as rational and ordered knowledge. Logic is properly the stage succeeding grammar in the formulation of rational knowledge. At least it was for men of Gerbert’s time, and the following centuries. Rightly enough they looked on logic as a scientia sermotionalis, which on one side touched sheer linguistics, and on the other, had for its field the further processes of reason. Thus Hugo of St. Victor, Abaelard’s very great contemporary, says: “Logic is named from the Greek word logos, which has a twofold interpretation. For logos means either sermo or ratio; and therefore logic may be termed either a scientia sermotionalis or a scientia rationalis. Logica rationalis embraces dialectic and rhetoric, and is called discretiva (argumentative and exercising judgment); logica sermotionalis is the genus which includes grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, to wit, discursive science (disertiva).”[455] The close connection between grammar and logic is evident. Logic treats of language used in rational expression, as well as of the reasoning processes carried on in language. Its elementary chapters teach a rational use of language, whereby men may reach a more deeply consistent expression of their thoughts than is gained from grammar. Yet grammar also is logic, and based on logical principles. All this is exemplified in the logical treatises composing the Aristotelian Organon, which the Middle Ages used. First comes Porphyry’s Isagoge, which clearly is bound up in language. Likewise Aristotle’s Categories treat of the rational and consistent use of language, or of what may be stated in language. Next it is obvious that the De interpretatione treats of language used to express thought, its generic function. The more advanced treatises of the Organon, the Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Topics, and Sophistical Elenchi, treat directly and elaborately of the reasoning processes themselves. So one perceives the grammatical affinities of the simpler treatises in the Organon. The more advanced ones seem to stand to them as oratorical rhetoric stands to elementary grammar. For the Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Elenchi are a kind of eristic, training the student to use the processes of thought and their expression in order to attain an end, commonly argumentative. The prior treatises have taught the elements, as it were the orthography and etymology of the rational expression of thought in language; the latter (even as syntax and rhetoric), train the student in the use of these elements. And one observes a nice historical fitness in the fact that only the simpler treatises of the Organon were in common use in the early Middle Ages, since they alone were necessary to the first stage in the appropriation of the substance of patristic and antique thought. The full Organon was rediscovered, and retaken into use in the middle or latter part of the twelfth century, when men had progressed to a more organic appropriation of the patristic material and what they knew of the antique philosophy. Thus in mediaeval education, and in the successive order of appropriating the patristic and the antique, logic stood on grammar’s shoulders. It was grammar’s rationalized stage, and treated language as the means of expressing thought consistently and validly; that is, so as not to contravene the necessities of that whereof it was the vehicle. And since language thus treated was in accord with rational thought, it would accord with the realities to which thought corresponds; and might be taken as expressing them. This last reflection introduces metaphysics. And properly. For the three stages in the mediaeval appropriation and expression of knowledge were grammar, logic, metaphysics. Logic has to do with the processes of thought; with the positing of premises and the drawing of the conclusion. It does not necessarily consider whether the contents of its premises represent realities. This is matter for ontology, metaphysics. Now mediaeval metaphysics, which were those of Greek philosophy, were extremely pre-Kantian, in assuming a correspondence between the necessities or conclusions of thought and the supreme realities, God and the Universe. Nor did mediaeval logic doubt that its processes could elucidate and express the veritable natures of things. So mediaeval logic readily wandered into the province of metaphysics, and ignored the line between the two. Yet there is little metaphysics in the Organon; none in its simpler treatises. So there was none in the elementary logical instruction of the schools before the twelfth century at least.[456] One may always distinguish between logic and metaphysics; and it is to our purpose to do so here. For as we have taken logic to represent the second stage in the mediaeval appropriation of knowledge, so metaphysics, poised in turn on logic’s shoulders, is very representative of the third stage, to wit, the stage of systematic and organic re-expression of the ancient matter, with elements added by the great schoolmen. Metaphysics was very properly the final stage. The grammatical represented an elementary learning of what the past had transmitted; the logical a further retrying of the matter, an attempt to understand and express it, formulate parts of it anew, with deeper consistency of expression. Then follows the attempt for final and universal consistency: final inasmuch as thought penetrates to the nature of things and expresses realities and the relationships of realities; and universal, in that it seeks to order and systematize all its concepts, and bring them to unity in a Summa—a perfected scheme of rational presentation of God and His creation. This will be, largely speaking, the final endeavour of the mediaeval man to ease his mind, and realize his impulse to know and express himself with uttermost consistency. So for mediaeval men, metaphysics stood on logic’s shoulders and represented the final completion of their thought, in a universal system and scheme of God and man and things.[457] But the first part of this proposition had not been true with Greek philosophy. Metaphysics is properly occupied with being, in its ultimate essence and relationships; with the consistent putting together of things, to wit, the presentation or expression of them so as not to disagree with any of the data recognized as pertinent. The thinker considers profoundly, seeking to penetrate the ultimate reality and relationships of things, through which a universal whole is constituted. This makes ontology, metaphysics—the science of being, of causes, and so the science of the first Cause, God. Aristotle called this the “first” philosophy, because lying at the base of all branches of knowledge, and depending on nothing beyond itself. Some time after his death, the Peripatetics and then the Neo-Platonists called this first science by the name of Metaphysics, “after” or “beyond” physics, if one will, perhaps because of the actual order of treatment in the schools. The term Metaphysics is vague enough; either “first” philosophy or “ontology” is preferable. Yet as to Greek philosophy the term has apt historical suggestiveness. For it did come after physics in time, and was in fact evoked by the imperfect method and consequent contradictions of the earlier philosophies. From the beginning, Greek philosophy drove straight at the cause or origin of things—surely the central problem of metaphysics. Thales and the other Ionians began with rational, though crude, hypotheses as to the sources of the universe. These were first attempts to reach a consistent expression of its origin and nature. Each succeeding philosopher considered further, from the vantage-ground of the recognized inconsistencies or inadequacies in the theories of his predecessors. He was thus led on to consider more profoundly the essential relationships of things, the very truth of their relationships, and on and on into the problem of their being. For the verity of relations must be according to the verity of being of the things related. The world about us consists in relationships, of antecedents and sequences, of cause and effect; and our thought of it is made up of consistencies or contradictions, which last we struggle to eliminate, or to transform to consistencies. These early philosophers looked only to the Aristotelian material cause for the origin and cause of things; yet reflection plunged them deeper into a consideration of the nature of being and relationships. The other causes were evoked by Anaxagoras and then by Plato, and by them were led into the arena of debate; and philosophers discussed the efficient and final cause as well as the material. Such discussions are recognized by Plato, and finally by Aristotle as relating to the first principles of cognition and being, and so as constituting metaphysics. The constant search for a deeper consistency of explanation had led on and on through a manifold consideration of those palpable relationships which make up the visible world; it had disclosed the series of necessary assumptions required by those visible relationships; and thus the search for causality and origins, and essential relationships, became one and the same—metaphysics. Metaphysics was not ineptly called so, since it had in time come after the cruder physical hypotheses. But such was not the order of mediaeval intellectual progress. The Middle Ages passed through no preliminary course of physical hypotheses, explanatory of the universe. Not physics, but logic (introduced by grammar) led up to the final construction—or rather adoption and reconstruction—of ultimate hypotheses as to God and man, led up to the all-ordering and all-compassing Theologia. Metalogics, rather than Metaphysics, would be the proper name for these final expressions or actualizations of the mediaeval impulse to know.
CHAPTER XXXVI TWELFTH-CENTURY SCHOLASTICISM I. The Problem of Universals: Abaelard.
II. The Mystic Strain: Hugo and Bernard.
III. The Later Decades: Bernard Silvestris; Gilbert de la PorrÉe;
William of Conches; John of Salisbury, and Alanus of Lille. I From the somewhat elaborate general considerations which have occupied the last two chapters, we turn to the representative manifestations of mediaeval thought in the twelfth century. These belong in part to the second or “logical,” and in part to the third or “meta-logical,” stage of the mediaeval mind. The first or “grammatical” stage was represented by the Carolingian period; and in reviewing the mental aspects of the eleventh century, we entered upon the second stage, that of logic, or dialectic, to use the more specific mediaeval term. Toward the close of the tenth century Gerbert was found strenuously occupying himself with logic, and using it as a means of ordering the branches of knowledge. At the end of the eleventh, Anselm has not only considered certain logical problems, but has vaulted over into constructive metaphysical theology. Looking back over Anselm’s work, from the vantage-ground of the twelfth century’s further reflections, one may be conscious of a certain genial youthfulness in his reliance upon single arguments, noble and beautiful soarings of the spirit, which however pay little regard to the firmness of the premises from which they spring, and still less to a number of cognate and pertinent considerations, which the twelfth century was to analyze. Anselm’s thoughts perhaps overleaped logic. At all events he appears only occasionally absorbed with its formal problems. Yet he lived in a time of dawning logical controversy. Roscellin was even then blowing up the problem of universals, a problem occasioned by the entering of mediaeval thought upon the “logical” stage of its appropriation of the patristic and antique. The problem of universals, or general ideas, from the standpoint of logic, lies at the basis of consistent thinking. It reverts to the time when Aristotle’s assertion of the pre-eminently real existence of individuals broke away from the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. For the early mediaeval philosophers, it took its rise in a famous passage in Porphyry’s Introduction to the Categories, the concluding sentence of which, as translated into Latin by BoËthius, puts the question thus: “Mox de generibus et speciebus illud quidem sive subsistant sive in nudis intellectibus posita sint, sive subsistentia corporalia sint an incorporalia, et utrum separata a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita et circa haec consistentia, dicere recusabo.” “Next as to genera and species, do they actually exist or are they merely in thought; are they corporeal or incorporeal existences; are they separate from sensible things or only in and of them?—I refuse to answer,” says Porphyry; “it is a very lofty business, unsuited to an elementary work.” Thus, in three pairs of crude alternatives, the question came over to the early Middle Ages. The men of the Carolingian period took one position or another, without sensing its difficulties, or observing how it lay athwart the path of knowledge. Students were not as yet attempting such a dynamic appropriation of the ancient material as would evoke this veritable problem of cognition. Even Gerbert at the close of the tenth century was still so busy with the outer forms and figments of logic that he had no time to enter on those ulterior problems where logic links itself to metaphysics. One Roscellin, living and teaching apparently at BesanÇon in the latter part of the eleventh century, seems to have been the first to attack the currently accepted “realism” with some sense of the matter’s thorny intricacies. With his own “nominalistic” position we are acquainted only through his adversaries, who imputed to him views which a thoughtful person could hardly have entertained—that universals were merely words and breath (flatus vocis). Roscellin seems at all events to have been a man strongly held by the reality of individuals, and one who found it difficult to ascribe a sufficient intellectual actuality to the general idea as distinguished from the perception of things and the demands of the concepts of their individual existences. His logical difficulties impelled him to theological heresy. The unity in the Trinity became an impossibility; he could only conceive of three beings, just as he might think of three angels; and he would have spoken of three Gods had usage not forbidden it, says St. Anselm.[458] As it was, he said enough to draw on him the condemnation of a Council held at Soissons in 1092, before which he quailed and recanted. For the remainder of his life he so constrained the expression of his thoughts as to ensure his safety. One may say that Plato’s theory of ideas was a metaphysical presentation of the universe, sounding in conceptions of reality. But for the Middle Ages, the problem whether genera and species exist when abstracted from their particulars, sprang from logical controversy. It was a problem of cognition, cognizance, understanding: how should one understand and analyze the contents of a statement, e.g. Socrates is a man. Moreover, it was a fundamental and universal problem of cognition; for it was not merely occupied, like all mental processes, with bringing data to consistent formulation, but pertained to those processes themselves by which any and all data are stated or formulated. It touched every formulation of truth, asking, in fine, how are we to think our statements? The philosophers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, did not view this problem as one pertaining to the mind’s processes, and as having to do solely with the understanding of the contents of a statement. Rather, even as Plato had done, they approached it as if it were a problem of modes of existence; and for this very reason it had pushed Roscellin into theological error. The discussion was to pass through various stages; and each stage may seem to us to represent the point reached by the thinker in his analysis of his conscious meaning in stating a proposition. Moreover, each solution may be valid for him who gives it, because of its correspondence to the meaning of his utterances so far as he has analyzed them. But mediaeval men could not take it in this way. Their intellectual task lay in appropriating, and in their own way re-expressing, all that had come to them from an authoritative past. The problem of universals had been stated by a great authority, who put it as pertaining to the objective reality of genera and species. How then might mediaeval men take it otherwise, especially when at all events it pertained in all verity to their endeavour to grasp and re-express the contents of transmitted truth? It became for a while the crucial problem, the answer to which might indicate the thinker’s general intellectual attitude. Far from keeping to logic, to the organon or instrumental part of the mediaeval endeavour to know, it wound itself through metaphysics and theology. Obviously the thinker’s answer to the problem would bear relation to his thoughts upon the transcendent reality of spiritual essences. The men who first became impressed with the importance of this problem, gave extreme answers to it, sometimes crassly denying the real existence of universals, but more often hailing them as antecedent and all-permeating realities. If Roscellinus took the former position, a pupil of his, William of Champeaux, held the extreme opposite view, when both he and the twelfth century were still young. One may, however, bear in mind that as the views of the older nominalist are reported only by his enemies, so our knowledge of William’s lucubrations comes mainly from the exacerbated pen of Peter Abaelard.William held apparently “that the same thing, in its totality and at the same time, existed in its single individuals, among which there was no essential difference, but merely a variety of accidents.”[459] Abaelard appears to have performed a reductio ad absurdum upon this view that the total genus exists in each individual. He pointed out that in such case the total genus homo would at the same time exist in Socrates and also in Plato, when one of them might be in Rome and the other in Athens. “At this William changed his opinion,” continues Abaelard, “and taught that the genus existed in each individual not essentialiter but indifferenter or [as some texts read] individualiter.” Which seems to mean that William no longer held that the total genus existed in each individual actually, but “indistinguishably,” or “individually.” And the students flocked away with Abaelard, he also says; and William fled the lecture chair. William and Peter; shall we say of them arcades ambo? This would be but a harmless depreciation of Abaelard, in the face of the universal and correct tradition as to his epoch-making intellectual progressiveness. Indeed it might be well to let the phrase sound in our ears, just for the reminder’s sake, that Abaelard was, like William, a man of logic, although far more expert both in manipulating the dialectic processes and in applying them to theology. Before endeavouring briefly to reconstruct the intellectual qualities of Abaelard from his writings, let us see how the famous open letter to a friend, in giving an apologetic story of the writer’s life, discloses the fatalities of his character. This Historia calamitatum suarum makes it plain enough why the crises of his life were all of them catastrophes—even leaving out of view his liaison with HeloÏse and its penalty. A fatal impulse to annoy seems to drive him from fate to fate; the old word of Heraclitus ???? ?????p? da??? (character is a man’s genius) was so patently true of him. Much that he said was to receive orthodox approval after his time. Quite true. It has often been remarked, that the heresy of one age is the accepted doctrine of the next, even within the Church. But would the heretic have been persona grata to the later time? Perhaps not. Peter Abaelard at all events would have led others and himself a life of thorns in the thirteenth century, or the fourteenth had he been born again, when some of his methods and opinions had become accepted commonplace. Did he have an eye for logical and human truth more piercing than his twelfth-century fellows? Apparently. Was his need to speak out his truth so much the more imperative than theirs? Possibly. At all events, he was certainly possessed with an inordinate impulsion to undo his rivals. He sits down before their fortress walls by night, and when they see him there, they know not whether they look on friend or foe—in this auditor. They will find out soon enough. He studied dialectic under William of Champeaux at Paris, as all men were to know. He got what William had to teach, and moved on, to lecture in Melun and elsewhere. Then he returned and sat at William’s feet awhile to learn rhetoric, as he announced. But quickly he rose up, and assailed his master’s doctrine of universals, and overthrew him, as we have seen. The victim’s friends made Abaelard’s eristically won lecturer’s seat a prickly one. He left Paris for a while, and then returned and taught on Mount St. GeneviÈve, outside the city. Up to this time he had not been known to study theology. But in 1113, at the age of thirty-four, he went to Laon to listen to a famous theologian named Anselm, who himself had studied at Bec under a greater Anselm. Says Abaelard in his Historia calamitatum: “So I came to this old man, whose repute was a tradition, rather than merited by talent or learning. Any one who brought his uncertainties to him, went away more uncertain still! He was a marvel in the eyes of his hearers, but a nobody before a questioner. He had a wonderful wordflow, but the sense was contemptible and the reasoning abject.” Well, I didn’t listen to him long, Abaelard intimates; but began to absent myself from his lectures, and was brought to task by his auditors, to whom jokingly I said, I, too, could lecture on Scripture; and I was taken up. Nothing loath, the next day I lectured to them on the passage they had chosen from Ezekiel’s obscure prophecies. So, all unprepared, and trusting in my genius, I began to lecture, at first to sparse audiences, but they quickly grew. Such is the substance of Abaelard’s own account, and he goes on to tell how “the old man aforesaid was violently moved with envy,” and shortly Abaelard had to take his lecturings elsewhere. He returned to Paris, and we have the episode of HeloÏse, for whom, as his life went on, he evinced a devoted affection.[460] Now he is monk in the abbey of St. Denis; and there again he lectures, and takes up certain themes against Roscellinus, whom he seems to resurrect from the quiet of old age to make a target of. This old man, too, hits back, and other vicious people blow up a cloud of envy, until the gifted lecturer finds himself an accused before the Council of Soissons, and his book condemned. Untaught by the burning of his book, Abaelard returns to his convent, and proceeds to unearth statements of the Venerable Bede showing that Dionysius the Areopagite who heard Paul preach, was not the St. Denis who became patron saint of France, and founder of the great abbey which even now was sheltering a certain Abaelard, and drawing power and revenue from the fame of its reputed almost apostolic founder. Its abbot and monks did not care to have the abbey walls undermined by truth, and Abaelard was hunted forth from among them. It was after this that he made for himself a lonely refuge, which he named the Paraclete, not far from Troyes, and thither again his pupils followed him in swarms, and built their huts around him in the wilderness. But still mightier foes—or their phantoms—rise against this hunted head. The Historia seems to allude to St. Norbert and to St. Bernard. Whatever the storm was, it was escaped by flight to a remote Breton convent which—still for his sins!—had chosen Abaelard its abbot. There in due course they tried to murder him, and again he fled, this time back to his congenial sphere, the schools of Paris, where he lectured, now at the summit of fame, to enthusiastic multitudes of students. Some years pass, and then the pious jackal, William of St. Thierry, rouses his lion Bernard to contend with Abaelard and crush him, not with dialectic, at the Council of Sens in 1141. In a year he died, a broken man, in Cluny’s shelter. The conflict had not been of his seeking. Perhaps, had he been less vain, he might have avoided it. When it was upon him, the unhappy athlete of the schools found himself a pigmy matched against the giant of Clairvaux—the Thor and Loki of the Church! Whether or not the unequal battle raises Abaelard in our esteem, its outcome commends him to our pity; and all our sympathy stays with him to the last days of a life that was, as if physically, crushed. This accumulation of sad fortune bears witness enough to the character of the man on whose neck it did not fall by accident. Now let us try to reconstruct him intellectually. We have heretofore observed the genius and noted the somewhat swaddling dialectic categories of a certain eager intellect bearing the name of Gerbert.[461] Abaelard’s mental processes have advanced beyond such logical stammerings. He and his time are in the fulness of youth, and feel the strength and joyful assurance of an intellectual progress, to be brought about by a new-found proficiency in dialectic. In the first half of the twelfth century, the intellectual genius of the time—and Abaelard was its quintessence—knew itself advancing by this means in truth. A like intellectual consciousness had rejoiced the disputants in Plato’s academy, under the inspiration of that beautiful reasoner’s exquisite dialectic. The one time, like the other, was justified in its confidence. For in such epochs, language, reasoning, and knowledge advance with equal step; thought clears up with linguistic and logical analysis; it becomes clear and illuminated because more distinctly conscious of the character of its processes, and the nature of statement. There is thus a veritable progress, at least in the methodology of truth. In Abaelard’s time men had already studied grammar, the grammar of the Latin tongue, and the quasi-grammar of rearrangement and first painful learning of the knowledge which it held. They had studied logic too, its simpler elements, those which consist mainly in a further clearing up of the meanings of language. Some men—Anselm of Canterbury—had already made sudden flights beyond grammar, and out of logic’s pale. And the labour of logical and organic appropriation, with some reconstruction of the ancient material, was to go on in this first half of the twelfth century, when Hugo of St. Victor lived as well as Abaelard. Progress by means of dialectic controversy, and first attempts at systematic construction, mark this period intellectually. Abaelard lived and moved and had his being in dialectic. The further interest of Theology was lent him by the spirit of his time. Through the medium of the one he reasoned analytically; and in the province of the other he applied his reasoning constructively, using patristic materials and the fragments of Greek philosophy scattered through them. Thus Abaelard, a true man of the twelfth century, passes on through logic to theology or metaphysics. For the completeness of his logical knowledge he lived and worked twenty or thirty years too soon. He was unacquainted with the more elaborate logical treatises of Aristotle, to wit, the Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Topics, and Sophistical Elenchi. The sources of his own treatises upon Dialectic are Porphyry’s Introduction, Aristotle’s Categories and De interpretatione, and certain treatises of BoËthius.[462] A first result of the elementary and quasi-grammatical character of the sources of logic upon which he drew, is that the connection between logic and grammar is very plain with him. Note, for example, this paragraph of his, the substance of which is drawn from Aristotle’s Categories: “But neither can substances be compared,[463] since comparison relates to attribute, and not to substance; so it is shown that comparison lies not as to nouns, but as to their attributes. Thus we say whiter but not whitenesser. Much more are substances which have no attribute (adjacentiam) immune from comparison. More or less cannot be predicated of nouns (nomina substantiva). For one cannot say more man or less man, as more or less white.”[464] Evidently this elementary sort of logic, whether with Aristotle or Abaelard, represents a clearing up of the mind on current modes of expression. And sometimes from such studies men make discoveries like that of MoliÈre’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who discovered that he had always been talking prose. Some of the points on which the minds of Abaelard’s contemporaries required clarification, would be foolish word-play to ourselves, as, for instance, whether the significance of the sentence homo est animal is contained in the subject, copula, or predicate, or only in all three; and whether when a word is spoken, the very same word and the whole of it comes to the ears of all the hearers at the same time: “utrum ipsa vox ad aures diversorum simul et tota aequaliter veniat.”[465] Such questions, as was observed regarding the problems of logical arrangement in Gerbert’s mind, may be pertinent and reasonable enough, if viewed in connection with the intellectual conditions of a period; just as many questions now make demand on us for solution, being links in the chain of our knowledge, or manner of reasoning. But future men may pass them by as not lying in their path to progressive knowledge of the universe and man. So the problem of universals was still cardinal with Abaelard and his fellow-logicians, who through logic were advancing, as they believed, along the path of objective truth. Its solution would determine the nature of the categories into which logic was fitting whatever might be enunciated or expressed. The inquiry represented an ultimate analysis of statement, of the general nature of propositions; and also related to their assumed correspondence with realities. What William of Champeaux had unqualifiedly alleged, Abaelard tried to determine more analytically, to wit, the value of the proposition “si aliquid sit ea res quae est species, id est vel homo vel equus et caetera, sit quaelibet res quae eorum genus est, veluti animal aut corpus aut substantia,”—if species be something, as man, horse, and so forth, then that which is the genus of these may be something, as animal, body, or substance.[466] Abaelard’s discussion of this matter is a discussion of the true content of propositions. His conclusion is not so clear as to have occasioned no dispute. One must not think of him as an Aristotelian—for he knew little of the substantial philosophy of Aristotle. Our dialectician had absorbed more of Plato, through turbid patristic channels and the current translation of the Timaeus. So his solution of the question of genus and species may prove an analytic bit of eclecticism, an imagined reconcilement of the two great masters. The universal or general is, says he, “quod natum est de pluribus praedicari,” that which is by its nature adapted to be predicated of a number of things. The universal consists neither in things as such nor in words as such; it consists rather in general predicability; it is sermo, sermo praedicabilis, that which may be stated, as a predicate, of many. As such it is not a mere word: sermo is not merely vox; that is not the true general predicable. On the other hand, one thing cannot be the predicate of another; res de re non praedicatur: therefore sermo is not res. Yet Abaelard does not limit the existence of the universal to the concept of him who thinks it. It surely exists in the individuals, since substantia specierum is not different from the essentia individuorum. But does not the general concept exist as an objective unity? Apparently Abaelard would answer: Yes, it does thus exist as a common sameness (consimilitudo). All this is anything but clear. And the various twelfth-century opinions on universals no longer possess human interest. It is hard for us to distinguish between them, or understand them clearly, or state them intelligibly. They are bound up in a phraseology untranslatable into modern language, because the discussion no longer corresponds to modern ways of thought. But one is interested in the human need which drove Abaelard and his fellows upon the horns of this problem, and in the nature of their endeavours to formulate their thought so as to escape those opposing horns—of an extreme realism which might issue in pantheism, and an extreme nominalism which seemed to deprive predication of substance and validity.[467] So much for Abaelard as sheer logician, formal adjuster of the instrumental processes of thinking. Dialectic was for him a first stage in the actualization of the impulse to know, and bring knowledge to consistent expression. It was also his way of approach to the further systematic presentation of his thoughts upon God and man, human society and justice, divine and human. “A new calumny against me, have my rivals lately devised, because I write upon the dialectic art; affirming that it is not lawful for a Christian to treat of things which do not pertain to the Faith. Not only they say that this science does not prepare us for the Faith, but that it destroys faith by the implications of its arguments. But it is wonderful if I must not discuss what is permitted them to read. If they allow that the art militates against faith, surely they deem it not to be science (scientia). For the science of truth is the comprehension of things, whose species is the wisdom in which faith consists. Truth is not opposed to truth. For not as falsehood may be opposed to falsity, or evil to evil, can the true be opposed to the true, or the good to the good; but rather all good things are in accord. All knowledge is good, even that which relates to evil, because a righteous man must have it. Since he should guard against evil, it is necessary that he should know it beforehand: otherwise he could not shun it. Though an act be evil, knowledge regarding it is good; though it be evil to sin, it is good to know the sin, which otherwise we could not shun. Nor is the science mathematica to be deemed evil, whose practice (astrology) is evil. Nor is it a crime to know with what services and immolations the demons may be compelled to do our will, but to use such knowledge. For if it were evil to know this, how could God be absolved, who knows the desires and cogitations of all His creatures, and how the concurrence of demons may be obtained? If therefore it is not wrong to know, but to do, the evil is to be referred to the act and not to the knowledge. Hence we are convinced that all knowledge, which indeed comes from God alone and from His bounty, is good. Wherefore the study of every science should be conceded to be good, because that which is good comes from it; and especially one must insist upon the study of that doctrina by which the greater truth is known. This is dialectic, whose function is to distinguish between every truth and falsity: as leader in all knowledge it holds the primacy and rule of all philosophy. The same also is shown to be needful to the Catholic Faith, which cannot without its aid resist the sophistries of schismatics.”[468] In this passage the man himself is speaking, and disclosing his innermost convictions. For Abaelard’s nature was set upon understanding all things through reason, even the mysteries of the Faith. He does not say, or quite think, that he will disbelieve whatever he cannot understand; but his reasoning and temper point to the conclusion. This was obviously true of Abaelard’s ethical opinions; his enemies said it was true of his theology. Such a man would naturally plead for freedom of discussion, even for freedom of conclusion; but within certain bounds; for who in the twelfth century could maintain that heretics or infidels did rightly in rejecting the Christian Faith? Yet Abaelard says heretics should be compelled (coercendi) by reason rather than force.[469] And he could at least conceive of the rejection of the Faith upon, say, imperfect rational grounds. In his dialogue between Philosopher, Jew, and Christian, the Christian says to the Philosopher: One cannot argue against you from the authority of Scripture, which you do not recognize; for no one can be refuted save with arguments drawn from what he admits: Nemo quippe argui nisi ex concessis potest.[470] However this sounded in Abaelard’s time, the same was enunciated by Thomas Aquinas after him, in a passage already given.[471] But it is doubtful whether Thomas would have cared to follow Abaelard in some of the arguments of his Ethics or Book called, Know Thyself, in which he maintains that no act is a sin unless the actor was conscious of its sinfulness; and therefore that killing the martyrs could not be imputed as sin to those persecutors who deemed themselves thereby to be doing a service acceptable to God.[472] The titles given by Abaelard to his various treatises are indicative of the critical insistency of his nature. He called his Ethica, Scito te ipsum, Know Thyself: understand thy good and ill intentions, and what may be vice or virtue in thee. Through the book, the discussion of right and wrong directs itself as pertinaciously to considerations of human nature as was possible in an age when theological dogma held the final criteria of human conduct. And Abaelard is capable of a lofty insight touching the relationship between God and man. “Penitence,” says he, “is truly fruitful when grief and contrition proceed from love of God, regarded as benignant, rather than from fear of penalties. Sin cannot endure with this groaning and contrition of heart: for sin is contempt of God, or consent to evil, and the love of God in inspiring our groaning, suffers no ill.”[473] Possibly when reading the Scito te ipsum one is conscious of a dialectician drawing distinctions, rather than of a moralist searching the heart of the matter. Everything is set forth so reasonably. Yet Abaelard’s impartial delight in a rational view of belief and conduct shows nowhere quite as obviously as in his Dialogue between Philosopher and Jew and Christian. Each in turn is made to set forth the best arguments his position admits of. The author does his best for each, and perhaps seems temperamentally drawn to the position of the Philosopher, whom he permits to call the Jews stultos and the Christians insanos. This philosopher naturally is no Greek of Plato’s or Aristotle’s time, but a good Roman, who regards moralis philosophia as the finis omnium disciplinarum, and hangs all intellectual considerations upon a discussion of the summum bonum. His well-worn arguments are put with earnestness. He deprecates the blind acceptance of beliefs by children from their fathers, and the narrowness of mind which keeps men from perceiving the possible truth in others’ opinions: “so that whomsoever they see differing from themselves in belief, they deem alien from the mercy of God. Thus condemning all others, they vaunt themselves alone as blessed. Long reflecting on this blindness and pride of the human race, I have unceasingly besought the Divine Pity that He would deign to draw me forth from this miserable Charibdian whirlpool of error, and guide me to a port of safety. So you [addressing both Jew and Christian] behold me solicitous and attentive as a disciple, to the documents of your arguments.”[474] The qualities cultivated by dialectic, and the impartial rational temper, here displayed, reappear in the works of Abaelard devoted to sacred doctrine. Enough has been said of the method and somewhat captious qualities of the Sic et non.[475] Unquestionably its manner of presenting the contradictory opinions of the Fathers, without any attempt to reconcile them, tended to bring into view the difficulties inhering in the formulation of Christian belief. And indeed the book made prominent all the diabolic insoluble problems of the Faith, or rather of life itself and any view of God and man: Predestination, for example; whether God causes evil; whether He is omnipotent; whether He is free. The Lombard’s Sentences and Thomas’s Summa considered all these questions; but they strove to solve them; and Thomas did solve every one, leaving no loose ends to his theology. More potently than Abaelard did the Angelic Doctor employ dialectic in his finished scheme. With him, this propaedeutic discipline, this tool of truth, perfectly performs its task of construction. So also Abaelard intended to work with it; but his somewhat unconsidered use of the tool did not meet the approval of his contemporaries. Accordingly, in his more constructive theological treatises his impulse to know and state appears finally actualized in the systematic formulation of convictions upon topics of ultimate interest, to wit, theology, the contents of the Christian Faith, the full relationship of God and man. Did he sever theology from philosophy? Nay, rather, with him theology was ultimate philosophy. Several times Abaelard rewrote what was substantially the same general work upon Theology. In one of its earliest forms it was burnt by the Council of Soissons in 1121.[476] In another form it exists under the title Theologia Christiana;[477] and the first part of its apparently final revision is now improperly entitled, Introductio ad theologiam.[478] The first Book of the Theologia Christiana is an exposition of the Trinity, not clinched in syllogisms, but consisting mainly of an orderly presentation of the patristic authorities supporting the author’s view of the matter. The testimonies of profane writers are also given. Liber II. opens by saying that in the former part of the work “we have collected the testimonia of prophets and philosophers, in support of the faith of the Holy Trinity.” Hereupon, by the same method of adducing authorities, Abaelard proceeds to refute those who had blamed him for citing the pagan philosophers. He marshals his supporting excerpts from the Fathers, and remarks: “That nothing is more needful for the defence of our faith than that as against the importunities of all the infidels we should have witness from themselves wherewith to refute them.” Then he points to the moral worth of some of the philosophers, to their true teaching of the soul’s immortality, and quotes Horace’s “Oderunt peccare boni virtutis amore.” He continues at some length setting forth their well-nigh evangelical virtue, and speaks of the Gospel as reformatio legis naturalis. At the beginning of Liber III. comes the statement: “We set the faith of the blessed Trinity as the foundation of all good.” Whereupon Abaelard breaks out in a denunciation of those who misuse dialectic; but again he passes to a defence of the art as an art and branch of knowledge, and shows its need as a weapon against those wranglers who will be quieted neither by the authority of the saints nor the philosophers: against whom, he, Abaelard, trusting in the divine aid, will turn this weapon as David did the sword of Goliath. He now states the true object of his work: “First then is to be set forth the theme of our whole labour, and the sum of faith; the unity of the divine substance and the Trinity of persons, which are in God, and are one God. Next we state the objections to our theses, and then the solutions of those objections.” And he gives the substance of the Athanasian Creed. From this point, his work becomes more dialectical and constructive, although of course continuing to quote authorities. He is emboldened to discuss the deepest mysteries, the very penetralia of the Trinity, and in a way which might well alarm men like Bernard, who desired acceptance of the Faith, with rhetoric, but without discussion. To be sure Abaelard pauses to justify himself by reverting to his apologetic purpose: “Heretics must be coerced with reason rather than by force.” However this may be, the work henceforth shows the passing on of logic to the exercise of its architectonic functions in constructing a systematic theological metaphysics. The miscalled Introductio ad theologiam, as might be expected of a last revision of the author’s Theology, is a more organic work. In the Prologue, Abaelard speaks of it as a Summa sacrae eruditionis or an Introductio to Divine Scripture. And again he states the justifying purpose of his labour, or rather puts it into the mouths of his disciples who have asked for such a work from him: “Since our faith, the Christian Faith, seems entangled in such difficult questions, and to stand apart from human reason (et ab humana ratione longius absistere), it should be fortified by so much the stronger arguments, especially against the attacks of those who call themselves philosophers.” Continuing, Abaelard protests that if in any way, for his sins, he should deviate from the Catholic understanding and statement, he will on seeing his error revise the same, like the blessed Augustine. The work itself opens with a statement of its intended divisions: “In three matters, as I judge, rests the sum of human salvation: Fides, caritas, and sacramentum”; and he gives his definition of faith, which was so obnoxious to Bernard and others, as the existimatio rerum non apparentium. The three extant Books do not conclude the treatment even of the first of these three topics. But one readily sees that were the work complete, its arrangement might correspond with that of Thomas’s Summa.[479] One may reiterate that it was more constructively argumentative than the Theologia Christiana, even in the manner of using the cited authorities. For instance, Abaelard’s mind is fixed on the analogy between the Neo-Platonic Trinity of Deus, nous, and anima mundi, and that of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The nous fitly represents Christ, who is the Sapientia Dei—which Abaelard sets forth; but then with even greater insistency he identifies the Holy Spirit with the world-soul. Nothing gave a stronger warrant to the accusations of heresy brought against him than this last doctrine, with which he was obsessed. Yet what roused St. Bernard and his jackals was not so much any particular opinion of Abaelard, as his dialectic and critical spirit, which insisted upon understanding and explaining, before believing. “The faith of the righteous believes; it does not dispute. But that man, suspicious of God (Deum habens suspectum), has no mind to believe what his reason has not previously argued.”[480] Still, when Bernard says that faith does not discuss, but believes, he states a conviction of his mind, a conviction corresponding with an inner need of his own to formulate and express his thought. Only, with Abaelard the need to consider and analyse was more consciously imperative. He could not avoid the constant query: How shall I think this thing—this thing, for example, which is declared by revelation? Just as other questioning spirits in other times might be driven upon the query: How shall we think these things which are disclosed by the variegated walls of our physical environment? Those yield data, or refuse them, and force the mind to put many queries, and come to some adjustment. So experience presents data for adjustment, just as dogma, Scripture, revelation present that which reason must bring within the action of its processes, and endeavour to find rational expression for. II The greatest dialectician of the early twelfth century felt no problems put him by the physical world. That did not attract his inquiry; it did not touch the reasonings evolved by his self-consciousness, any more than it impressed the fervid mind of his great adversary, St. Bernard. The natural world, however, stirred the mind of Abaelard’s contemporary, Hugo of St. Victor.[481] Its colours waved before his reveries, and its visible sublimities drew his mind aloft to the contemplation of God: for him its things were all the things of God—opus conditionis or opus restaurationis;[482] the work of foundation, whereby God created the physical world for the support and edification of its crowning creature man; and the work of restoration, to wit, the incarnation of the Word, and all its sacraments. Hugo was a Platonic and very Christian theologian. He would reason and expound, and yet was well aware that reason could not fathom the nature of God, or bring man to salvation. “Logic, mathematics, physics teach some truth, yet do not reach that truth wherein is the soul’s safety, without which whatever is is vain.”[483] So Hugo was not primarily a logician, like Abaelard; nor did he care chiefly for the kind of truth which might be had through logic. Nevertheless the productions of his short life prove the excellence of his mind and his large enthusiasm for knowledge. As Hugo was the head of the school of St. Victor for some years before his death, certain of his works cover topics of ordinary mediaeval education, secular and religious; while others advance to a more profound expression of the intellectual, or spiritual, interests of their author. For elementary religious instruction, he composed a veritable book of Sentences,[484] which preceded the Lombard’s in time, but was later than Abaelard’s Sic et non. Without striking features, it lucidly and amiably carried out its general purpose of setting forth the authoritative explanations of the elements of the Christian Faith. The writer did not hesitate to quote opposing views, which were not heralded, however, by such danger-signals of contradiction as flare from the chapter headings of the Sic et non. The corresponding treatise upon profane learning—the Eruditio didascalica—is of greater interest.[485] It commences in elementary fashion, as a manual of study: “There are two things by which we gain knowledge, to wit, reading and meditation; reading comes first.” The book is to be a guide to the student in the study both of secular and divine writings; it teaches how to study the artes, and then how to study the Scriptures.[486] Even in this manual, Hugo shows himself a meditative soul, and one who seeks to base his most elementary expositions upon the nature and needs of man. The mind, says he, is distracted by things of sense, and does not know itself. It is renewed through study, so that it learns again not to look without for what itself affords. Learning is life’s solace, which he who finds is happy, and he who makes his own is blessed.[487] For Hugo, philosophy is that which investigates the rationes of things human and divine, seeking ever the final wisdom, which is knowledge of the primaeva ratio: this distinguishes philosophy from the practical sciences, like agriculture: it follows the ratio, and they administer the matter. Again and again, Hugo returns to the thought that the object of all human actiones and studia is to restore the integrity of our nature or mitigate its weaknesses, restore the image of the divine similitude in us, or minister to the needs of life. This likeness is renewed by speculatio veritatis, or exercitium virtutis.[488] Such is a pretty broad basis of theory for a high school manual. Hugo proceeds to set forth the scheme, rather than the substance, of the arts and sciences, pausing occasionally to admonish the reader to hold no science vile, since knowledge always is good; and he points out that all knowledge hangs together in a common coherency. He sketches[489] the true student’s life: Whoever seeks learning, must not neglect discipline! He must be humble, and not ashamed to learn from any one; he must observe decent manners, and not play the fool and make faces at lecturers on divinity, for thereby he insults God. Yea, and let him mind the example of the ancient sages, who for learning’s sake spurned honours, rejected riches, rejoiced in insults, deserted the companionship of men, and gave themselves up to philosophy in desert solitudes, that they might be more free for meditation. Diligent search for wisdom in quietude becomes a scholar; and likewise poverty, and likewise exile: he is very delicate who clings to his fatherland; “He is brave to whom every land is home (patria); and he is perfect to whom the whole world is an exile!”[490] Hugo has much to say of the pulchritudo and the decor of the creature-world. But with him the world and its beauty point to God. One should observe it because of its suggestiveness, the visible suggesting the invisible. Hugo has already been followed in his argument that the world, in its veriest reality, is a symbol.[491] Here we follow him along his path of knowledge, which leads on and upward from cogitatio, through meditatio, to contemplatio. The steps in Hugo’s scheme are rational, though the summit lies beyond. This path to truth, leading on from the visible symbol to the unseen power, is for him the reason and justification of study; drawing to God it makes for man’s salvation. Hugo has put perhaps his most lucid exposition of the three grades of knowledge into the first of his Nineteen Sermons on Ecclesiastes.[492] He is fond of certain numbers, and here his thought revolves in categories of the number three. Solomon composed three works, the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles. In the first, he addresses his son paternally, admonishing him to pursue virtue and shun vice; in the second, he shows the grown man that nothing in the world is stable; finally, in Canticles, he brings the consummate one, who has spurned the world, to the Bridegroom’s arms. “Three are the modes of cognition (visiones) belonging to the rational soul: cogitation, meditation, contemplation. It is cogitation when the mind is touched with the ideas of things, and the thing itself is by its image presented suddenly, either entering the mind through sense or rising from memory. Meditation is the assiduous and sagacious revision of cogitation, and strives to explain the involved, and penetrate the hidden. Contemplation is the mind’s perspicacious and free attention, diffused everywhere throughout the range of whatever may be explored. There is this difference between meditation and contemplation: meditation relates always to things hidden from our intelligence; contemplation relates to things made manifest, either according to their nature or our capacity. Meditation always is occupied with some one matter to be investigated; contemplation spreads abroad for the comprehending of many things, even the universe. Thus meditation is a certain inquisitive power of the mind, sagaciously striving to look into the obscure and unravel the perplexed. Contemplation is that acumen of intelligence which, keeping all things open to view, comprehends all with clear vision. Thus contemplation has what meditation seeks. “There are two kinds of contemplation: the first is for beginners, and considers creatures; the kind which comes later, belongs to the perfect, and contemplates the Creator. In the Proverbs, Solomon proceeds as through meditation. In Ecclesiastes he ascends to the first grade of contemplation. In the Song of Songs he transports himself to the final grade. In meditation there is a wrestling of ignorance with knowledge; and the light of truth gleams as in a fog of error. So fire is kindled with difficulty in a heap of green wood; but then fanned with stronger breath, the flame burns higher, and we see volumes of smoke rolling up, with flame flashing through. Little by little the damp is exhausted, and the leaping fire dispels the smoke. Then victrix flamma darting through the heap of crackling wood, springs from branch to branch, and with lambent grasp catches upon every twig; nor does it rest until it penetrates everywhere and draws into itself all that it finds which is not flame. At length the whole combustible material is purged of its own nature and passes into the similitude and property of fire; then the din is hushed, and the voracious fire having subdued all, and brought all into its own likeness, composes itself to a high peace and silence, finding nothing more that is alien or opposed to itself. First there was fire with flame and smoke; then fire with flame, without smoke; and at last pure fire with neither flame nor smoke.” So the victrix flamma achieves the three stages of spiritual insight, fighting its way through the smoke of cogitation, through the smoke and flame of meditation, and at last through the flame of creature contemplation, to the high peace of God, where all is love’s ardent vision, without flame or smoke. It is thus through the grades of knowledge that the soul reaches at last that fulness of intelligence which may be made perfect and inflamed with love, in the contemplation of God. All knowledge is good according to its grade; only let it always lead on to God, and with humility. Hugo makes his principles clear at the opening of his commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius.[493] “The Jews seek a sign, and the Greeks wisdom. There was a certain wisdom which seemed such to them who knew not the true wisdom. The world found it, and began to be puffed up, thinking itself great in this. Confiding in its wisdom, it presumed, and boasted that it would attain the highest wisdom.... And it made itself a ladder of the face of the creation, shining toward the invisible things of the Creator.... Then those things which were seen were known, and there were other things which were not known; and through those which were manifest they expected to reach those which were hidden; and they stumbled and fell into the falsehoods of their own imaginings.... So God made foolish the wisdom of this world; and He pointed out another wisdom, which seemed foolishness, and was not. For it preached Christ crucified, in order that truth might be sought in humility. But the world despised it, wishing to contemplate the works of God, which He had made to be marvelled at, and it did not wish to venerate what He had set for imitation. Neither did it look to its own disease, and seek a medicine with piety; but presuming on a false health, it gave itself over with vain curiosity to the study of alien matters.” This study made the wisdom of the world, whereby it devised the arts and sciences which we still learn. But the world in its pride did not read aright the great book of nature. It had not the knowledge of the true Exemplar, for the sanitation of its inner vision, to wit, the flesh of the eternal Word in the humanity of Jesus. “There were two images (simulacra) set for man, in which he might perceive the unseen: one consisting of nature, the other of grace. The former image was the face of this world; the latter was the humanity of the Word. And God is shown in both, but He is not understood in both; since the appearance of nature discloses the artificer, but cannot illuminate the eyes of him who contemplates it.” Hugo then classifies the sciences in the usual Aristotelian way, and shows that Christian theology is the end of all philosophy. The first part of philosophia theorica is mathematics, which speculates as to the visible forms of visible things. The second is physics, which scrutinizes the invisible causes of visible things. The third, theology, alone contemplates invisible substances and their invisible natures. Herein is a certain progression; and the mind mounts to knowledge of the true. Through the visible forms of visible things, it comes to invisible causes of visible things; and through the invisible causes of visible things, it ascends to invisible substances, and to knowing their natures. This is the summit of philosophy and the perfection of truth. In this, as already said, the wise of this world were made foolish; because proceeding by the natural document alone, making account only of the elements and appearance of the world, they missed the instructive instances of Grace: which in spite of humble guise afford the clearer insight into truth. This is Hugo’s scheme of knowledge; it begins with cogitatio, then proceeds through meditatio to contemplatio of the creature world, and finally of the Creator. The arts and sciences, as well as the face of nature, afford a simulacrum of the unseen Power; but all this knowledge by itself will not bring man to the perfect knowledge of God. For this he needs the exemplaria of Grace, shown through the incarnation of the Word. Only by virtue of this added means, may man attain to perfect contemplation of the truth of God. That end and final summit is beyond reason’s reach; but the attainment of rational knowledge makes part of the path thither. Keen as was Hugo’s intellectual nature, his interest in reason was coupled with a deeper interest in that which reason might neither include nor understand. The intellect does not include the emotional and immediately desiderative elements of human nature; neither can it comprehend the infinite which is God; and Hugo drew toward God not only through his intellect, but likewise through his desiderative nature, with its yearnings of religious love. That love with him was rational, since its object satisfied his mind as far as his mind could comprehend it. So Hugo’s intellectual interests were connected with the emotional side of human nature, and also led up to what transcended reason. Thus they led to what was a mystery because too great for human reason, and they included that which also was somewhat of a mystery to reason because lying partly outside its sphere. Hugo is an instance of the intellectual nature which will not rest in reason’s province, but feels equally impelled to find expression for matters that either exceed the mind, or do not altogether belong to it. Such an intellect is impelled to formulate its convictions in regard to these; its negative conviction that it cannot comprehend them, and why it cannot; and its more positive conviction of their value—of the absolute worth of God, and of man’s need of Him, and of the love and fear by which men may come close to Him, or avoid His wrath. What Hugo has had to say as to cogitation, meditation, and contemplation, represents his analysis of the stages by which a sufficing sense may be reached of the Creator and His world of creature-kind. In this final wisdom and ardour of contemplation, both human reason and human love have part. The intellect advances along its lines, considering the world, and drawing inferences as to the unseen Being who created and sustains it. Mind’s unaided power will not reach. But by the grace of God, supremely manifested in the Incarnation, the man is humbled, and his heart is touched and drawn to love the power of the divine pity and humility. The lesson of the Incarnation and its guiding grace, emboldens the heart and enlightens the mind; and the man’s faculties are strengthened and uplifted to the contemplation of God, wherein the mind is satisfied and the heart at rest. We have here the elements of piety, intellectual and devotional. Hugo is an example of their union; they also preserve their equal weight in Aquinas. But because Hugo emphasizes the limitations of the intellect, and so ardently recognizes the heart’s yearning and immediacy of apperception, he is what is styled a mystic; a term which we are now in a position to consider, and to some extent exchange for other phrases of more definite significance.[494] Quite to avoid the term is not possible, inasmuch as the conception certainly includes what is mysterious because unknowable through reason. For it includes a sense of the supreme, a sense of God, who is too great for human reason to comprehend, and therefore a mystery. And it includes a yearning toward God, the desire of Him, and the feeling of love. The last is also mysterious, in that it has not exclusive part with reason, but springs as well from feeling. Yet the essence or nature of this spirit of piety which we would analyse, consists in consciousness of the reality of the object of its yearning or devotion. Not altogether through induction or deduction, but with an irrational immediacy of conviction, it feels and knows its object. In place of the knowledge which is mediated through rational processes, is substituted a conviction upheld by yearning, love’s conviction indeed, of the reality and presence of that which is all the greater and more worthy because it baffles reason. And the final goal attainable by this mystic love is, even as the goal of other love, union with the Beloved. The mystic spirit is an essential part of all piety or religion, which relates always and forever to the rationally unknown, and therefore mysterious. Without a consciousness of mystery, there can be neither piety nor religion. Nor can there be piety without some devotion to God, nor the deepest and most ardent forms of piety, without fervent love of God. This devotion and this love supply strength of conviction, creating a realness of communion with the divine, and an assurance of the soul’s rest and peace therein. But that the intellect has part, Hugo abundantly demonstrates. One must have perceptions, and thought’s severest wrestlings—cogitatio and meditatio—before reaching that first stage of wide and sure intelligence, which relates to the creature world, and affords a broad basis of assurance, whence at last the soul shall spring to God. Intellectual perceptions and rational knowledge, and all the mind’s puttings together of its data in inductions and deductions and constructions, form a basis for contemplation, and yield material upon which the emotional side of human nature may exercise itself in yearning and devotion. Herein the constructive imagination works; which is intellectual faculty illuminated and impelled by the emotions. This spirit actualizes itself in the power and scope of its resultant conviction, by which it makes real to itself the qualities, attributes, and actions of its object, God, and the nature of man’s relationship or union with the divine. In its final energy, when only partly conscious of its intellectual inductions, it discards syllogisms, quite dissatisfied with their devious and hesitating approach. Instead, by the power of love, it springs directly to its God. Nevertheless the soul which feels the inadequacy of reason even to voice the soul’s desires, will seek means of expression wherein reason still will play a submerged part. The soul is seeking to express what is not altogether expressible in direct and rational statement. It seeks adumbrations, partial unveilings of its sentiments, which shall perhaps make up in warmth of colour what they lack in definiteness of line. In fine, it seeks symbols. Such symbolism must be large and elastic, in order to shadow forth the soul’s relations with the Infinite; it must also be capable of carrying passion, that it may satisfy the soul’s craving to give voice to its great love. In Greek thought as well as in the Hellenizing Judaism of a Philo, symbolism, or more specifically speaking, allegorical interpretation, was obviously apologetic, seeking to cloud in naturalistic interpretations the doings of the rather over-human gods of Greece.[495] But it sprang also from the unresting need of man to find expression for that sense of things which will not fit definite statement. This was the need which became creative, and of necessity fancifully creative, with Plato. Though he would have nothing to do with falsifying apologetics, all the more he felt the need of allegories, to suggest what his dialectic could not formulate. In the early times of the Church militant of Christ, allegorical interpretation was exploited to defend the Faith; in the later patristic period, the Faith had so far triumphed, that allegory as a sword of defence and attack might be sheathed, or just allowed to glitter now and then half-drawn. But piety’s other need, with increasing energy, compelled the use of symbols and articulate allegory to express the directly inexpressible. Thereafter through the Middle Ages, while the use of allegory as a defence against the Gentiles slumbered, so much more the other need of it, and the sense of the universal symbolism of material things, filled the minds of men; and in age-long answer to this need, allegory, symbolism, became part of the very spirit of the mediaeval time. Thus it became the universal vehicle of pious expression: it may be said almost to have co-extended with all mediaeval piety. It was ardently loving, as with St. Bernard; it might be filled with scarlet passion, as with Mechthild of Magdeburg; or it might be used in the self-conscious, and yet inspired vision-pictures of Hildegard of Bingen. And indeed with almost any mediaeval man or woman, it might keep talking, as a way of speech, obtrusively, conventionally, ad nauseam. For indeed in treatise after treatise even of the better men, allegory seems on the one hand to become very foolish and perverse, banal, intolerably talking on and on beyond the point; or again we sense its mechanism, hear the creaking of its jaws, while no living voice emerges,—and we suspect that the mystery of life, if it may not be compassed by direct statement, also lies deeper than allegorical conventions. Hugo’s great De sacramentis showed the equipoise of intellectual and pietistic interests in him, and the Platonic quality of his mind’s sure sense of the reality of the supersensual.[496] Other treatises of his show his yearning piety, and the Augustinian quality of his soul, “made toward thee, and unquiet till it rests in thee.” The De arca Noe morali,[497] that is to say, the Ark of Noah viewed in its moral significance, is charming in its spiritual refinement, and interesting in its catholic intellectual reflections. The Prologue presents a situation: “As I was sitting once among the brethren, and they were asking questions, and I replying, and many matters had been cited and adduced, it came about that all of us at once began to marvel vehemently at the unstableness and disquiet of the human heart; and we began to sigh. Then they pleaded with me that I would show them the cause of such whirlings of thought in the human heart; and they besought me to set forth by what art or exercise of discipline this evil might be removed. I indeed wished to satisfy my brethren, so far as God might aid me, and untie the knot of their questions, both by authority and by argument. I knew it would please them most if I should compose my matter to read to them at table. “It was my plan to show first whence arise such violent changes in man’s heart, and then how the mind may be led to keep itself in stable peace. And although I had no doubt that this is the proper work of grace, rather than of human labour, nevertheless I know that God wishes us to co-operate. Besides it is well to know the magnitude of our weakness and the mode of its repairing, since so much the deeper will be our gratitude. “The first man was so created, that if he had not sinned, he would always have beheld in present contemplation his Creator’s face, and by always seeing Him, would have loved Him always, and, by loving, would always have clung close to Him, and by clinging to Him who was eternal, would have possessed life without end. Evidently the one true good of man was perfect knowledge of his Creator. But he was driven from the face of the Lord, since for his sin he was struck with the blindness of ignorance, and passed from that intimate light of contemplation; and he inclined his mind to earthly desires, as he began to forget the sweetness of the divine. Thus he was made a wanderer and fugitive over the earth. A wanderer indeed, because of disordered concupiscence; and a fugitive, through guilty conscience, which feels every man’s hand against it. For every temptation will overcome the man who has lost God’s aid. “So man’s heart which had been kept secure by divine love, and one by loving one, afterwards began to flow here and there through earthly desires. For the mind which knows not to love its true good, is never stable and never rests. Hence restlessness, and ceaseless labour, and disquiet, until the man turns and adheres to Him. The sick heart wavers and quivers; the cause of its disease is love of the world; the remedy, the love of God.” Hugo’s object is to give rest to the restless heart, by directing its love to God. One still bears in mind his three plains of knowledge, forming perhaps the three stages of ascent, at the top of which is found the knowledge that turns to divine contemplation and love. There may be a direct and simple love of God for simple souls; but for the man of mind, knowledge precedes love. “In two ways God dwells in the human heart, to wit, through knowledge and through love; yet the dwelling is one, since every one who knows Him, loves, and no one can love without knowing. Knowledge through cognition of the Faith erects the structure; love through virtue, paints the edifice with colour.”[498] Then make a habitation for God in thy heart. This is the great matter, and indeed all: for this, Scripture exists, and the world was made, and God became flesh, through His humility making man sublime. The Ark of Noah is the type of this spiritual edifice, as it is also the type of the Church. The piety and allegory of this work rise as from a basis of knowledge. The allegory indeed is drawn out and out, until it seems to become sheer circumlocution. This was the mediaeval way, and Hugo’s too, alas! We will not follow further in this treatise, nor take up his De arca Noe mystica,[499] which carries out into still further detail the symbolism of the Ark, and applies it to the Church and the people of God. Hugo has also left a colloquy between man and his soul on the true love, which lies in spiritual meditation.[500] But it is clear that the reaches of Hugo’s yearning are still grounded in intellectual considerations, though these may be no longer present in the mind of him whose consciousness is transformed to love. One may discern the same progression, from painful thought to surer contemplation, and thence to the heart’s devoted communion, in him whom we have called the Thor and Loki of the Church. No twelfth-century soul loved God more zealously than St. Bernard. He was not strong in abstract reasoning. His mind needed the compulsion of the passions to move it to sublime conclusions. Commonly he is dubbed a mystic. But his piety and love of God poise themselves on a basis of consideration before springing to soar on other wings. In his De consideratione,[501] Bernard explains that word in the sense given by Hugo to meditatio, while he uses contemplatio very much as Hugo does. It applies to things that have become certain to the mind, while “consideratio is busy investigating. In this sense contemplatio may be defined as the true and certain intuition of the mind (intuitus animi) regarding anything, or the sure apprehension of the true: while consideratio is thought intently searching, or the mind’s endeavour to track out the true.”[502] Contemplatio, even though it forget itself in ecstasy, must be based on prior consideration; then it may take wings of its own, or rather (with orthodox Hugo and Bernard) wings of grace, and fly to the bosom of its God. This flight is the immediacy of conviction and the ecstasy which follows. One may even perceive the thinking going on during the soul’s outpour of love. For the mind still supports the soul’s ardour with reasonings, original or borrowed, as appears in the second sermon of that long series preached by Bernard on Canticles to his own spiritual Élite of Clairvaux.[503] The saintly orator is yearning, yearning for Christ Himself; he will have naught of Moses or Isaiah; nor does he desire dreams, or care for angels’ visits: ipse, ipse me osculetur, cries his soul in the words of Canticles—let Him kiss me. The phrasing seems symbolical; but the yearning is direct, and at least rhetorically overmastering. The emotion is justified by its reasons. They lie in the personality of Christ and Bernard’s love of Him, rising from all his knowledge of Him, even from his experience of Jesus’ whisperings to the soul. He knows how vastly Jesus surpasses the human prophets who prefigured or foretold Him: ipsos longe superat Jesus meus—the word meus is love’s very articulation. The orator cries: “Listen! Let the kissing mouth be the Word assuming flesh; and the mouth kissed be the flesh which is assumed; then the kiss which is consummated between them is the persona compacted of the two, to wit, the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” This identical allegory goes back to Origen’s Commentary on Canticles. Bernard has kindled it with an intimate love of Jesus, which is not Origen’s. But the thought explains and justifies Bernard’s desire to be kissed by the kiss of His mouth, and so to be infolded in the divine love which “gave His only-begotten Son,” and also became flesh. Os osculans signifies the Incarnation: one realizes the emotional power which that saving thought would take through such a metaphor. At the end of his sermon, Bernard sums up the conclusion, so that his hearers may carry it away: “It is plain that this holy kiss was a grace needed by the world, to give faith to the weak, and satisfy the desire of the perfect. The kiss itself is none other than the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns God, per omnia saecula saeculorum, Amen.” III There is small propriety in speaking of these men of the first half of the twelfth century as Platonists or Aristotelians; nor is there great interest in trying to find in Plato or Aristotle or Plotinus the specific origin of any of their thoughts. They were apt to draw on the source nearest and most convenient; and one must remember that their immediate philosophic antecedents were not the distinct systems of Plato and Aristotle and Plotinus, but rather the late pagan eras of eclecticism, followed by that strongly motived syntheticism of the Church Fathers which selected whatever might accord with their Christian scheme. So Abaelard must not be called an Aristotelian. Neither he nor his contemporaries knew what an Aristotelian was, and when they called Abaelard Peripateticus, they meant one skilled in the logic which was derived from the simpler treatises of Aristotle’s Organon. Nor will we call Hugo a Platonist, in spite of his fine affinities with Plato; for many of Hugo’s thoughts, his classification of the sciences for example, pointed back to Aristotle. Abaelard, Hugo, St. Bernard suggest the triangulation of the epoch’s intellectual interests. Peter Lombard, somewhat their junior, presents its compend of accepted and partly digested theology. He took his method from Abaelard, and drew whole chapters of his work from Hugo; but his great source, which was also theirs, was Augustine. The Lombard was, and was to be, a representative man; for his Sentences brought together the ultimate problems which exercised the minds of the men of his time and after. The early and central decades of the twelfth century offer other persons who may serve to round out our general notion of the character of the intellectual interests which occupied the period before the rediscovery of Aristotle, that is, of the substantial Aristotelian encyclopaedia of knowledge. Among such Adelard of Bath (England) was somewhat older than Abaelard. His keen pursuit of knowledge made him one of its early pilgrims to Spain and Greece. He compiled a book of Quaestiones naturales, and another called De eodem et diverso,[504] in which he struggled with the problem of universals, and with palpable problems of psychology. His cosmology shows a genial culling from the Timaeus fragment of Plato, and such other bits of Greek philosophy as he had access to. Adelard was influenced by the views of men who taught or studied at Chartres. Bernard of Chartres, the first of the great Chartrian teachers of the early twelfth century,[505] wrote on Porphyry, and after his death was called by John of Salisbury perfectissimus inter Platonicos saeculi nostri. He was one of those extreme realists whose teachings might bear pantheistic fruit in his disciples; he had also a Platonistic imagination, leading him to see in Nature a living organism. Bernard’s younger brother, Thierry, also called of Chartres, extended his range of studies, and compiled numerous works on natural knowledge, indicating his wide reading and receptive nature. His realism brought him very close to pantheism, which indeed flowered poetically in his admirer or pupil, Bernard Silvestris of Tours. If we should analyze the contents of the latter’s De mundi universitate, it might be necessary to affirm that the author was a dualistic thinker, in that he recognized two first principles, God and matter; and also that he was a pantheist, because of the way in which he sees in God the source of Nature: “This mind (nous) of the supreme God is soul (intellectus), and from its divinity Nature is born.”[506] One should not, however, drive the heterogeneous thoughts of these twelfth-century people to their opposite conclusions. A moderate degree of historical insight should prevent our interpreting their gleanings from the past by formulas of our own greater knowledge. Doubtless their books—Hugo’s as well as Thierry’s and Bernard Silvester’s—have enough of contradiction if we will probe for it with a spirit not their own. But if we will see with their eyes and perceive with their feelings, we shall find ourselves resting with each of them in some unity of personal temperament; and that, rather than any half-borrowed thought, is Hugo or Thierry or Bernard Silvestris. Silvester’s book, De mundi universitate, sive Megacosmus et microcosmus, is a half poem, like BoËthius’s De consolatione and a number of mediaeval productions to which there has been occasion to allude. It is fruitless to dissect such a composite of prose and verse. In it Natura speaks to Nous, and then Nous to Natura; the four elements come into play, and nine hierarchies of angels; the stars in their firmaments, and the genesis of things on earth; Physics and her daughters, Theorica and Practica, and all the figures of Greek mythology. An analysis of such a book will turn it to nonsense, and destroy the breath of that twelfth-century temperament which loved to gather driftwood from the wreckage of the ancient world of thought. Thus perhaps they expected to draw to themselves, even from the pagan flotsam, some congenial explanation of the universe and man.A far more acute thinker was Gilbert de la PorrÉe,[507] who taught at Chartres for a number of years, before advancing upon Paris in 1141. He next became Bishop of Poictiers, and died in 1154. Like Abaelard, he was primarily a logician, and occupied himself with the problem of universals, taking a position not so different from Abaelard’s. Like Abaelard also, Gilbert was brought to task before a council, in which St Bernard sought to be the guiding, scilicet, condemning spirit. But the condemnation was confined to certain sentences, which when cut from their context and presented in distorting isolation, the author willingly sacrificed to the flames. He refused, some time afterwards, to discuss his views privately with the Abbot of Clairvaux, saying that the latter was too inexpert a theologian to understand them. Gilbert’s most famous work, De sex principiis, attempted to complete the last six of Aristotle’s ten Categories, which the philosopher had treated cursorily; it was almost to rival the work of the Stagirite in authority, for instance, with Albertus Magnus, who wrote a Commentary upon it in the same spirit with which he commented on the logical treatises of the Organon. In the same year with Gilbert (1154) died a man of different mental tendencies, William of Conches,[508] who likewise had been a pupil of Bernard of Chartres. He was for a time the tutor of Henry Plantagenet. William was interested in natural knowledge, and something of a humanist. He made a Commentary on the Timaeus, and wrote various works on the philosophy of Nature, in which he wavered around an atomistic explanation of the world, yet held fast to the Biblical Creation, to save his orthodoxy. He also pursued the study of medicine, which was a specialty at Chartres; through the treatises of Constantinus Africanus[509] he had some knowledge of the pathological theories of Galen and Hippocrates. For his interest in physical knowledge, he may be regarded as a precursor of Roger Bacon. On the other hand, he was a humanist in his strife against those “Cornificiani” who would know no more Latin than was needful;[510] and he compiled from the pagan moralists a sort of Summa. It is called, in fact, a Summa moralium philosophorum (an interesting title, connecting it with the Christian Summae sententiarum).[511] It treats the virtues under the head of de honesto; and under that of de utile, reviews the other good things of mind, body, and estate. It also discusses whether there may be a conflict between the honestum and the utile. These men of the first half of the twelfth century lived before the new revealing of the Aristotelian philosophy and natural knowledge coming at the century’s close. Their muster is finally completed by two younger men, the one an Englishman and the other a Lowlander. The youthful years of both synchronize with the old age of the men of whom we have been speaking. For John of Salisbury was born not far from the year 1115, and died in 1180; and Alanus de Insulis (Lille) was probably born in 1128, and lived to the beginning of the next century. They are spiritually connected with the older men because they were taught by them, and because they had small share in the coming encyclopaedic knowledge. But they close the group: John of Salisbury closing it by virtue of his critical estimate of its achievement; Alanus by virtue of his final rehandling of the body of intellectual data at its disposal, to which he may have made some slight addition. Abaelard knew and used the simpler treatises of the Aristotelian Organon of logic. He had not studied the Analytics and the Topics, and of course was unacquainted with the body of Aristotle’s philosophy outside of logic. John of Salisbury and Alanus know the entire Organon; but neither one nor the other knows the rest of Aristotle, which Alexander of Hales was the first to make large use of. John of Salisbury, Little John, Johannes Parvus, as he was called, was the best classical scholar of his time.[512] His was an acute and active intellect, which never tired of hearing and weighing the views of other men. He was, moreover, a man of large experience, travelling much, and listening to all the teachers prominent in his youth. Also he was active in affairs, being at one time secretary to Thibaut, Archbishop of Canterbury, and then the intimate of Becket, of Henry II., and Pope Adrian IV.! A finished scholar, who knew not one thing, but whatever might be known, and was enlightened by the training of the world, Little John critically estimates the learning and philosophy of the men he learns from. Having always an independent point of view he makes acute remarks upon it all, and admirable contributions to the sum of current thought. But chiefly he seems to us as one who looks with even eye upon whatsoever comes within his vision. He knows the weaknesses of men and the limitations of branches of discipline; knows, for instance, that dialectic is sterile by itself, but efficient as an aid to other disciplines. So, as to logic, John keeps his own point of view, and is always reasonable and practical.[513] Likewise, with open mind, he considers what there may be in the alleged science of the Mathematicians, i.e. diviners and astrologers. He uses such phrases as “probabilia quidem sunt haec ... sed tamen the venom lies under the honey!” For this science sets a fatal necessity on things, and would even intrude into the knowledge of the future reserved for God’s majesty. And as John considers the order of events to come, and the diviner’s art, cornua succrescunt—the horns of more than one dilemma grow.[514] John knew more than any man of the ancient philosophies.[515] For himself, of course he loved knowledge; yet he would not dissever it from its value in the art of living. “Wisdom indeed is a fountain, from which pour forth the streams which water the whole earth; they fill not alone the garden of delights of the divine page, but flow on to the Gentiles, and do not altogether fail even the Ethiopians.... It is certain that the faithful and wise reader, who from love keeps learning’s watch, escapes vice and draws near to life.”[516] Philosophy is the moderatrix omnium (a favourite phrase with John); the true philosopher, as Plato says, is a lover of God: and so philosophia is amor divinitatis. Its precept is to love God with all our strength, and our neighbour as ourselves: “He who by philosophizing has reached charitas, has attained philosophy’s true end.”[517] John goes on to show how deeply they err who think philosophy is but a thing of words and arguments: many of those who multiply words, by so doing burden the mind. Virtue inseparably accompanies wisdom; this is John’s sum of the matter. Clearly he is not always, or commonly, wrestling with ultimate metaphysical problems; he busies himself, acutely but not metaphysically, with the wisdom of life. He too can use the language of piety and contemplation. In the sixth chapter of his De septem septenis (The seven Sevens) he gives the seven grades of contemplation—meditatio, soliloquium, circumspectio, ascensio, revelatio, emissio, inspiratio.[518] He presents the matter succinctly, thus perhaps giving clarity to current pietistic phraseology. Alanus de Insulis was a man of renown in his life-time, and after his death won the title of Doctor Universalis. Although the fame of scholar, philosopher, theologian, poet, may have uplifted him during his years of strength, he died a monk at Citeaux, in the year 1202. Fame came justly to him, for he was learned in the antique literature, and a gifted Latin poet, while as thinker and theologian he made skilful and catholic use of his thorough knowledge of whatever the first half of the twelfth century had achieved in thought and system. Elsewhere he has been considered as a poet;[519] here we merely observe his position and accomplishment in matters of salvation and philosophy.[520] Alanus possessed imagination, language, and a faculty of acute exposition. His sentences, especially his definitions, are pithy, suggestive, and vivid. He projected much thought as well as fantasy into his poem, Anticlaudianus, and his cantafable, De planctu naturae. He showed himself a man of might, and insight too, in his Contra haereticos. His suggestive pithiness of diction lends interest to his encyclopaedia of definitions, Distinctiones dictionum theologicalium; and his keen power of reasoning succinctly from axiomatic premises is evinced in his De arte fidei catholicae. The intellectual activities of Alanus fell in the latter decades of the twelfth century, when mediaeval thought seemed for the moment to be mending its nets, and preparing for a further cast in the new waters of Aristotelianism. Alanus is busy with what has already been won; he is unconscious of the new greater knowledge, which was preparing its revelations. He is not even a man of the transition from the lesser to the greater intellectual estate; but is rather a final compendium of the lesser. Himself no epoch-making reasoner, he uses the achievements of Abaelard and Hugo, of Gilbert de la PorrÉe and William of Conches, and others. Neither do his works unify and systematize the results of his studies. He is rather a re-phraser. Yet his refashioning is not a mere thing of words; it proceeds with the vitalizing power of the man’s plastic and creative temperament. One may speak of him as keen and acquisitive intellectually, and creative through his temperament. Alanus shows a catholic receptivity for all the mingled strains of thought, Platonic, Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean, which fed the labours of his predecessors. He has studied the older sources, the Timaeus fragment, also Apuleius and BoËthius of course. His chief blunder is his misconception of Aristotle as a logician and confuser of words (verborum turbator)—a phrase, perhaps, consciously used with poetic license. For he has made use of much that came originally from the Stagirite. Within his range of opportunity, Alanus was a universal reader, and his writings discover traces of the men of importance from Pseudo-Dionysius and Eriugena down to John of Salisbury and Gundissalinus. These remarks may take the place of any specific presentation of Alanus’s work in logic, of his view of universals, of his notions of physics, of nature, of matter and form, of man’s mind and body, and of the Triune Godhead.[521] In his cosmology, however, we may note his imaginatively original employment of the conception or personification of Nature. God is the Creator, and Nature is His creature, and His vice-regent or vicarious maker, working the generation and decay of things material and changeable.[522] This thought, imaginatively treated, makes a good part of the poetry of the De planctu and the Anticlaudianus. The conception with him is full of charming fantasy, and we look back through Bernardus Silvestris and other writers to Plato’s divine fooling in the Timaeus, not as the specific, but generic, origin of such imaginative views of the contents and generation of the world. Such imaginings were as fantasy to science, when compared with the solid and comprehensive consideration of the material world which was to come a few years after Alanus’s death through the encyclopaedic Aristotelian knowledge presented in the works of Alexander of Hales and Albertus Magnus.
CHAPTER XXXVII THE UNIVERSITIES, ARISTOTLE, AND THE MENDICANTS Intellectually, the thirteenth century in western Europe is marked by three closely connected phenomena: the growth of Universities, the discovery and appropriation of Aristotle, and the activities of Dominicans and Franciscans. These movements were universal, in that the range of none of them was limited by racial or provincial boundaries. Yet a line may still be drawn between Italy, where law and medicine were cultivated, and the North, where theology with logic and metaphysics were supreme. Absorption in these subjects produced a common likeness in the intellectual processes of men in France, England, and Germany, whose writings were to be no longer markedly affected by racial idiosyncrasies. This was true of the logical controversy regarding universals, so prominent in the first part of the twelfth century. It was very true of the great intellectual movement of the later twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, to wit, the coming of Aristotle to dominance, in spite of the counter-currents of Platonic Augustinianism. The men who followed the new knowledge had slight regard for ties of home, and travelled eagerly in search of learning. So, even as from far and wide those who could study Roman law came to Bologna, the study of theology and all that philosophy included drew men to Paris. Thither came the keen-minded from Italy and from England; from the Low Countries and from Germany; and from the many very different regions now covered by the name of France. Wherever born and of whatever race, the devotees of philosophy and theology at some period of their career reached Paris, learned and taught there, and were affected by the universalizing influence of an international aggregate of scholarship. So had it been with Breton Abaelard, with German Hugo, and with Lombard Peter; so with English John, hight of Salisbury. And in the following times of culmination, Albertus Magnus comes in his maturity from Germany; and his marvellous pupil Thomas, born of noble Norman stock in southern Italy, follows his master, eventually to Paris. So Bonaventura of lowly mid-Italian birth likewise learns and teaches there; and that unique Englishman, Roger Bacon, and after him Duns Scotus. These few greatest names symbolize the centralizing of thought in the crowded and huddled lecture-rooms of the City on the Seine. The origins of the great mediaeval Universities can scarcely be accommodated to simple statement. Their history is frequently obscure, and always intricate; and the selection of a specific date or factor as determining the inception, or distinctive development, of these mediaeval creations is likely to be but arbitrary. They had no antique prototype: nothing either in Athens or Rome ever resembled these corporations of masters and students, with their authoritative privileges, their fixed curriculum, and their grades of formally certified attainment. Even the Alexandria of the Ptolemies, with all the pedantry of its learned litterateurs and their minute study of the past, has nothing to offer like the scholastic obsequiousness of the mediaeval University, which sought to set upon one throne the antique philosophy and the Christian revelation, that it might with one and the same genuflection bow down before them both. It behoves us to advert to the conditions influencing the growth of Universities, and give a little space to those which were chief among them. The energetic human advance distinguishing the twelfth century in western Europe exhibits among its most obvious phenomena an increased mobility in all classes of society, and a tendency to gather into larger communities and form strong corporate associations for profit or protection. New towns came into being, and old ones grew apace. Some of them in the north of Europe wrested their freedom from feudal lords; and both in the north and south, municipalities attained a more complex organization, while within them groups of men with common interests formed themselves into powerful guilds. As strangers of all kinds—merchants, craftsmen, students—came and went, their need of protection became pressing, and was met in various ways. No kind of men were more quickly touched by the new mobility than the thousands of youthful learners who desired to extend their knowledge, or, in some definite field, perfect their education. In the eleventh century, such would commonly have sought a monastery, near or far. In the twelfth and then in the thirteenth, they followed the human currents to the cities, where knowledge flourished as well as trade, and tolerable accommodation might be had for teachers and students. Certain towns, some for more, some for less, obvious reasons, became homes of study. Bologna, Paris, Oxford are the chief examples. Irnerius, famed as the founder of the systematic study of the Roman law, and Gratian, the equally famous orderer of the Canon law, taught or wrote at Bologna when the twelfth century was young. Their fame drew crowds of laymen and ecclesiastics, who desired to equip themselves for advancement through the business of the law, civil or ecclesiastical. At the same time, hundreds, which grew to thousands, were attracted to the Paris schools—the school of Notre Dame, where William of Champeaux held forth; the school of St. Victor, where he afterwards established himself, and where Hugo taught; and the school of St. GeneviÈve, where Abaelard lectured on dialectic and theology. These were palpable gatherings together of material for a University. What first brought masters and students to Oxford a few decades later is not so clear. But Oxford had been an important town long before a University lodged itself there. In the twelfth century, citizenship scarcely protected one beyond the city walls. A man carried but little safety with him. Only an insignificant fraction of the students at Bologna, and of both masters and students at Paris and Oxford, were citizens of those towns. The rest had come from everywhere. Paris and Bologna held an utterly cosmopolitan, international, concourse of scholar-folk. And these scholars, turbulent enough themselves, and dwelling in a turbulent foreign city, needed affiliation there, and protection and support. Organization was an obvious necessity, and if possible the erection of a civitas within a civitas, a University within a none too friendly town. This was the primal situation, and the primal need. Through somewhat different processes, and under different circumstances, these exigencies evoked a University in Bologna, Paris, and Oxford.[523] In Italy, where the instincts of ancient Rome never were extinguished, where some urban life maintained itself through the early helpless mediaeval centuries, where during the same period an infantile humanism did not cease to stammer; where “grammar” was studied and taught by laymen, and the “ars dictaminis” practised men in the forms of legal instruments, it was but natural that the new intellectual energies of the twelfth century should address themselves to the study of the Roman law, which, although debased and barbarized, had never passed into desuetude. And inasmuch as abstract theology did not attract the Italian temperament or meet the conditions of papal politics in Italy, it was likewise natural that ecclesiastical energies should be directed to the equally useful and closely related canon law. Such studies with their practical ends could best be prosecuted at some civic centre. In the first part of the twelfth century, Irnerius lectured at Bologna upon the civil law; a generation later, Gratian published his Decretum there. The specific reasons inducing the former to open his lectures in that city are not known; but a large and thrifty town set at the meeting of the great roads from central Italy to the north and east, was an admirable place for a civil doctor and his audience, as the event proved. Gratian was a monk in a Bologna convent, and may have listened to Irnerius. The publication of his Decretum from Bologna, by that time (cir. 1142) famous for jurisprudence, lent authority to this work, whose universal recognition was to enhance in turn Bologna’s reputation. From the time of this inception of juristic studies, the talents of the doctors, and the city’s fame, drew a prodigious concourse of students from all the lands of western Europe. The Doctors of the Civil and Canon Laws organized themselves into one, and subsequently into two, Colleges. Apparently they had become an efficient association by the third quarter of the twelfth century. But the University of Bologna was to be constituted par excellence, not of one or more colleges of doctors, but of societies of students. The persons who came for legal instruction were not boys getting their first education in the Arts. They were men studying a profession, and among them were many individuals of wealth and consequence, holding perhaps civil or ecclesiastic office in the places whence they came. The vast majority had this in common, that they were foreigners, with no civil rights in Bologna. It behoved them to organize for their protection and mutual support, and for the furtherance of the purposes for which they had come. That a body of men in a foreign city should live under the law of their own home, or the law of their own making, did not appear extraordinary in the twelfth century. It was not so long since the principle that men carried the law of their home with them, had been widely recognized, and in all countries the clergy still lived under the law of the Church. The gains accruing from the presence of a great number of foreign students might induce the authorities of Bologna to permit them to organize as student guilds, and regulate their affairs by rules of their own, even as was done by other guilds in most Italian cities. At Bologna the power of Guelf and Ghibeline clubs, and of craftsmen’s guilds, rivalled that of the city magistrates. There is some indirect evidence that these students first divided themselves into four Nationes. If so, the arrangement did not last. For by the middle of the thirteenth century they are found organized in two Universitates, or corporations, a Universitas Citramontanorum and a Universitas Ultramontanorum; each under its own Rector. These two corporations of foreign students constituted the University. The Professors did not belong to them, and therefore were not members of the University. Indeed they fought against the recognition of this University of students, asserting that the students were but their pupils. But the students prevailed, strong in their numbers, and in the weapon which they did not hesitate to use, that of migration to another city, which cut off the incomes of the Professors and diminished the repute and revenue of Bologna. So great became the power of the student body, that it brought the Professors to complete subjection, paying them their salaries, regulating the time and mode of lecturing, and compelling them to swear obedience to the Rectors. The Professors protested, but submitted. To make good its domination over them, and its independence as against the city, the student University migrated to Arezzo in 1215 and to Padua in 1222.[524] In origin as well as organization, the University of Paris differed from Bologna. It was the direct successor of the cathedral school of Notre Dame. This had risen to prominence under William of Champeaux. But Abaelard drew to Paris thousands of students for William’s hundreds (or at least hundreds for William’s tens); and Abaelard at the height of his popularity taught at the school of St. GeneviÈve, across the Seine. Therefore this school also, although fading out after Abaelard’s time, should be regarded as a causal predecessor of the Paris University. So, for that matter, should the neighbouring school of St. Victor, founded by the discomfited William; for its reputation under Hugo and Richard drew devout students from near and far, and augmented the scholastic fame of Paris. It was both the privilege and duty of the Chancellor of Notre Dame to license competent Masters to open schools near the cathedral. In the course of time, these Masters formed an Association, and assumed the right to admit to their Society the licentiates of the Chancellor, to wit, the new Masters who were about to begin to teach. In the decades following Abaelard’s death, the Masters who lectured in the vicinity of Notre Dame increased in number. They spread with their schools beyond the island, and taught in houses on the bridges. They were Masters, that is, teachers, in the Arts. As the twelfth century gave way to the thirteenth, interest in the Arts waned before the absorbing passion for metaphysical theology. This was a higher branch of study, for which the Arts had come to be looked on as a preparation. So the scholars of the schools of Arts became impatient to graduate, that is, to reach the grade of Master, in order to pass on to the higher study of theology. A result was that the course of study in the Arts was shortened, while Masters multiplied in number. Their Society seems to have become a definite and formal corporate body or guild, not later than the year 1175. Herein was the beginning of the Paris University. It had become a studium generale, like Bologna, because there were many Masters, and students from everywhere were admitted to study in their schools. Gradually the University came to full corporate existence. From about 1210, written statutes exist, passed by the Society of Masters; at the same date a Bull of Innocent III. recognizes the Society as a Corporation. Then began a long struggle for supremacy, between the Masters and the Chancellor: it was the Chancellor’s function to grant the licence to become a Master; but it was the privilege of the Society to admit the licentiate to membership. The action of both being thus requisite, time alone could tell with whom the control eventually should rest. Was the self-governing University to prevail, or the Chancellor of the Cathedral? The former won the victory. The Masters in Arts constituted par excellence the University, because they far outnumbered the Masters in the upper Faculties of Theology, Law, and Medicine. They were the dominant body; what they decided on, the other Faculties acquiesced in. These Masters in Arts, besides being numerous, were young, not older than the law students at Bologna. With their still younger students,[525] they made the bulk of the entire University, and were the persons who most needed protection in their lawful or unlawful conduct. At some indeterminate period they divided themselves into the four Nationes, French, Normans, Picards, and English. They voted by Nationes in their meetings; but from a period apparently as early as their organization, a Rector was elected for all four Nationes, and not one Rector for each. There were, however, occasional schisms or failures to agree. It was to be the fortune of the Rector thus elected to supplant the Chancellor of the Cathedral as the real head of the University. The vastly greater number of the Masters in Arts were actually students in the higher Faculties of Theology, Law,[526] or Medicine, for which graduation in the Arts was the ordinary prerequisite. The Masters or Doctors of these three higher Faculties, at least from the year 1213, determined the qualifications of candidates in their departments. Nevertheless the Rector of the Faculty of Arts continued his advance toward the headship of the whole University. The oath taken by the Bachelors in the Arts, of obedience to that Faculty and its Rector, was strengthened in 1256, so as to bind the oath-taker so long as he should continue a member of the University. The University had not obtained its privileges without insistence, nor without the protest of action as well as word. Its first charter of privileges from the king was granted in 1200, upon its protests against the conduct of the Provost of Paris in attacking riotous students. Next, in combating the jurisdiction of the Chancellor, it obtained privileges from the Pope; and in 1229, upon failure to obtain redress for an attack from the Provost’s soldiers, ordered by the queen, Blanche of Castile, the University dispersed. Thus it resorted to the weapon by which the University of Bologna had won the confirmation of its rights. In the year 1231 the great Papal Bull, Parens scientiarum, finally confirmed the Paris University in its contentions and demands: the right to suspend lectures was sanctioned, whenever satisfaction for outrage had been refused for fifteen days; likewise the authority of the University to make statutes, and expel members for a breach of them. The Chancellor of Notre Dame and the Bishop of Paris were both constrained by the same Bull. A different struggle still awaited the University, in which it was its good fortune not to be altogether successful; for it was contending against instruments of intellectual and spiritual renovation, to wit, the Mendicant Orders. The details are difficult to unravel at this distance of time. But the Dominicans and Franciscans, in the lifetime of their founders, established themselves in Paris, and opened schools of theology. Their Professors were licensed by the Chancellor, and yet seem to have been unwilling to fall in with the customs of the University, and, for example, cease from teaching and disperse, when it saw fit to do so. The doctors of the theological Faculty became suspicious, and opposed the admission of Mendicants to the theological Faculty. The struggle lasted thirty years, until the Dominicans obtained two chairs in that Faculty, and the Franciscans perhaps the same number, on terms which looked like a victory for the Orders, but in fact represented a compromise; for the Mendicant doctors in the end apparently submitted to the statutes of the University.[527] The origin of Oxford University was different, and one may say more adventitious than that of Paris or Bologna. For Oxford was not the capital of a kingdom, nor is it known to have been an ancient seat of learning. The city was not even a bishop’s seat, a fact which had a marked effect upon the constitution of the University. The old town lay at the edge of Essex and Mercia, and its position early gave it importance politically, or rather strategically, and as a place of trade. How or whence came the nucleus of Masters and students that should grow into a University is unknown. An interesting hypothesis[528] is that it was a colony from Paris, shaken off by some academic or political disturbance. This surmise has been connected with the year 1167. Some evidence exists of a school having existed there before. Next comes a distinct statement from the year 1185, of the reading of a book before the Masters and students.[529] After this date the references multiply. In 1209, one has a veritable “dispersion,” in protest against the hanging of some scholars. A charter from the papal legate in 1214 accords certain privileges, among others that a clerk arrested by the town should be surrendered on demand of the Bishop of Lincoln[530] or the Archdeacon, or the Chancellor, whom the Bishop shall set over the scholars. This document points to the beginning of the chancellorship. The title probably was copied from Paris; but in Oxford the office was to be totally different. The Paris Chancellor was primarily a functionary of a great cathedral, who naturally maintained its prerogatives against the encroachments of university privilege. But at Oxford there was no cathedral; the Chancellor was the head of the University, probably chosen from its Masters, and had chiefly its interests at heart. Making allowance for this important difference in the Chancellor’s office, the development of the University closely resembled that of Paris. Its first extant statute, of the year 1252, prescribes that no one shall be licensed in Theology who has not previously graduated in the Arts. To the same year belongs a settlement of disputes between the Irish and northern scholars. The former were included in the Australes or southerners, one of the two Nationes composing the Faculty of Arts. The Australes included the natives of Ireland, Wales, and England south of the Trent; the other Natio, the Boreales, embraced the English and Scotch coming from north of that river. But the division into Nationes was less important than in the cosmopolitan University of Paris, and soon ceased to exist. The Faculty of Arts, however, continued even more dominant than at Paris. There was no serious quarrel with the Mendicant Orders, who established themselves at Oxford—the Dominicans in 1221, and the Franciscans three years later. The curriculum of studies appears much the same at both Universities, and, as followed in the middle of the thirteenth century, may be thus summarized. For the lower degree of Bachelor of Arts, four or five years were required; and three or four years more for the Master’s privileges. The course of study embraced grammar (Priscian), also rhetoric, and in logic the entire Organon of Aristotle, preceded by Porphyry’s Isagoge, and with the Sex principia of Gilbert de la PorrÉe added to the course. The mathematical branches of the Quadrivium also were required: arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. And finally a goodly part of the substantial philosophy of Aristotle was studied, with considerable choice permitted to the student in his selection from the works of the philosopher. At Oxford he might choose between the Physics or the De coelo et mundo, or the De anima or the De animalibus. The Metaphysics and Ethics or Politics were also required before the Bachelor could be licensed as a Master. In Theology the course of study was extremely lengthy, especially at Paris, where eight years made the minimum, and the degree of Doctor was not given before the candidate had reached the age of thirty-five. The chief subjects were Scripture and the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Besides which, the candidate had to approve himself in sermons and disputations. The latter might amount to a trial of nerve and endurance, as well as proficiency in learning, since the candidate was expected to militare in scholis, against a succession of opponents from six in the morning till six in the evening, with but an hour’s refreshment at noon.[531] In spite of the many resemblances of Oxford to Paris in organization and curriculum, the intellectual tendencies of the two Universities were not altogether similar. At Paris, speculative theology, with metaphysics and other branches of “philosophy,” regarded as its adjuncts, were of absorbing interest. At Oxford, while the same matters were perhaps supreme, a closer scholarship in language or philology was cultivated by Grosseteste, and his pupils, Adam of Marsh and Roger Bacon. The genius of observation was stirring there; and a natural science was coming into being, which was not to repose solely upon the authority of ancient books, but was to proceed by the way of observation and experiment. Yet Roger Bacon imposed upon both his philology and his natural science a certain ultimate purpose: that they should subserve the surer ascertainment of divine and saving truth, and thus still remain handmaids of theology, at least in theory.
The year 1200 may be taken to symbolize the middle of a period notable for the enlargement of knowledge. If one should take the time of this increase to extend fifty years on either side of the central point, one might say that the student of the year 1250 stood to his intellectual ancestor of the year 1150, as a man in the full possession and use of the Encyclopaedia Britannica would stand toward his father who had saved up the purchase money for the same. The most obvious cause of this was an increasing acquaintance with the productions of the so-called Arabian philosophy, and more especially with the works of Aristotle, first through translations from the Arabic, and then through translations from the Greek, which were made in order to obviate the insufficiency of the former. It would need a long excursus to review the far from simple course of so-called Arabian thought, philosophic and religious. It begins in the East, and follows the setting sun. Even before the Hegira (622) the Arabs had rubbed up against the inhabitants of Syria, Christian in name, eastern or Hellenic in culture and proclivity. Then in a century or two, when the first impulsion of Mohammedan conquest was spent, the works of Aristotle and his later Greek commentators were translated into Arabic from Syrian versions, under the encouragement of the rulers of Bagdad. The Syrian versions, as we may imagine, were somewhat eclecticized and, more especially, Neo-Platonized. So it was not the pure Aristotle that passed on into Arabic philosophy, but the Aristotelian substance interpreted through later phases of Greek and Oriental thought. Still, Aristotle was the great name, and his system furnished the nucleus of doctrine represented in this Peripatetic eclecticism which was to constitute, par excellence, Arabic philosophy. Also Greek mathematical and medical treatises were translated into Arabic from Syrian versions. El-Farabi (d. 950) and Avicenna (980-1036) were the chief glories of the Arabic philosophy of Bagdad. These two gifted men were commentators upon the works of the Stagirite, and authors of many interesting lucubrations of their own.[532] Arabian philosophy declined in the East with Avicenna’s death; but only to revive in Mussulman Spain. There its great representative was Averroes, whose life filled the last three quarters of the twelfth century. So great became his authority as an Aristotelian, with the Scholastics, that he received the name of Commentator, par excellence, even as Aristotle was par excellence, Philosophus. We need not consider the ideas of these men which were their own rather than the Stagirite’s; nor discuss the pietistic and fanatical sects among the Mussulmans, who either sought to harmonize Aristotle with the Koran, or disapproved of Greek philosophy. One readily perceives that in its task of acquisition and interpretation, with some independent thinking, and still more temperamental feeling, Arabic philosophy was the analogue of Christian scholasticism, of which it was, so to speak, the collateral ancestor.[533] And in this wise. The Commentaries of Averroes, for example, were translated into Latin; and, throughout all the mediaeval centuries, the Commentary tended to supplant the work commented on, whether that work was Holy Scripture or a treatise of Aristotle. By the middle of the thirteenth century all the important works of Averroes had been translated into Latin, and he had many followers at Paris; and before then, from the College of Toledo, had come translations of the principal works of the other chief Arabian philosophers. Of still greater importance for the Christian West was the work of Jews and Christians in Spain and Provence, in translating the Arabic versions of Aristotle into Latin, sometimes directly, and sometimes first into Hebrew and then into Latin. They attempted a literal translation, which, however, frequently failed to give the significance even of the Arabic version. These Arabic-Latin translations were of primary importance for the first introduction of Aristotle to the theologian philosophers of Christian Europe. They were not to remain the only ones. In the twelfth century, a number of Western scholars made excursions into the East; and the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 enlarged their opportunities of studying the Greek language and philosophy. Attempts at direct translation into Latin began. One of the first translators was the sturdy Englishman, Robert Grosseteste. He was born in Suffolk about 1175; studied at Lincoln, then at Oxford, then at Paris, whence he returned to become Chancellor of the University of Oxford. He was made Bishop of Lincoln in 1236, and died seventeen years later. It was he who laid the foundation of the study of Greek at Oxford, and Roger Bacon was his pupil. But the most important and adequate translations were the work of two Dominicans, the Fleming, William of Moerbeke, and Henry of Brabant, who translated the works of Aristotle at the instance of Thomas Aquinas, possibly all working together at Rome, in 1263 and the years following. Aquinas recognized the inadequacy of the older translations, and based his own Aristotelian Commentaries upon these made by his collaborators, learned in the Greek tongue. The joint labour of translation and commentary seems to have been undertaken at the command of Pope Urban IV., who had renewed the former prohibitions put upon the use of Aristotle at the Paris University, in the older, shall we say, Averroistic versions. If these prohibitions, which did not touch the logical treatises, were meant to be taken absolutely, such had been far from their effect. In 1210 and again in 1215, an interdict was put upon the naturalis philosophia and the methafisica of the Stagirite. It was not revoked, but rather provisionally renewed, in 1231, until those works should be properly expurgated. A Commission was appointed which accomplished nothing; and the old interdict still hung in the air, unrescinded, yet ignored in practice. So Pope Urban referred to it as still effective—which it was not—in 1263. For Aristotle had been more and more thoroughly exploited in the Paris University, and by 1255 the Faculty of Arts formally placed his works upon the list of books to be studied and lectured upon.[534] So the founding of Universities and the enlarged and surer knowledge brought by a study of the works of Aristotle were factors of power in the enormous intellectual advance which took place in the last half of the twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth century. Yet these factors could not have operated as they did, but for the antecedent intellectual development. Before the first half of the twelfth century had passed, the patristic material had been mastered, along with the current notions of antique philosophy, for the most part contained in it. Strengthened by this discipline, men were prepared for an extension and solidifying of their knowledge of the universe and man. Not only had they appropriated what the available sources had to offer, but, when we think of Abaelard and Hugo of St. Victor, we see that organic restatements had been made of what had been acquired. Still, men really knew too little. It is very well to exploit logic, and construct soul-satisfying schemes of cosmogonic symbolism, in order to represent the deepest truth of the material world. But the evident sense-realities of things are importunate. The minds even of spiritual men may, in time, crave explanation of this side of their consciousness. Abaelard seems to have been oblivious to natural phenomena; Hugo recognizes them in order to elicit their spiritual meaning; and Alanus de Insulis, a generation and more afterwards, takes a poet’s view of Nature. Other men had a more hard-headed interest in these phenomena; but they knew too little to attempt seriously to put them together in some sense-rational scheme. The natural knowledge presented by the writings of the Church Fathers was little more than foolishness; the early schoolmen were their heirs. They observed a little for themselves; but very little. There is an abysmal difference in the amount of natural knowledge exhibited by any writing of the twelfth century, and the works of Albertus Magnus belonging say to the middle of the thirteenth. The obvious reason of this is, that the latter had drawn upon the great volume of natural observation and hypothesis which for the preceding five hundred years had been actually closed to western Europe, and for five hundred years before that had been spiritually closed, because of the ineptitude of men to read therein. That volume was of course the encyclopaedic Natural Philosophy of Aristotle, completed, and treated in its ultimate causal relationships, by his Metaphysics. The Metaphysics, the First Philosophy, gave completeness and unity to the various provinces of natural knowledge expounded in his special treatises. For this reason, one finds in the works of Albertus a fund of natural knowledge solid with the solidity of the earth upon which one may plant his feet, and totally unlike the beautiful dreaming which drew its prototypal origins from the skyey mind of Plato. The utilization of Aristotle’s philosophy by the Englishman, Alexander of Hales, who became a Franciscan near the year 1230, when he had already lectured for some thirty years at Paris; its far more elaborate and complete exposition by the very Teutonic Dominican, Albertus Magnus; and its even closer exposition and final incorporation within the sum of Christian doctrine, by Thomas,—this three-staged achievement is the great mediaeval instance of return to a genuine and chief source of Greek philosophy. These three schoolmen went back of the accounts and views of Greek philosophy contained in the writings of the Fathers. And in so doing they also went back of what was transmitted to the Middle Ages by BoËthius and other “transmitters.”[535]But the achievement of these schoolmen had other import. Their work represents the culmination of the third stage of mediaeval thought: that of systematic and organic restatement of the substance of the patristic and antique, with added elements; for there can be no organic restatement which does not hold and present something from him who achieves it. The result, attained at least by Thomas, was even more than this. Based upon the data and assumptions of scholasticism, it was a complete and final statement of the nature of God so far as that might be known, of the creature world, corporeal and incorporeal, and especially of man, his nature, his qualities, his relationship to God and final destiny. And herein, in its completeness, it was satisfying. The human mind in seeking explanation of the phenomena of its consciousness—presumably a reflex of the universe without—tends to seek a unity of explanation. A unity of explanation requires a completeness in the mental scheme of what is to be explained. Thoughtful men in the Middle Ages craved a scheme of life complete even in detail, which should educe life’s currents from a primal Godhead, and project them compacted, with none left straying or pointing nowhither, on toward universal fulfilment of His will. Mediaeval thought had been preceded by whole views, entire schemes of life. Greek philosophy had held only such from the time when Thales said that water was the cause of all things. Plato’s view or scheme also was beautiful in its ideally pyramided structure, with the Idea of the Good at the apex. For Aristotle, knowledge was to be a syllogistic, or at least rational and jointed, encyclopaedia, rounded, unified, complete. After the pagan times, another whole scheme was that of Augustine, or again, that of Gregory the Great, though barbarized and hardened. Thus as patterns for their own thinking, mediaeval men knew only of entire schemes of thought. Their creed was, in every sense, a symbol of a completed scheme. And no mediaeval philosopher or theologian suspected himself of fragmentariness. Yet, in fact, at first they did but select and compile. After a century and more of this, they began to make organic statements of parts of Christian doctrine. So we have Anselm’s Proslogium and Cur Deus Homo. Abaelard’s Theologia is far more complete; and so is Hugo’s De sacramentis, which offers an entire scheme, symbolical, sacramental, Christian, of God and the world and man. Hugo’s scheme might be ideally satisfying; but little concrete knowledge was represented in it. And when in the generations following his death, the co-ordinated Aristotelian encyclopaedia was brought to light and studied, then and thereafter any whole view of the world must take account of this new volume of argument and concrete knowledge. Alexander of Hales begins the labour of using it in a Christian Summa; Albertus makes prodigious advance, at least in the massing and preparation of the full Aristotelian material. Both try for whole views and comprehensive results. Then Thomas, most highly favoured in his master Albert, and gifted with a genius for acquisition and synthetic exposition, incorporates Aristotle, and Aristotle’s whole views, into the whole view presented by the Catholic Faith. Thomas’s view, to be satisfying, had to be complete. It was knowledge united and amalgamated into a scheme of salvation. But a scheme of salvation is a chain, which can hold only in virtue of its completeness; break one link, and it snaps; leave one rivet loose, and it may also snap. A scheme of salvation must answer every problem put to it; a single unanswered problem may imperil it. The problem, for example, of God’s foreknowledge and predestination—that were indeed an open link, which Thomas will by no means leave unwelded. Hence for us modern men also, whose views of the universe are so shamelessly partial, leaving so much unanswered and so much unknown, the philosophy of Thomas may be restful, and charm by its completeness. It is of great interest to observe the apparently unlikely agencies by which this new volume of knowledge was made generally available. In fact, it was the new knowledge and the demand for it that forced these agencies to fulfil the mission of exploiting it. For they had been created for other purposes, which they also fulfilled. Verily it happened that the chief means through which the new knowledge was gained and published were the two new unmonastic Orders of monks, friars rather we may call them. Francis of Assisi was born in 1182 and died in 1226; Dominic was born in 1177 and died in 1221. The Orders of Minorites and Preachers were founded by them respectively in 1209 and 1215. Neither Order was founded to promote secular knowledge. Francis organized his Minorites that they might imitate the lives of Christ and His apostles, and preach repentance to the world. Dominic founded his Order to save souls through preaching: “For our Order is known from the beginning to have been instituted especially for preaching and the saving of souls, and our study (studium nostrum) should have as the chief object of its labour to enable us to be useful to our neighbours’ souls (ut proximorum animabus possimus utiles esse).”[536] Within an apparent similarity of aim, each Order from the first reflected the temper of its founder; and the temper of Francis was not that of Dominic. For our purpose here, the difference may perhaps be symbolized by the Dominican maxim to preach the Gospel throughout the world equally by word and example (verbo pariter et exemplo); and the Franciscan maxim, to exhort all plus exemplo quam verbo.[537] A generation later St Bonaventura puts it thus: “Alii (scilicet, Praedicatores) principaliter intendunt speculationi ... et postea unctioni. Alii (scilicet, Minores) principaliter unctioni et postea speculationi.”[538] It is safe to say that St Francis had no thought of secular studies; and as for the Order of Preachers, the Constitutions of 1228 forbade the Dominicans to study libros gentilium and seculares scientias. They are to study libros theologicos.[539] Francis, also, recognized the necessity of Scriptural study for those Minorites who were allowed to preach. In these views the early Franciscans and Dominicans were not peculiar; but rather represented the attitude of the older monastic Orders and of the stricter secular clergy. The Gospel teaching of Christ had nothing to do with secular knowledge—explicitly. But the first centuries of the Church perceived that its defenders should be equipped with the Gentile learning, into which indeed they had been born. And while Francis was little of a theologian, and Dominic’s personality and career remain curiously obscure, one can safely say that both founders saw the need of sacred studies, and left no authoritative expression prohibiting their Orders from pursuing them to the best advantage for the cause of Christ. Yet we are not called on to suppose that either founder, in founding his Order for a definite purpose, foresaw all the means which after his death might be employed to attain that purpose—or some other! The new Order cometh, the old rusteth. So has it commonly been with Monasticism. Undoubtedly these uncloistered Orders embodied novel principles of efficiency for the upholding of the Faith: their soldiers marched abroad evangelizing, and did not keep within their fastnesses of holiness. The Mendicant Orders were still young, and fresh from the inspiration of their founders. In those years they moved men’s hearts and drew them to the ideal which had been set for themselves. The result was, that in the first half of the thirteenth century the greater part of Christian religious energy girded its loins with the cords of Francis and Dominic. At the commencement of that century, when the Orders of Minorites and Preachers were founded, the world of Western thought was prepared to make its own the new Aristotelian volume of knowledge and applied reason. Once that was opened and its contents perceived, the old Augustinian-Neo-Platonic ways of thinking could no longer proceed with their idealizing constructions, ignoring the pertinence of the new data and their possible application to such presentations of Christian doctrine as Hugo’s De sacramentis or the Lombard’s Sentences. The new knowledge, with its methods, was of such insistent import, that it had at once to be considered, and either invalidated by argument, or accepted, and perhaps corrected, and then accommodated within an enlarged Christian Philosophy.The spiritual force animating a new religious movement attracts the intellectual energies of the period, and furnishes them a new reality of purpose. This was true of early Christianity, and likewise true of the fresh religious impulse which proceeded from Francis’s energy of love and the organizing zeal of Dominic. From the very years of their foundation, 1209 and 1215, the rapid increase of the two Orders realized their founders’ visions of multitudes hurrying from among all nations to become Minorites or Preachers. And more and more their numbers were recruited from among the clergy. The lay members, important in the first years of Francis’s labours, were soon wellnigh submerged by the clericals; and the educated or learned element became predominant in the Franciscan Order as it was from the first in the Dominican. Consider for an instant the spread of the former. In 1216, Cardinal Jacques of Vitry finds the Minorites in Lombardy, Tuscany, Apulia, and Sicily. The next year five thousand are reported to have assembled at the general meeting of the Order. Two years later Francis proceeds to carry out his plan of world-conquest by apportioning the Christian countries, and sending the brethren into France, Germany, Hungary, Spain, and throughout Italy.[540] It was a period when in the midst of general ignorance on the part of the clergy as well as laity, Universities (generalia studia) were rising in Italy, France, and England. The popes, Innocent III. (died 1216), Honorius III. (died 1221), and Gregory IX. (died 1241), were seeking to raise the education and even the learning of the Church. Their efforts found in the zeal of the Mendicants a ready response which was not forthcoming from the secular clergy. The Mendicants were zealous for the Faith, and loyal liegemen of the popes, who were their sustainers and the guarantors of their freedom from local ecclesiastical interference. What more fitting instruments could be found to advance the cause of sacred learning at the Universities, and enlarge it with the new knowledge which must either serve the Faith or be its enemy. If all this was not evident in the first decades of the century, it had become so by the middle of it, when the Franciscan Bonaventura and the Dominicans Albertus and Thomas were the intellectual glories of the time. And thus, while the ardour of the new Orders drew to their ranks the learning and spiritual energy of the Church, the intellectual currents of the time caught up those same Brotherhoods, which had so entrusted their own salvation to the mission of saving other souls abroad in the world, where those currents flowed. The Universities, above all the University par excellence, were in the hands of the secular clergy; and long and intricate is the story of their jealous endeavours to exclude the Mendicants from Professors’ chairs. The Dominicans established themselves at Paris in 1217, the Franciscans two years later. The former succeeded in obtaining one chair of theology at the University in 1229, and a second in 1231; and about the same time the Franciscans obtained their first chair, and filled it with Alexander of Hales. When he died an old man, fifteen years later, they wrote upon his tomb: “Gloria Doctorum, decus et flos Philosophorum,
Auctor scriptorum vir Alexander variorum,” closing the epitaph with the words: “primus Doctor eorum,” to wit, of the Minorites. He was the author of the first Summa theologiae, in the sense in which that term fits the work of Albert and Thomas. And there is no harm in repeating that this Summa of Alexander’s was the first work of a mediaeval schoolman in which use was made of the physics, metaphysics, and natural history, of Aristotle.[541] He died in 1245, when the Franciscans appear to have possessed two chairs at the University. One of them was filled in 1248 by Bonaventura, who nine years later was taken from his professorship, to become Minister-General of his Order. It was indeed only in this year 1257 that the University itself had been brought by papal injunctions formally to recognize as magister this most eloquent of the Franciscans, and the greatest of the Dominicans, Thomas Aquinas. The latter’s master, Albert, had been recognized as magister by the University in 1245.Before the intellectual achievements of these two men, the Franciscan fame for learning paled. But that Order went on winning fame across the Channel, which the Dominicans had crossed before them. In 1224 they came to Oxford, and were received as guests by an establishment of Dominicans: this was but nine years after the foundation of the preaching Order! Perhaps the Franciscan glories overshone the Dominican at Oxford, where Grosseteste belongs to them and Adam of Marsh and Roger Bacon. But whichever Order led, there can be no doubt that together they included the greater part of the intellectual productivity of the maturing thirteenth century. Nevertheless, in spite of the vast work of the Orders in the field of secular knowledge, it will be borne in mind that the advancement of sacra doctrina, theology, the saving understanding of Scripture, was the end and purpose of all study with Dominicans and Franciscans, as it was universally with all orthodox mediaeval schoolmen; although for many the nominal purpose seems a mere convention. Few men of the twelfth or thirteenth century cared to dispute the principle that the Carmina poetarum and the Dicta philosophorum “should be read not for their own sake, but in order that we may learn holy Scripture to the best advantage: I say they are to be offered as first-fruits, for we should not grow old in them, but spring from their thresholds to the sacred page, for whose sake we were studying them for a while.”[542] Within the two Orders, especially the Franciscan, men differed sharply as to the desirability of learning. So did their contemporaries among the secular clergy, and their mediaeval and patristic predecessors as far back as Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian. On this matter a large variance of opinion might exist within the compass of orthodoxy; for Catholicism did not forbid men to value secular knowledge, provided they did not cleave to opinions contradicting Christian verity. This was heresy, and indeed was the sum of what was called Averroism, the chief intellectual heresy of the thirteenth century. It consisted in a sheer following of Aristotle and his infidel commentator, wheresoever the opinions of the Philosopher, so interpreted, might lead. They were not to be corrected in the interest of Christian truth. A representative Averroist, and one so important as to draw the fire of Aquinas, as well as the censures of the Church, was Siger de Brabant. He followed Aristotle and his commentator in maintaining: The universal oneness of the (human) intelligence, the anima intellectiva, an opinion which involved the denial of an individual immortality, with its rewards and punishments; the eternity of the visible world,—uncreated and everlasting; a rational necessitarianism which precluded freedom of human action and moral responsibility. It would be hard to find theses more fundamentally opposed to the Christian Faith. Yet Siger may have deemed himself a Christian. With other Averroists, he sought to preserve his religious standing by maintaining that these opinions were true according to philosophy, but not according to the Catholic Faith: “Dicunt enim ea esse vera secundum philosophiam, sed non secundum fidem catholicam.”[543] With what sincerity Siger held this untenable position is hard to say.
CHAPTER XXXVIII BONAVENTURA The range and character of the ultimate intellectual interests of the thirteenth century may be studied in the works of four men: St. Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas, and lastly, Roger Bacon. The first and last were as different as might be; and both were Franciscans. Albertus and Thomas represent the successive stages of one achievement, the greatest in the course of mediaeval thought. In some respects, their position is intermediate between Bonaventura and Bacon. Bonaventura reflects many twelfth-century ways of thinking; Albert and Thomas embody par excellence the intellectual movement of the thirteenth century in which they all lived; and Roger Bacon stands for much, the exceeding import of which was not to be recognized until long after he was forgotten. The four were contemporaries, and, with the possible exception of Bacon, knew each other well. Thomas was Albert’s pupil; Thomas and Bonaventura taught at the same time in the Faculty of Theology at Paris, and stood together in the academic conflict between their Orders and the Seculars. Albertus and Bonaventura also must have known each other, teaching at the same time in the theological faculty. As for Bacon, he was likewise at Paris studying and teaching, when the others were there, and may have known them.[544] Albert and Thomas came of princely stock, and sacrificed their fortune in the world for theology’s sake. Bacon’s family was well-to-do; Bonaventura was lowly born.John of Fidanza, who under the name of Bonaventura was to become Minister-General of his Order, Cardinal, Saint, and Doctor Seraphicus, saw the light in the Tuscan village of Bagnorea. That he was of Italian, half Latin-speaking, stock is apparent from his own fluent Latin. Probably in the year 1238, when seventeen years old, he joined the Franciscan Order; and four years later was sent to Paris, where he studied under Alexander of Hales. In 1248 he was licensed to lecture publicly, and thenceforth devoted himself at Paris to teaching and writing, and defending his Order against the Seculars, until 1257, when, just as the University conferred on him the title of Magister, he was chosen Minister-General of his Order, in the thirty-seventh year of his age. The greater part of his writings were composed before the burdens of this primacy drew him from his studies. He was still to become Prince of the Church, for he was made Cardinal of Albano in 1273, the year before his death. For all the Middle Ages the master in theology was Augustine. Either he was studied directly in his own writings, or his views descended through the more turbid channels of the works of men he influenced. Mediaeval theology was overwhelmingly Augustinian until the middle of the thirteenth century; and since theology was philosophy’s queen, mediaeval philosophy conformed to that which Augustine employed in his theology. This, if traced backward to its source, should be called Platonism, or Neo-Platonism if we turn our mind to the modes in which Augustine made use of it. His Neo-Platonism was not unaffected by Peripatetic and later systems of Greek philosophy; yet it was far more Platonic than Stoical or Aristotelian. Those first teachers, who in the maturity of their powers became Brothers Minorites, were Augustinians in theology, and consequently Platonists, in so far as Platonism made part of Augustine’s doctrines. Thus it was with the first great teacher at the Minorites school in Oxford, Robert Grosseteste, and with the first great Minorite teacher at Paris, Alexander of Hales. Both of these men were promoters of the study of Aristotle; yet neither became so imbued with Aristotelianism as to revise either his theological system or the Platonic doctrines which seemed germane to it. Moreover, in so far as we may imagine St. Francis to have had a theology, we must feel that Augustine, with his hand on Plato’s shoulder, would have been more congenial to him than Aristotle. And so in fact it was to be with his Order. Augustine’s fervent piety, his imagination and religious temperament, held the Franciscans fast. Surely he was very close to the soul of that eloquent Franciscan teacher, who called Alexander of Hales “master and father,” sat at his feet, and never thought of himself as delivering new teachings. It would have been strange indeed if Bonaventura had broken from the influences which had formed his soul, this Bonaventura whose most congenial precursor lived and wrote and followed Augustine far back in the twelfth century, and bore the name of Hugo of St. Victor. Bonaventura’s writings did much to fix Augustinianism upon his Order; rivalry with the Dominicans doubtless helped to make it fast; for the latter were following another system under the dominance of their two Titan leaders, who had themselves come to maturity with the new Aristotelian influences, whereof they were magna pars. But just as Grosseteste and Alexander made use of what they knew of Aristotle, so Bonaventura had no thought of misprizing him who was becoming in western Europe “the master of those who know.” In specific points this wise Augustinian might prefer Aristotle to Plato. For example, he chose to stand, with the former, upon the terra firma of sense perception, rather than keep ever on the wing in the upper region of ideal concepts. “Although the anima, according to Augustine, is linked to eternal principles (legibus aeternis), since somehow it does reach the light of the higher reason, still it is unquestionable, as the Philosopher says, that cognition originates in us by the way of the senses, of memory, and of experience, out of which the universal is deduced, which is the beginning of art and knowledge (artis et scientiae). Hence, since Plato referred all certain cognition to the intelligible or ideal world, he was rightly criticized by Aristotle. Not because he spoke ill in saying that there are ideas and eternal rationes; but because, despising the world of sense, he wished to refer all certain cognition to those Ideas. And thus, although Plato seems to make firm the path of wisdom (sapientiae) which proceeds according to the eternal rationes, he destroys the way of knowledge, which proceeds according to the rationes of created things (rationes creatas). So it appears that, among philosophers, the word of wisdom (sermo sapientiae) was given to Plato, and the word of knowledge (scientiae) to Aristotle. For that one chiefly looked to the things above, and this one considered things below.[545] But both the word of wisdom and of knowledge, through the Holy Spirit, was given to Augustine, as the pre-eminent declarer of the entire Scripture.”[546] So there is Aristotelian ballast in Bonaventura’s Platonic-Augustinian theology. His chief divergence from Albert and Thomas (who, of course, likewise held Augustine in honour, and drew on Plato when they chose) is to be found in his temperamental attitude, toward life, toward God, or toward theology and learning. His Augustinian soul held to the pre-eminence of the good above the true, and tended to shape the second to the first. So he maintained the primacy of willing over knowing. Man attains God through goodness of will and through love. The way of knowledge is less prominent with Bonaventura than with Aquinas. Surely the latter, and his master Albert, saw the main sanction of secular knowledge in its ministry to sacra doctrina; but their hearts may seem to tarry with the handmaid. Bonaventura’s position is the same; but his heart never tarries with the handmaid; for with him heart and mind are ever constant to the queen, Theology. Yet he recognizes the queen’s need of the handmaid. Holy Writ is not for babes; the fulness of knowledge is needed for its understanding: “Non potest intelligi sacra Scriptura sine aliarum scientiarum peritia.”[547] And without philosophy many matters of the Faith cannot be intelligently discussed. There is no knowledge which may not be sanctified to the purpose of understanding Scripture; only let this purpose really guide the mind’s pursuits.Bonaventura wrote a short treatise to emphasize these universally admitted principles, and to show how every form of human knowledge conformed to the supreme illumination afforded by Scripture, and might be reduced to the terms and methods of Theology, which is Scripture rightly understood. He named the tract De reductione artium ad theologiam[548] (The leading back of the Arts to Theology). “‘Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights,’ says James. This indicates the source of all illumination, and the streaming of all enlightenment from that fontal light. While every illumination is inner knowledge (omnis illuminatio cognitio interna sit) we may distinguish the external light, (lumen exterius), to wit, the light of mechanical art; the lower light, to wit, the light of sense perception; the interior light, to wit, the light of philosophical cognition; the superior light, to wit, the light of grace and Holy Scripture. The first illuminates as to the arts and crafts; the second as to natural form; the third as to intellectual truth; the fourth as to saving truth.” He enumerates the mechanical arts, drawing from Hugo of St. Victor; then he follows with Augustine’s explanation of the second lumen, as that which discerns corporeal things. He next speaks of the third lumen which lightens us to the investigation of truths intelligible, scrutinizing the truth of words (Logic), or the truth of things (Physics), or the truth of morals (Ethics). The fourth lumen, of Holy Scripture, comes not by seeking, but descends through inspiration from the Father of lights. It includes the literal, the spiritual, moral and anagogic signification of Scripture, teaching the eternal generation and incarnation of Christ, the way to live, and the union of God and the soul. The first of these branches pertains to faith, the second to morals, and the third to the aim and end of both. “Let us see,” continues Bonaventura, “how the other illuminations have to be reduced to the light of Holy Scripture. And first as to the illumination from sense cognition, as to which we consider its means, its exercise, and its delight (oblectamentum).” Its means is the Word eternally generated, and incarnated in time; its exercise is in the sense perception of an ordered way of living, following the suitable and avoiding the nocuous; and as for its object of delight, as every sense pursues that which delights it, so the sense of our heart should seek the beautiful, harmonious, and sweet-smelling. In this way divine wisdom dwells hidden in sense cognition. Next, as to the illumination of mechanical art, which is concerned with the production of the works of craft. Herein likewise may be observed analogies with the light from Holy Scripture, which reveals the Word, the order of living, and the union of God and the soul. No creature proceeds from the great Artificer, save through the Word; and the human artificer works to produce a beautiful, useful, and enduring work; which corresponds to the Scriptural order of living. Each human artificer makes his work that it may bring him praise or use or delight; as God made the rational soul, to praise and serve and take delight in Him, through love. By similar methods of reasoning Bonaventura next “reduces,” or leads back, Logic, and Natural and Moral Philosophy to the ways and purposes of Theology, and shows how “the multiform wisdom of God, which is set forth lucidly by Scripture, lies hidden in every cognition, and in every nature. It is also evident that all kinds of knowledge minister to Theology; and that Theology takes illustrations, and uses phrases, pertaining to every kind of knowledge (cognitionis). It is also plain how ample is the illuminating path, and how in every thing that is sensed or perceived, God himself lies concealed.”[549] Ways of reasoning change, while conclusions sometimes endure. Bonaventura’s reasoning in the above treatise is for us abstruse and fanciful; yet many will agree with the conclusion, that all kinds of knowledge may minister to our thought of God, and of man’s relationship to Him. And with Bonaventura, all his knowledge, his study of secular philosophy, his logic and powers of presentation, had theology unfailingly in view, and ministered to the satisfaction, the actualization (to use our old word) of his religious nature. He belongs among those intellectually gifted men—Augustine, Anselm, Hugo of St. Victor—whose mental and emotional powers draw always to God, and minister to the conception of the soul’s union with the living spring of its being. The life, the labours of Bonaventura were as the title of the little book we have just been worrying with, a reductio artium ad theologiam, a constant adapting of all knowledge and ways of meditation, to the sense of God and the soul’s inclusion in the love divine. No one should expect to find among his compositions any independent treatment of secular knowledge for its own sake. Rather throughout his writings the reasonings of philosophy are found always ministering to the sovereign theme. The most elaborate of Bonaventura’s doctrinal works was his Commentary upon the Lombard’s Sentences. In form and substance it was a Summa theologiae.[550] He also made a brief and salutary theological compend, which he called the Breviloquium.[551] The note of devotional piety is struck by the opening sentence, taken from the Epistle to the Ephesians, and is held throughout the work: “‘I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole fatherhood in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled in all the fulness of God.’ The great doctor of the Gentiles discloses in these words the source, progress, and state (ortus, progressus, status) of Holy Scripture, which is called Theology; indicating that the source is to be thought upon according to the grace (influentiam) of the most blessed Trinity; the progress with reference to the needs of human capacity; and the state or fruit with respect to the superabundance of a superplenary felicity. “For the Source lies not in human investigation, but in divine revelation, which flows from the Father of lights, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and earth is named, from whom, through His Son Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit flows in us; and through the Holy Spirit bestowing, as He wills, gifts on each, faith is given, and through faith Christ dwells in our hearts. This is the knowledge of Jesus Christ, from which, as from a source, comes the certitude and understanding of the whole Scripture. Wherefore it is impossible that any one should advance in its knowledge, unless he first has Christ infused in him.... “The Progress of Holy Scripture is not bound to the laws of reasonings and definitions, like the other sciences; but, conformably to supernatural light, proceeds to give to man the wayfarer (homini viatori) a knowledge of things sufficing for his salvation, by plain words in part, and in part mystically: it presents the contents of the universe as in a Summa, in which is observed the breadth; it describes the descent (from above) in which is considered the length; it describes the goodness of the saved, in which is considered the height; it describes the misery of the damned, in which consists the depth not only of the universe itself but of the divine judgment.... “The State or fruit of Holy Scripture is the plentitude of eternal felicity. For the Book containing words of eternal life was written not only that we might believe, but that we might have eternal life, in which we shall see, we shall love, and all our desires shall be filled, whereupon we shall know the love which passeth knowledge, and be filled in all the fulness of God.... “As to the progress of Scripture, first is to be considered the breadth, which consists in the multitude of parts.... Rightly is Holy Scripture divided into the Old and New Testament, and not in theorica and practica, like philosophy; because since Scripture is founded on the knowledge of faith, which is a virtue and the basis of morals, it is not possible to separate in Scripture the knowledge of things, or of what is to be believed, from the knowledge of morals. It is otherwise with philosophy, which handles not only the truth of morals, but the true, speculatively considered. Then as Holy Scripture is knowledge (notitia) moving to good and recalling from evil, through fear and love, so it is divided into two Testaments, whose difference, briefly, is fear and love.... “Holy Scripture has also length, which consists in the description of times and ages from the beginning to the day of Judgment.... The progress of the whole world is described by Scripture, as in a beautiful poem, wherein one may follow the descent of time, and contemplate the variety, manifoldness, equity, order, righteousness, and beauty of the multitude of divine judgments proceeding from the wisdom of God ruling the world: and as with a poem, so with this ordering of the world, one cannot see its beauty save by considering the whole.... “No less has Sacred Scripture height (sublimitatem), consisting in description of the ranged hierarchies, the ecclesiastical, angelic, and divine.... Even as things have being in matter or nature, they have also being in the anima through its acquired knowledge; they have also being in the anima through grace, also through glory; and they have also being in the way of the eternal—in arte aeterna. Philosophy treats of things as they are in nature, or in the anima according to the knowledge which is naturally implanted or acquired. But theology as a science (scientia) founded upon faith and revealed by the Holy Spirit, treats of those matters which belong to grace and glory and to the eternal wisdom. Whence placing philosophic cognition beneath itself, and drawing from nature (de naturis rerum) as much as it may need to make a mirror yielding a reflection of things divine, it constructs a ladder which presses the earth at the base, and touches heaven at the top: and all this through that one hierarch Jesus Christ, who through his assumption of human nature, is hierarch not in the ecclesiastical hierarchy alone, but also in the angelic; and is the medial person in the divine hierarchy of the most blessed Trinity.”[552] The depth (profunditas) of Scripture consists in its manifold mystic meanings. It reveals these meanings of the creature world for the edification of man journeying to his fatherland. Scripture throughout its breadth, length, height, and depth uses narrative, threat, exhortation, and promise all for one end. “For this doctrina exists in order that we may become good and be saved, which comes not through naked consideration, but rather through inclination of the will.... Here examples have more effect than arguments, promises are more moving than ratiocinations, and devotion is better than definition.” Hence Scripture does not follow the method and divisions of other sciences, but uses its own diverse means for its saving end. The Prologue closes with rules of Scriptural interpretation.[553] In our plan of following what is of human interest in mediaeval philosophy or theology, prologues and introductions are sometimes of more importance than the works which they preface; for they disclose the writer’s intent and purpose, and the endeavour within him, which may be more intimately himself, than his performance. So more space has been given to Bonaventura’s Prologue than the body of the treatise will require. The order of topics is that of the Lombard’s Sentences or Aquinas’s Summa. Seven successive partes consider the Trinity, the creation, the corruption from sin, the Incarnation, the grace of the Holy Spirit, the sacramental medicine, and the Last Judgment. Each pars is divided into chapters setting forth some special topic. Bonaventura’s method, pursued in every chapter, is to state first the scriptural or dogmatic propositions, and then give their reason, which he introduces with such words as: Ratio autem ad praedictorum intelligentiam haec est. The work is a complete systematic compend of Christian theology; its conciseness and lucidity of statement are admirable. For an example of its method and quality, the first chapter of the sixth part may be given, upon the origin of Sacraments. “Having treated of the Trinity of God, of the creation of the world, the corruption of sin, the incarnation of the Word, and the grace of the Holy Spirit, it is time to treat of the sacramental medicine, regarding which there are seven matters to consider: the origin of the sacraments, their variation, distinction, appointment, dispensation, repetition, and the integrity of each. “Concerning[554] the origin of the Sacraments this is to be held, that sacraments are sensible signs divinely appointed as medicaments, in which under cover of things sensible, divine virtue secretly operates; also that from likeness they represent, from appointment they signify, from sanctification they confer, some spiritual grace, through which the soul is healed from the infirmities of vice; and for this as their final end they are ordained; yet they avail for humility, instruction, and exercise as for a subsidiary end. “The reason and explanation of the aforesaid is this: The reparative principle (principium), is Christ crucified, to wit, the Word incarnate, that directs all things most compassionately because divine, and most compassionately heals because divinely incarnate. It must repair, heal, and save the sick human race, in a way suited to the sick one, the sickness and the occasion of it, and the cure of the sickness. The physician is the incarnate Word, to wit, God invisible in a visible nature. The sick man is not simply spirit, nor simply flesh, but spirit in mortal flesh. The disease is original sin, which through ignorance infects the mind, and through concupiscence infects the flesh. While the origin of this fault primarily lay in reason’s consent, yet its occasion came from the senses of the body. Consequently, in order that the medicine should correspond to these conditions, it should be not simply spiritual, but should have somewhat of sensible signs; for as things sensible were the occasion of the soul’s falling, they should be the occasion of its rising again. Yet since visible signs of themselves have no efficiency ordained for grace, although representative of its nature, it was necessary that they should by the author of grace be appointed to signify and should be blessed in order to sanctify; so that there should be a representation from natural likeness, a signification from appointment, and a sanctification and preparedness for grace from the added benediction, through which our soul may be cured and made whole. “Again, since curative grace is not given to the puffed up, the unbelieving, and disdainful, so these sensible signs divinely given, ought to be such as not only would sanctify and confer grace, and heal, but also would instruct by their signification, humble by their acceptance, and exercise through their diversity; that thus through exercise despondency (acedia) should be shut out from the desiderative [nature], through instruction ignorance be shut out from the rational [nature], through humiliation pride be shut out from the irascible [nature], and the whole soul become curable by the grace of the Holy Spirit, which remakes us according to these three capacities (potentias)[555] into the image of the Trinity and Christ. Finally, whereas the grace of the Holy Spirit is received through these sensible signs divinely appointed, it is found in them as an accident. Hence sacraments of this kind are called the vessels and cause of grace: not that grace is of their substance or produced by them as by a cause; for its place is in the soul, and it is infused by God alone; but because it is ordained by divine decree, that in them and through them we shall draw the grace of cure from the supreme physician, Christ; although God has not fettered His grace to the sacraments.[556] “From the premises, therefore, appears not only what may be the origin of the sacraments, but also the use and fruit. For their origin is Christ the Lord; their use is the act which exercises, teaches, and humbles; their fruit is the cure and salvation of men. It is also evident that the efficient cause of the sacraments is the divine appointment; their material cause is the figurement of the sensible sign; their formal cause the sanctification by grace; their final cause the medicinal healing of men. And because they are named from their form and end they are called sacraments, as it were medicamenta sanctificantia. Through them the soul is led back from the filth of vice to perfect sanctification. And so, although corporeal and sensible, they are medicinal, and to be venerated as holy because they signify holy mysteries, and make ready for the holy gifts (charismata) given by most holy God; and they are divinely consecrated by holy institution and benediction for the holiest worship of God appointed in holy church, so that rightly they should be called sacraments.” The Breviloquium was Bonaventura’s rational compendium of Christian theology. It offered in brief compass as complete a system as the bulkiest Summa could carry out to doctrinal elaboration. Quite different in method and intent was his equally famous Itinerarium mentis in Deum,[557] the praise of which, according to the great Chancellor Gerson, could not fitly be uttered by mortal mouth. We have seen how in the Reductio artium ad theologiam Bonaventura conformed all modes of perception and knowledge to the uses and modes of theology; the final end of which is man’s salvation, consisting in the union of the soul with God, through every form of enlightenment and all the power of love. The Breviloquium has given the sum of Christian doctrine, an intelligent and heart-felt understanding of which leads to salvation. And now the Itinerarium—well, it is best to let Bonaventura tell how he came to compose it, and of its purpose and character. “Since, after the example of our most blessed father Francis, I pant in spirit for the peace which he preached in the manner of our Lord Jesus Christ, I a sinner who am the seventh, all unworthy, Minister-General of the Brethren,—it happened that by God’s will in the thirty-third year after our blessed father’s death, I turned aside to the mountain of Alverna, as to a quiet place, seeking the spirit’s peace. While I lingered there my mind dwelt on the ascensions of the spirit, and, among others, on the miracle which in that very spot came to blessed Francis, when he saw the winged Seraph in the likeness of the Crucified. And it seemed to me his vision represented the suspension of our father in contemplation, and the way by which he came to it. For by those six wings may be understood the suspensions of the six illuminations, by which the soul, as by steps and journeys, through ecstatic outpourings of Christian wisdom, is prepared to pass beyond to peace. For the way lies only through love of the Crucified, which so transformed Paul carried to the third heaven, that he could say: ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ So the image of the six seraph’s wings represents the six rungs of illumination, which begin with the creatures and lead on to God, to whom no one can come save through the Crucified.... “For one is not prepared for the divine contemplations, which lead to the rapt visions of the mind, unless he be with Daniel, a man of desires.[558] Desires are stirred within us by the cry of prayer and the bright light of speculation. I shall invite the reader first to the sighings of prayer through Christ crucified, lest perchance he believe that study might suffice without unction, or diligence without piety, knowledge without charity, zeal without divine grace, or the mirror (speculum) without the wisdom divinely inspired. Then to those humble and devout ones, to whom grace first has come, to those lovers of the divine wisdom, who burn with desire of it, and are willing to be still, for the magnifying of God, I shall propose pertinent speculations, showing how little or nothing is it to turn the mirror outward unless the mirror of our mind be rubbed and polished.” Thus Bonaventura writes his prologue to this devotional tract, which will also hold “pertinent speculations.” Remarkable is the intellectuality and compacted thought which he fuses in emotional expression. He will write seven chapters, on the seven steps, or degrees, in the ascent to God, which is the mind’s true itinerarium. Since we cannot by ourselves lift ourselves above ourselves, prayer is the very mother and source of our upward struggle. Prayer opens our eyes to the steps in the ascent. Placed in the universe of things, we find in it the corporeal and temporal footprint (vestigium) leading into the way of God. Then we enter our mind, which is the everlasting and spiritual image of God; and this is to enter the truth of God. Whereupon we should rise above us to the eternal most spiritual first cause; and this is to rejoice in the knowledge of God’s majesty. This is the threefold illumination, by which we recognise the triple existence of things, in matter, in the intelligence, and in the divine way—in arte divina. And likewise our mind has three outlooks, one upon the corporeal world without, which is called sense, another into and within itself, which is called spiritus, and a third above itself, which is called mens. By means of all three, man should set himself to rising toward God, and love Him with the whole mind, and heart, and soul. Then Bonaventura makes further analysis of his triple illumination into “six degrees or powers of the soul, to wit, sense, imagination, reason, intellect, intelligence, and apex mentis seu synteresis scintilla. These degrees are planted within us by nature, deformed through fault, reformed through grace, purged through righteousness, exercised through knowledge, perfected through wisdom.... Whoever wishes to ascend to God should shun the sins which deform nature, and stretch forth his natural powers, in prayer, toward reforming grace, in mode of life, toward purifying righteousness, in meditation, toward illuminating knowledge, in contemplation toward the wisdom which makes perfect. For as no one reaches wisdom except through grace, righteousness, and knowledge, so no one reaches contemplation, except through meditation, a holy life, and devout prayer.” Chapter one closes with little that is novel; for we seem to be retracing the thoughts of Hugo of St. Victor. The second chapter is on the “Contemplation of God in His Footprints in the Sensible World.” This is the next grade of speculation, because we shall now contemplate God not only through His footprints, but in them also, so far as He is in them through essence, power, or presence. The sensible world, the macrocosmus, enters the microcosmus, which is the anima, through the gates of the five senses. The author sketches the processes of sense-perception, through which outer facts are apprehended according to their species, and delighted in if pleasing, and then adjudged according to the ratio of their delightfulness, to wit, their beauty, sweetness, salubrity, and proportion. Such are the footprints in which we may contemplate our God. All things knowable possess the quality of generating their species in our minds, through the medium of our perceptions; and thus we are led to contemplate the eternal generation of the Word—image and Son—from the Father. Likewise sweetness and beauty point on to their fontal source. And from speculation on the local, the temporal, and mutable, our reason carries us to the thought of the immutable, the uncircumscribed and eternal. Then from the beauty and delightfulness of things, we pass to the thought of number and proportion, and judge of their irrefragable laws, wherein are God’s wisdom and power. “The creatures of this sensible world signify the invisible things of God; in part because God is the source and exemplar and end of every creature; in part through their proper likeness; in part from their prophetic prefiguring; in part from angelic operations; and in part through superadded ordainment. For every creature by nature is an effigy of the eternal wisdom; especially whatever creature in Scripture is taken by the spirit of prophecy as a type of the spiritual; but more especially those creatures in the likeness of which God willed to appear by an angelic minister; and most especially that creature which he chose to mark as a sacrament.” From these first grades of speculation, which contemplate the footprints of God in the world, we are led to contemplate the divine image in the natural powers of our minds. We find the image of the most blessed Trinity in our memory, our rational intelligence, and our will; the joint action of which leads on to the desire of the summum bonum. Next we contemplate the divine image in our minds remade by the gifts of grace upon which we must enter by the door of the faith, hope, and love of the Mediator of God and men, Jesus Christ. As philosophy helped us to see the image of God in the natural qualities of our mind, so Scripture now is needed to bring us to these three theological virtues (faith, hope, and love), which enable the mind of fallen man to be repaired and made anew through grace. From this fourth grade, in which God is still contemplated in his image, we rise to consider God as pure being, wherein there is neither privation, nor bound, nor particularity; and next in his goodness, the highest communicability (summam communicabilitatem) of which may be contemplated, but not comprehended, in the mystery of the most blessed Trinity. “In whom [the persons of the Trinity] it is necessary because of the summa bonitas that there should be the summa communicabilitas, and because of the latter, the summa consubstantialitas, and because of this the summa configurabilitas, and from these the summa coaequalitas, and through this the summa coaeternitas, and from all the preceding the summa cointimitas, by which each is in the other, and one works with the other through every conceivable indivisibility (indivisionem) of the substance, virtue, and operation of the same most blessed Trinity....” “And when thou contemplatest this,” adds Bonaventura, “do not think to comprehend the incomprehensible.” From age to age the religious soul finds traces of its God in nature and in its inmost self. Its ways of finding change, varying with the prevailing currents of knowledge; yet still it ever finds these vestigia, which represent the widest deductions of its reasoning, the ultimate resultants of its thought, and its own brooding peace. Therefore may we not follow sympathetically the Itinerarium of Bonaventura’s mind as it traces the footprints of its God? Thus far the way has advanced by reason, uplifted by grace, and yet still reason. This reason has comprehended what it might comprehend of the traces and evidences of God in the visible creation and the soul of man; it has sought to apprehend the being of God, but has humbly recognized its inability to penetrate the marvels of his goodness in the mystery of the most blessed Trinity. There it stops at the sixth grade of contemplation; yet not baffled, or rendered vain, for it has performed its function and brought the soul on to where she may fling forth from reason’s steeps, and find herself again, buoyant and blissful, in a medium of super-rational contemplation. This makes the last chapter of the mind’s Itinerarium; it is the apex mentis, the summit of all contemplations in which the mind has rest. Henceforth “Christ is the way and door, the ladder and the vehicle, as the propitiation placed on the Ark of God, and the sacrament hidden from the world. He who looks on this propitiation, with his look full fixed on him who hangs upon the cross, through faith, hope, and charity, and all devotion, he makes his Passover, and through the rod of the cross shall pass through the Red Sea, out of Egypt entering the desert, and there taste the hidden manna, and rest with Christ in the tomb, dead to all without; and shall realize, though as one still on the way, the word of Christ to the believing thief: ‘To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.’ Which was also revealed to the blessed Francis when in ecstasy of contemplation on the high mountain, the Seraph with six wings, nailed on a cross, appeared to him. There, as we have heard from his companion, he passed into God through ecstasy of contemplation, and was set as an exemplar of perfect contemplation, whereby God should invite all truly spiritual men to this transit and ecstasy, by example rather than by word. In this passing over, if it be perfect, all the ways of reason are relinquished, and the apex affectus is transferred and transformed into God. This is the mystic secret known by no one who does not receive it, and received by none who does not desire it, and desired only by him whose heart’s core is aflame from the fire of the Holy Spirit, whom Christ sent on earth.... Since then nature avails nothing here, and diligence but little, we should give ourselves less to investigation and more to unction; little should be given to speech, and most to inner gladness; little to the written word, and all to God’s gift the Holy Spirit; little or nothing is to be ascribed to the creature, and all to the creative essence, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Here Bonaventura loses himself in an untranslatable extract from Eriugena’s version of the Areopagite, and then proceeds: “If thou askest how may these things be, interrogate grace and not doctrine, desire and not knowledge, the groaning of prayer rather than study, the Spouse rather than the teacher, God and not man, mist rather than clarity, not light but fire all aflame and bearing on to God by devotion and glowing affection. Which fire is God, and the man Christ kindles it in the fervour of his passion, as only he perceives who says: ‘My soul chooseth strangling and my bones, death.’ He who loves this death shall see God. Then let us die and pass into darkness, and silence our solicitudes, our desires, and phantasies; let us pass over with Christ crucified from this world to the Father; that the Father shown us, we may say with Philip: ‘it sufficeth us.’ Let us hear with Paul: ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’ Let us exult with David, saying: ‘Defecit caro mea et cor meum, Deus cordis mei et pars mea Deus in aeternum’.”[559] It is best to leave the saint and doctor here, and not follow in other treatises the current of his yearning thought till it divides in streamlets which press on their tortuous ways through allegory and the adumbration of what the mind disclaims the power to express directly. Those more elaborate treatises of his, which are called mystic, are difficult for us to read. As with Hugo of St. Victor, from whom he drew so largely, Bonaventura’s expression of his religious yearnings may interest and move us; but one needs perhaps the cloister’s quiet to follow on through the allegorical elaboration of this pietism. Bonaventura’s Soliloquium might weary us after the Itinerarium, and we should read his De septem itineribus aeternitatis with no more pleasure than Hugo’s Mystic Ark of Noah. It is enough to witness the spiritual attitude of these men without tracking them through the “selva oscura” to their lairs of meditation.
CHAPTER XXXIX ALBERTUS MAGNUS Albert the Great was prodigious in the mass of his accomplishment. Therein lay his importance for the age he lived in; therein lies his interest for us. For him, substantial philosophy, as distinguished from the instrumental rÔle of logic, had three parts, set by nature, rather than devised by man; they are physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. “It is our intention,” says Albert at the beginning of his exposition of Aristotle’s Physics, “to make all the said parts intelligible to the Latins.” And he did. Perhaps the world has had no greater purveyor of a knowledge not his own. He is comparable with BoËthius, who gave the Latin world the Aristotelian Organon, a gift but half availed of for many centuries. Albert gave his Latin world the rest of Aristotle, the philosophia realis. His world was as ready to receive this great donation, as the time of BoËthius was unready to profit by any intellectual gift demanding mental energies for its assimilation. BoËthius stood alone in his undertaking; if his hand failed there was none to take up his task. Fate stayed his hand; and the purpose that was his, to render the whole of Plato and Aristotle intelligible to the Latin world, perished with him, the Latin world being by no means eager for the whole of Aristotle and Plato, and unfit to receive it had it been proffered. But Albert’s time was eager; it was importunate for the very enlargement of knowledge which Albert, more than any other man, was bringing it. An age obtains what it demands. Albert had fellow-labourers, some preceding, some assisting, and others following him, to perfect the knowledge in which he worked, and build it into the scholastic Christian scheme. But in this labour of purveyorship he overtopped the rest, the giant of them all. He was born Count of Bollstadt, in Suabia, probably in the year 1193. Whether his youth was passed in the profession of arms, or in study, is not quite clear. But while still young he began his years of studious travel, and at Padua in 1223 he joined the Dominican Order. He became a miracle of learning, reputed also as one who could explain the phenomena of nature. From 1228 to 1245 he taught in German cities, chiefly at Cologne. Then the scene changed to Paris, where he lectured and won fame from 1245 to 1248. With this period begins the publication of his philosophical encyclopaedia. Perhaps it was first completed in 1256. But Albert kept supplementing and revising it until his death. In 1248 he was remanded to Cologne to establish a school there. His life continued devoted to study and teaching, yet with interruptions. For he filled the office of Provincial of his Order for Germany from 1254 to 1257, and was compelled to be Bishop of Regensburg from 1260 to 1262. Then he insisted on resigning, and retired to a cloister at Cologne. Naturally he was engaged in a number of learned controversies, and was burdened with numerous ecclesiastical affairs. In 1277 for the last time he set his face toward Paris, to defend the doctrines and memory of his great pupil, who had died three years before. His own illustrious life closed at Cologne on the fifteenth of November, 1280. Albert was a man of piety, conforming strictly to the rules of his Order. It is said that he refused to own even the manuscripts which he indited; and as Dominican Provincial of Germany he walked barefoot on his journeys through the vast territory set under his supervision. Tradition has him exceeding small of stature. Albert’s labours finally put within reach of his contemporaries the sum of philosophy and science contained in the works of Aristotle, and his ancient, as well as Arabian, commentators. The undertaking was grandly conceived; it was carried out with tireless energy and massive learning. Let us observe the principles which informed the mind of this mighty Teuton scholar. He transcribed approvingly the opinion expressed by Aristotle at the opening of the Metaphysics, that the love of knowledge is natural to man; and he recognized the pleasure arising from knowledge of the sensible world, apart from considerations of utility.[560] He took this thought from Aristotle; but the proof that he made it his own with power lay in those fifty years of intellectual toil which produced the greatest of all mediaeval storehouses of knowledge. In his reliance on his sources, Albert is mediaeval; his tendency is to accept the opinion which he is reproducing, especially when it is the opinion of Aristotle. Yet he protested against regarding even him as infallible. “He who believes that Aristotle was God, ought to believe that he never erred. If one regards him as a man, then surely he may err as well as we.”[561] Albert was no Averroist to adhere to all the views of the Philosopher; he pointedly differed from him where orthodoxy demanded it, maintaining, for instance, the creation of the world in time, contrary to the opinion of the Peripatetics. Albert, and with him Aquinas, had not accepted merely the task of expounding Aristotle, but also that of correcting him where Truth (with a large Christian capital) required it. Albert held that Aristotle might err, and that he did not know everything. The development of science was not closed by his death: “Dicendum quod scientiae demonstrativae non omnes factae sunt, sed plures restant adhuc inveniendae.”[562] This is not Roger Bacon speaking, but Albertus; and still more might one think to hear the voice of the recalcitrant Franciscan in the words: “Oportet experimentum non in uno modo, sed secundum omnes circumstantias probare.”[563] Yet these words too are Albert’s, and he is speaking of the observation of nature’s phenomena; regarding which one shall not simply transcribe the ancient statement; but observe with his own eyes and mind.This was in the spirit of Aristotle; Albert recognizes and approves. But did he make the experimental principle his own with power, as he did the thought that the desire to know is inborn? This is a fundamental question as to Albert. No one denies his learning, his enormous book-diligence. But was he also an observer of natural phenomena? One who sought to test from his own observation the statements of the books he read? It is best here to avoid either a categorical affirmation or denial. The standard by which one shapes one’s answer is important. Are we to compare Albert with a St. Bernard, whose meditations shut his eyes to mountains, lakes, and woods? Or are we to apply the standards of a natural science which looks always to the tested results of observation? There is sufficient evidence in Albert’s writings to show that he kept his eyes open, and took notice of interesting phenomena, seen, for instance, on his journeys. But, on the other hand, it is absurd to imagine that he dreamed of testing the written matter which he paraphrased, or of materially adding to it, by systematic observation of nature. Accounts of his observations do not always raise our opinion of his science. He transcribes the description of certain worms, and says that they may come from horse-hairs, for he has seen horse-hairs, in still water, turning into worms.[564] The trouble was that Albert had no general understanding of the processes of nature. Consequently, in his De animalibus for instance, he gives the fabulous as readily as the more reasonable. Nevertheless let no one think that natural knowledge did not really interest and delight him. His study of plants has led the chief historian of botany to assert that Albert was the first real botanist, after the ancient Theophrastus, inasmuch as he studied for the sake of learning the nature of plants, irrespective of their medical or agricultural uses.[565] The writings of Albertus Magnus represent, perhaps more fully than those of any other man, the round of knowledge and intellectual interest attracting the attention of western Europe in the thirteenth century. At first glance they seem to separate into those which in form and substance are paraphrases of Aristotelian treatises, or borrowed expositions of Aristotelian topics; and those which are more independent compositions. Yet the latter, like the Summa de creaturis, for example, will be found to consist largely of borrowed material; the matter is rearranged, and presented in some new connection, or with a purpose other than that of its source. In his Aristotelian paraphrases, which were thickly sown with digressive expositions, Albert’s method, as he states at the beginning of the Physica, is “to follow the order and opinions of Aristotle, and to give in addition whatever is needed in the way of explanation and support; yet without reproducing Aristotle’s text (tamen quod textus eius nulla fiat mentio). And we shall also compose digressiones to expound whatever is obscure.” The titles of the chapters will indicate whether their substance is from Aristotle. Thus instead of giving the Aristotelian text, with an attached commentary, Albert combines paraphrase and supplementary exposition. Evidently the former method would have presented Aristotle’s meaning more surely, and would have thus subserved a closer scholarship. But for this the Aristotelian commentaries of Aquinas must be awaited. The compass of Albert’s achievement as a purveyor of ancient knowledge may be seen from a cursory survey of his writings; which will likewise afford an idea of the quality of his work, and how much there was of Albert in it.[566] To begin with, he sets forth with voluminous exposition the entire Aristotelian Organon. The preliminary questions as to the nature of logic were treated in the De praedicabilibus,[567] which expanded the substance of Porphyry’s Isagoge. In this treatise Albert expounds his conclusions as to universals, the universal being that which is in one yet is fit (aptum) to be in many, and is predicable of many. “Et hoc modo prout ratio est praedicabilitatis, ad logicam pertinet de universali tractare; quamvis secundum quod est natura quaedam et differentia entis, tractare de ipso pertineat ad metaphysicam.” That is to say, It pertains to logic to treat of the universal in respect to its predicability; but in so far as the question relates to the nature and differences of essential being, it pertains to metaphysics. This sentence is an example of Albert’s awkward Latin; but it shows how firmly he distinguishes between the logical and the metaphysical material. His treatment of logic is exhaustive, rather than acutely discriminating. He works constantly with the material of others, and the result is more inclusive than organic.[568] In his ponderous treatment of logical themes, no possible consideration is omitted. The De praedicabilibus is followed by the De praedicamentis, Albert’s treatise on the Categories. Next comes his Liber de sex principiis, which is a paraphrasing exposition of the work of Gilbert de la PorrÉe. Then comes his Perihermenias, which keeps the Greek title of the De interpretatione. These writings are succeeded by elaborate expositions of the more advanced logical treatises of Aristotle, all of them, of course, Analytics (Prior and Posterior), Topics, and Elenchi. The total production is detailed, exhaustive, awful; it is ingens truly, only not quite informis; and Teutonically painstaking and conscientious. Thus logic makes Tome I. of the twenty-one tomes of Albert’s Opera. Tome II. contains his expository paraphrases of Aristotle’s Physics and lesser treatises upon physical topics, celestial and terrestrial. From the opening chapter we have already taken the programme of his large intention to make known all Aristotle to the Latins. In this chapter likewise he proceeds to lay out the divisions of philosophia realis into Aristotelian conceptions of metaphysica, mathematica, and physica. With chapter two he falls into the first of his interminable digressions, taking up what were called “the objections of Heracleitus” to any science of physics. Another digressive chapter considers the proper subject of physical science, to wit, corpus mobile, and another considers its divisions. After a while he takes up the opinions of the ancients upon the beginnings (principia) of things, and then reasons out the true opinion in the matter. Liber II. of his Physica is devoted to Natura, considered in many ways, but chiefly as the principium intrinsecum omnium eorum quae naturalia sunt. It is the principle of motion in the mobile substance. Next he passes to a discussion of causes; and in the succeeding books he considers movement, place, time, and eternity. Albert’s paraphrase is replete with logical forms of thinking; it seems like formal logic applied in physical science. The world about us still furnishes, or is, data for our thoughts; and we try to conceive it consistently, so as to satisfy our thinking; so did Aristotle and Albertus. But they avowedly worked out their conceptions of the external world according to the laws determining the consistency of their own mental processes; and deemed this a proper way of approach to natural science. Yet the work of Aristotle represents a real consideration of the universe, and a tremendous mass of natural knowledge. The achievement of Albertus in rendering it available to the scholar-world of the thirteenth century was an extension of knowledge which seems the more prodigious as we note its enormous range. This continues to impress us as we turn over Albert’s next treatises, paraphrasing those of Aristotle, as their names indicate: De coelo et mundo; De generatione et corruptione; Libri IV. meteorum; De mineralibus, which ends Tome II. and the physical treatises proper. Tome III. introduces us to another region, opening with Albert’s exhaustive paraphrase, De anima. It is placed here because the scientia de anima is a part of naturalis scientia, and comes after minerals and other topics of physics, but precedes the science of animate bodies—corporum animatorum; for the last cannot be known except through knowing their animae. In this, as well as in other works of Albert, psychological material is gathered from many sources. One may hardly speak of the psychology of Albertus Magnus, since his matter has no organic unity. It is largely Aristotelian, with the thoughts of Arab commentators taken into it, as in Albert’s Aristotelian paraphrases generally. But it is also Augustinian, and Platonic and Neo-Platonic. Albert is capable of defending opposite views in the same treatise; and in spite of best intentions, he does not succeed in harmonizing what he draws from Aristotle, with what he takes from Augustine. Hence his works nowhere present a system of psychology which might be called Albert’s, either through creation or consistent selection. But at least he has gathered, and bestowed somewhere, all the accessible material.[569] Tome III. of Albert’s Opera contains also his Aristotelian paraphrase, Metaphysicorum libri XIII. In this vera sapientia philosophiae, he follows Aristotle closely, save where orthodoxy compels deviation.[570] Tome IV. contains his paraphrasing expositions, Ethica and In octo libros politicorum Aristotelis commentarii. Tome V. contains paraphrases of Aristotle’s minor natural treatises,—parva naturalia; to wit, the Liber de sensu et sensato, treating problems of sense-perception; next the Liber de memoria et reminiscentia, in which the two are thus distinguished: “Memoria motus continuus est in rem, et uniformis. Reminiscibilitas autem est motus quasi interceptus et abscissus per oblivionem.” Treatises follow: De somno et vigilia; De motibus animalium; De aetate, sive de juventute et senectute; De spiritu et respiratione; De morte et vita; De nutrimento et nutribile; De natura et origine animae; De unitate intellectus contra Averroem (a controversial tract); De intellectu et intelligibile (an important psychological writing); De natura locorum; De causis proprietatum elementorum; De passionibus aeris, sive de vaporum impressionibus; and next and last, saving some minor tracts, Albert’s chief botanical work, De vegetabilibus. Aristotle’s Botany was lost, and Albert’s work was based on the De plantis of Nicolas of Damascus, a short compend vulgarly ascribed to Aristotle, but really made in the first century, and passing through numerous translations from one language to another, before Albert accepted it as the composition of the Stagirite. It consisted of two short books; Albert’s work contained seven long ones, and made the most important work on botany since the times of Aristotle and his pupil Theophrastus. In opening, Albert says that generalities applicable to all animate things have been already presented, and now it is time to consider more especially and in turn, vegetabilia, sensibilia, rationabilia. In the first eight chapters of his first book, Albert follows his supposed Aristotelian source, and then remarks that the translation of the Philosopher’s treatise is so ignorantly made that he will himself take up in order the six problems thus far incompetently discussed. So he considers whether plants have souls; whether plant-souls feel and desire; whether plants sleep; as to sex in plants; whether without sex they can propagate their species; and as to their hidden life. In the second book, having again bewailed the insufficiency of his source, Albert takes up the classification of plants, and proceeds with a description of their various parts, then passes on to the shape of leaves, the generation and nature of flowers, their colour, odour, and shape. Liber III., still as an independent digressio, discusses seeds and fruit. In Liber IV. Albert returns to his unhappy source, and his matter declines in interest; but again, in Liber V., he frees himself in a digressio on the properties and effects of plants, gathered from many sources, some of which are foolish enough. His sixth book is a description of trees and other plants in alphabetical order. The last and seventh is devoted to agriculture.[571] In the De vegetabilibus, Albert, as an expounder of natural knowledge, is at his best. A less independent and intelligent production is his enormous treatise De animalibus libri XXVI., which fills the whole of Tome IV. of Albert’s Opera. A certain Thomas of CantimprÉ, an admiring pupil of Albert, may have anticipated the above-named work of his teacher by his own compilation, De naturis rerum, which appears to have been composed shortly before the middle of the thirteenth century. Its descriptions of animals, although borrowed and uncritical, were at least intended to describe them actually, and were not merely fashioned for the moral’s sake, after the manner of the Physiologus,[572] and many a compilation of the early Middle Ages. Yet the work contains moralities enough, and plenty of the fabulous. But Thomas diligently gathered information as he might, and from Aristotle more than any other. Thus, in his lesser way, he, as well as Albert, represents the tendency of the period to interest itself in the realities, as well as in the symbolisms, of the natural world. Albert’s work is not such an inorganic compilation as Thomas’s. He has paraphrased the ten books of Aristotle’s natural histories, his four books on the parts of animals, and his five books on their generation. To these nineteen, he has added seven books on the nature of animal bodies and on their grades of perfection; and then on quadrupeds, birds, aquatic animals, snakes, and small bloodless creatures. Besides Aristotle, he draws on Avicenna, Galen, Ambrose (!), and others, including Thomas of CantimprÉ. Thus, his work is made up mainly of the ancient written material. Moreover, Albert is kept from a natural view of his subject through the need he feels to measure animals by the standards of human capacity, and learn to know them through knowing man. His digressiones usually discuss abstract problems, as, for instance, whether beyond the four elements, any fifth principle enters the composition of animal bodies. As for his anatomy, he describes the muscles, and calls the veins nerves, having no real knowledge of the latter. He corrects few ancient errors, either anatomical or physiological; and his own observations, occasionally referred to in his work, scarcely win our respect. Nor does he exclude fabulous stories, or the current superstitions as to the medicinal or magical effect of parts of certain animals. On the whole, Albert’s merit in the province of Zoology lies in his introduction of the Aristotelian data and conceptions to the mediaeval Latin West.[573] After Tome IV. of Albert’s Opera, follow many portly tomes, the contents of which need not detain us. There are enormous commentaries on the Psalms and Prophets, and the Gospels (Tomes VII.-XI.); then a tome of sermons, then a tome of commentaries on the Hierarchies of Pseudo-Dionysius; and three tomes of commentaries on the Lombard’s Sentences,—commentaries, that is to say, upon works which stood close to Scripture in authority. With these we reach the end of Albert’s labours in paraphrase and commentary, and pass to his more constructive work. Of course, the first and chief is his Summa theologiae, contained in Tomes XVII. and XVIII. of the Opera. With Albert, theology is a science, a branch of systematic knowledge, the highest indeed, and yet one among others. This science, says he in the Prologue to his Summa, “... is of all sciences the most entitled to credence—certissimae credulitatis et fidei. Other sciences, concerning creatures, possess rationes immobiles, yet those rationes are mobiles because they are in created things. But this science founded in rationibus aeternis is immutable both secundum esse and secundum rationem. And since it is not constituted of the sensible and imaginable, which are not quite cleared of the hangings of matter, plainly it, alone or supremely, is science: for the divine intellect is altogether intellectual, being the light and cause of everything intelligible; and from it to us is the divine science.” Albert’s dialectic is turgid enough, and lacks the lucidity of his pupil. Yet his reasoning may be weighty and even convincing. Intellect, Reason and its realm of that which is known through Reason, is higher than sense perceptions and imaginations springing from them: it affords the surest knowledge; the science that treats of pure reason, which is in God, is the surest and noblest of sciences. Albert clearly defines the province and nature of theology. “It is scientia secundum pietatem; it is not concerned with the knowable (scibile) simply as such, nor with the knowable universally; but only as it inclines us to Piety. Piety, as Augustine says, is the worship of God, perfected by faith, hope, charity, prayer, and sacrifices. Thus theology is the science of what pertains to salvation; for piety conduces to salvation.”[574] The Summa theologiae treats of the encyclopaedic matter of the sacred science, in the order and arrangement with which we are familiar.[575] It is followed (Tome XIX.) by Albert’s Summa de creaturis, a presentation of God’s creation, omitting the special topics set forth in the De vegetabilibus and De animalibus. It treats of creation, of matter, of time and eternity, of the heavens and celestial bodies, of angels, their qualities and functions, and the hierarchies of them; of the state of the wicked angels, of the works of the six days, briefly; and then of man, soul and body, very fully; of man’s habitation and the order and perfection of the universe. Thus the Summa de creaturis treats of the world and man as God’s creation; but it is not directly concerned with man’s salvation, which is the distinguishing purpose of a Summa theologiae, however encyclopaedic such a work may be. Two tomes remain of Albert’s opera, containing much that is very different from anything already considered. Tome XX. is devoted to the Virgin Mary, and is chiefly made up of two prodigious tracts: De laudibus beatae Mariae Virginis libri XII., and the Mariale, sive quaestiones super evangelium, Missus est angelus Gabriel. These works—it is disputed whether Albert was their author—are a glorification, indeed a deification, of Mary. They are prodigious; they are astounding. The worship of Mary is gathered up in them, of Mary the chief and best beloved religious creation of the Middle Ages; only not a creation, strictly speaking, for the Divine Virgin, equipped with attribute and quality, sprang from the fecund matrix of the early Church. The works before us represent a simpler piety than Albert’s Summa theologiae. They contain satisfying, consoling statements, not woven of dialectic. And the end is all that the Mary-loving soul could wish. “Christ protects the servants of His genetrix:—and so does Mary, as may be read in her miracles, protect us from our bodily enemies, and from the seducers of souls.”[576] The praises of Mary will seem marvellous indeed to anyone turning over the tituli of books and chapters. There is here a whole mythology, and a universal symbolism. Symbolically, Mary is everything imaginable; she has every virtue and a mass of power and privileges. She is the adorable and chief efficient Goddess mediating between the Trinity and the creature man. Tome XXI., last tome of all, has a variety of writings, some of which may not be Albert’s. Among them is a work of sweet and simple piety, a work of turning to God as a little child; and one would be loath to take it away from this man of learning. De adhaerendo Deo is its title, which tells the story. Albert wished at last to write something presenting man’s ultimate perfection, so far as that might be realized in this life. So he writes this little tract of chamber-piety, as to how one should cling to Christ alone. Yet he cannot disencumber himself of his lifelong methods of composition. He might conceive and desire; but it was not for him to write a tract to move the heart. The best he can say is that the end of all our study and discipline is intendere et quiescere in Domino Deo intra te per purissimum intellectum, et devotissimum affectum sine phantasmatibus et implicationibus. The great scholar would come home at last, like a little child, if he only could.
CHAPTER XL THOMAS AQUINAS I. Thomas’s Conception of Human Beatitude.
II. Man’s Capacity to know God.
III. How God knows.
IV. How the Angels know.
V. How Men know.
VI. Knowledge through Faith perfected in Love. I With Albert it seemed most illuminating to outline the masses of his work of Aristotelian purveyorship and inchoate reconstruction of the Christian encyclopaedia in conformity with the new philosophy. Such a treatment will not avail for Thomas. His achievement, even measured by its bulk, was as great as Albert’s. But its size and encyclopaedic inclusiveness do not represent its integral excellences. The intellectual qualities of Thomas, evinced in his work, are of a higher order than those included in intelligent diligence, however exceptional. They must be disengaged from out of the vast product of their energies, in order that they may be brought together, and made to appear in the organic correlation which they held in the mind of the most potent genius of scholasticism. We are pleased to find some clue to a man’s genius in the race and place from which he draws his origin. So for whatever may be its explanatory value as to Thomas, one may note that he came of Teutonic stocks, which for some generations had been domiciled in the form-giving Italian land. The mingled blood of princely Suabian and Norman lines flowed in him; the nobility of his father’s house, the Counts of Aquinum, was equalled by his mother’s lineage. Probably in 1225 he was born, in Southern Italy, not far from Monte Cassino. Thither, as a child, he was sent to school to the monks, and stayed with them through childhood’s formative period. His education did not create the mind which it may have had part in directing to sacred study. Near his tenth year, the extraordinary boy was returned to Naples, there to study the humanities and philosophy under selected masters. When eighteen, he launched himself upon the intellectual currents of the age by joining the Dominican Order. Stories have come down of the violent, but fruitless opposition of his family. In two years, with true instinct, Thomas had made his way from Naples to the feet of Albert in Cologne. Thenceforth the two were to be together, as their tasks permitted, and the loyal relationship between master and scholar was undisturbed by the latter’s transcendent genius. Plato had the greatest pupil, and Aristotle the greatest master, known to fame. That pupil’s work was a redirecting of philosophy. The work of pupil Thomas perfected finally the matter upon which his master laboured; and the master’s aged eyes beheld the finished structure that was partly his, when the pupil’s eyes had closed. Thomas, dying, left Albert to defend the system that was to be called “Thomist,” after him who constructed and finished it to its very turret points, rather than “Albertist,” after him who prepared the materials. To return to the time when both still laboured. Thomas in 1245 accompanied his master to Paris, and three years later went back with him to Cologne. Thereafter their duties often separated them. We know that in 1252 Thomas was lecturing at Paris, and that he there received with Bonaventura the title of magister in 1257. After this he is found south of the Alps; it was in the year 1263 that Urban IV. at Rome encouraged him to undertake a critical commentary upon Aristotle, based on a closer rendering into Latin of the Greek. In 1268, at the height of his academic fame, he is once more at Paris; which he leaves for the last time in 1272, having been directed to establish a studium generale at Naples. Two years later he died, on his way to advise the labours of the Council assembled at Lyons.[577] Thomas wrote commentaries upon the Aristotelian De interpretatione and Posterior Analytics; the Physics, the De coelo et mundo, the Meteorum, the Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics, and certain other Aristotelian treatises. His work shows such a close understanding of Aristotle as the world had not known since the days of the ancient Peripatetics. Of course, he lectured on the Sentences, and the result remains in his Commentaries on them. He lectured, and the resulting Commentaries exist in many tomes, on the greater part of both the Old and New Testaments. It would little help our purpose to catalogue in detail his more constructive and original works, wherein he perfected a system of philosophy and sacred knowledge. Chief among them were the Summa contra Gentiles and the Summa theologiae, the latter the most influential work of all western mediaeval scholasticism. Many of his more important shorter treatises are included in the Quaestiones disputatae, and the Quodlibetalia. They treat of many matters finally put together in the Summa theologiae. De malo in communi, de peccatis, etc.; De anima; De virtutibus in communi, etc.; De veritate; De ideis; De cognitione angelorum; De bono; De voluntate; De libero arbitrio; De passionibus animae; De gratia;—such are titles drawn from the Quaestiones. The Quodlibetalia were academic disputations held in the theological faculty, upon any imaginable thesis having theological bearing. Some of them still appear philosophical, while many seem bizarre to us; for example: Whether an angel can move from one extreme to the other without passing through the middle. One may remember that such questions had been put, and put again, from the time of the Church Fathers. This question answered by Thomas whether an angel may pass from one extreme to the other without traversing the middle is pertinent to the conception of angels as completely immaterial beings,—a conception upon the elaboration of which theologians expended much ingenious thought. In the earlier Middle Ages, when men were busy putting together the ancient matter, the personalities of the writers may not clearly appear. It is different in the twelfth century, and very different in the thirteenth, when the figures of at least its greater men are thrown out plainly by their written works. Bonaventura is seen lucidly reasoning, but with his ardently envisioning piety ever reaching out beyond; the personality of Albert most Teutonically wrestles itself into salience through the many-tomed results of his very visible efforts; when we come to Roger Bacon, we shall find wormwood, and many higher qualities of mind, flowing in his sentences. And the consummate fashioning faculty, the devout and intellectual temperament of Thomas, are writ large in his treatises. His work has unity; it is a system; it corresponds to the scholastically creative personality, from the efficient concord of whose faculties it proceeded. The unity of Thomas’s personality lay in his conception of man’s summum bonum, which sprang from his Christian faith, but was constructed by reason from foundation to pinnacle; and it is evinced in the compulsion of an intellectual temperament that never let the pious reasoner’s energies or appetitions stray loitering or aberrant from that goal. Likewise the unity of his system consists in its purpose, which is to present that same summum bonum, credited by faith, empowered, if not empassioned, by piety, and constructed by reason. To fulfil this purpose in its utmost compass, reason works with the material of all pertinent knowledge; fashioning the same to complete logical consistency of expression. Therefore, it is from his conception of this summum bonum as from a centre of illumination, that we may trace the characteristic qualities alike of Thomas and his work. His faith, his piety, and his intellectual nature are revealed in his thought of supreme felicity. Man’s chief good being the ground of the system, the thought and study which Thomas puts upon the created universe and upon God, regarded both as Creator and in the relationships of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, conduce to make large and sure and ample this same chief good of man. To it likewise conduce the Incarnation, and the Sacraments springing therefrom; in accord with it, Thomas accepts or constructs his metaphysics, his psychology, his entire thought of human capacity and destiny, and sets forth how nearly man’s reason may bring him to this goal, and where there is need of divine grace. In this goal, moreover, shall be found the sanction of human knowledge, and the justification of the right enjoyment of human faculties; it determines what elements of mortal life may be gathered up and carried on, to form part of the soul’s eternal beatitude. Thomas’s intellectual powers work together in order to set his thought of man’s summum bonum on its surest foundations, and make clear its scope: his faculty of arrangement, and serious and lucid presentation; his careful reasoning, which never trips, never overlooks, and never either hurries or is taken unprepared; his marvellous unforgetfulness of everything which might remotely bear on the subject; his intellectual poise, and his just weighing of every matter that should be taken into the scales of his determination. Observing these, we may realize how he seemed to his time a new intellectual manifestation of God’s illuminating grace. There was in him something unknown before; his argument, his exposition, was new in power, in interest, in lucidity. On the quality of newness the wretched old biographer rings his reiteration: “For in his lectures he put out new topics (articulos), inventing a new and clear way of drawing conclusions and bringing new reasons into them, so that no one, who had heard him teach new doubts and allay them by new arguments, would have doubted that God had illumined with rays of new light one who became straightway of such sure judgment, that he did not hesitate to teach and write new opinions, which God had deigned newly to inspire.”[578] His biographer’s view is justified. Thomas was the greatest of the schoolmen. His way of teaching, his translucent exposition, came to his hearers as a new inspiration. Only Bonaventura (likewise Italian-born) may be compared with him for clearness of exposition—of solution indeed; and Thomas is more judicial, more supremely intellectual; his way of treatment was a stronger incitement and satisfaction to at least the minds of his auditors. Albert, with his mass of but half-conquered material, could not fail to show, whether he would or not, the doubt-breeding difficulties of the new philosophy, which was yet to be worked into Christian theology. Thomas exposed every difficulty and revealed its depths; but then he solved and adjusted everything with an argumentation from whose careful inclusiveness no questions strayed unshepherded. Placed with Thomas, Albert shows as the Titan whose strength assembles the materials, while Thomas is the god who erects the edifice. The material that Thomas works with, and many of his thoughts and arguments, are to be found in Albert; and the pupil knew his indebtedness to the great master, who survived him to defend his doctrines. But what is not in Albert, is Thomas, Thomas himself, with his disentangled reasoning, his clarity, his organic exposition, his final construction of the mediaeval Christian scheme.[579] In the third book of his Summa philosophica contra Gentiles, and in the beginning of Pars prima secundae of his Summa theologiae, Thomas expounds man’s final end, ultimus finis, which is his supreme good or perfect beatitude. The exposition in the former work, dating from the earlier years of the author’s academic activities, seems the simpler at first reading; but the other includes more surely Thomas’s last reasoning, placed in the setting of argument and relationship which he gave it in his greatest work. We shall follow the latter, borrowing, however, from the former when its phrases seem to present the matter more aptly to our non-scholastic minds. The general position of the topic is the same in both Summae; and Thomas gives the reason in the Prologus to Pars prima secundae of the Summa theologiae. His way of doing this is significant: “Man is declared to be made in the image of God in this sense (as Damascenus[580] says) that by ‘image’ is meant intellectual, free to choose, and self-potent to act. Therefore, after what has been said of the Exemplar God, and of those things which proceed from the divine power according to its will, there remains for us to consider His image, to wit, man, in so far as he is himself the source (principium) of his acts, possessing free will and power over them.” Thereupon Thomas continues, opening his first Quaestio:[581] “First one must consider the final end (ultimus finis) of human life, and then those things through which man may attain this end, or deviate from it. For one must accept from an end the rationale of those things which are ordained to that end.” Assuming the final end of human life to be beatitude, Thomas considers wherein man as a rational creature may properly have one final end, on account of which he wills all that he wills. Quaestio ii. shows that man’s beatitude cannot consist in riches, honours, fame, power, pleasures of the body, or in any created good, not even in the soul. Man gains his beatitude through the soul; but in itself the soul is not man’s final end. The next Quaestio is devoted to the gist of the matter: what beatitude is, and what is needed for it. Thomas first shows in what sense beatitude is something increate (increatum). He has already pointed out that end (finis) has a twofold meaning: the thing itself which we desire to obtain, and the fruition of it. “In the first sense, the final end of man is an increate good, to wit God, who alone with His infinite goodness can perfectly fulfil the wish (voluntas) of man. In the second sense the final end of man is something created existing in himself; which is nought else than attainment or fruition (adeptio vel fruitio) of the final end. The final end is called beatitude. If then man’s beatitude is viewed as cause or object, it is something increate; but if it is considered in its beatific essence (quantum ad ipsam essentiam beatitudinis) it is something created.” Thomas next shows: “... that inasmuch as man’s beatitude is something created existing in himself, it is necessary to regard it as action (operatio). For beatitude is man’s ultimate perfection. But everything is perfect in so far as it is actually (actu, i.e. in realized actuality): for potentiality without actuality is imperfect. Therefore beatitude should consist in man’s ultimate actuality. But manifestly action (operatio) is the final actuality of the actor (operantis); as the Philosopher shows, demonstrating that everything exists for its action (propter suam operationem). Hence it follows of necessity that man’s beatitude is action.” The next point to consider is whether beatitude is the action of man’s senses or his intellect. Drawing distinctions, Thomas points out that “the action of sense cannot pertain to beatitude essentially; because man’s beatitude essentially consists in uniting himself to the increate good; to which he cannot be joined through the action of the senses. Yet sense-action may pertain to beatitude as an antecedent or consequence: as an antecedent, for the imperfect beatitude attainable in this life, where the action of the senses is a prerequisite to the action of the mind; as a consequence, in that perfect beatitude which is looked for in heaven; because, after the resurrection, as Augustine says, from the very beatitude of the soul, there may be a certain flowing back into the body and its senses, perfecting them in their actions. But not even then will the action by which the human mind is joined to God depend on sense.” Beatitude then is the action of man’s intellectual part; and Thomas next inquires, whether it is an action of the intelligence or will (intellectus aut voluntatis). With this inquiry we touch the pivot of Thomas’s attitude, wherein he departs from Augustine, in apparent reliance on the word of John: “This is eternal life that they should know thee, the one true God.” Life eternal is man’s final end; and therefore man’s beatitude consists in knowledge of God, which is an act of mind. Thomas argues this at some length. He refers to the distinction between what is essential to the existence of beatitude, and what is joined to it per accidens, like enjoyment (delectatio). “I say then, that beatitude in its essence cannot consist in an act of will. For it has appeared that beatitude is the obtaining (consecutio) of the final end. But obtaining does not consist in any act of will; for will attaches to the absent when one desires it, as well as to the present in which one rests delighted. It is evident that the desire for an end is not an obtaining of it, but a movement toward it. Enjoyment attaches to will from the presence of the end; but not conversely does anything become present because the will shall delight in it. Therefore there must be something besides an act of will, through which the end may become present to the will. This is plain respecting the ends of sense (fines sensibiles). For if to obtain money were an act of will, the miser would have obtained it from the beginning. And so it comes to pass with respect to an end conceived by the mind; we obtain it when it becomes present to us through an act of the intellect; and then the delighted will rests in the end obtained. Thus, therefore, the essence of beatitude consists in an act of mind. But the delight which follows beatitude pertains to will, even in the sense in which Augustine says: ‘beatitudo est gaudium de veritate,’ because indeed joy is the consummation of beatitude.” The supremely intellectual attitude of the Angelic Doctor, shows at once, and as it were universally, in his conviction of the primacy of the true over the good, and of knowledge over will. Sometimes he argues these points directly; and again, his temperamental attitude appears in the course of argument upon other points. For example, Quaestio xvi. of Pars prima has for its subject Veritas. And in the first article, which discusses whether truth is in the thing (in re) or only in the mind, he argues thus: “As good signifies that upon which desire (appetitus) is bent, so true signifies that at which understanding aims. There is this difference between desire and understanding or any kind of cognition: cognition exists in so far as what is known (cognitum) is in the knower; but desire is as the desirous inclines toward the desired. Thus the end (terminus == finis) of desire, which is the good, is in the desirable thing; but the end of knowing, which is the true, is in mind itself.” In Articulus 4, Thomas comes to his point: that the true secundum rationem (i.e. according to its formal nature) is prior to the good. “Although both the good and the true have been taken as convertible with being, yet they differ in their conception (ratione); and that the true is prior to the good appears from two considerations: First, the true is more closely related to being, which is prior to the good; for the true regards being itself, simply and directly; while the ratio of the good follows being as in some way perfect, and therefore desirable. Secondly, cognition naturally precedes desire. Therefore, since the true regards cognition, and the good regards desire, the true is prior to the good secundum rationem.” This argument, whatever validity it may have, is significant of its author’s predominantly intellectual temperament, and consistent with his conception of man’s supreme beatitude as the intellectual vision of God. Obviously, moreover, the setting of the true above the good is another way of stating the primacy of knowledge over will, which is also maintained: “Will and understanding (intellectus) mutually include each other: for the understanding knows the will; and the will wills that the understanding should know.”[582] Evidently all rational beings have will as well as understanding; God wills, the Angels will, man wills. Indeed, how could knowledge progress but for the will to know? Yet of the two, considered in themselves, understanding is higher than will— “for its object is the ratio, the very essential nature, of the desired good, while the object of will is the desired good whose ratio is in the understanding.... Yet will may be the higher, if it is set upon something higher than the understanding.... When the thing in which is the good is nobler than the soul itself, in which is the rational cognizance (ratio intellecta), the will, through relation to that thing, is higher than the understanding. But when the thing in which is the good, is lower than the soul, then in relation to that thing, the understanding is higher than the will. Wherefore the love of God is better than the cognizance (cognitio); but the cognizance of corporeal things is better than the love. Yet taken absolutely, the understanding is higher than the will.”[583] These positions of the Angelic Doctor were sharply opposed in his lifetime and afterwards. Without entering the lists, let us rather follow him on his evidently Aristotelian path, which quickly brings him to his next conclusion: “That beatitude consists in the action of the speculative rather than the practical intellect, as is evident from three arguments: “First, if man’s beatitude is action, it ought to be the man’s best (optima) action. But man’s best action is that of his best faculty in respect to the best object. The best faculty is intelligence, whose best object is the divine good, which is not an object of the practical, but of the speculative intelligence. Wherefore, in such action, to wit, in contemplation of things divine, beatitude chiefly consists. And because every one seems to be that which is best in him, as is said in the Ethics, so such action is most proper to man and most enjoyable. “Secondly, the same conclusion appears from this, that contemplation above all is sought on account of itself. The perfection (actus, full realization) of the practical intelligence is not sought on account of itself, but for the sake of action: the actions themselves are directed toward some end. Hence it is evident that the final end cannot consist in the vita activa, which belongs to the practical intelligence. “Thirdly, it is plain from this, that in the vita contemplativa man has part with those above him, to wit, God and the Angels, unto whom he is made like through beatitude; but in those matters which belong to the vita activa, other animals, however imperfectly, have somehow part with him. “And so the final and perfect beatitude which is looked for in the life to come, in principle consists altogether in contemplation. But the imperfect beatitude which may be had here, consists first and in principle in contemplation, and secondly in the true operation of the practical intellect directing human actions and passions, as is said in the tenth book of the Ethics.” It being thus shown that perfect beatitude lies in the action of the speculative intelligence, Thomas next shows that it cannot consist in consideration of the speculative sciences— “for the consideration of a science does not reach beyond the potency (virtus) of the principles of that science, seeing that the whole science is contained potentially (virtualiter) in its principles. But the principles of speculative sciences are received through the senses, as the Philosopher makes clear. Therefore the entire consideration of the speculative sciences cannot be extended beyond that to which a cognition of sense-objects (sensibilium) is able to lead. Man’s final beatitude, which is his perfection, cannot consist in the cognition of sense-objects. For no thing is perfected by something inferior, except as there may be in the inferior some participation in a superior. Evidently the nature (forma) of a stone, or any other sensible thing, is inferior to man, save in so far as something higher than the human intelligence has part in it, like the light of reason.... But since there is in sensible forms some participation in the similitude of spiritual substances, the consideration of the speculative sciences is, in a certain way, participation in true and perfect beatitude.” Neither can perfect beatitude consist in knowledge of the higher, entirely immaterial, or, as Thomas calls them, separate (separatae) substances, to wit, the Angels. Because it cannot consist in that which is the perfection of intelligence only from participation. The object of the intelligence is the true. Whatever has truth only through participation in something else cannot make the contemplating intelligence perfect with a final perfection. But the angels have their being (esse) as they have their truth, from the participation of the divine in them. Whence it remains that only the contemplation of God, Who alone is truth through His essential being, can make perfectly blessed. “But,” adds Thomas, “nothing precludes the expectation of some imperfect beatitude from contemplating the angels, and even a higher beatitude than lies in the consideration of the speculative sciences.” So the conclusion is that “the final and perfect beatitude can be only in the vision of the divine essence. The proof of this lies in the consideration of two matters: first, that man is not perfectly blessed (beatus) so long as there remains anything for him to desire or seek; secondly, that the perfection of every capacity (potentiae), is adjudged according to the nature (ratio) of its object.” And a patent line of argument leads to the unavoidable conclusion: “For perfect beatitude it is necessary that the intellect should attain to the very essence of the first cause. And thus it will have its perfection through union with God as its object.” There are few novel thoughts in Thomas’s conception of man’s supreme beatitude. But he has taken cognizance of all pertinent considerations, and put the whole matter together with stable coherency. He continues, discussing in the succeeding Quaestiones a number of important matters incidental to his central determination of the nature of man’s supreme good. Thus he shows how joy (delectatio) is a necessary accompaniment of beatitude, which, however, in principle consists in the action of the mind, which is visio, rather than in the resulting delectatio. The latter consists in a quieting or satisfying of the will, through the goodness of that in which it is satisfied. When the will is satisfied in any action, that results from the goodness of the action; and the good lies in the action itself rather than in the quieting of the will.[584] Here Thomas’s reasoning points to an active ideal, an ideal of energizing, rather than repose. But he concludes that for beatitude “there must be a concurrence of visio, which is the perfect cognizance of the intelligible end; the getting it, which implies its presence; and the joy or fruition, which implies the quieting of that which loves in that which is loved.”[585] Thomas also shows how rectitude of will is needed, and discusses whether a body is essential; his conclusion being that a body is not required for the perfect beatitude of the life to come; yet he gives the counter considerations, showing the conduciveness of the perfected body to the soul’s beatitude even then. Next he follows Aristotle in pointing out how material goods may be necessary for the attainment of the imperfect beatitude possible on earth, while they are quite impertinent to the perfect beatitude of seeing God; and likewise he shows how the society of friends is needed here, but not essential hereafter, and yet a concomitant to our supreme felicity. The course of argument of the Liber iii. of the Contra Gentiles is not dissimilar. A number of preliminary chapters show how all things tend to an end; that the end of all is God; and that to know God is the end of every intellectual being. Next, that human felicitas does not consist in all those matters, in which the Summa theologiae also shows that beatitude does not lie; but that it consists in contemplation of God. He puts his argument simply: “It remains that the ultimate felicity of man lies in contemplation of truth. For this is the sole action (operatio) of man which is proper to man alone. This alone is directed to nothing else, as an end; since the contemplation of truth is sought for its own sake. Through this action, likewise, man is joined to higher substances (beings) through likeness of action, and through knowing them in some way. For this action, moreover, man is most sufficient by himself, needing but little external aid. To this also all other human acts seem to be directed as to an end. For to the perfection of contemplation, soundness of body is needed, to which all the arts of living are directed. Also quiet from the disturbance of passions is required, to which one comes through the moral virtues, and prudence; and quiet also from tumults, to which end all rules of civil life are ordained; and so, if rightly conceived, all human business seems to serve the contemplation of truth. Nor is it possible for the final felicity of man to consist in the contemplation which is confined to an intelligence of beginnings (principiorum), which is most imperfect and general (universalis), containing a knowledge of things potentially: it is the beginning, not the end of human study. Nor can that felicity lie in the contemplation of the sciences, which pertain to the lowest things, since felicity ought to lie in the action of the intelligence in relationship to the noblest intelligible verities. It remains that man’s final felicity consists in the contemplation of wisdom pursuant to a consideration of things divine. From which it also is evident by the way of induction, what was before proved by arguments, that the final felicity of man consists only in contemplation of God.”[586] Having reached this central conclusion of the Contra Gentiles, as well as of the Summa theologiae, Thomas proceeds to trim it further, so as clearly to differentiate that knowledge of God in which lies the ultimate felicity of intelligent beings from other ways of knowing God, which do not fully represent this supreme and final bliss. He first excludes the sort of common and confused knowledge of God, which almost all men draw from observing the natural order of things; then he shuts out the knowledge of God derived from logical demonstration, through which, indeed, one rather approaches a proper knowledge of Him;[587] next, he will not admit that supreme felicity lies in the cognition of God through faith; since that is still imperfect. This felicity consists in seeing[588] the divine essence, an impossibility in this life, when we see as in a glass. The supreme felicity is attainable only after death. Hereupon Thomas continues with the very crucial discussion of the capacity of the rational creature to know God. But instead of following him further in the Contra Gentiles, we will rather turn to his final presentation of this question in his Summa theologiae.
II The great Summa, having opened with an introductory consideration of the character of sacra doctrina,[589] at once fixes its attention upon the existence and attributes of God. These having been reviewed, Thomas begins Quaestio xii. by saying, that “as we have now considered what God is in His own nature (secundum se ipsum) it remains to consider what He is in our cognition, that is, how He is known by creatures.” The first question is whether any created intelligence whatsoever may be able to see God per essentiam. Having stated the counter arguments, and relying on John’s “we shall see Him as He is,” Thomas proceeds with his solution thus: “Since everything may be knowable so far as it exists in actuality,[590] God, who is pure actuality, without any mingling of potentiality, is in Himself, most knowable. But what is most knowable in itself, is not knowable to every intelligence because of the exceeding greatness of that which is to be known (propter excessum intelligibilis supra intellectum); as the sun, which is most visible, may not be seen by a bat, because of the excess of light. Mindful of this, some have asserted that no created intelligence could behold the essential nature (essentiam) of God. “But this is a solecism. For since man’s final beatitude consists in his highest action, which is the action of the intelligence, if the created intelligence is never to be able to see the essential nature of God, either it will never obtain beatitude, or its beatitude will consist in something besides God: which is repugnant to the faith. For the ultimate perfection of a rational creature lies in that which is the source or principle (principium) of its being. Likewise the argument is against reason. For there is in man a natural desire to know the cause, when he observes the effect; and from this, wonder rises in men. If then the intelligence of the rational creature is incapable of attaining to the first cause of things, an inane desire must be ascribed to nature. “Wherefore it is simply to be conceded that the blessed may see the essential nature of God.” So this general conclusion, or assumption, is based on faith, and also leaps, as from the head of Jove, the creature of unconquerable human need, which never will admit the inaneness of its yearnings. And now, assuming the possibility of seeing God in his true nature, Thomas proves that He cannot be seen thus through the similitude of any created thing: in order to behold God’s essence some divine likeness must be imparted from the seeing power (ex parte visivae potentiae), to wit, the light of divine glory (which is consummated grace) strengthening the intelligence that it may see God. And he next shows that it is impossible to see God by the sense of sight, or any other sense or power of man’s sensible nature. For God is incorporeal. Therefore He cannot be seen through the imagination, but only through the intelligence. Nor can any created intelligence through its natural faculties see the divine essence. “Cognition takes place in so far as the known is in the knower. But the known is in the knower according to the mode and capacity (modus) of the knower. Whence any knower’s knowledge is according to the measure of his nature. If then the being of the thing to be known exceeds the measure of the knowing nature, knowledge of it will be beyond the nature of that knower.” In order to see God in His essential nature, the created intellect needs light created by God: In lumine tuo videbimus lumen. And it may be given to one created intellect to see more perfectly than another. Do those who see God per essentiam, comprehend Him? No. “To comprehend God is impossible for any created intelligence. To have any true thought of God is a great beatitude.... Since the created light of glory received by any created intelligence, cannot be infinite, it is impossible that any created intelligence should know God infinitely, and comprehend Him.” Again he reasons; They who shall see God in His essence will see what they see through the divine essence united to their intelligence; they will see whatever they see at once, and not successively; for the contents of this intellectual, God-granted vision are not apprehended by means of the respective species or general images, but in and through the one divine essence. But in this life, man may not see God in His essential nature: “The mode of cognition conforms to the nature of the knower. But our soul, so long as we live in this life, has its existence (esse) in corporeal matter. Wherefore, by nature, it knows only things that have material form, or may through such be known. Evidently the divine essence cannot be known through the natures of material things. Any cognition of God through any created likeness whatsoever, is not a vision of His essence.... Our natural cognition draws its origin from sense; it may extend itself so far as it can be conducted (manuduci) by things of sense (sensibilia). But from them our intelligence may not attain to seeing the divine essence.... Yet since sensible creatures are effects, dependant on a cause, we know from them that God exists, and that as first cause He exceeds all that He has caused. From which we may learn the difference between Himself and His creatures, to wit, that He is not any of those things which He has caused.... “Through grace a more perfect knowledge of God is had than through natural reason. For cognition through natural reason needs both images (phantasmata) received from things of sense, and the natural light of intelligence, through whose virtue we abstract intelligible conceptions from them. In both respects human cognition is aided through the revelation of grace. For the natural light of the intellect is strengthened through the infusion of light graciously given (luminis gratuiti); while the images in the man’s imagination are divinely formed so that they are expressive of things divine, rather than of what naturally is received through the senses, as appears from the visions of the prophets.”[591] Natural reason stops with the unity of God, and can give no knowledge of the Trinity of divine Persons. Says Thomas:[592] “It has been shown that through natural reason man can know God only from His creatures. Creatures lead to knowledge of God as effects lead to some knowledge of a cause. Only that may be known of God by natural reason which necessarily belongs to Him as the source of all existences. The creative virtue of God is common to the whole Trinity; it pertains to the unity of essence, not to the distinction of persons. Through natural reason, therefore, those things concerning God may be known which pertain to the unity of essence, but not those which pertain to the distinction of persons.... Who strives to prove the Trinity of Persons by natural reason, doubly disparages faith: first as regards the dignity of faith itself, which concerns invisible things surpassing human reason; secondly as derogating from its efficiency in drawing men to it. For when any one in order to prove the faith adduces reasons which are not cogent, he falls under the derision of the faithless; for they think that we use such arguments, and that we believe because of them. One shall not attempt to prove things of faith save by authorities, and in discussion with those who receive the authorities. With others it is enough to argue that what the faith announces is not impossible.” Here Thomas seems rationally to recognize the limits upon reason in discovering the divine nature. In the regions of faith, reason’s feet lack the material footing upon which to mount. So Thomas would assert. But will he stand to his assertion? The shadowy line between reason and faith wavers with him. At least so it seems to us, for whom ontological reasoning has lost reality, and who find proofs of God not so much easier than proofs of the Trinity. But Thomas and the other scholastics dwelt in the region of the metaphysically ideal. To them it was not only real, but the most real; and it was so natural to step across the line of faith, trailing clouds of reason. The feet of such as Thomas are as firmly planted on the one side of the line as on the other. And now, as it might also seem, Thomas, having thus formally reserved the realm of faith, quickly steps across the line, to undertake a tremendous metaphysical exposition of the Trinity, of the distinctions between its Persons, of their properties, respective functions, and relationships; and all this is carried on largely in the categories of Aristotelian philosophy. Yet is he not still consistent with himself? For he surely did not conceive the elements of his discussion to lie in the lucubrations or discoveries of the natural reason; but in the data of revelation, and their explanation by saintly doctors. And was not he also a vessel of their inspiration, a son of faith, who might humbly hope for the light of grace, to transfigure and glorify his natural powers in the service of revealed truth? Thomas’s ideal is intellectual, and yet ends in faith. His intellectual interests, by faith emboldened, strengthened, and pointed heavenward, make on toward the realisation of that intellectual beatitude which is to be consummate hereafter, when the saved soul’s grace-illumined eye shall re-awaken where it may see face to face.
III Knowledge, then, supplemented in this life by faith, is the primary element of blessedness. We now turn our attention to the forms of knowledge and modes of knowing appropriate to the three rational substances: God, angel, man. The first is the absolute incorporeal being, the primal mover, in whom there is no potentiality, but actuality simple and perfect. The second is the created immaterial or “separated” substance, which is all that it is through participation in the uncreate being of its Creator. The third is the composite creature man, made of both soul and body, his capacities conditioned upon the necessities of his dual nature, his sense-perception and imagination being as necessary to his knowledge, as his rational understanding; for whom alone it is true that sense-apprehension may lead to the intelligible verities of God: “etiam sensibilia intellecta manuducunt ad intelligibilia divinorum.”[593] The earlier Quaestiones of Pars prima, on the nature of God, lead on to a consideration of God’s knowledge and ways of knowing. Those Quaestiones expounded the qualities of God quite as far as comported with Thomas’s realization of the limitation of the human capacity to know God in this life. Quaestio iii. upon the Simplicitas of God, shows that God is not body (corpus); that in Him there is no compositeness of form and material; that throughout His nature, He is one and the same, and therefore that He is His Deitas, His vita, and whatever else may be predicated of Him. Next it is shown (Qu. iv.) that God is perfect; that in Him are the perfectiones of all things, since whatever there may be of perfection in an effect, should be found in the effective cause; and as God is self-existent being, He must contain the whole perfection of being in Himself (totam perfectionem essendi in se). Next, that God is the good (bonum) and the summum bonum; He is infinite; He is in all things (Qu. viii. Art. 1) not as a part of their essence, but as accidens, and as the doer is in his deeds; and not only in their beginning, but so long as they exist; He acts upon everything immediately, and nothing is distant from Him; God is everywhere: as the soul is altogether in every part of the body, so God entire is in all things and in each. God is in all things created by Him as the working cause; but He is in the rational creature, through grace; as the object of action is in the actor, as the known is in the knower, and the desired in the wishful. God is immutable (Qu. ix.); for as final actuality (actus purus), with no admixture of potentiality, He cannot change; nor can He be moved; since His infinitude comprehends the plenitude of all perfection, there is nothing that He can acquire, and no whither for Him to extend. God is eternal (Qu. x.); for him there is no beginning, nor any succession of time; but an interminable now, an all at once (tota simul), which is the essence of eternity, as distinguished from the successiveness of even infinite time. And God is One (Qu. xi.). “One does not add anything to being, save negation of division. For One signifies nothing else than undivided being (ens indivisum). And from this it follows that One is convertible with being.” That God is One, is proved by His simplicitas; by the infiniteness of His perfection; and by the oneness of the world. “After a consideration,” now says Thomas, “of those matters which pertain to the divine substance, we may consider those which pertain to its action (operatio). And because certain kinds of action remain in the doer, while others pass out into external effect, we first treat of knowledge and will (for knowing is in the knower and willing in him who wills); and then of God’s power, which is regarded as the source of the divine action passing out into external effect. Then, since knowing is a kind of living, after considering the divine knowledge, the divine life will be considered. And because knowledge is of the true, there will be need to consider truth and falsity. Again since every cognition is in the knower, the rationes (types, essential natures) of things as they are in God the Knower (Deo cognoscente) are called ideas (ideae); and a consideration of these will be joined to the consideration of knowledge.”[594] Thus clearly laying out his topic, Thomas begins his discussion of God’s knowledge (scientia Dei); of the modes in which God knows and the knowledge which He has. In God is the most perfect knowledge. God knows Himself through Himself; in Him knowledge and Knower (intellectum and intellectus) are the same.[595] He perfectly comprehends Himself; for He knows Himself so far as He is knowable; and He is absolutely knowable being utter reality (actus purus). Likewise He knows things other than Himself. For He knows Himself perfectly, which implies a knowledge of those things to which His power (virtus) extends. Moreover, He knows all things in their special natures and distinctions from each other: for the perfection, or perfected actuality, of everything is contained in Him; and therefore God in Himself is able to know all things perfectly, and the special nature of everything exists through some manner of participation in the divine perfection. God knows all things in one, to wit, Himself; and not successively, or by means of discursive reasoning. “God’s knowledge is the cause of things. It stands to all created beings as the knowledge of the artificer to the things he makes. God causes things through His knowledge, since His being is His knowing (cum suum esse sit suum intelligere).” His knowledge causes things when it has the will joined with it, and, in so far as it is the cause of things, is called scientia approbationis. God knows things which are not actually (actu). Whatever has been or will be, He knows by the knowledge of sight (scientia visionis, which by implication is equivalent to scientia approbationis). For God’s knowing, which is His being, is measured by eternity; and eternity includes all time, as present, and without succession; so the present vision (intuitus) of God embraces all time and all things existing at any time, as if present. As for whatever is in the power of God or creature, but which never has been or will be, God knows it not as in vision, but simply knows it. God also knows evil. “Whoever knows anything perfectly should know whatever might happen to it. There are some good things to which it may happen to be corrupted through evils: wherefore God would not know the good perfectly, unless He also knew the evil. Everything is knowable so far as it is; but the being (esse) of evil is the privation of good: hence inasmuch as God knows good, He knows evil, as darkness is known through light.” Thomas now takes up a point curious perhaps to us, but of importance to him and Aristotle: does God know individuals (singularia), the particular as opposed to the universal? This point might seem disposed of in the argument by which Thomas maintained that God knew things in their special and distinct natures. But he now proves that God knows singularia by an argument which bears on his contention that man does not know singularia through the intelligence, but perceives them through sense; and as we shall see, that the angels have no direct knowledge of individuals, being immaterial substances. “God knows individuals (cognoscit singularia). For all perfections found in creatures pre-exist in higher mode in God. To know (cognoscere) individuals pertains to our perfection. Whence it follows that God must know them. The Philosopher (Aristotle) holds it to be illogical that anything should be known to us, and not to God.... But the perfections which are divided in inferior beings, exist simply and as one in God. Hence, although through one faculty we know universals and what is immaterial, and through another, individuals and what is material; yet God simply, through His intelligence, knows both.... One must hold that since God is the cause of things through His knowledge, the knowledge of God extends itself as far as His causality extends. Wherefore, since God’s active virtue extends itself not only to forms, from which is received the ratio of the universal, but also to matter, it is necessary that God’s knowledge should extend itself to individuals, which are such through matter.” And replying to a counter-argument Thomas continues: “Our intelligence abstracts the intelligible species from the individuating principles. Therefore the intelligible species of our intelligence cannot be the likeness of the individual principles; and, for this reason, our intelligence does not know individuals. But the intelligible species of the divine intelligence, which is the essence of God, is not immaterial through abstraction, but through itself; and exists as the principle of all principles entering the composition of the thing, whether principles of species or of the individual. Therefore through His essence God knows both universals and individuals.”[596] With these arguments still echoing, Thomas shows that God can know infinite things; also future contingencies; also whatever may be stated (enuntiabilia). His knowledge, which is His substance, does not change. It is speculative knowledge, in so far as relating to His own unchangeable nature, and to whatever He can do, but does not; it is practical knowledge so far as it relates to anything which He does. Thomas concludes his direct discussion of God’s knowledge, by an application of the Platonic theory of ideas, in which he mainly follows Augustine. “It is necessary to place ideas in the divine mind. Idea is the Greek for the Latin forma. Thus through ideas are understood the forms of things existing beyond the things themselves. By which we mean the prototype (exemplar) of that of which it is called the form; or the principle of its cognition, in so far as the forms of things knowable are said to be in the knower.” There must be many ideas or (as Augustine phrases it) stable rationes of things. There is a ratio in the divine mind corresponding to whatever God does or knows. “Ideas were set by Plato as the principles both of the cognition and the generation of things, and in both senses they are to be placed in the divine mind. So far as idea is the principle of the making of a thing, it may be called the prototype (exemplar), and pertains to practical knowledge (practicam cognitionem); but as the principle of cognition (principium cognoscitivum), it is properly called ratio, and may also pertain to speculative knowledge. In the signification of exemplar, it relates to everything created at any time by God: but when it means principium cognoscitivum, it relates to all things which are known by God, although never coming into existence.”[597] Such are the divine modes of knowledge. Thomas proceeds to discuss other aspects of the divine nature, the life and power, will and love, which may be ascribed to God. He then passes on to a discussion of the Persons of the Trinity. This completed, he turns to the world of created substances; into which we will follow him so far as to observe the forms of knowledge and ways of knowing proper to angels and mankind. We shall hereafter have to speak of the divine and angelic love, and of man’s love of God; but here, as our field is intellectual, we will simply recall to mind that Thomas applies a like intellectual conception of beatitude to both God and His rational creatures: “Beatitude, as has been said, signifies the perfect good of the intellectual nature; as everything desires its perfection, the intellectual [substance] desires to be beata. That which is most perfect in every intellectual nature, is the intellectual operation wherein, in a measure, it grasps all things. Wherefore the beatitude of any created intellectual nature consists in knowing (in intelligendo).”[598] IV Thomas regards the creation as a processio, a going out of all creatures from God. Every being (ens) that in any manner (quocumque modo) is, is from God. “God is the prima causa exemplaris of all things.... For the production of anything, there is needed a prototype (exemplar), in order that the effect may follow a determined form.... The determination of forms must be sought in the divine wisdom. Hence one ought to say that in the divine wisdom are the rationes of all things: these we have called ideas, to wit, prototypal forms existing in the divine mind. Although such may be multiplied in respect to things, yet really they are not other than the divine essence, according as its similitude can be participated in by divers things in divers ways. Thus God Himself is the first exemplar of all. There may also be said to be in created things certain exemplaria of other things, when they are made in the likeness of such others, or according to the same species or after the analogy of some resemblance.”[599] God not only is the efficient and exemplary cause, but also the final cause of all things (Divina bonitas est finis omnium rerum). “The emanation (emanatio) of all being from the universal cause, which is God, we call creation.”[600] God alone may be said to create. The function pertains not to any Person, but to the whole Trinity in common. And there is found some image of the Trinity in rational creatures in whom is intelligence and will; and in all creatures may be found some vestiges of the creator. Thomas, after a while, takes up the distinction between spiritual and corporeal creatures, and considers first the purely spiritual, called Angels. We enter with him upon the contemplation of these conceptions, which scholasticism did not indeed create, but elaborated with marvellous logic, and refined to a consistent intellectual beauty. None had larger share in perfecting the logical conception of the angelic nature, as immaterial and essentially intellectual, than our Angelic Doctor. A volume might well be devoted to tracing the growth of these beings of the mind, from their not unmilitant career in the Old Testament and the Jewish Apocrypha, their brief but classically beautiful mention in the Gospels, and their storm-red action in the Apocalypse; then through their treatment by the Fathers, to their hierarchic ordering by the great Pseudo-Areopagite; and so on and on, through the earlier Scholastics, the Lombard’s Sentences, and Hugo of St. Victor’s appreciative presentation; up to the gathering of all the angelic matter by Albertus Magnus, its further encyclopaedizing by Vincent of Beauvais, and finally its perfect intellectual disembodiment by Thomas;—while all the time the people’s mythopoeic love went on endowing these guardian spirits with heart and soul, and fashioning responsive stories of their doings. For men loved and feared them, and looked to them as God’s peculiar messengers. Thus they flash past us in the Divina Commedia; and their forms become lovely in Christian art. As we enter upon the contemplation of the angelic nature, let us not as of course regard angels simply as imaginative conceptions of Scripture and of the patristic and mediaeval mind. Thomas will show his reasons for their necessary existence, which may not convince us. Yet we may believe in angels, inasmuch as any real conception of the world’s governance by God requires the fulfilling of His thoughts through media that bring them down to move and live and realize themselves with each of us. Who, in striving to express, can do more than symbolize, the ways of God? What symbols truer than angels have been devised? “It is necessary,” opens Thomas,[601] “to affirm (ponere) that there are incorporeal creatures. For in created things God chiefly intends the good, which consists in assimilation to Him. Perfect assimilation of the effect to the cause is seen when the effect resembles the cause in that through which the cause produces the effect. God produces the creature through intelligence and will. Consequently the perfection of the universe requires that there should be intellectual creatures. To know cannot be the act (actus) of the body or of any corporeal faculty (virtus); because all body is limited to here and now. Therefore it is necessary, in order that the universe may be perfect, that there should be incorporeal creatures.”[602] Thomas then argues that the intellectual substance is entirely immaterial. “Angelic substances are above our understanding. So our understanding cannot attain to apprehending them as they are in themselves; but only in its own fashion as it apprehends composite things.” These immaterial substances exist in exceeding great number, and each is a species, because there cannot be several immaterial beings of one species, any more than there could be separate whitenesses or many humanities. Angels in their nature are imperishable. For nothing is corrupted save as its form is separated from its matter. But these immaterial substances are not composed of matter and form, being themselves subsisting forms and indestructible. Brass may have and lose a circular shape; but the circular shape cannot be separated from the circle, which it is. Thomas next shows (Pars prima, Qu. li.) that angels have no bodies by nature joined to them. Body is not of the ratio of intellectual substances. These (when perfect and not like the human soul) have no need to acquire knowledge through sensation. But though angels are intellectual substances, separate (separatae) from bodies, they sometimes assume bodies. In these they can perform those actions of life which have something in common with other kinds of acts; as speech, a living act, has something in common with inanimate sounds. Thus far only can physical acts be performed by angels, and not when such acts essentially belong to living bodies. Angels may appear as living men, but are not; neither are they sentient through the organs of their assumed bodies; they do not eat and digest food; they move only per accidens, incidentally to the inanimate motion of their assumed bodies; they do not beget, nor do they really speak; “but it is something like speech, when these bodies make sounds in the air like human voices.” Dropping the sole remark, that scholasticism has no sense of humour, we pass on to Thomas’s careful consideration of the angelic relations to space or locality (Qu. lii. and liii.). “Equivocally only may it be said that an angel is in a place (in loco): through application of the angelic virtue to some corporeal spot, the angel may be said in some sense to be there.” But, as angels are finite, when one is said, in this sense, to be in a place, he is not elsewhere too (like God). Yet the place where the angel is need not be an indivisible point, but may be larger or smaller, as the angel wills to apply his virtue to a larger or smaller body. Two angels may not be in the same place at the same time, “because it is impossible that there should be two complete immediate causes of one and the same thing.” Angels are said, likewise equivocally, to move, in a sense analogous to that in which they are said to be in a place. Such equivocal motion may be continuous or not. If not continuous, evidently the angel may pass from one place to another without traversing the intervening spaces. The angelic movement must take place in time; there must be a before and after to it, and yet not necessarily with any period intervening. Now as to angelic knowledge: De cognitione Angelorum. Knowing is no easy thing for man; and we shall see that it is not a simple matter to know, without the senses to provide the data and help build up knowledge in the mind. The function of sense, or its absence, conditions much besides the mere acquisition of the elements from which men form their thoughts. Thomas’s exposition of angelic knowledge and modes of knowing is a logical and consistent presentation of a supersensual psychology and theory of knowledge. Entering upon his subject, Thomas shows (Qu. liv.) that knowing (intelligere) is not the substantia or the esse of an angel. Knowing is actio, which is the actuality of faculty, as being (esse) is the actuality of substance. God alone is actus purus (absolute realized actuality), free from potentiality. His substantia is His being and His action (suum esse and suum agere). “But neither in an angel, nor in any creature, is virtus or the potentia operativa the same as the creature’s essentia,” or its esse or substantia. The difficult scholastic-Aristotelian categories of intellectus agens and possibilis do not apply to angelic cognition (for which the reader and the angels may be thankful). The angels, being immaterial intelligences, have no share in those faculties of the human soul, like sight or hearing, which are exercised through bodily organs. They possess only intelligence and will. “It accords with the order of the universe that the supreme intellectual creature should be intelligent altogether, and not intelligent in part, like our souls.” Quaestio lv., concerning the medium cognitionis angelicae, is a scholastic discussion scarcely to be rendered in modern language. The angelic intelligence is capable of knowing all things; and therefore an angel does not know through the medium of his essentia or substantia, which are limited. God alone knows all things through His essentia. The angelic intellect is made perfect for knowing by means of certain forms or ideas (species). These are not received from things, but are part of the angelic nature (connaturales). The angelic intelligence (potentia intellectiva) is completed through general concepts, of the same nature with itself (species intelligibiles connaturales). These come to angels from God at the same time with their being. Such concepts or ideas cover everything that they can know by nature (naturaliter). And Thomas proves that the higher angels know through fewer and more universal concepts than the lower. “In God an entire plenitude of intellectual cognition is held in one, to wit, in the divine essence through which God knows all things. Intelligent creatures possess such cognition in inferior mode and less simply. What God knows through one, inferior intelligences know through many; and this many becomes more as the inferiority increases. Hence the higher angel may know the sum total of the intelligible (universitatem intelligibilium) through fewer ideas or concepts (species); which, however, are more universal since each concept extends to more [things]. We find illustration of this among our fellows. Some are incapable of grasping intelligible truth, unless it be set forth through particular examples. This comes from the weakness of their intelligence. But others, of stronger mind, can seize many things from a few statements” (Qu. lv. Art. 3). Through this argument, and throughout the rest of his exposition of the knowledge of God, angel, and man, we perceive that, with Thomas, knowledge is superior and more delightful, as it is abstract in character, and universal in applicability. By knowing the abstract and the universal we become like to God and the angels; knowledge of and through the particular is but a necessity of our half-material nature. Thomas turns now to consider the knowledge had by angels of immaterial beings, i.e. themselves and God (Qu. lvi.): “An angel, being immaterial, is a subsisting form, and therefore intelligible actually (actu, i.e. not potentially). Wherefore, through its form, which is its substance, it knows itself.” Then as to knowledge of each other: God from the beginning impressed upon the angelic mind the likenesses of things which He created. For in Him, from the beginning, were the rationes of all things, both spiritual and corporeal. Through the impression of these rationes upon the angelic mind, an angel knows other angels as well as corporeal creatures. Their natures also yield them some knowledge of God. The angelic nature is a mirror holding the divine similitude. Yet without the illumination of grace the angelic nature knows not God in His essence, because no created likeness may represent that. As for material things (Qu. lvii.), angels have knowledge of them through the intelligible species or concepts impressed by God on the angelic mind. But do they know particulars—singularia? To deny it, says Thomas, would detract from the faith which accords to angels the ministration of affairs. This matter may be thought thus: “Things flow forth from God both as they subsist in their own natures and as they are in the angelic cognition. Evidently what flowed from God in things pertained not only to their universal nature, but to their principles of individuation.... And as He causes, so He also knows.... Likewise the angel, through the concepts (species) planted in him by God, knows things not only according to their universal nature, but also according to their singularity, in so far as they are manifold representations of the one and simple essence.” One observes that the whole scholastic discussion of universals lies back of arguments like these. The main principles of angelic knowledge have now been set forth; and Thomas pauses to point out to what extent the angels know the future, the secret thoughts of our hearts, and the mysteries of grace. He has still to consider the mode and measure of the angelic knowledge from other points of view. Whatever the angels may know through their implanted natures, they know perfectly (actu); but it may be otherwise as to what is divinely revealed to them. What they know, they know without the need of argument. And the discussion closes with remarks on Augustine’s phrase and conception of the matutina and vespertina knowledge of angels: the former being the knowledge of things as they are in the Word; the latter being the knowledge of things as they are in their own natures.[603] V That the abstract and the universal is the noble and delectable, we learn from this exposition of angelic knowledge. We may learn the same from Thomas’s presentation of the modes and contents of human understanding. The Summa theologiae follows the Scriptural order of presentation;[604] which is doubtless the reason why Thomas, instead of passing from immaterial creatures to the partly immaterial creature man, considers first the creation of physical things—the Scriptural work of the six days. After this he takes up the last act of the Creation—man. In the Summa he considers man so far as his composite nature comes within the scope of theology. Accordingly the principal topic is the human soul (anima); and the body is regarded only in relation to the soul, its qualities and its fate. Thomas will follow Dionysius (Pseudo-Areopagite) in considering first the nature (essentia) of the soul, then its faculties (virtus sive potentiae), and thirdly, its mode of action (operatio). Under the first head he argues (Pars prima, Qu. lxxv.) that the soul, which is the primum principium of life, is not body, but the body’s consummation (actus) and forma. Further, inasmuch as the soul is the principium of mental action, it must be an incorporeal principle existing by itself. It cannot properly be said to be the man; for man is not soul alone, but a composite of soul and body. But the soul, being immaterial and intellectual, is not a composite of form and matter. It is not subject to corruption. Concerning its union with the body (Qu. lxxvi.), “it is necessary to say that the mind (intellectus), which is the principle of intellectual action, is the form (forma) of the human body.” One and the same intellectual principle does not pertain to all human bodies: there is no common human soul, but as many souls as there are men.[605] Yet no man has a plurality of souls. “If indeed the anima intellectiva were not united to the body as form, but only as motor (as the Platonists affirm), it would be necessary to find in man another substantial form, through which the body should be set in its being. But if, as we have shown, the soul is united to the body as substantial form, there cannot be another substantial form beside it” (Qu. lxxvi. Art. 4). The human soul is fitly joined to its body; for it holds the lowest grade among intellectual substances, having no knowledge of truth implanted in it, as the angels have; it has to gather knowledge per viam sensus. “But nature never omits what is necessary. Hence the anima intellectiva must have not only the faculty of knowing, but the faculty of feeling (sentiendi). Sense-action can take place only through a corporeal instrument. Therefore the anima intellectiva ought to be united to such a body, which should be to it a convenient organ of sense” (Art. 5). Moreover, “since the soul is united to the body as form, it is altogether in any and every part of the body” (Art. 8). It is a cardinal point (Qu. lxxvii.) with Thomas that the soul’s essentia is not its potentia: the soul is not its faculties. That is true only of God. In Him there is no diversity. There is some diversity of faculty in an angel; and more in man, a creature on the confines of the corporeal and spiritual creation, in whom concur the powers of both. There is order and priority among the powers of the soul: the potentiae intellectivae are higher than the potentiae sensitivae, and control them; while the latter are above the potentiae nutritivae. Yet the order of their generation is the reverse. The highest of the sensitive faculties is sight. The anima is the subject in which are the powers of knowing and willing (potentiae intellectivae); but the subject in which are the powers of sensation is the combination of the soul and body. All the powers of the soul, whether the subject be soul alone or soul and body, flow from the essence of the soul, as from a source (principium). Thomas follows (Qu. lxxviii.) Aristotle in dividing the powers of the soul into vegetative, sensitive, appetitive, motor, and intellectual. In taking up the last, he points out (Qu. lxxix.) that intelligence (intellectus) is a power of the soul, and not the soul itself. He then follows the Philosopher in showing how intelligence (intelligere) is to be regarded as a passive power, and he presents the difficult Aristotelian device of the intellectus agens, and argues that memory and reason are not to be regarded as powers distinct from the intelligence (intellectus). How does the soul, while united to the body (the anima conjuncta), (1) know corporeal things which are beneath it? (2) how does it know itself and what is in itself? and (3) how does it know immaterial substances which are above it? The exposition of these problems is introduced by (Qu. lxxxiv.) a historical discussion of the primi philosophi who thought there was nothing but body in the world. Then came Plato, seeking “to save some certain cognition of truth” by means of his theory of Ideas. But Plato seems to have erred in thinking that the form of the known must be in the knower as it is in the known. This is not necessary. In sense-perception the form of the thing is not in sense as it is in the thing. “And likewise the intelligence receives the species (Ideas) of material and mobile bodies immaterially and immutably, after its own mode; for the received is in the recipient after the mode of the recipient. Hence it is to be held that the soul through the intelligence knows bodies by immaterial, universal, and necessary cognition.” Thomas sets this matter forth in a manner very illuminating as to his general position regarding knowledge: “It follows that material things which are known must exist in the knower, not materially, but immaterially. And the reason of this is that the act of cognition extends itself to those things which are outside of the knower. For we know things outside of us. But through matter, the form of the thing is limited to what is single (aliquid unum). Hence it is plain that the ratio (proper nature) of cognition is the opposite of the ratio of materiality. And therefore things, like plants, which receive forms only materially, are in no way cognoscitivae, as is said in the second book of De anima. The more immaterially anything possesses the form of the thing known, the more perfectly it knows. Wherefore the intelligence, which abstracts the species (Idea) not only from matter, but also from individualizing material conditions, knows more perfectly than sense, which receives the form of the thing known without matter indeed, but with material conditions. Among the senses themselves, sight is the most cognoscitivus, because least material. And among intelligences, that is the more perfect which is the more immaterial” (Qu. lxxxiv. Art. 2). Then Thomas again differs from Plato, and holds with Aristotle, that the intelligence through which the soul knows has not its ideas written upon it by nature, but from the first is capable of receiving them all (sed est in principio in potentia ad hujusmodi species omnes). Hereupon, and with further arguments, Thomas shows “that the species intelligibiles, by which our soul knows, do not arise from separate forms” or ideas.To the converse question, whether intelligent cognition comes from things of sense, Thomas answers, following Aristotle: “One cannot say that sense perception is the whole cause of intellectual cognition, but rather in a certain way is the matter of the cause (materia causae).” On the other hand, “it is impossible that the mind, in the state of the present life, wherein it is joined to the passive body (passibili corpori), should know anything actually (actu) except by turning itself to images (phantasmata). And this appears from two arguments. In the first place, since the mind itself is a power (vis) using no bodily organ, its action would not be interrupted by an injury to any bodily organ, if for its action there was not needed the action of some faculty using a bodily organ. Sense and imagination use a bodily organ. Hence as to what the mind knows actually (actu), there is needed the action of the imagination and other faculties, both in receiving new knowledge and in using knowledge already acquired. For we see that when the action of the imaginative faculty is interrupted by injury to an organ, as with the delirious, the man is prevented from actually knowing those things of which he has knowledge. Secondly (as any one may observe in himself), whenever he attempts to know (intelligere) anything, he forms images by way of example, in which he may contemplate what he is trying to know. And whenever we wish to make any one else understand, we suggest examples, from which he may make for himself images to know by. “The reason of this is that the knowing faculty is suited to the knowable (potentia cognoscitiva proportionatur cognoscibili). The appropriate object of the intelligence of an angel, who is separate from all body, is intelligible immaterial substance (substantia intelligibilis a corpore separata); through this kind of intelligible he cognizes also material things. But the appropriate object of the human mind, which is joined to a body, is the essence or nature (quidditas sive natura) existing in material body; and through the natures of visible things of this sort it ascends to some cognition of invisible things. It belongs to the idea (ratio) of this nature that it should exist in some individual having corporeal matter, as it is of the concept (ratio) of the nature of stone or horse that it should be in this stone or this horse. Hence the nature of a stone or any material thing cannot be known completely and truly, unless it is known as existing in some particular [instance]. We apprehend the particular through sense and imagination; and so it is necessary, in order that the mind should know its appropriate object, that it should turn itself to images, in order to behold the universal nature existing in the particular. If, indeed, the appropriate object of our intelligence were the separate form, or if the form of sensible things did not subsist in the particular [instances], as the Platonists say, our mind in knowing would have no need always to turn itself to images” (Qu. lxxxiv. Art. 7). It is next queried whether the judgment of the mind is impeded through binding (per ligamentum) the senses. In view of the preceding argument the answer is, that since “all that we know in our present state, becomes known to us through comparison with sensible things, it is impossible that there should be in us perfect mental judgment when the senses are tied, through which we take cognizance of sensible things” (Qu. lxxxiv. Art. 8). This entire argument shows in what firm Aristotelian manner, scholasticism, in the person of Thomas, set itself upon a basis of sense perception; through which it still pressed to a knowledge of the supersensible and abstract. In this argument we also see, as always with Thomas, that knowledge is perfect and blessed, the more immaterial and abstract are its modes. All of which will continue to impress us as we follow Thomas, briefly, through his exposition of the modus and ordo of knowing (intelligendi) (Qu. lxxxv.). The first question is whether our mind knows corporeal things by abstracting the species from the images—the type from the particular. There are three grades of the cognizing faculty (virtutis cognoscitivae). The lowest is sensation, which is the act of a bodily organ. Its appropriate object is form as existing in matter. And since matter is the principle of individuation (i.e. the particularizing principle from which results the particular or individual), sense perception is confined to the particular. The highest grade of the cognitient faculty is that which is independent of bodily organs and separate from matter, as the angelic intelligence; and its object is form subsisting without matter. For though angels know material things, they view them only in the immaterial, to wit, themselves or God. Between the two is the human mind, which “is the forma of the body. So it naturally knows form existing individually in corporeal matter, and yet not as form is in such matter. But to know form, which is in concrete matter, and yet know it not as it is in such matter, is to abstract it from this particular matter which the images represent. It follows that our intelligence knows material things by abstracting them from images; and through reflecting on these material abstractions we reach some cognition of the immaterial, just as conversely the angels know the material through the immaterial” (Qu. lxxxv. Art. 1). It is next proved that the soul, through the intelligible species or forms abstracted from particulars, knows things which are outside the soul. In a way, intellection arises from sense perception; therefore the sense perception of the particular precedes the intellectual knowledge of universals. But, on the other hand, the intelligence, in coming to perfect cognition, proceeds from the undistinguished to the distinguished, from the more to the less general, and so knows animal before it knows homo, and homo before it knows Socrates. The next conclusion reads very neatly in scholastic Latin, but is difficult to paraphrase: it is that the intelligence may know many things at once (simul) per modum unius, but not per modum multorum; that is to say, the mind may grasp at once whatever it may grasp under one species, but cannot know a number of things at once which fall under different species. Next as to what our mind knows in material things (Qu. lxxxvi.). It does not know the particular or singular (singularia) in them directly; for the principle of singularity in material things is the particular matter. But our mind knows by abstracting from such the species, that is, the universal. This it knows directly. But it knows singularia indirectly, inasmuch as, when it has abstracted the intelligible species, it must still, in order to know completely (actu), turn itself to the images in which it knows the species. How does the anima intellectiva know itself, and those things which are in it (Qu. lxxxvii.)? Everything is knowable in so far as it is actually (in actu) and not merely potentially. So the human intelligence knows itself not through its essence, which is still but potential, but in so far as it has actually realized itself; knows itself, that is, through its actuality. The permanent qualities (habitus) of the soul exist in a condition between potentiality and actuality. The mind knows them when they are actually present or operative. Does the human intelligence know its own act—know that it knows? In God, knowing and being are one. Although this is not true of the angelic intelligence, nevertheless with an angel the prime object of knowledge is his own essence. With one and the same act an angel knows that it knows, and knows its essence. But the primal object of the human intelligence is neither its knowledge (knowing, intelligere) nor its essence, but something extrinsic, to wit, the nature of the material thing. Hence that is the first object known by the human intelligence; and next is known its own actus, by which that first object is known. Likewise the human intelligence knows the acts of will. An act of will is nothing but a certain inclination toward some form of the mind (formam intellectam) as natural appetite is an inclination toward a natural form. The act of will is in the knowing mind and so is known by it. So far as to how the soul knows material things, which are below it, and its own nature and qualities. It is another question whether the soul knows those things which are above it, to wit, the immaterial substances. Can the soul in the state of the present life know the angels in themselves? With lengthy argument, differing from Plato and adhering to Aristotle, Thomas proves the negative: that in the present life we cannot know substantias separatas immateriales secundum seipsas. Nor can we come to a knowledge of the angelic substances through knowing material things. “For immaterial substances are altogether of another nature (ratio) from the whatnesses (quidditates) of material things; and however much our intelligence abstracts from matter the essence (quidditas) of the material thing, it will never arrive at anything like an immaterial substance. And so, through material substances, we cannot know immaterial substances perfectly” (Qu. lxxxviii. Art. 2). Much less can we thus know God. The discussion hitherto has been confined to the intellectual capacities of souls united to their bodies. As to the knowledge which the “separated” soul may have, other considerations arise akin to those touching the knowledge possessed by the separated substances called angels. Is the separated soul able to know? Thomas has shown that so long as the soul is joined to the body it cannot know anything except by turning itself to images. If this were a mere accident of the soul, incidental to its existence in the body, then with that impediment removed, it would return to its own nature and know simply. But if, as we suppose, this turning to images is of the nature of the soul, the difficulty grows. Yet the soul has one mode of existence when united to the body, and another when separated, but with its nature remaining. Souls united to bodies may know through resort to images of bodies, which are in the bodily organs; but when separated, they may know by turning to that which is intelligible simply, as other separate substances do. Yet still this raises doubt; for why did not God appoint a nobler way for the soul to know than that which is natural to it when joined to the body? The perfection of the universe required that there should be diverse grades among intellectual substances. The soul is the lowest of them. Its feeble intelligence was not fit to receive perfect knowledge through universal conceptions, save when assisted by concrete examples. Without these, souls would have had but a confused knowledge. Hence, for their more perfect knowledge of things, they are naturally united to bodies, and so receive a knowledge from things of sense proper to their condition; just as rude men can be led to know only through examples. So it was for a higher end that the soul was united to the body, and knows through resort to images; yet, when separated, it will be capable of another way of knowing.[606] Separated from the body, the soul can know itself through itself. It can know other separated souls perfectly, but the angels, who are higher natures, only imperfectly, at least through the knowledge which the separated soul has from its nature; but that may be increased through grace and glory. The separated soul will know natural objects through the species (ideas) received from the inflowing divine light; yet less perfectly than the angels. Likewise, less universally than angels, will separated souls, by like means of species received from the divine light, know particular things, and only such as they previously knew, or may know through some affection or aptitude or the divine decree. For the habit and aptitude of knowledge, and the knowledge already acquired, will remain in the separated soul, so far as relates to the knowledge which is in the intellect, and no longer in the lower perceptive faculties. Neither will distance from the object affect the soul’s knowledge, since it will know through the influx of forms (species) from the divine light. “Yet through the cognition belonging to their nature, separated souls do not know what is doing here below. For such souls know the particular and concrete (singularia) only as from the traces (vestigia) of previous cognition or affection, or by divine appointment. And the souls of the dead by divine decree, and in accordance with their mode of existence, are separated from the intercourse of the living and joined to the society of spiritual substances. Therefore they are ignorant of those things which are done among us.” Nevertheless, it would seem, according to the opinions of Augustine and Gregory, “that the souls of the saints who see God know all that is done here. Yet, perfectly joined to the divine righteousness, they are not grieved, nor do they take part in the affairs of the living, save as the divine disposition requires.” “Still the souls of the dead are able to care for the affairs of the living, although ignorant of their condition; just as we have care for the dead, though ignorant of their state, by invoking the suffrages of the Church. And the souls of the dead may be informed of the affairs of the living from souls lately departed hence, or through angels or demons, or by the revealing spirit of God. But if the dead appear to the living, it is by God’s special dispensation, and to be reckoned as a divine miracle” (Qu. lxxxix. Art. 8). VI We have thus traced Thomas’s view of the faculty of knowledge, the primary constituent of beatitude in God, and in angels and men. There are other elements which not only supplement the faculty of knowledge, but even flow as of necessity from a full and true conception of that faculty and its perfect energizing. These needful, yet supplementary, factors are the faculties of will and love and natural appetite; though the last does not exist in God or angel or in “separated soul.” The composite creature man shares it with brutes: it is of enormous importance, since it may affect his spiritual progress in this life, and so determine his state after death. Let us observe these qualities in God, in the immaterial substances called angels, and in man. In God there is volition as well as intelligence; for voluntas intellectum consequitur; and as God’s being (esse) is His knowing (intelligere), so likewise His being is His will (velle).[607] Essentially alike in God and man and angel are the constituents of spiritual beatitude and existence—knowing, willing, loving. From Creator down to man, knowledge differs in mode and in degree, yet is essentially the same. The like is true of will. As to love, because passion is of the body, love and every mode of turning from or to an object is passionless in God and the angels. Yet man through love, as well as through willing and through knowing, may prove his kinship with angels and with God. God is love, says John’s Epistle. “It is necessary to place love in God,” says Thomas. “For the first movement of will and any appetitive faculty (appetitivae virtutis) is love (amor).” It is objected that love is a passion; and the passionless God cannot love. Answers Thomas, “Love and joy and delight are passions in so far as they signify acts (or actualities, actus) of the appetitus sensitivi; but they are not passions when they signify the actus of the appetitus intellectivi; and thus are they placed in God” (Pars prima, Qu. xx. Art. 1). God loves all existences. Now all existences, in so far as they are, are good. For being itself (esse) is in a sense the good of any thing, and likewise its perfection. It has been shown that God’s will is the cause of all things; and thus it is proper that a thing should have being, or good, in so far as it is willed by God. God wills some good to every existent thing. And since to love is nothing else than to will good to something, it is evident that God loves all things that are, yet not in the way we love. For since our will is not the cause of the goodness of things, but is moved by it as by an object, our love by which we will good to anything is not the cause of its goodness; but its goodness calls forth the love by which we wish to preserve and add to the good it has; and for this we work. But God’s love imparts and creates goodness in things. The divine love embraces all things in one and the same act of will; but inasmuch as His love creates goodness, there could be no greater goodness in one thing than in another unless He willed greater good to one than to the other: in this sense He may be said to love one creature more than another; and in this way He loves the better things more. Besides love, the order of the universe proves God’s justitia; an attribute which is to be ascribed to Him, as Dionysius says, in that He grants to all things what is appropriate, according to the dignity of the existence of each, and preserves the nature of each in its own order and virtue. Likewise misericordia is to be ascribed to God, not as if He were affected by pitying sadness, but in that He remedies the misery or defects of others. Thus far as to will and love in God. Next, as to these qualities in Angels. Have angels will? (Pars prima, Qu. lix.). Thomas argues: All things proceed from the divine will, and all per appetitum incline toward good. In plants this is called natural appetite. Next above them come those creatures who perceive the particular good as of the senses; their inclination toward it is appetitus sensitivus. Still above them are such as know the ratio of the good universally, through their intelligence. Such are the angels; and in them inclination toward the good is will. Moreover, since they know the nature of the good, they are able to form a judgment as to it; and so they have free will: ubicumque est intellectus, est liberum arbitrium. And as their knowledge is above that of men, so in them free will exists more excellently. The angels have only the appetitus intellectivus which is will; they are not irascible or concupiscent, since these belong to the appetitus sensitivus. Only metaphorically can furor and evil concupiscence be ascribed to demons, as anger is to God—propter similitudinem effectus. Consequently amor and gaudium do not exist as passions in angels. But in so far as these qualities signify solely an act of will, they are intellectual. In this sense, to love is to will good to anything, and to rejoice (gaudere) is to rest the will in a good obtained. Similarly, caritas and spes, in so far as they are virtues, lie not in appetite, but in will; and thus exist in angels. With man the virtues of temperance and fortitude may relate to things of sense; but not so with angels, who have no passions to be bridled by these virtues. Temperance is ascribed to them when they temper their will according to the will divine, and fortitude, when they firmly execute it (Qu. lix. Art. 4). In a subsequent portion of Pars prima (Qu. cx.) Thomas has occasion to point out that, as in human affairs, the more particular power is governed by the more universal, so among the angels. “The higher angels who preside over the lower have more universal knowledge. It is likewise clear that the virtus of a body is more particular than the virtus of a spiritual substance; for every corporeal form is form particularized (individuata) through matter, and limited to the here and now. But immaterial forms are unconditioned and intelligible. And as the lower angels, who have forms less universal, are ruled by the higher angels, so all corporeal things are ruled by angels. And this is maintained not only by the holy Doctors, but by all philosophers who have recognized incorporeal substances.” Next Thomas considers the action of angels upon men, and shows that men may have their minds illumined by the lower orders of angels, who present to men intelligibilem veritatem sub similitudinibus sensibilium. God sends the angels to minister to corporeal creatures; in which mission their acts proceed from God as a cause (principio). They are His instruments. They are sent as custodians of men, to guide and move them to good. “To every man an angel is appointed for his guard: of which the reason is, that the guardianship (custodia) of the angels is an execution of divine providence in regard to men.” Every man, while as viator he walks life’s via non tuta, has his guardian angel. And the archangels have care of multitudes of men (Qu. cxiii.). Thus Thomas’s, or rather, say the Christian doctrine as to angels, becomes a corollary necessary to Christian theism, and true at least symbolically. But—and this is the last point as to these ministering spirits—do the angels who love without passion, grieve and suffer when those over whom they minister are lost? “Angels grieve neither over the sins nor the punishment of men. For, as says Augustine, sadness and grief arise only from what contravenes the will. But nothing happens in the world that is contrary to the will of the angels and other blessed ones. For their will is entirely fixed (totaliter inhaeret) in the order of the divine righteousness (Justitiae); and nothing takes place in the world, save what takes place and is permitted by the same. And so, in brief, nothing takes place in the world contrary to the will of the blessed” (Qu. cxiii. Art. 7). We come to man. He has will, and free will or choice, as the angels have. Will is part of the intellectual nature: it is as the intellectivus appetitus. But man differs from the angels in possessing appetites which belong to his sense-nature and do not perceive the good in its common aspects; because sense does not apprehend the universal, but only the particular.[608] Sometimes Thomas speaks of amor as including every form of desire, intellectual or pertaining to the world of sense. “The first movement of will and of any appetitive faculty (virtus) is amor.”[609] So in this most general signification amor “is something belonging to appetite; for the object of both is the good.” “The first effect of the desirable (appetibilis) upon the appetitus, is called amor; thence follows desiderium, or the movement toward the desirable; and at last the quies which is gaudium. Since then amor consists in an effect upon the appetitus, it is evidently passio; most properly speaking when it relates to the yearning element (concupiscibile), but less properly when it relates to will” (Pars prima, Qu. xxvi. Art. 2). Further distinguishing definitions are now in order: “Four names are applied to what pertains to the same: amor, dilectio, caritas, et amicitia. Of the three first, amor has the broadest meaning. For all dilectio or caritas is amor; but not conversely. Dilectio adds to amor a precedent choice (electionem praecedentem) as its name indicates. Hence dilectio is not in the concupiscent nature, but in the will, and therefore in the rational nature. Caritas adds to amor a certain perfectionem amoris, inasmuch as what is loved, is esteemed as very precious, as the name shows” (Ibid. Art. 3). Moreover, amor may be divided into amor amicitiae, whereby we wish good to the amicus, and amor concupiscentiae, whereby properly we desire a good to ourselves. The Good is the object and, in that sense, the cause, of amor (Qu. xxvii.). “But love requires a cognition of the good which is loved. Therefore the Philosopher says, that bodily sight is the cause of amoris sensitivi. Likewise contemplation of spiritual beauty or goodness is the cause of amoris spiritualis. Thus, therefore, cognition is the cause of love, inasmuch as the good cannot be loved unless known.” From this broad conception of amor the argument rises to amor in its purest phases, which correspond to the highest modes of knowledge man is capable of. They are considered in their nature, in their causes, and effects. It is evident whither we are travelling in this matter. “Love (amor) may be perfect or imperfect. Perfect love is that by which some one is loved for himself, as a man loves a friend. Imperfect love is that by which some one loves a thing, not for itself, but in order that that good may come to him, as a man loves the thing he desires. The first love pertains to caritas which cleaves to God (inhaeret Deo) for Himself (secundum seipsum).”[610] Caritas is one of the theological virtues, and as such Thomas treats it. To it corresponds the “gift” of sapientia, likewise a virtue bestowed by God, but more particularly regarded as the “gift” of the Holy Spirit. Caritas is set not in the appetitus sensitivus, but in the will. Yet as it exceeds our natural faculties, “it is not in us by nature, nor acquired through our natural powers; but through the infusion of the Holy Spirit, who is the amor Patris et Filii.” He infuses caritas according to His will; and it will increase as we draw near to God; nor is there any bound to its augmentation. May caritas be perfect in this life? In one sense it never can be perfect, because no creature ever can love God according to His infinite lovableness. “But on the part of him who wills to love (ex parte diligentis), caritas is perfect when he loves as much as he is able. Which may be taken in three ways. In one way, as the whole heart of man is always borne toward God; and this is the perfection of the love of home (caritas patriae), unattainable here, where because of this life’s infirmities it is impossible always actually to think upon God, and be drawn toward Him by voluntary love (dilectione). In another way, as a man may strive to keep himself free for God and things divine, laying other matters aside, save as life’s need requires: and that is the perfection of caritas, possible in this life, yet not for all who have caritas. And the third way, when any one habitually sets his heart on God, so that he thinks and wills nothing that is contrary to the divine love: this perfection is common to all who have caritas.”[611] The caritas with which we love God, extends to our neighbours, and even to our enemies, for God’s sake; also to ourselves, including our bodies; it embraces sinners, but not their sinfulness. It embraces the angels. There is order and grade in caritas, according to its relationship to God, the source of beatitude and voluntary love (dilectionis). God is to be loved ex caritate above all; for He is loved as the cause of beatitude, while our neighbour is loved as a participant with us in the beatitude from God. We should love God more than ourselves; because beatitude is in God as in the common and fontal source of all things that participate in beatitude. “But, after God, man should love himself, in so far as he is spirit (secundum naturam spiritualem), more than any one else. This is plain from the very reason of loving. God is loved as the principle of good, on which the dilectio caritatis is based. Man loves himself ex caritate for the reason that he is a participator in that good. He loves his neighbour because of his association (societas) in that good.... Participation in the divine good is a stronger reason for loving, than association in this participation. Therefore, man ex caritate should love himself more than his neighbour; and the mark (signum) of this is, that man should not commit any sin barring his participation in this beatitude, in order to free his neighbour from sin.... But one should love his neighbour’s salvation more than his own body.”[612] We may love some of our neighbours more than others; for those bound to us by natural ties and proximity can be loved more and in more actual ways. The order and grades of love will endure when our natures are perfected in glory. Love (caritas) is the supreme theological virtue. It comes to us in this life through grace; it can be perfected only when grace is consummated in glory. Likewise the highest knowledge possible in this life comes through grace, to be perfected in glory. All is from God, and that which, of all the rest, seems most freely given is the divine influence disposing the intelligence and will toward good, and illuminating these best God-given faculties. This, as par excellence, through the exceeding bounty of its free bestowal, is called gratia (grace). It is a certain habitual disposition of the soul; it is not the same as virtus, but a divinely implanted disposition, in which the virtues must be rooted; it is the imparted similitude of the divine nature, and perfects the nature of the soul, so far as that has part in likeness to the divine: it is the medial state between nature and that further consummation of the grace-illumined nature, which is glory; and so it is the beginning, the inchoatio, of our glorified beatitude. Clearly, grace is no part of our inborn nature, and does not belong to our natural faculties. It is a divinely bestowed increment, directing our natural faculties toward God and uplifting them to higher capacities of knowing and loving. To follow Thomas’s exposition of grace a little more closely:[613] man, through his natural powers, may know truth, but not the highest; and without grace, our fallen nature cannot will all the good belonging to it (connaturale), nor love God above all else, nor merit eternal life. “Grace is something supernatural in man coming from God.” It “is not the same as virtue; and its subject (i.e. its possessor, that in which it is set) cannot be a faculty (potentia) of the soul; for the soul’s faculties, as perfected, are conceived to be virtues. Grace, which is prior to virtue, is set, not in the faculties, but in the essence of the soul. Thus, as through his faculty of knowing (potentiam intellectivam), man shares the divine knowledge by the virtue of faith, and through the faculty of will shares the divine love by the virtue of caritas, so by means of a certain similitude he shares in the divine nature through some regeneration or recreation” (Pars I. ii., Qu. cx. Art. 4). Grace may be conceived either as “divine aid, moving us to willing and doing right, or as a formative and abiding (habituale) gift, divinely placed in us” (Qu. cxi. Art. 2). “The gift of grace exceeds the power of any created nature; and is nothing else than a sharing (participatio) of the divine nature” (Qu. cxii. Art. 1). So it is clear that without grace man cannot rise to the highest knowledge and the purest love of which he is capable in this life; far less can he reach that final and perfected blessedness which is expected hereafter. For this he must possess the virtue of Faith, which comes not without grace. “The perfection of the rational creature consists not only in that which may be his, in accordance with his nature; but also in that which may come to him from some supernatural sharing in the divine goodness. The final beatitude of man consists in some supernatural vision of God. Man can attain to that only through some mode of learning from God the Teacher, and he must believe God as a disciple believes his master” (Pars II. ii., Qu. ii. Art. 3). Within the province of the Christian Faith “it is necessary that man should accept per modum fidei not only what is above reason, but also what may be known through reason.” (Art. 4). He must believe explicitly the prima credibilia, that is to say, the Articles of Faith; it is enough if he believes other credibilia implicitly, by holding his mind prepared to accept whatever Scripture teaches (Art. 5). “To believe is an act of the intellect (actus intellectus) as moved by will to assenting. It proceeds from the will and from the intellect.... Yet it is the immediate act of the intellect, and therefore faith is in the intellect as in a subject [i.e. possessor]” (Qu. iv. Art. 2). And Thomas, having shown the function of will in any act of faith, passes on by the same path to connect fides with caritas: “Voluntary acts take their species from the end which is the object of volition. That from which anything receives its species, occupies the place held by form in material things. Hence, as it were, the form of any voluntary act is the end to which it is directed (ordinatur). Manifestly, an act of faith is directed to the object willed (which is the good) as to an end. But good which is the end of faith, to wit, the divine good, is the proper object of caritas. And so caritas is called the form of faith, in so far as through caritas the act of faith is perfected and given form” (Qu. iv. Art. 3). Thomas makes his conclusion more precise: “As faith is the consummation of the intellect, that which pertains to the intellect, pertains, per se, to faith. What pertains to will, does not, per se, pertain to faith. The increment making the difference between the faith which has form and faith which lacks it (fides formata, fides informis), consists in that which pertains to will, to wit, to caritas, and not in what pertains to intellect” (Qu. iv. Art. 4). Only the fides which is formed and completed in caritas is a virtue (Art. 5). And Thomas says concisely (Qu. vi. Art. 1) what in many ways has been made evident before: For Faith, it is necessary that the credibilia should be propounded, and then that there should be assent to them; but since man, in assenting to those things which are of the Faith, is lifted above his nature, his assent must proceed from a supernatural principle working within him, which is God moving him through grace. It is not hard to see why two gifts (dona) of the Holy Spirit should belong to the virtue Faith, to wit, understanding and knowledge, intellectus et scientia. Thomas gives the reasons in an argument germane to his Aristotelian theory of cognition: “The object of the knowing faculty is that which is.... Many kinds of things lie hidden within, to which the intellectus of man should penetrate. Beneath the accidens the substantial nature of the thing lies hidden; beneath words lie their meanings; beneath similes and figures, lies the figured truth—veritas figurata (for things intelligible are, as it were, within things sensible); and in causes lie hidden the effects, and conversely. Now, since human cognition begins with sense, as from without, it is clear that the stronger the light of the intellect, the further it will penetrate to the inmost depths. But the light of our natural intellect is of finite virtue, and may reach only to what is limited. Therefore man needs the supernatural light, in order to penetrate to the knowledge which through the natural light he is not able to know; and that supernatural light given to man is called the donum intellectus” (Qu. viii. Art. 1). This gift follows grace. Grace is more perfect than nature. It does not abrogate, but perfects the natural faculties. Nor does it fail in those matters in which man’s natural power is competent (Qu. ix. Art. 1). So, besides the donum intellectus, to Faith belongs the donum scientiae also, which brings and guides knowledge of human things (Art. 2). And now we shall not be surprised to find sapientia, the very highest gift of the Spirit, attached to the grace-given virtue caritas. For caritas is the informing principle of Faith, and the highest virtue of the grace-illumined will. The will, be it remembered, belongs to man’s intellectual nature; its object is the good which is known by the mind (bonum intellectum). “Sapientia (wisdom, right knowledge as to the highest cause, which is God) signifies rectitude of judgment in accordance with the rationes divinae,” the ideas and reasons which exist in God. Rectitude of judgment regarding things divine may arise from rational inquiry; in which case it pertains to the sapientia which is an intellectual virtue. But it may also spring from affinity to those things themselves; and then it is a gift of the Holy Spirit (II. ii., Qu. xlv. Art. 2). Says Thomas: “By the name beatitude is understood the final perfection of the rational or intellectual nature. This consists for this life in such contemplation as we may have here of the highest intelligible good, which is God; but above this felicity is that other felicity which we expect when we shall see God as He is” (Pars I., Qu. lxii Art 1). But mark: the perfection of the intellectual nature does not consist merely in knowing, narrowly taken. The right action of will is also essential, of the will directed toward the highest good, which is God: and this is caritas, of which the corresponding gift from the Spirit is wisdom. In accord with this full consummation of human nature, comprising the perfection of cognition and will, Thomas outlines his conception of the vita contemplativa, the life of most perfect beatitude attainable on earth: “The vita contemplativa is theirs whose resolve is set upon the contemplation of truth. Resolve is an act of will; because resolve is with respect to the end, which is the object of will. Thus the vita contemplativa, according to the essence of its action, is of the intelligence; but so far as it pertains to what moves us to engage in such action, it is of the will, which moves all the other faculties, including the intelligence, to act. Appetitive energy (vis appetitiva) moves toward contemplating something, either sensibly or intellectually: sometimes from love of the thing seen, and sometimes from love of the knowledge itself, which arises from contemplation. And because of this, Gregory sets the vita contemplativa in the love of God—in caritate Dei—to wit, inasmuch as some one, from a willing love (dilectio) of God burns to behold His beauty. And because any one is rejoiced when he attains what he loves, the vita contemplativa is directed toward dilectio[614] which lies in affect (in affectu); by which amor also is intended” (II. ii., Qu. clxxx. Art. 1). The moral virtues, continues Thomas, do not pertain essentially to this vita. But they may promote it, by regulating the passions and quieting the tumult of outside affairs. In principle it is fixed upon the contemplation of truth, which here we see but in a glass darkly; and so we help ourselves along by contemplating the effects of the divine cause in the world. Thus final beatitude, and its mortal approach in the vita contemplativa of this earth, is of the mind, both in its knowledge and its love. Immateriality, spirituality, is with Thomas primarily intellectual. Yet his beatitude is not limited to the knowing faculties. It embraces will and love. The grace of God and the gifts of the Holy Spirit touch love as well as knowledge, raising one and both to final unison of aim. Thus far in this life, while in the life to come, these grace-uplifted qualities of knowledge, and that choosing love (dilectio) which rises from knowledge of the good, are perfected in gloria. Further than this we shall not go with Thomas, nor follow him, for example, through his exposition of the means of salvation—the Incarnation and the sacraments. Nor need we further mark the prodigious range of his theology, or his metaphysics, logic, or physics. To all this many books have been devoted. We are but seeking to realise his intellectual interests and qualities, in such way as to bring them within the compass of our sympathy. A more encyclopaedic and systematic presentation of his teaching is proper for those who would trace, or perhaps attach themselves to, particular doctrines; or would find in scholasticism, even in Thomas, some special authoritativeness. For us these doctrines have but the validity of all human striving after truth. Moreover, perhaps a truer view of Thomas, the theologian and philosopher, is gained from following a few typical forms of his teaching presented in his own exposition, than by analyzing his thought with later solvents which he did not apply, and presenting his matter classified as he would not have ordered it, and in modern phrases, which have as many meanings foreign to scholasticism as scholasticism has thoughts not to be translated into modern ways of thinking.
CHAPTER XLI ROGER BACON Of all mediaeval men, Thomas Aquinas achieved the most organic and comprehensive union of the results of human reasoning and the data of Christian theology. He may be regarded as the final exponent of scholasticism, perfected in method, universal in scope, and still integral in purpose. The scholastic method was soon to be impugned and the scholastic universality broken. The premature attack upon the method came from Roger Bacon;[615] the fatal breach in the scholastic wholeness resulted from the constructive, as well as critical, achievements of Duns Scotus and Occam. Bacon is a perplexing personality. With other mediaeval thinkers one quickly feels the point of view from which to regard them. Not so with this most disparate genius of the Middle Ages. Reading his rugged statements, and trying to form a coherent thought of him, we are puzzled at the contradictions of his mind. One may not say that he was not of his time. Every man is of his time, and cannot raise himself very far out of the mass of knowledge and opinion furnished by it, any more than a swimmer can lift himself out of the water that sustains him. Yet personal temper and inclination may aline a man with less potent tendencies, which are obscured and hampered by the dominant intellectual interests of the period. Assuredly, through all the Middle Ages, there were men who noticed such physical phenomena as bore upon their lives, even men who cared for the dumb beginnings of what eventually might lead to natural science. But they were not representative of their epoch’s master energies; and in the Middle Ages, as always, the man of evident and great achievement will be one who, like Aquinas, stands upon the whole attainment of his age. Roger Bacon, on the contrary, was as one about whose loins the currents of his time drag and pull; they did not aid him, and yet he could not extricate himself. It was his intellectual misfortune that he was held by his time so fatally, so fatally, at least, for the proper doing of the work which was to be his contribution to human enlightenment, a contribution well ignored while he lived, and for long afterward. Bacon accepted the dominant mediaeval convictions: the entire truth of Scripture; the absolute validity of the revealed religion, with its dogmatic formulation; also (to his detriment) the universally prevailing view that the end of all the sciences is to serve their queen, theology. Yet he hated the ways of mediaeval natural selection and survival of the mediaeval fittest, and the methods by which Albert or Thomas or Vincent of Beauvais were at last presenting the sum of mediaeval knowledge and conviction. Well might he detest those ways and methods, seeing that he was Roger Bacon, one impelled by his genius to critical study, to observation and experiment. He was impassioned for linguistics, for mathematics, for astronomy, optics, chemistry, and for an experimental science which should confirm the contents of all these, and also enlarge the scope of human ingenuity. Yet he was held fast, and his thinking was confused, by what he took from his time. Especially he was obsessed by the idea that philosophy, including every branch of knowledge, must serve theology, and even in that service find its justification. But what has chemistry to do with theology? What has mathematics? And what has the physical experimental method? By maintaining the utility of these for theology, Bacon saved his mediaeval orthodoxy, and it may be, his skin from the fire. But it wrecked the working of his genius. His writings remain, such of them as are known, astounding in their originality and insight, and almost as remarkable for their inconsistencies; they are marked by a confusion of method and a distortion of purpose, which sprang from the contradictions between Bacon’s genius and the current views which he adopted. The career of Bacon was an intellectual tragedy, conforming to the old principles of tragic art: that the hero’s character shall be large and noble, but not flawless, inasmuch as the fatal consummation must issue from character, and not happen through chance. He died an old man, as in his youth, so in his age, a devotee of tangible knowledge. His pursuit of a knowledge which was not altogether learning had been obstructed by the Order of which he was an unhappy and rebellious member; quite as fatally his achievement was deformed from within by the principles which he accepted from his time. But he was responsible for his acceptance of current opinions; and as his views roused the distrust of his brother Friars, his intractable temper drew their hostility (of which we know very little) on his head. Persuasiveness and tact were needed by one who would impress such novel views as his upon his fellows, or, in the thirteenth century, escape persecution for their divulgence. Bacon attacked dead and living worthies, tactlessly, fatuously, and unfairly. Of his life scarcely anything is known, save from his allusions to himself and others; and these are insufficient for the construction of even a slight consecutive narrative. Born; studied at Oxford; went to Paris, studied, experimented; is at Oxford again, and a Franciscan; studies, teaches, becomes suspect to his Order, is sent back to Paris, kept under surveillance, receives a letter from the pope, writes, writes, writes,—his three best-known works; is again in trouble, confined for many years, released, and dead, so very dead, body and fame alike, until partly unearthed after five centuries. Inference and construction may fill out this sombre outline. England was the land of Bacon’s birth, and Ilchester is said to have been the natal spot. The approximate date may be guessed at from his reference to himself as senex in 1267, and his remark that he had then been studying forty years. His family seems to have been wealthy. Besides the letter of Pope Clement, hereafter to be quoted, there is one contemporary reference to him. Mathew Paris has a story of a certain clericus de curia, scilicet Rogerus Bacum, speaking up with bold wit to King Henry III. at Oxford in 1233. Bacon when a young man studied there under Robert Grosseteste and Adam of Marsh. He frequently refers to both, and always with respect. His chief enthusiasm is for the former. For years this admirable man was chancellor of Oxford; until made bishop of Lincoln in 1235. Although never a Franciscan, he was the Order’s devoted friend, and lectured in its house at Oxford. Grosseteste founded the study of Greek at Oxford, and collected treatises upon Greek grammar. Bacon, following him, wrote a Greek grammar. Grosseteste, before Bacon, devoted himself to physics and mathematics, and all that these many-branched sciences might include. Besides a taste for these studies Bacon may have had from him the idea that they were useful for theology. “No one,” says Bacon, “knew the sciences save Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, from his length of life and experience, and studiousness and industry, and because he knew mathematics and optics, and was able to know all things; and he knew enough of the languages to understand the saints and philosophers of antiquity; but not enough to translate them, unless towards the end of his life when he invited Greeks, and had books of Greek grammar gathered from Greece and elsewhere.”[616] There is evidence that others at Oxford, besides Grosseteste, were interested in the study of Greek and natural science.From Oxford Bacon went to Paris, where apparently he remained for a number of years; he was made a doctor there, and afterwards became a Franciscan. Since a monk could own nothing, one may perhaps infer that Bacon did not join the Order until after the lapse of certain twenty years of scientific research, in which he spent much money, as he says in 1267, in an often-quoted passage of the Opus tertium: “For now I have laboured from my youth in the sciences and languages, and for the furtherance of study, getting together much that is useful. I sought the friendship of all wise men among the Latins, and caused youth to be instructed in languages, and geometric figures, in numbers and tables and instruments, and many needful matters. I examined everything useful to the purpose, and I know how to proceed, and with what means, and what are the impediments: but I cannot go on for lack of the funds which are needed. Through the twenty years in which I laboured specially in the study of wisdom, careless of the crowd’s opinion, I spent more than two thousand pounds in these pursuits on occult books (libros secretos) and various experiments, and languages and instruments, and tables and other things.”[617] After his first stay at Paris Bacon returned to Oxford. There he doubtless continued his researches, and divulged them, or taught in some way. For he roused the suspicions of his Order, and in the course of time was sent or conducted back to Paris, where constraint seems to have been put upon his actions and utterances. Like the first, this second, possibly enforced, stay was a long one; he speaks of himself in the first chapter of the Opus tertium as “for ten years an exile.” Yet here as always, one is not quite certain how literally to take Bacon’s personal statements, either touching himself or others. A short period of elation was at hand. He had evidently been forbidden to write, or spread his ideas; he had been disciplined at times with a diet of bread and water. All this had failed to sweeten his temper, or conform his mind to current views. In 1265, an open-minded man who had been a jurist, a warrior, and the counsellor of a king, before becoming an ecclesiastic, was made Pope Clement IV. While living in Paris he had been interested in Bacon’s work. Soon after the papal election our sore-bestead philosopher managed to communicate with him, as appears by the pope’s reply, written from Viterbo, in July 1266: “To our beloved son, Brother Roger, called Bacon, of the Order of Brothers Minorites. We have received with pleasure the letter of thy devotion; and we have well considered what our beloved son called Bonecor, Knight, has by word of mouth set forth to us, with fidelity and prudence. So then, that we may understand more clearly what thou purposest, it is our will, and we command thee by our Apostolic mandate that, notwithstanding the prohibition of any prelate, or any constitution of thy Order, thou sendest to us speedily in good script that work which, while we held a minor office, we requested thee to communicate to our beloved son Raymond, of Laudunum. Also, we command thee to set forth in a letter what remedies thou deemest should be applied to those matters which thou didst recently speak of as fraught with such peril. Do this as secretly as possible without delay.”[618] Poor Bacon! The pope’s letter roused him to ecstasy, then put him in a quandary, and elicited elaborate apologies, and the flood of persuasive exposition which he poured forth with tremulous haste in the eighteen months following. Delight at being solicited by the head of Christendom breaks out in hyperbole, not to be wondered at: he is uplifted and cast prone; that his littleness and multiple ignorance, his tongue-tied mouth and rasping pen, and himself unlistened to by all men, a buried man delivered to oblivion, should be called on by the pope’s wisdom for wisdom’s writings (sapientales scripturas)! “The Saviour’s vicar, the ruler of the orb, has deigned to solicit me, who am scarcely to be numbered among the particles of the world—inter partes universae! Yet, while my weakness is oppressed with the glory of this mandate, I am raised above my own powers; I feel a fervour of spirit; I rise up in strength. And indeed I ought to overflow with gratitude since your beatitude commands what I have desired, what I have worked out with sweat, and gleaned through great expenditures.”[619] The word “expenditures” touches one horn of Bacon’s dilemma. He is a Franciscan; therefore penniless; and, besides that, apparently under the restraining ban of his own Order. The pope has enjoined secrecy; therefore Bacon cannot set up the papal mandate against the probable interference of his own superiors. The pope has sent no funds; sitting in culmine mundi he was too busy with high affairs to think of that.[620] And now comes the chief matter for Bacon’s apologies: his Beatitude misapprehends, has been misinformed: the work is not yet written; it is still to be composed. In spite of these obstacles the friendless but resourceful philosopher somehow obtained opportunity to write, and the means needed for the fair copy. And then in those great eighteen, or perhaps but fifteen, months, what a flood of enlightenment, of reforming criticism, of plans of study and methods of investigation, of examples and sketches of the matter to be prepared or discovered, is poured forth. Four works we know of,[621] and they may have made the greater part of all that Bacon ever actually wrote. With variations of emphasis, of abridgement and elaboration, the four have the one purpose to convince the pope of the enormous value of Bacon’s scheme of useful and saving knowledge. To a great extent they set forth the same matters; indeed the Opus tertium was intended to convey the substance of the Opus majus, should that fail to reach the pope. So there is much repetition and some disorder in these eager, hurried works, defects which emphasise the dramatic situation of the impetuous genius whose pent-up utterance was loosed at last. The Opus minus and the Vatican Fragment are as from a man overpowered by the eagerness to say everything at once, lest the night close in before he have chance of speech. And when the Opus majus was at last sent forth, accompanied by the Opus minus, as a battleship by a light armed cruiser, the Opus tertium was despatched after them, filled with the same militant exposition, for fear the former two should perish en voyage. Did they ever reach the pope? We may presume so. Did he read any one of them? Here there is no information. Popes were the busiest men in Europe, and death was so apt to cut short their industry. Clement died the next year, and so far as known, no syllable of acknowledgement from him ever reached the feverishly expectant philosopher. A few words will tell the rest. In 1271, apparently, Bacon wrote his Compendium studii philosophiae, taking the occasion to denounce the corruptions of Church and society in unmeasured terms. He rarely measured his vituperation! His life was setting on toward its long last trial. In 1277, Jerome of Ascoli, the General of the Franciscan Order, held a Chapter at Paris, and Bacon was condemned to imprisonment (carceri condempnatus) because of his teachings, which contained aliquas novitates suspectas.[622] Jerome became Pope Nicholas IV. At a Chapter of the Order held in Paris in 1292, just after his death, certain prisoners condemned in 1277, were set free. Roger Bacon probably was among the number. If so, it was in the year of his liberation that he wrote a tract entitled Compendium theologiae; for that was written in 1292. This is the last we hear of him. But as he must now have been hard on to eighty, probably he did not live much longer. There seems to have been nothing exceptional in Bacon’s attitude toward Scripture and the doctrines of the Church. He deemed, with other mediaeval men, that Scripture held, at least implicitly, the sum of knowledge useful or indeed possible for men. True, neither the Old Testament nor the New treats of grammar, or physics, or of minerals, or plants, or animals. Nevertheless, the statements in these revealed writings are made with complete knowledge of every topic or thing considered or referred to—bird, beast, and plant, the courses of the stars, the earth and its waters, yea, the arts of song or agriculture, and the principles of every science. Conversely (and here Bacon even gave fresh emphasis and novel pointings to the current view) all knowledge whatsoever, every art and science, is needed for the full understanding of Scripture, sacra doctrina, in a word, theology. This opinion may hold large truth; but Bacon’s advocacy of it sometimes affects us as a reductio ad absurdum, especially when he is proceeding on the assumption that the patriarchs and prophets had knowledge of all sciences, including astrology and the connection between the courses of the stars and the truth of Christianity. There was likewise nothing startling in Bacon’s view of the Fathers, and their knowledge and authoritativeness. Thomas did not regard them as inspired. Neither did Bacon; he respects them, yet discerns limitations to their knowledge; by reason of their circumstances they may have neglected certain of the sciences; but this is no reason why we should.[623] As for the ancient philosophers, Bacon holds to their partial inspiration. “God illuminated their minds to desire and perceive the truths of philosophy. He even disclosed the truth to them.”[624] They received their knowledge from God, indirectly as it were, through the prophets, to whom God revealed it directly. More than once and with every detail of baseless tradition, he sets forth the common view that the Greek philosophers studied the prophets, and drew their wisdom from that source.[625] But their knowledge was not complete; and it behoves us to know much that is not in Aristotle.[626] “The study of wisdom may always increase in this life, because nothing is perfect in human discoveries. Therefore, we later men ought to supplement the defects of the ancients, since we have entered into their labours, through which, unless we are asses, we may be incited to improve upon them. It is most wretched always to be using what has been attained, and never reach further for one’s self.”[627] It may be that Bacon was suspected of raising the philosophers too near the Christian level; and perhaps his argument that their knowledge had come from the prophets may have seemed a vain excuse. Says he, for example: “There was a great book of Aristotle upon civil science,[628] well agreeing with the Christian law; for the law of Aristotle has precepts like the Christian law, although much is added in the latter excelling all human science. The Christian law takes whatever is worthy in the civil philosophical law. For God gave the philosophers all truth, as the saints, and especially Augustine, declare.... And what noble thoughts have they expressed upon God, the blessed Trinity, the Incarnation, Christ, the blessed Virgin, and the angels.”[629] Possibly one is here reminded of Abaelard, and his thought of Christianity as reformatio legis naturalis. Yet Christ had said, He came not to destroy, but to fulfil; and the chief Christian theologians had followed Augustine in “despoiling the Egyptians” as he phrased it; the very process which in fact was making the authority of Aristotle supreme in Bacon’s time. So there was little that was peculiar or suspicious in Bacon’s admiration of the philosophers. The trouble with Bacon becomes clearer as we turn to his views upon the state of knowledge in his time, and the methods of contemporary doctors in rendering it worse, rather than better. These doctors were largely engaged upon sacra doctrina; they were primarily theologians and expounders of the truth of revelation. Bacon’s criticism of their methods might disparage that to which those methods were applied. His caustic enumeration of the four everlasting causes of error, and the seven vices infecting the study of theology, will show reason enough why his error-stricken and infected contemporaries wished to close his mouth. The anxiousness of some might sour to enmity under the acerbity of his attack; nor would their hearts be softened by Bacon’s boasting that these various doctors, of course including Albert, could not write in ten years what he is sending to the pope.[630] Bacon declares that there is at Paris a great man (was it Albert? was it Thomas?), who is set up as an authority in the schools, like Aristotle or Averroes; and his works display merely “infinite puerile vanity,” “ineffable falsity,” superfluous verbiage, and the omission of the most needful parts of philosophy.[631] Bacon is not content with abusing members of the rival Dominican Order; but includes in his contempt the venerable Alexander of Hales, the defunct light of the Franciscans. “Nullum ordinem excludo,” cries he, in his sweeping denunciation of his epoch’s rampant sins. As for the seculars, why, they can only lecture by stealing the copy-books of the “boys” in the “aforesaid Orders.”[632] “Never,” says Bacon in the Compendium studii from which the last phrases are taken, “has there been such a show of wisdom, nor such prosecution of study in so many faculties through so many regions as in the last forty years. Doctors are spread everywhere, especially in theology, in every city, castle, and burg, chiefly through the two student Orders. Yet there was never so great ignorance and so much error—as shall appear from this writing.”[633] Bacon never loses a chance of stating the four causes of the error and ignorance about him. These causes preyed upon his mind—he would have said they preyed upon the age. They are elaborately expounded in pars i. of the Opus majus:[634] “There are four principal stumbling blocks (offendicula) to comprehending truth, which hinder well-nigh every one: the example of frail and unworthy authority, long-established custom, the sense of the ignorant crowd (vulgi sensus imperiti), and the hiding of one’s own ignorance under the pretence of wisdom. In these, every man is involved and every state beset. For in every act of life, or business, or study, these three worst arguments are used for the same conclusion: this was the way of our ancestors, this is the custom, this is the common view: therefore should be held. But the opposite of this conclusion follows much better from the premises, as I will prove through authority, experience, and reason. If these three are sometimes refuted by the glorious power of reason, the fourth is always ready, as a gloss for foolishness; so that, though a man know nothing of any value, he will impudently magnify it, and thus, soothing his wretched folly, defeat truth. From these deadly pests come all the evils of the human race; for the noblest and most useful documents of wisdom are ignored, and the secrets of the arts and sciences. Worse than this, men blinded by the darkness of these four do not see their ignorance, but take every care to palliate that for which they do not find the remedy; and what is the worst, when they are in the densest shades of error, they deem themselves in the full light of truth.”[635] Therefore they think the true the false, and spend their time and money vainly, says Bacon with many strainings of phrase. “There is no remedy,” continues Bacon, “against the first three causes of error save as with all our strength we set the sound authors above the weak ones, reason above custom, and the opinions of the wise above the humours of the crowd; and do not trust in the triple argument: this has precedent, this is customary, this is the common view.” But the fourth cause of error is the worst of all. “For this is a lone and savage beast, which devours and destroys all reason,—this desire of seeming wise, with which every man is born.” Bacon arraigns this cause of evil, through numerous witnesses, sacred and profane. It has two sides: display of pretended knowledge, and excusing of ignorance. Infinite are the verities of God and the creation: let no one boast of knowledge. It is not for man to glory in his wisdom; faith goes beyond man’s knowledge; and still much is unrevealed. In forty years we learn no more than could be taught youth in one. I have profited more from simple men “than from all my famous doctors.” Bacon’s four universal causes of ignorance indicate his general attitude. More specific criticisms upon the academic methods of his time are contained in his septem peccata studii principalis quod est theologiae. This is given in the Opus minus.[636] Bacon, it will be remembered, says again and again that all sciences must serve theology, and find their value from that service: the science of theology includes every science, and should use each as a handmaid for its own ends. Accordingly, when Bacon speaks of the seven vices of the studium principale quod est theologia, we may expect him to point out vicious methods touching all branches of study, yet with an eye to their common service of their mistress. “Seven are the vices of the chief study which is theology; the first is that philosophy in practice dominates theology. But it ought not to dominate in any province beyond itself, and surely not the science of God, which leads to eternal life.... The greater part of all the quaestiones in a Summa theologiae is pure philosophy, with arguments and solutions; and there are infinite quaestiones concerning the heavens, and concerning matter and being, and concerning species and the similitudes of things, and concerning cognition through such; also concerning eternity and time, and how the soul is in the body, and how angels move locally, and how they are in a place, and an infinitude of like matters which are determined in the books of the philosophers. To investigate these difficulties does not belong to theologians, according to the main intent and subject of their work. They ought briefly to recite these truths as they find them determined in philosophy. Moreover, the other matter of the quaestiones which concerns what is proper to theology, as concerning the Blessed Trinity, the Incarnation, the Sacraments, is discussed principally through the authorities, arguments, and distinctions of philosophy.” Evidently, this first vice of theological study infected the method of Albert and Thomas, and of practically all other theologians! Its correction might call for a complete reversal of method. But the reversal desired by Bacon would scarcely have led back to Gospel simplicity, as may be seen from what follows. “The second vice is that the best sciences, which are those most clearly pertinent to theology, are not used by theologians. I refer to the grammar of the foreign tongues from which all theology comes. Of even more value are mathematics, optics, moral science, experimental science, and alchemy. But the cheap sciences (scientiae viles) are used by theologians, like Latin grammar, logic, natural philosophy in its baser part, and a certain side of metaphysics. In these there is neither the good of the soul, nor the good of the body, nor the good things of fortune. But moral philosophy draws out the good of the soul, as far as philosophy may. Alchemy is experimental and, with mathematics and optics, promotes the good of the body and of fortune.... While the grammar of other tongues gives theology and moral philosophy to the Latins.... Oh! what madness is it to neglect sciences so useful for theology, and be sunk in those which are impertinent! “The third vice is that the theologians are ignorant of those four sciences which they use; and therefore accept a mass of false and futile propositions, taking the doubtful for certain, the obscure for evident; they suffer alike from superfluity and the lack of what is necessary, and so stain theology with infinite vices which proceed from sheer ignorance.” For they are ignorant of Greek and Hebrew and Arabic, and therefore ignorant of all the sciences contained in these tongues; and they have relied on Alexander of Hales and others as ignorant as themselves. The fourth vice is that they study and lecture on the Sentences of the Lombard, instead of the text of Scripture; and the lecturers on the Sentences are preferred in honour, while any one who would lecture on Scripture has to beg for a room and hour to be set him. “The fifth fault is greater than all the preceding. The text of Scripture is horribly corrupt in the Vulgate copy at Paris.” Bacon goes at some length into the errors of the Vulgate, and gives a good account of the various Latin versions of the Bible. Next, the “sextum peccatum is far graver than all, and may be divided into two peccata maxima: one is that through these errors the literal sense of the Vulgate has infinite falsities and intolerable uncertainties, so that the truth cannot be known. From this follows the other peccatum, that the spiritual sense is infected with the same doubt and error.” These errors, first in the literal meaning, and thence in the spiritual or allegorical significance, spring from ignorance of the original tongues, and from ignorance of the birds and beasts and objects of all sorts spoken of in the Bible. “By far the greater cause of error, both in the literal and spiritual meaning, rises from ignorance of things in Scripture. For the literal sense is in the natures and properties of things, in order that the spiritual meaning may be elicited through convenient adaptations and congruent similitudes.” Bacon cites Augustine to show that we cannot understand the precept, Estote prudentes sicut serpentes, unless we know that it is the serpent’s habit to expose his body in defence of his head, as the Christian should expose all things for the sake of his head, which is Christ. Alack! is it for such ends as these that Bacon would have a closer scholarship fostered, and natural science prosecuted? The text of the Opus minus is broken at this point, and one cannot say whether Bacon had still a seventh peccatum to allege, or whether the series ended with the second of the vices into which he divided the sixth. Bacon’s strictures upon the errors of his time were connected with his labours to remedy them, and win a firmer knowledge than dialectic could supply. To this end he advocated the study of the ancient languages, which he held to be “the first door of wisdom, and especially for the Latins, who have not the text, either of theology or philosophy, except from foreign languages.”[637] His own knowledge of Greek was sufficient to enable him to read passages in that tongue, and to compose a Greek grammar.[638] But he shows no interest in the classical Greek literature, nor is there evidence of his having studied any important Greek philosopher in the original. He was likewise zealous for the study of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic, the other foreign tongues which held the learning so inadequately represented by Latin versions. He spoke with some exaggeration of the demerits of the existing translations;[639] but he recognised the arduousness of the translator’s task, from diversity of idiom and the difficulty of finding an equivalent in Latin for the statements, for example, in the Greek. The Latin vocabulary often proved inadequate; and words had to be taken bodily from the original tongue. Likewise he saw, and so had others, though none had declared it so clearly, that the translator should not only be master of the two languages, but have knowledge of the subject treated by the work to be translated.[640] After the languages, Bacon urged the pursuit of the sciences, which he conceived to be interdependent and corroborative; the conclusions of each of them susceptible of proof by the methods and data of the others. “Next to languages,” says Bacon in chapter xxix. of the Opus tertium, “I hold mathematics necessary in the second place, to the end that we may know what may be known. It is not planted in us by nature, yet is closest to inborn knowledge, of all the sciences which we know through discovery and learning (inventionem et doctrinam). For its study is easier than all other sciences, and boys learn its branches readily. Besides, the laity can make diagrams, and calculate, and sing, and use musical instruments. All these are the opera of mathematics.” Thus, with antique and mediaeval looseness, Bacon conceived this science. He devotes to it the long Pars quarta of the Opus majus: saying at the beginning that of— “the four great sciences the gate and key is mathematics, which the saints found out (invenerunt) from the beginning of the world, and used more than all the other sciences. Its neglect for the past thirty or forty years has ruined the studies (studium) of the Latins. For whoso is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences, nor the things of this world. But knowledge of this science prepares the mind and lifts it to the tested cognition (certificatam cognitionem) of all things.” Bacon adduces authorities to prove the need of mathematics for the study of grammar and logic; he shows that its processes reach indubitable certitude of truth; and “if in other sciences we would reach certitude free from doubt, and truth without error, we must set the foundations of cognition in mathematics.”[641] He points out its obvious necessity in the study of the heavens, and in everything pertaining to speculative and practical astrologia; also for the study of physics and optics. Thus his interest lay chiefly in its application. As human science is nought unless it may be applied to things divine, mathematics must find its supreme usefulness in its application to the matters of theology. It should aid us in ascertaining the position of paradise and hell, and promote our knowledge of Scriptural geography, and more especially, sacred chronology. Next it affords us knowledge of the exact forms of things mentioned in Scripture, like the ark, the tabernacle, and the temple, so that from an accurate ascertainment of the literal sense, the true spiritual meaning may be deduced. It should not be confused with its evil namesake magic,[642] yet the true science is useful in determining the influence of the stars on the fortunes of states. Moreover, mathematics, through astrology, is of great importance in the certification of the faith, strengthening it against the sect of Antichrist;[643] then in the correction of the Church’s calendar; and finally, as all things and regions of the earth are affected by the heavens, astrology and mathematics are pertinent to a consideration of geography. And Bacon concludes Pars quarta with an elaborate description of the regions, countries, and cities of the known world. Bacon likewise was profoundly interested in optics, the scientia perspectiva, which he sets forth elaborately in Pars quinta of the Opus majus. Much space would be needed to discuss his theories of light and vision, and the propagation of physical force, treated in the De multiplicatione specierum. He knew all that was to be learned from Greek and Arabic sources, and, unlike Albert, who compiled much of the same material, he used his knowledge to build with. Bacon had a genius for these sciences: his Scientia perspectiva is no mere compilation, and no work used by him presented either a theory of force or of vision, containing as many adumbrations of later theorizing.[644] Yet he fails to cast off his obsession with the “spiritual meaning” and the utility of science for theology. He discussed the composition of Adam’s body while in a state of innocence,[645] a point that may seem no more tangible than Thomas’s reasonings upon the movements of Angels, which Bacon ridicules. Again in his Optics, after an interesting discussion of refraction and reflection, he cannot forego a consideration of the spiritual significations of refracted rays.[646] Even his discussion of experimental science has touches of mediaevalism, which are peculiarly dissonant in this most original and “advanced” product of Bacon’s genius, which now must be considered more specifically.The speculative intellect of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was so widely absorbed with the matter and methods of the dominant scholasticism, that no one is likely to think of the eminent scholastics as isolated phenomena. Plainly they were but as the highest peaks which somewhat overtop the other mountains, through whose aggregation and support they were lifted to their supreme altitude. But with Bacon the danger is real lest he seem separate and unsupported; for the influences which helped to make him are not over-evident. Yet he did not make himself. The directing of his attention to linguistics is sufficiently accounted for by the influence of Grosseteste and others, who had inaugurated the study of Greek, and perhaps Hebrew at Oxford. As for physics or optics, others also were interested—or there would have been no translations of Greek and Arabic treatises for him to use;[647] and in mathematics there was a certain older contemporary, Jordanus Nemorarius (not to mention Leonardo Fibonacci), who far overtopped him. It is safe to assume that in the thirteenth, as in the twelfth and previous centuries, there were men who studied the phenomena of nature. But they have left scant record. A period is remembered by those features of its main accomplishment which are not superseded or obliterated by the further advance of later times. Nothing has obliterated the work of the scholastics for those who may still care for such reasonings; and Aquinas to-day holds sway in the Roman Catholic Church. On the other hand, the sparse footprints of the mediaeval men who essayed the paths of natural science have long since been trodden out by myriad feet passing far beyond them, along those ways. Yet there were these wayfarers, who made little stir in their own time, and have long been well forgotten. Had it not been for the letter from Pope Clement, Bacon himself might be among them; and only his writings keep from utter oblivion the name of an individual who, according to Bacon, carried the practice of “experimental science” further than he could hope to do. It may be fruitful to approach Bacon’s presentation of this science, or scientific method, through his references to this extraordinary Picard, named Peter of Maharncuria, or Maricourt. In the Opus tertium, Bacon has been considering optics and mathematics, and has spoken of this Peter as proficient in them; and thus he opens chapter xiii., which is devoted to the scientia experimentalis: “But beyond these sciences is one more perfect than all, which all serve, and which in a wonderful way certifies them all: this is called the experimental science, which neglects arguments, since they do not make certain, however strong they may be, unless at the same time there is present the experientia of the conclusion. Experimental science teaches experiri, that is, to test, by observation or experiment, the lofty conclusions of all sciences.” This science none but Master Peter knows. By following the text further, we may be able to appreciate what Bacon will shortly say of him: “Another dignity of this science is that it attests these noble truths in terms of the other sciences, which they cannot prove or investigate: like the prolongation of human life; for this truth is in terms of medicine, but the art of medicine never extends itself to this truth, nor is there anything about it in medical treatises. But the fidelis experimentator has considered that the eagle, and the stag, and the serpent, and the phoenix prolong life, and renew their youth, and knows that these things are given to brutes for the instruction of men. Wherefore he has thought out noble plans (vias nobiles) with this in view, and has commanded alchemy to prepare a body of like constitution (aequalis complexionis), that he may use it.” It may be pertinent to our estimate of Bacon’s experimental science to query where the experimentator ever observed an eagle or a phoenix renewing its youth, outside of the Physiologus? “The third dignity of this science is that it does not accept truths in terms of the other sciences, yet uses them as handmaids.... And this science attests all natural and artificial data specifically and in the proper province, per experientiam perfectam; not through arguments, like the purely speculative sciences, and not through weak and imperfect experientias, like the operative sciences (scientiae operativae).[648] So this is the mistress of all, and the goal of all speculation. But it requires great expenditures for its prosecution; Aristotle, by Alexander’s authority, besides those whom he used at home in experientia, sent many thousands of men through the world to examine (ad experiendum) the natures and properties of all things, as Pliny tells. And certainly to set on fire at any distance would cost more than a thousand marks, before adequate glasses could be prepared; but they would be worth an army against the Turks and Saracens. For the perfect experimenter could destroy any hostile force by this combustion through the sun’s rays. This is a marvellous thing, yet there are many other things more wonderful in this science; but very few people are devoted to it, from lack of money. I know but one, who deserves praise for the prosecution of its works; he cares not for wordy controversies, but prosecutes the works of wisdom, and in them rests. So what others as purblind men try to see, like bats in the twilight, he views in the full brightness of day, because he is dominus experimentorum. He knows natural matters per experientiam, and those of medicine and alchemy, and all things celestial and below. He is ashamed if any layman, or old woman, or knight, or rustic, knows what he does not. He has studied everything in metal castings, and gold and silver work, and the use of other metals and minerals; he knows everything pertaining to war and arms and hunting; he has examined into agriculture and surveying; also into the experiments and fortune-tellings of old women, knows the spells of wizards; likewise the tricks and devices of jugglers. In fine, nothing escapes him that he ought to know, and he knows how to expose the frauds of magic.” It is impossible to complete philosophy, usefully and with certitude, without Peter; but he is not to be had for a price; he could have had every honour from princes; and if he wished to publish his works, the whole world of Paris would follow him. But he cares not a whit for honours or riches, though he could get them any time he chose through his wisdom. This man has worked at such a burning-glass for three years, and soon will perfect it by the grace of God. There is a great deal of Roger Bacon in these curious passages; much of his inductive genius, much of his sanguine hopefulness, not to say inventive imagination; and enough of his credulity. No one ever knew or could perform all he ascribes to this astounding Peter, from whom, apparently, there is extant a certain intelligent treatise upon the magnet.[649] And as for those burning-glasses, or possibly reflectors, by which distant fleets and armies should be set afire—did they ever exist? Did Archimedes ever burn with them the Roman ships at Syracuse? Were they ever more than a myth? It is, at all events, safe to say that no device from the hand and brain of Peter of Maharncuria ever threatened Turk or Saracen. It is knowledge that gives insight. Modern critical methods amount chiefly to this, that we know more. Bacon did not have such knowledge of animal physiology as would assure him of the absurdity of the notion that an eagle or any animal could renew its youth. Nor did he know enough to realise the vast improbability of Greek philosophers drawing their knowledge from the books of Hebrew prophets. And one sees how loose must have been the practice, or the dreams, of his “experimental science.” His fundamental conception seems to waver: Scientia experimentalis, is it a science, or is it a means and method universally applicable to all scientific investigation? The sciences serve it as handmaids, says Bacon; and he also says, that it alone can test and certify, make sure and certain, the conclusions of the other sciences. Perhaps he thought it the master-key fitting all the doors of knowledge; and held that all sciences, so far as possible, should proceed from experience, through further observation and experiment. But he has not said quite this. He is little to be blamed for his vagueness, and greatly to be admired for having reached his possibly inconsistent conception. Observation and experiment were as old as human thought upon human experience. And Albert the Great says that the conclusions of all sciences should be tested by them. But he evinces no formal conception of either an experimental science or method; though he has much to say as to logic, and ponderously considers whether it is a science or the means or method of all sciences.[650] Herein he is discussing consciously with respect to logic, the very point as to which Bacon, in respect to experimental science, rather unconsciously wavers: is it a science, and almost the queen? Or is it the true scientific method to be followed by all sciences when applicable?[651] Bacon had no high regard for the study of logic, deeming that the thoughts of untaught men naturally followed its laws.[652] This was doubtless true, and just as true, moreover, of experimental science as of logic. The one and the other were built up from the ways of the common man and universal processes of thought. Yet the logic of the trained mind is the surer; and so experimental science may reach out beyond the crude observations of unscientific men. Manifestly with Roger Bacon the scientia experimentalis held the place which logic held with Albert, or queenly dialectic with Abaelard. He repeats himself continually in stating its properties and prerogatives, yet without advancing to greater clearness of conception. Pars sexta of the Opus majus is devoted to it: and we may take one last glance to see whether the statements there throw any further light upon the matter. “The roots of the wisdom of the Latins having been placed and set in Languages, Mathematics, and Perspective, I now wish to re-examine these radices from the side of scientia experimentalis; because, without experientia nothing can be known adequately. There are two modes of arriving at knowledge (cognoscendi), to wit, argument and experimentum. Argument draws a conclusion and forces us to concede it, but does not make it certain or remove doubt, so that the mind may rest in the perception of truth, unless the mind find truth by the way of experience.” And Bacon says, as illustration, that you could never by mere argument convince a man that fire would burn; also that “in spite of the demonstration of the properties of an equilateral triangle, the mind would not stick to the conclusion sine experientia.” After referring to Aristotle, and adducing some examples of foolish things believed by learned and common men alike, because they had not applied the tests of observation, he concludes: “Oportet ergo omnia certificari per viam experientiae.” He continues with something unexpected: “Sed duplex est experientia: one is through the external senses, and thus those experimenta take place which are made through suitable instruments in astronomy, and by the tests of observation as to things below. And whatever like matters may not be observed by us, we know from other wise men who have observed them. This experientia is human and philosophical; but it is not sufficient for man, because it does not give plenary assurance as to things corporeal; and as to things spiritual it reaches nothing. The intellect of man needs other aid, and so the holy patriarchs and prophets, who first gave the sciences to the world, received inner illuminations and did not stand on sense alone. Likewise many believers after Christ. For the grace of faith illuminates much, and divine inspirations, not only in spiritual but corporeal things, and in the sciences of philosophy. As Ptolemy says, the way of coming to a knowledge of things is duplex, one through the experientia of philosophy, and the other through divine inspiration, which is much better.”[653] Any doubt as to the religious and Christian meaning of the last passage is removed by Bacon’s statement of the “seven grades of this inner science: the first is through illuminationes pure scientiales; the next consists in virtues, for the bad man is ignorant; ... the third is in the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which Isaiah enumerates; the fourth is in the beatitudes which the Lord defines in the Gospel; the fifth is in the sensibus spiritualibus; the sixth is in fructibus, from which is the peace of God which passes omnem sensum; the seventh consists in raptures (in raptibus) and their modes, as in various ways divers men have been enraptured, so that they saw many things which it is not lawful for man to tell. And who is diligently exercised in these experiences, or some of them, can certify both to himself and others not only as to spiritual things, but as to all human sciences.”[654] These utterances are religious, and bring us back to the religious, or practical, motive of Bacon’s entire endeavour after knowledge: knowledge should have its utility, its practical bearing; and the ultimate utility is that which promotes a sound and saving knowledge of God. The true method of research, says Bacon in the Compendium studii, “... is to study first what properly comes first in any science, the easier before the more difficult, the general before the particular, the less before the greater. The student’s business should lie in chosen and useful topics, because life is short; and these should be set forth with clearness and certitude, which is impossible without experientia. Because, although we know through three means, authority, reason, and experientia, yet authority is not wise unless its reason be given (auctoritas non sapit nisi detur ejus ratio), nor does it give knowledge, but belief. We believe, but do not know, from authority. Nor can reason distinguish sophistry from demonstration, unless we know that the conclusion is attested by facts (experiri per opera). Yet the fruits of study are insignificant at the present time, and the secret and great matters of wisdom are unknown to the crowd of students.”[655] It is as with an echo of this thought, that Bacon begins the second chapter of his exposition of experimental science in the sixth part of the Opus majus, from which we have but now withdrawn our attention. He anxiously reiterates what he has already said more than once, as to the properties and prerogatives of this scientia experimentalis. Then he gives his most interesting and elaborate example of its application in the investigation of the rainbow, an example too lengthy and too difficult to reproduce. In stating the three prerogatives, he makes but slight change of phrasing; yet his restatement of the last of them:—“The third dignitas of this science is that it investigates the secrets of nature by its own competency and out of its own qualities, irrespective of any connection with the other sciences,”—signifies an autonomous science, rather than a method applicable to all investigation. The illustrations which Bacon now gives, range free indeed; yet in the main relate to “useful discoveries” as one might say: to ever-burning lamps, Greek fire, explosives, antidotes for poison, and matters useful to the Church and State. Along these lines of discovery through experiment, Bacon lets his imagination travel and lead him on to surmises of inventions that long after him were realised. “Machines for navigating are possible without rowers, like great ships suited to river or ocean, going with greater velocity than if they were full of rowers: likewise wagons may be moved cum impetu inaestimabili, as we deem the chariots of antiquity to have been. And there may be flying machines, so made that a man may sit in the middle of the machine and direct it by some devise: and again, machines for raising great weights.”[656] The modern reality has outdone this mediaeval dream.
CHAPTER XLII DUNS SCOTUS AND OCCAM The thirteenth century was a time of potent Church unity, when the papacy, triumphant over emperors and kings, was drawing further strength from the devotion of the two Orders, who were renewing the spiritual energies of Western Christendom. Scholasticism was still whole and unbroken, in spite of Roger Bacon, who attacked its methods with weapons of his own forging, yet asserting loudly the single-eyed subservience of all the sciences to theology. This assertion from a man of Bacon’s views, was as vain as the Unam sanctam of Pope Boniface VIII., fulminated in 1302, arrogating for the papacy every power on earth. In earlier decades such pretensions had been almost acquiesced in; but the Unam sanctam was a senile outcry from a papacy vanquished by the new-grown power of the French king, sustained by the awakening of a French nation. The opening years of the fourteenth century, so fatal for the papacy, were also portentous for scholasticism. The Summa of Thomas was impugned by Joannes Duns Scotus, whose entire work, constructive as well as critical, was impressed with qualities of finality, signifying that in the forms of reasoning represented by him as well as Thomas, thought should advance no farther. Bacon’s attack upon scholastic methods had proved abortive from its tactlessness and confusion, and because men did not care for, and perhaps did not understand, his arguments. It was not so with the arguments of Duns Scotus. Throughout the academic world, thought still was set to chords of metaphysics; and although men had never listened to quite such dialectic orchestration as Duns provided, they liked it, perceived its motives, and comprehended the meaning of its themes. So his generation understood and appreciated him. That he was the beginning of the end of the scholastic system, could not be known until the manner of that ending had disclosed itself more fully. We, however, discern the symptoms of scholastic dissolution in his work. His criticism of his predecessors was disintegrating, even when not destructive. His own dialectic was so surpassingly intricate and dizzy that, like the choir of Beauvais, it might some day collapse. With Duns Scotus, scholasticism reasoned itself out of human reach. And with him also, the wholeness of the scholastic purpose finally broke. For he no longer maintained the union of metaphysics and theology. The latter, to be sure, was valid absolutely; but, from a speculative, it has become a practical science. It neither draws its principles from metaphysics, nor subordinates the other sciences—all human knowledge—to its service. Although rational in content, it possesses proofs stronger than dialectic, and stands on revelation. There had always been men who maintained similar propositions. But it was quite another matter that the severance between metaphysics and theology should be demonstrated by a prodigious metaphysical theologian after a different view had been carried to its farthest reaches by the great Aquinas. Henceforth philosophy and theology were set on opposite pinnacles, only with theology’s pinnacle the higher. In spite of the last circumstance, the coming time showed that men cannot for long possess in peace two standards of truth—philosophy and revelation; but will be driven to hold to the one and ignore the other. By breaking the rational union of philosophy and theology, Duns Scotus prepared the way for Occam. The latter also asserts vociferously the superiority of the divine truth over human knowledge and its reasonings. But the popes are at Avignon, and the Christian world no longer bows down before those willing Babylonian captives. Under such a blasted condition of the Church, how should any inclusive Christian synthesis of thought and faith be maintained?Duns Scotus[657] could not have been what he was, had he not lived after Thomas. He was indeed the pinnacle of scholasticism; set upon all the rest. Yet this pinnacle had its more particular supports—or antecedents. And their special line may be noted without intending thereby to suggest that the influences affecting the thought of Duns Scotus did not include all the men he heard or read, and criticised. That Duns Scotus was educated at Oxford, and became a Franciscan, and not a Dominican, had done much to set the lines of thought reflected in his doctrines. Anselm of Aosta, of Bec, of Canterbury, had been an intellectual force in England. Duns was strongly influenced by his bold realism, by his emphasis upon the power and freedom of the will, and by his doctrine of the atonement.[658] But Anselm also affected Scotus indirectly through the English worthy who stands between them. This, of course, was Robert Grosseteste, to whom we have had occasion to refer, yet, despite of his intrinsic worth, always in relation to his effect on others. He was a great man; in his day a many-sided force, strong in the business of Church and State, strong in censuring and bridling the wicked, strong in the guidance of the young university of Oxford, and a mighty friend of the Franciscan Order, then establishing itself there. To his pupils, and their pupils apparently, he was a fruitful inspiration; yet the historian of thought may be less interested in the master than in certain of these pupils who brought to explicit form divers matters which in Grosseteste seem to have been but inchoate.[659] One thinks immediately of Roger Bacon, who was his pupil; and then of Duns, the metaphysician, who possibly may have listened to some aged pupil of Grosseteste. In different ways, Duns as well as Bacon took much from the master. And it is possible to see how the great teacher and bishop may have incited the genius of Scotus as well as that of Bacon to perform its task. For Grosseteste was a rarely capable and clear-eyed man, honest and resolute, who with the entire strength of a powerful personality insisted upon going to the heart of every proposition, and testing its validity by the surest means obtainable. By virtue of his training and intellectual inheritance, he was an Augustinian and a Platonist; a successor of Anselm, rather than a predecessor of the great Dominican Aristotelians. He was accordingly an emphatic realist, yet one who would co-ordinate the reality of his “universals” with the reality of experience. Even had he not been an Augustinian, such a masterful character would have realised the power of the human will, and felt the practical insistencies of the art of human salvation, which was the science of theology. Views like these prevailed at Oxford. They may be found clearly stated by Richard of Middleton, an Oxford Franciscan somewhat older than Duns Scotus. He declares that theology is a practical science, and emphasises the primacy and freedom of the will. Voluntas est nobilissima potentia in anima. Again: Voluntas simpliciter nobilior est quam intellectus: the intellect indeed goes before the Will, as the servant who carries the candle before his lord. So the idea of the Good, toward which the Will directs itself, is higher than that of the True, which is the object of the mind; and loving is greater than knowing.[660] Roger Bacon had also held that Will (Voluntas) was higher than the knowing faculty (intellectus); and so did Henry of Ghent,[661] a man of the Low Countries, doctor solemnis hight, and a ruling spirit at the Paris University in the latter part of the thirteenth century. Many of his doctrines substantially resembled those of Scotus, although attacked by him. So we seem to see the pit in which Duns may have digged. This man, who was no mere fossor, but a builder, and might have deserved the name of Poliorcetes, as the overthrower of many bulwarks, has left few traces of himself, beyond his twenty tomes of metaphysics, which contain no personal references to their author. The birthplace of Johannes Duns Scotus, whether in Scotland, England or Ireland, is unknown. The commonly accepted date, 1274, probably should be abandoned for an earlier year. It is known that he was a Franciscan, and that the greater part of his life as student and teacher was passed at Oxford. In a letter of commendation, written by the General of his Order in 1304, he is already termed subtilissimus. He was then leaving for Paris, where, two or three years later, in 1307, he was made a Doctor. The following year he was sent to Cologne, and there he died an enigmatical death on November 8, 1308. Report has it that he was buried alive while in a trance.[662] Probably there was little to tell of the life of Duns Scotus. His personality, as well as his career, seems completely included and exhausted in his works. Yet back of them, besides a most acutely reasoning mind, lay an indomitable will. The man never faltered in his labour any more than his reasoning wavered in its labyrinthic course to its conclusions. His learning was complete: he knew the Bible and the Fathers; he was a master of theology, of philosophy, of astronomy, and mathematics. The constructive processes of his genius appear to issue out of the action of its critical energies. Duns was the most penetrating critic produced by scholasticism. Whatever he considered from the systems of other men he subjected to tests that were apt to leave the argument in tatters. No logical inconsequence escaped him. And when every point had been examined with respect to its rational consistency, this dialectic genius was inclined to bring the matter to the bar of psychological experience. On the other hand he was a churchman, holding that even as Scripture and dogma were above question, so were the decrees of the Church, God’s sanctioned earthly Civitas. Having thus tested whatever was presented by human reason, and accepting what was declared by Scripture or the Church, Duns proceeds to build out his doctrine as the case may call for. No man ever drove either constructive logic or the subtilties of critical distinctions closer to the limits of human comprehension or human patience than Duns Scotus. And here lies the trouble with him. The endless ramification and refinement of his dialectic, his devious processes of conclusion, make his work a reductio ad absurdum of scholastic ways of reasoning. Logically, eristically, the argumentation is inerrant. It never wanders aimlessly, but winding and circling, at last it reaches a conclusion from some point unforeseen. Would you run a course with this master of the syllogism? If you enter his lists, you are lost. The right way to attack him, is to stand without, and laugh. That is what was done afterwards, when whoever cared for such reasonings was called a Dunce, after the name of this most subtle of mediaeval metaphysicians. Thus a man is judged by his form and method, and by the bulk of his accomplishment. Form, method, bulk of accomplishment, with Scotus were preposterous. When the taste or mania for such dialectics passed away, this kind of form, this maze of method, this hopelessness of bulk, made an unfit vehicle for a philosophy of life. Men would not search it through to find the living principles. Yet living principles were there; or, at least, tenable and consistent views. The main positions of Duns Scotus, some of which he held in opposition to Thomas, may strike us as quite reasonable: we may be inclined to agree with him. Perhaps it will surprise us to find sane doctrine so well hidden in such dialectic. He held, for example, that there is no real difference between the soul and its faculties. Thomas never demonstrated the contrary quite satisfactorily. Again, Duns Scotus was a realist: the Idea exists, since it is conceived. For the intellect is passive, and is moved by the intelligible. Therefore the Universal must be a something, in order to occasion the conception of it. Thus the reality of the concept proves the actuality of the Idea.[663] Duns adds further explanations and distinctions regarding the actuality of universals, which are somewhat beyond the comprehension of the modern mind. But one may remark that he reaches his views of the actuality of universals through analysis of the processes of thought. Sense-perception occasions the Idea in us; there must exist some objective correspondence to our general concepts, as there must also be in things some objective correspondence to our perception of them as individuals, whereby they become to us this or that individual thing. Such individual objectivity is constituted by the thisness of the thing, its haecceitas which is to be contra-distinguished from its general essence, to wit, its whatness, or quidditas. Duns holds that we think individual things directly as we think abstract Ideas; and so their haecceitas is as true an object of our thought as their quidditas. This seems a reasonable conclusion, seeing that the individual and not the type is the final end of creation. So our conceptions prove for us the actuality both of the universal and the concrete; and the proof of one and the other is rooted in sense-perception. Nothing was of greater import with Duns than the doctrine of the primacy of the Will over the intellect. Duns supports it with intricate argument. The soul in substance is identical with its faculties; but the latter are formally distinguishable from it and from each other. Knowing and willing are faculties or properties of the soul. The will is purely spiritual, and to be distinguished from sense-appetite: the will, and the will alone, is free; absolutely undetermined by any cause beyond itself. Even the intellect, that is the knowing faculty, is determined from without. Although some cognition precedes the act of willing, the will is not determined by cognition, but uses it. So the will, being free, is higher than the intellect. It is the will that constitutes man’s greatness; it raises him above nature, and liberates him from her coercions. Not the intellect, but the will directs itself toward the goal of blessedness, and is the subject of the moral virtues. Such seems to be Duns’s main position; but he distinguishes and refines the matter beyond the limits of our comprehension.[664] Another fundamental doctrine with Duns Scotus is that theology is not a speculative, but a practical, science—a position which Duns unfortunately disproved with his tomes of metaphysics! But in spite of the personal reductio ad absurdum of his argument, the position taken by him betokens the breaking up of the scholastic system. The subject of theology, at least for men, is the revelation of God contained in Scripture. “Holy Scripture is a kind of knowledge (quaedam notitia) divinely given in order to direct men to a supernatural end—in finem supernaturalem.”[665] The knowledge revealed in Scripture relates to God’s free will and ordainment for man; which is, that man should attain blessedness. Therefore the truths of Scripture are practical, having an end in view; they are such as are necessary for Salvation. The Church has authority to declare the meaning of Scripture, and supplement it through its Catholic tradition. Is theology, then, properly a science? Duns will not deny it; but thinks it may more properly be called a sapientia, since according to its nature, it is rather a knowledge of principles than a method of conclusions. It consists in knowledge of God directly revealed. Therefore its principles are not those of the human sciences: for example, it does not accept its principles from metaphysics, although that science treats of much that is contained in theology. Nor are the sciences—we can hardly say the other sciences—subordinated to it; since their province is natural knowledge obtained through natural means. Theology, if it be a science, is one apart from the rest. The knowledge which makes its substance is never its end, but always means to its end; which is to say, that it is practical and not speculative. By virtue of its primacy as well as character, theology pertains to the Will, and works itself out in practice: practical alike are its principles and conclusions. Apparently, with Duns, theology is a science only in this respect, that its substance, which is most rational, may be logically treated with a view to a complete and consistent understanding of it.[666]In entire consistency with these fundamental views, Duns held that man’s supreme beatitude lay in the complete and perfect functioning of his will in accordance with the will of God. This was a strong and noble view of man, free to think and act and will and love, according to the will, and aided by the Grace, of the Creator of his will and mind. The trouble lay, as said before, in the method by which all was set forth and proved. The truly consequent person who made theology a practical matter, was such a one as Francis of Assisi, with his ceaselessly-burning Christlike love actualizing itself in living act and word—or possibly such a one as Bonaventura with his piety. But can it ever seem other than fantastic, to state this principle, and then bulwark it with volumes of dialectic and a metaphysics beyond the grasp of human understanding? Not from such does one learn to do the will of God. This was scarcely the way to make good the ultimate practical character of religion, as against Thomas’s frankly intellectual view. Duns is as intellectual as Thomas; but Thomas is the more consistent. And shall we say, that with Duns all makes toward God, as the final end, through the strong action of the human will and love? So be it—Thomas said, through intellection and through love. Again one queries, did the Scotian reasoning ever foster love? And then Duns set theology apart,—and supreme. Again, so be it. Let the impulsive religion of the soul assert its primacy. But this was not the way of Duns. Theology and philosophy do not rest on the same principles, says he; but how does he demonstrate it? By substantiating this severance by means of metaphysical dialectic, and using the same dialectic and the same metaphysics to prove that theology can do without either. Not by dialectic and metaphysics can theology free itself from them, and set itself on other foundations. Duns Scotus exerted great influence, both directly and through the reaction occasioned by certain of his teachings. The next generations were full of Scotists, who were proud if only they might be reputed more subtle than their master. They succeeded in becoming more inane. There were other men, whom the critical processes of Duns led to deny the validity of his constructive metaphysics. Of those who profited by his teaching, yet represented this reaction against parts of it, the ablest was the Franciscan, William of Occam, a man but few years younger than Duns. He was born in England, in the county of Surrey; and studied under Duns at Paris. It is known that in 1320 he was lecturing with distinction at this centre of intellectual life. Three years afterward, he quitted his chair, and in the controversies then rending his Order, hotly espoused the cause of the Spirituales—the Franciscans who would carry out the precepts of Francis to the letter. Next, he threw himself with all the ardour of his temper into the conflict with the papacy, and became the literary champion of the rights of the State. He was cited before the pope, and imprisoned at Avignon, but escaped, in 1328, and fled to the Court of the emperor, Louis of Bavaria, to whom, as the accounts declare, he addressed the proud word: Tu me defendas gladio, ego te defendam calamo. He died about 1347. The succession, as it were, of Occam to Duns Scotus, is of great interest. It was portentous for scholasticism. The pupil, for pupil in large measure he was, profited by the critical methods and negations of the master. But he denied the validity of the metaphysical constructions whereby Duns sought to rebuild what his criticism had cast down or shaken. Especially, Occam would not accept the subtle Doctor’s fabrication of an external world in accord with the apparent necessities of thought. For with all Duns’s critical insistency, never did a man more unhesitatingly make a universe to fit the syllogistic processes of his reason, projected into the external world. Here Occam would not follow him, as Aristotle would not follow Plato.It were well to consider more specifically these two sides of Occam’s succession to Duns Scotus, shown in his acceptance and rejection of the master’s teaching. He followed him, of course, in emphasising the functions of the will; and accepted the conception of theology as practical, and not speculative, in its ends; and, like Duns, he distinguished, nay rather, severed, theology from philosophy, widening the cleft between them. If, with Duns, theology was still, in a sense, a science; with Occam it could hardly be called one. Although Duns denied that theology was to be controlled by principles drawn from metaphysics, he laboured to produce a metaphysical counterfeit, wherein theology, founded on revelation and church law, should present a close parallel to what it would have been, had its controlling principles been those of metaphysics. Occam quite as resolutely as his master, proves the untenability of current theological reasonings. More unreservedly than Duns, he interdicts the testing of theology by reason: and goes beyond him in restricting the sphere of rationally demonstrable truth, denying, for instance, that reason can demonstrate God’s unity, infinity, or even existence. Unlike Duns, he would not attempt to erect a quasi-scientific theology, in the place of the systems he rejects. To make up for this negative result, Occam asserted the verity of Scripture unqualifiedly, as Duns also did. With Occam, Scripture, revelation, is absolutely infallible, neither requiring nor admitting the proofs of reason. To be sure he co-ordinates with it the Law of Nature, which God has implanted in our minds. But otherwise theology, faith, stands alone, very isolated, although on the alleged most certain of foundations. The provinces of science and faith are different. Faith’s assent is not required for what is known through evidence; science does not depend on faith. Nor does faith or theology depend on scientia. And since, without faith, no one can assent to those verities which are to be believed (veritatibus credibilibus), there is no scientia proprie dicta respecting them. So the breach in the old scholastic, Thomist, unity was made utter and irreparable. Theology stands on the surest of bases, but isolated, unsupported; philosophy, all human knowledge, extends around and below it, and is discredited because irrelevant to highest truth. Thus far as to Occam’s loyal and rebellious succession to the theology of Duns. In philosophy, it was much the same. He accepted his critical methods, but would not follow him in his constructive metaphysics. Although the older man was pre-eminently a metaphysician, the critical side of his intellect drew empiric processes within the sweep of its energies. Occam, unconvinced of the correspondence between the logic of concepts and the facts of the external world, seeks to limit the principles of the former to the processes of the mind. Accordingly, he rejects the inferences of the Scotian dialectic which project themselves outward, as proofs of the objective existence of abstract or general ideas. It is thus from a more thoroughgoing application of the Scotian analysis of mental processes, and a more thoroughgoing testing of the evidence furnished by experience, that Occam refuses to recognise the existence of universals save in the mind, where evidently they are necessary elements of thinking. Manifestly, he is striving very earnestly not to go beyond the evidence; and he is also striving to eliminate all unevidenced and unnecessary elements, and those chimeras of the mind, which become actual untruths when posited as realities of the outer world. Such were the motives of Occam’s far from simple theory of cognition. In it, mental perceptions, or cognitions, were regarded as symbols (signa, termini) of the objects represented by them. They are natural, as contrasted with the artificial symbols of speech and writing. They fall into three classes; first, sense-perception of the concrete object, and thirdly, so to speak, the abstract concept representative of many objects, or of some ideal figment or quality. Intermediate between the two, Occam puts notitia intuitiva, which relates to the existence of concrete things. It serves as a basis for the cognition of their combinations and relationships, and forms a necessary antecedent to abstract knowledge. Notitia abstractiva praesupponit intuitivam.[667] Occam holds that notitia intuitiva presents the concrete thing as it exists. Otherwise with abstract or general concepts. They are signa of mental presentations, or processes; and there is no ground for transferring them to the world of outer realities. Their existence is confined to the mind, where they are formed from the common elements of other signa, especially those of our notitia intuitiva. “And so,” says Occam, “the genus is not common to many things through any sameness in them, but through the common nature (communitatem) of the signum, by which the same signum is common to many things signified.”[668] These universals furnish predicates for our judgments, since through them we conceive of realities as containing a common element of nature. They are not mere words; but have a real existence in the mind, where they perform functions essential to thinking. Indirectly, through their bases of notitiae intuitivae, they even reflect outer realities. “The Universal is no mere figment, to which there is no correspondence of anything like it (cui non correspondet aliquod consimile) in objective being, as that is figured in the thinker.” It results from the foregoing argument, that science, ordered knowledge, which seeks co-ordination and unity, has not to do with things; but with propositions, its object being that which is known, rather than that which is. Things are singular, while science treats of general ideas, which are only in the mind. “It should be understood, that any science, whether realis or rationalis, is only concerned with propositions (propositionibus); because propositions alone are known.”[669] It was not so very great a leap from the realism of Duns, which ascribed a certain objective existence to general ideas, to the nominalism, or rather conceptualism, of Occam, which denied it, yet recognised the real existence and necessary functions of universals, in the mind. The metaphysically proved realities of Duns were rather spectral, and Occam’s universals, subjective though they were, lived a real and active life. One feels that the realities of Duns’s metaphysics scarcely extended beyond the thinker’s mind. In many respects Occam’s philosophy was a strenuous carrying out of Duns’s teachings; and when it was not, we see the younger man pushed, or rather repelled, to the positions which he took, by the unsatisfying metaphysics of his teacher. History shows other rebounds of thought, which seem abrupt, and yet were consequential in the same dual way that Occam’s doctrine followed that of Duns. Out of the Brahmin Absolute came the Buddhist wheel of change; even as Parmenides was followed hard by Heraclitus. And how often Atheism steps on Pantheism’s heels! Thus, developing, revising, and changing, Occam carried out the work of Duns, and promulgated a theory of knowledge which pointed on to much later phases of thinking. In his school he came to be called venerabilis inceptor, a proper title for the man who shook loose from so much previous thought, and became the source of so many novel views. He had, indeed, little fear of novelty. “Novelties (novitates) are not altogether to be rejected; but as what is old (vetusta), on becoming burdensome, should be abolished, so novelties when, to the sound judgment, they are useful, fruitful, necessary, expedient, are the more boldly to be embraced.”[670] It is not, however, as the inceptor of new philosophies or of novel views on the relations between State and Papacy that we are viewing Occam here at the close of this long presentation of the ultimate intellectual interests of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But rather as the man who represented the ways in which the old was breaking up, and embodied the thoughts rending the scholastic system; who even was a factor in the palpable decadence of scholastic thinking that had set in before his eyes were closed. For from him came a new impulse to a renewed overstudy of formal logic—with Thomas, for example, logic had but filled its proper rÔle. Withdrawing from metaphysics the matter pertaining to the problem of universals and much more besides, Occam transferred the same to logic, which he called omnium artium aptissimum instrumentum.[671] This reinstatement of logic as the instrument and means of all knowledge was to be the perdition of emptier-minded men, who felt no difference between philosophy and the war of words. And in this respect at least the decadence of scholasticism took its inception from this bold and virile mind which had small reverence for popes or for the idols of the schools. We shall not follow the lines of this decay, but simply notice where they start. In the growth and decline of thought, things so go hand in hand that it is hard to say what draws and what is drawn. In the scholastic decadence, the preposterous use of logic was a palpable element. Yet was it cause or effect? Obviously both. Scholasticism was losing its grasp of life; and the universities in the fourteenth century were crowded with men whose minds mistook words for thoughts; and because of this they gave themselves to hypertrophic logic. On the other hand, this windy study promoted the increasing emptiness of philosophy. Likewise, as cause and effect, inextricably bound together, the other factors work, and are worked upon. The number of universities increases; professors and students multiply; but there is an awful dearth of thinkers among them. There ceases even to be a thorough knowledge of the scholastic systems; men study from compendia; and thereby remain most deeply ignorant, and unfecundated by the thoughts of their forbears. Cause and effect again! We can hardly blame them, when tomes and encyclopaedias were being heaped mountain high, with life crushed beneath the monstrous pile, or escaping from it. But whether cause or effect, the energies of study slackened, and even rotted, both at the universities and generally among the members of the two Student Orders, from whom had come the last creators—and perhaps destroyers—of scholasticism. Next: the language of philosophy deteriorated, becoming turbid with the barbarisms of hair-splitting technicalities. Likewise the method of presentation lost coherence and clarity. All of which was the result of academic decadence, and promoted it. So decay worked on within the system, each failing element being both effect and cause, in a general subsidence of merit. There were also causes, as it were, from without; which possibly were likewise effects of this scholastic decay As the life of the world once had gone out of paganism, and put on the new vigour of Christianity, so the life of the world was now forsaking scholasticism, and deriding, shall we say, the womb it had escaped from. Was the embryo ripe, that the womb had become its mephitic prison? At all events, the fourteenth century brought forth, and the next was filled with, these men who called the readers of Duns Scotus Dunces—and the word still lives. Men had new thoughts; the power of the popes was shattered, and within the Church, popes and councils fought for supremacy; there was no longer any actual unity of the Church to preserve the unity of thought; Wicliffe had risen; Huss and Luther were close to the horizon; a new science of observation was also stirring, and a new humanism was abroad. The life of men had not lessened nor their energies and powers of thought. Yet life and power no longer pulsed and wrought within the old forms; but had gone out from them, and disdainfully were flouting the emptied husks.
CHAPTER XLIII THE MEDIAEVAL SYNTHESIS: DANTE It lies before us to draw the lines of mediaeval development together. We have been considering the Middle Ages very largely, endeavouring to fix in mind the more interesting of their intellectual and emotional phenomena. We have found throughout a certain spiritual homogeneity; but have also seen that the mediaeval period of western Europe is not to be forced to a fictitious unity of intellectual and emotional quality—contradicted by a disparity of traits and interests existing then as now. Yet just as certain ways of discerning facts and estimating their importance distinguish our own time, making it an “age” or epoch, so in spite of diversity and conflict, the same was true of the mediaeval period. From the ninth to the fourteenth century, inter-related processes of thought, beliefs, and standards prevailed and imparted a spiritual colour to the time. While not affecting all men equally, these spiritual habits tended to dominate the minds and tempers of those men who were the arbiters of opinion, for example, the church dignitaries, or the theologian-philosophers. Men who thought effectively, or upon whom it fell to decide for others, or to construct or imagine for them, such, whether pleasure-loving, secularly ambitious, or immersed in contemplation of the life beyond the grave, accepted certain beliefs, recognized certain authoritatively prescribed ideals of conduct and well-being, and did not reject the processes of proof supporting them. The causes making the Middle Ages a characterizable period in human history have been scanned. We observed the antecedent influences as they finally took form and temper in the intellectual atmosphere of the latter-day pagan world and the cognate mentalities of the Church Fathers. We followed the pre-Christian Latinizing of Provence, Spain, Gaul, and the diffusion of Christianity throughout the same countries, where, save for sporadic dispossession, Christianity and Latin were to continue, and become, in the course of centuries, mediaeval and Romance. As waves of barbarism washed over the somewhat decadent society of Italy and her Latin daughters, we saw a new ignorance setting a final seal upon the inability of these epigoni to emulate bygone achievements. Plainly there was need of effort to rescue the disjecta membra of the antique and Christian heritages. The wreckers were famous men, young BoËthius, old Cassiodorus, the great pope Gregory, and princely Isidore. For their own people they were gatherers and conservers; but they proved veritable transmitters for Franks, Anglo-Saxons and Germans, who were made acquainted with Christianity and Latinity between the sixth and the ninth centuries, the period in the course of which the Merovingian kingdoms were superseded by the Carolingian Empire. With the Carolingian period the Middles Ages unquestionably are upon us. The factors and material of mediaeval development, howsoever they have come into conjunction, are found in interplay. It was for the mediaeval peoples, now in presence of their spiritual fortunes, to grow and draw from life. Their task, as has appeared from many points of view, was to master the Christian and antique material, and change its substance into personal faculty. Under different guises this task was for all, whether living in Italy or dwelling where the antique had weaker root or had been newly introduced. This Carolingian time of so much sheer introduction to the teaching of the past presented little intellectual discrimination. That would come very gradually, when men had mastered their lesson and could set themselves to further study of the parts suited to their taste. Nevertheless, there was even in the Carolingian period another sort of discrimination, towards which men’s consciences were drawn by the contrast between their antique and Christian heritages, and because the latter held a criterion of selection and rejection, touching all the elements of human life. Whoever reflects upon his life and its compass of thought, of inclination, of passion, action, and capacity for happiness or desolation, is likely to consider how he may best harmonize its elements. He will have to choose and reject; and within him may arise a conflict which he must bring to reconcilement if he will have peace. He may need to sacrifice certain of his impulses or even rational desires. As with a thoughtful individual, so with thoughtful people of an epoch, among whom like standards of discrimination may be found prevailing. The ninth century received, with patristic Christianity, a standard of selection and rejection. In conformity with it, men, century after century, were to make their choice, and try to bring their lives to a discriminating unity and certain peace. Yet in every mediaeval century the soul’s peace was broken in ways demanding other modes of reconcilement. What profiteth a man to gain the world and lose his eternal life? Here was the Gospel basis of the matter. And, following their conception of Christ’s teaching, the Fathers of the Church elaborated and defined the conditions of attainment of eternal life with God, which was salvation. This was man’s whole good, embracing every valid and righteous element of life. Thus it had been with Christ; thus it was with Augustine; thus it was with Benedict of Nursia and Gregory the Great; only in Benedict and Gregory the salvation which represented the true and uncorrupt life of man on earth, as well as the assured preparation for eternal life with God, had shrunken from the universality of Christ, and even from the fulness of desire with which Augustine sought to know God and the soul. In these later men the conception of salvation had contracted through ascetic exclusion and barbaric fear. Yet with Benedict and Gregory, in whom there was much constructive sanity, and indeed with all men who were not maniacally constrained, there was recognition that salvation was of the mind as well as through faith and love, or abhorrent fear. It is necessary to know the truth; and surely it is absolutely good to desire to know the truth forever, without the cumbrances of fleshly mortality. This desire is a true part of everlasting life. Through it Origen, Hilary of Poictiers, Augustine largely, and after them the great scholastics with Dante at their close, achieved salvation. But why should one desire to know the truth utterly and forever, were not the truth desirable, lovable? Naturally one loves that which through desire and effort one has come to know. Love is required and also faith by him who will have and know the salvation which is eternal life; the emotions must take active part. Yet salvation comes not through the unguided sense-desiderative nature. It is for reason to direct passionate desire, and raise it to desire rationally approved, which is volition. Thus salvation not only requires the action of the whole man, but is in and of his entire nature. It presents a unity primarily because of its agreement with the will of God, and then because of its unqualified and universal insistence that it, salvation, life eternal, be set absolutely first in man’s endeavour. What indeed could be more irrational, and more loveless and faithless, than that any desire should prevail over the entire good of man and the will of God as well? Oneness and peace consist in singleness of purpose and endeavour for salvation. Herein lies the standard of conduct and of discrimination as touching every element of mortal life. With mediaeval men, the application of the criterion of salvation depended on how the will of God for man, and man’s accordant conduct, was conceived. What kind of conduct, what elements of the intellectual and emotional life were proper for the Kingdom of Heaven? What matters barred the way, or were unfit for the eternal spiritual state? The history of Christian thought lies within these queries. An authoritative consensus of opinion was represented by the Church at large, holding from century to century a juste milieu of doctrine, by no means lax and yet not going to ascetic extremes. Seemingly the Church maintained varying standards of conduct for different orders of men. Yet in truth it was applying one standard according to the responsibilities of individuals and their vows. The Church (meaning, for our purpose, the authoritative consensus of mediaeval ecclesiastical or religious approvals) always upheld as the ideal of perfect living the religious life, led under the sanction and guidance of some recognized monastic regula. So lived monks and nuns, and in more extreme or sporadic instances, anchorites and reclusae. The main peril of this strait and narrow path was its forsaking, the breaking of its vows. Less austerely guarded and exposed to further dangers were the secular clergy, living in the world, occupied with the care of lay souls, and with other cares that hardly touched salvation. The world avowedly, the flesh in reality, and the devil in all probability, beset the souls of bishops and other clergy. In view of their exposed positions “in the world,” a less austerely ascetic life was expected of the seculars, whose lapses from absolute holiness God might—or perhaps might not—condone. Around, and for the most part below, regulars and seculars were the laity of both sexes, of all ages, positions, and degrees of instruction or ignorance. They had taken no vows of utter devotion to God’s service, and were expected to marry, beget children, fight and barter, and fend for themselves amid the temptations and exigencies of affairs. Well for them indeed if they could live in communion with the Church, and die repentant and absolved, eligible for purgatory. For all these kinds of men and women like virtues were prescribed, although their fulfilment was looked for with varying degrees of expectation. For instance, the distinctly theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity, especially the first, could not be completely attained by the ignorance and imperfect consecration of laymen. The vices, likewise, were the same for all, pride, anger, hypocrisy, and the rest; only with married people a venial unchastity was sacramentally declared not to constitute mortal sin. For this one case, human weakness, also mankind’s necessity, was recognized; while, in practice, the Church, through its boundless opportunities for penitence and absolution, mercifully condoned all delinquency save obstinate pride, impenitence, and disbelief. These were the bare poles ethical of the orthodox mediaeval Christian scheme. How as to its intellectual and emotional inclusiveness? The many-phased interest of the mind, i.e. the desire to know, was in principle accepted, but with the condition that the ultimate end of knowledge should be the attainment of salvation. It was stated and re-emphasized by well-nigh every type of mediaeval thinker, that Theology was the queen of sciences, and her service alone justified her handmaids. All knowledge should make for the knowledge of God, and enlarge the soul’s relationship to its Creator and Judge. “He that is not with me is against me.” Knowledge which does not aid man to know his God and save his soul, all intellectual pursuits which are not loyal to this end, minister to the obstinacy and vainglory of man, stiff-necked, disobedient, unsubmissive to the will of God. Knowledge is justified or condemned according to its ultimate purpose. Likewise every deed, business, occupation, which can fill out the active life of man. As they make for Christ and salvation, the functions of ruler, warrior, lawyer, artisan, priest, are justified and blessed—or the reverse. But how as to the appetites and the emotions? How as to love, between the sexes, parent and child, among friends? The standard of discrimination is still the same, though its application vary. Appetite for food, if unrestrained, is gluttony; it must be held from hindering the great end. One must guard against love’s obsession, against sense-passion, which is so forgetful of the ultimate good: concupiscence is sinful. Through bodily begetting, the taint of original sin is transmitted; and in all carnal desire, though sanctioned by the marriage sacrament, is lust and spiritual forgetfulness. When in fornication and adultery its acts contravene God’s law, they are mortal sins which will, if unabsolved, cast the sinner into hell. Few men in the Middle Ages were insensible to their future lot, and therefore the criterion of salvation unto eternal life would rarely be rejected. But often there was conflict within the soul before it acquiesced in what it felt compelled to recognize; and sometimes there was clear revolt against current convictions, or practical insistence that a larger volume of the elements of human nature were fit for life eternal.Conflict before acquiescence had agitated the natures of sainted Fathers of the Church, who marked out the path to salvation which the Middle Ages were to tread. One thinks at once of Jerome’s never-forgotten dream of exclusion from Paradise because of too great delight in classic reading. Another phase was Augustine’s, set forth somewhat retrospectively in his Confessions. Therein, as would seem, the drawings of the flesh were most importunate. Yet not without sighs and waverings did the mind of Augustine settle to its purpose of knowing only God and the soul. At all events the chafings of mortal curiosity, the promptings of cultivated taste, and the cravings of the flesh, were the moving forces of the Psychomachia which passed with Patristic Christianity to the Middle Ages. Thousands upon thousands of ardent souls were to experience this conflict before convincing themselves that classic studies should be followed only as they led heavenward, and that carnal love was an evil thing which, even when sacramentally sanctioned, might deflect the soul. The revolt against the authoritatively accepted standard declared itself along the same lines of conflict, but did not end in acquiescence and renunciation. It contended rather for a peace and reconcilement which should include much that was looked upon askance. It was not always violent, and might be dumb to the verge of unconsciousness, merely a tacit departure from standards more universally recognized than followed. There were countless instances of this silent departure from the standard of salvation. With cultivated men, it realized itself in classical studies, as with Hildebert of Le Mans or John of Salisbury. It does not appear that either of them experienced qualms of conscience or suffered rebuke from their brethren. No more did Gerbert, an earlier instance of catholic interest in profane knowledge, though legends of questionable practices were to encircle his fame. Other men pursued knowledge, rational or physical, in such a way as to rouse hostile attention to its irrelevancy or repugnancy to saving faith, and this even in spite of formal demonstration by the investigator—Roger Bacon is in our mind—of the advantage of his researches to the Queen Theology. Bacon might not have been so suspect to his brethren, and his demonstration of the theological serviceableness of natural knowledge would have passed, had he not put forth bristling manifestos denouncing the blind acceptance of custom and authority. Moreover, the obvious tendencies of methods of investigation advocated by him countered methods of faith; for the mediaeval and patristic conception of salvation, whatever collateral supports it might find in reason, was founded on the authority of revelation. Indeed it was the lifting up of the standard of rational investigation which distinguished the veritable revolt from those preliminary inner conflicts which often strengthened final acquiescence. And it was the obstinate elevation of one’s individual wisdom (as it appeared to the orthodox) that separated the accredited supporters of the Church among theologians and philosophers, from those who were suspect. We mark the line of the latter reaching back through Abaelard to Eriugena. Such men, although possibly narrower in their intellectual interests than some who more surely abode within the Church’s pale, may be held as broader in principle. For inasmuch as they tended to set reason above authority, it would seem that there was no bound to their pursuit of rational knowledge, wherewith to expand and fortify their reason. But if the intellectual side of man pressed upon the absolutism of the standard of salvation, more belligerent was the insistency of love—not of the Crucified. To the Church’s disparagement of the flesh, love made answer openly, not slinking behind hedges or closed doors, nor even sheltering itself within wedlock’s lawfulness. It, love, without regard to priestly sanction, proclaimed itself a counter-principle of worth. The love of man for woman was to be an inspiration to high deeds and noble living as well as a source of ennobling power. It presented an ideal for knights and poets. It could confer no immortality on lovers save that of undying fame: but it promised the highest happiness and worth in mortal life. If only knights and ladies might not have grown old, the supremacy of love and its emprize would have been impregnable. But age must come, and the ghastly mediaeval fear of death was like to drive lover and mistress at the last within some convent refuge. Fear brought compunction and perhaps its tears. Renunciation of the joy of life seemed a fit penance to disarm the Judge’s wrath. So at the end of life the ideal of love was prone to make surrender to salvation. Asceticism even enters its literature, as with the monkish Galahad. There was, however, another way of reconcilement between the carnal and the spiritual, the secular and the eternal, by which the secular and carnal were transformed to symbols of the spiritual and eternal—the way of the Vita nuova and the Divina Commedia, as we shall see. So in spite of conflicts or silent treasons within the natures of many who fought beneath the Christian banner, in spite of open mutinies of the mind and declared revolts of the heart, salvation remained the triumphant standard of discrimination by which the elements of mediaeval life were to be esteemed or rejected. What then were these elements to which this standard, or deflections from it, should apply? How specify their mediaeval guise and character? It would be possible to pass in review synoptically the contents of this work. We might return, and then once more travel hitherward over the mediaeval path, the many paths and byways of mediaeval life. We might follow and again see applied—or unapplied—these standards of discrimination, salvation over all, and the deviations of pretended acquiescence or subconscious departure. We might perhaps make one final attempt to draw the currents of mediaeval life together, or observe the angles of their divergence, and note once more the disparity of taste and interest making so motley the mediaeval picture. But this has been done so excellently, in colours of life, and presented in the person of a man in whom mediaeval thought and feeling were whole, organic, living—an achievement by the Artist moving the antecedent scheme of things which made this man Dante what he was. We shall find in him the conflict, the silent departures, and the reconcilement at last of recalcitrant elements brought within salvation as the standard of universal discrimination. Dante accomplishes this reconcilement in personal yet full mediaeval manner by transmuting the material to the spiritual, the mortal to the eternal, through the instrumentality of symbolism. He is not merely mediaeval; he is the end of the mediaeval development and the proper issue of the mediaeval genius. Yes, there is unity throughout the diversity of mediaeval life; and Dante is the proof. For the elements of mediaeval growth combine in him, demonstrating their congruity by working together in the stature of the full-grown mediaeval man. When the contents of patristic Christianity and the surviving antique culture had been conceived anew, and had been felt as well, and novel forms of sentiment evolved, at last comes Dante to possess the whole, to think it, feel it, visualize its sum, and make of it a poem. He had mastered the field of mediaeval knowledge, diligently cultivating parts of it, like the Graeco-Arabian astronomy; he thought and reasoned in the terms and assumptions of scholastic (chiefly Thomist-Aristotelian) philosophy; his intellectual interests were mediaeval; he felt the mediaeval reverence for the past, being impassioned with the ancient greatness of Rome and the lineage of virtue and authority moving from it to him and thirteenth-century Italy and the already shattered Holy Roman Empire. He took earnest joy in the Latin Classics, approaching them from mediaeval points of view, accepting their contents uncritically. He was affected with the preciosity of courtly or chivalric love, which Italy had made her own along with the songs of the Troubadours and the poetry of northern France. His emotions flowed in channels of current convention, save that they overfilled them; this was true as to his early love, and true as to his final range of religious and poetic feeling. His was the emotion and the cruelty of mediaeval religious conviction; while in his mind (so worked the genius of symbolism) every fact’s apparent meaning was clothed with the significance of other modes of truth. Dante was also an Italian of the period in which he lived; and he was a marvellous poet. One may note in him what was mediaeval, what was specifically Italian, and what, apparently, was personal. This scholar could not but draw his education, his views of life and death, his dominant inclinations and the large currents of his purpose, from the antecedent mediaeval period and the still greater past which had worked upon it so mightily. His Italian nature and environment gave point and piquancy and very concrete life to these mediaeval elements; and his personal genius produced from it all a supreme poetic creation. The Italian part of Dante comes between the mediaeval and the personal, as species comes between the genus and the individual. The tremendous feeling which he discloses for the Roman past seems, in him, specifically Italian: child of Italy, he holds himself a Latin and a direct heir of the Republic. Yet often his attitude toward the antique will be that of mediaeval men in general, as in his disposition to accept ancient myth for fact; while his own genius appears in his beautifully apt appropriation of the Virgilian incident or image; wherein he excels his “Mantuan” master, whose borrowings from Homer were not always felicitous. Frequently the specifically Italian in Dante, his yearning hate of Florence, for example, may scarcely be distinguished from his personal temper; but its civic bitterness is different from the feudal animosities or promiscuous rages which were more generically mediaeval. As a lighter example, there are three lines in the fourth canto of the Purgatorio which do not reflect the Middle Ages, nor yet pertain to Dante’s character, but are, we feel, Italian. They are these: “Thither we drew; and there were persons who were staying in the shadow behind the rock, as one through indolence sets himself to stay.” Again, Dante’s arguments in the De monarchia[672] seem to be those of an Italian Ghibelline. Yet beyond his intense realization of Italy’s direct succession to the Roman past, his reasoning is scholastic and mediaeval, or springs occasionally from his own reflections. The Italian contribution to the book tends to coalesce either with the general or the personal elements. Dante argues that the rewards or fruits of virtue belonged to the Roman people because of the pre-eminent virtue, high lineage, and royal marriage-connections, of their ancestor Aeneas.[673] Here, of course, the statements of Virgil are accepted literally, and one notes that while the argument is mediaeval in its absurdity, it will be made Italian in its application. Likewise his further arguments making for the same conclusion, however Italianized in their pointing, are mediaeval, or patristic, in their provenance: for example, that the Roman Empire was divinely helped by miracles; that the divine arbitrament decided the world-struggle or duellum in its favour; and that Christ was born and suffered legally to redeem mankind under the Empire’s authority and jurisdiction.[674] Moreover, in refuting the very mediaeval papal arguments from “the keys,” from “the two swords,” and from the analogy of the sun and moon, Dante himself reasons scholastically.[675] The De vulgari eloquentia illustrates the difference between Dante accepting and reproducing mediaeval views, and Dante thinking for himself. In opening he speaks of mixing the stronger potions of others with the water of his own talent, to make a beverage of sweetest hydromel—we have heard such phrases before! Then the first chapters give the current ideas touching the nature and origin of speech, and describe the confusion of language at the building of Babel: each group of workmen engaged in the same sort of work found themselves speaking a new tongue understood only by themselves; while the sacred Hebrew speech endured with that seed of Shem who had taken no part in the impious construction. After this foolishness, the eighth chapter of Book I. becomes startlingly intelligent as Dante discusses the contemporary Romance tongues of Europe and takes up the idioma which uses the particle si. Out of its many dialects he detaches his thought of a volgare, a mother tongue, which shall be the illustrious, noble, and courtly speech in Latium, and shall seem to be of every Latian city and yet of none, and afford a standard by which the speech of each city may be criticized. The mediaeval period offers no such penetrating linguistic observation; and in the De Vulgari Eloquentia, as in the Convito, Dante is deeply conscious of the worth of the Romance vernacular. Written in the volgare, the style of the latter nondescript work bears curious likeness to scientific Latin writing. The Latin scholastic thought shows plainly through this involved and scholastic volgare, while the scholastic substance is rendered in a scarcely altered medium. The Convito is indeed a curious work which one need not lament that Dante did not carry out to its mediaeval interminableness in fourteen books. The four that he wrote suffice to show its futility and apparent confusion in conception and form. Besides incidentally explaining the thought of the idyllic Vita nuova, it professed to be a commentary upon fourteen of Dante’s canzone, the meaning of which had been misunderstood. Indeed they had been suspected of disclosing a passion bearing a morganatic relationship to the love of Beatrice. Truly understood they referred to that love which is the love of knowledge, philosophy to wit; and their commentary should expound that, and might properly set forth the contents of the Seven Liberal Arts and the higher divine reaches of knowledge. The Convito seems also to mark a stage in Dante’s life: the time perhaps when he turned, or imagined himself as turning, to philosophy for consolation in youthful grief, or the time perhaps when his nature looked coldly upon its early faith and sought to stay itself with rational knowledge. The book might thus seem a De consolatione philosophiae, after the temper, if not the manner, of BoËthius’ work, which then was much in Dante’s mind. Yet it was to be a setting forth of knowledge for the ignorant, a sort of Summa contra Gentiles, as is hinted in the last completed chapter. These three purposes fall in with the fact that the work was apparently the expression of Dante’s intellectual nature, and of his spiritual condition between the experience of the Vita nuova and the time or state of the Commedia.[676] Certainly the Convito gives evidence touching the writer’s mental processes and the interests of his mind. Except for its lofty advocacy of the volgare and its personal apologetic references, it contains little that is not blankly mediaeval. And had it kept on to its completion, so as to have become no torso, but a full Summa or Tesoro of liberal knowledge, its whimsical form as a commentary upon canzone would have made it one of the most bizarre of mediaeval compositions. One should not take this most repellent of Dante’s writings as an adequate expression of the intellectual side of his nature; though a significant phrase may be drawn from it: “Philosophy is a loving use of wisdom (uno amoroso uso di sapienza) which chiefly is in God, since in Him is utmost wisdom, utmost love, and utmost actuality.”[677] A loving use of wisdom—with Dante the pursuit of knowledge was no mere intellectual search, but a pilgrimage of the whole nature, loving heart as well as knowing mind, and the working virtues too. This pilgrimage is set forth in the Commedia, perhaps the supreme creation of the Middle Ages, and a work that by reason of the beautiful affinity of its speech with Latin,[678] exquisitely expressed the matters which in Latin had been coming to formulation through the mediaeval centuries. The Commedia (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) is a Summa, a Summa salvationis, a sum of saving knowledge. It is such just as surely as the final work of Aquinas is a Summa theologiae. But Aquinas was the supreme mediaeval theologian-philosopher, while Dante was the supreme theologian-poet; and with both Aquinas and Dante, theology includes the knowledge of all things, but chiefly of man in relation to God. Such was the matter of the divina scientia of Thomas, and such was the subject of the Commedia, which was soon recognized as the Divina Commedia in the very sense in which Theology was the divine science. The Summa of Thomas was scientia not only in substance, but in form; the Commedia was scientia, or sapientia, in substance, while in form it was a poem, the epic of man the pilgrim of salvation. In every sense, Aristotelian and otherwise, it was a work of art; and herein if we cannot compare it with a Summa, we may certainly liken it to a Cathedral, which also was a work of art and a Summa salvationis wrought in stone. For a Cathedral—it is the great French type we have in mind—was a Summa of saving knowledge, as well as a place for saving acts. And presenting the substance of knowledge in the forms of art, very true art, the matter of which had long been pondered on and loved or hated, the Cathedral in its feeling and beauty, as well as in the order of its manifested thought, was a Commedia; for it too was a poem with a happy ending, at least for those who should be saved. The Cathedral had grown from dumb barrel-vaulted Romanesque to Gothic, speaking in all the terms of sculpture and painted glass. It grew out of its antecedents. The Commedia rested upon the entire evolution of the Middle Ages. Therein had lain its spiritual preparation. To be sure it had its casual forerunners (precursori): narratives, real or feigned, of men faring to the regions of the dead.[679] But these signified little; for everywhere thoughts of the other life pressed upon men’s minds: fear of it blanched their hearts; its heavenly or hellish messengers had been seen, and not a few men dreamed that they had walked within those gates and witnessed clanging horrors or purgatorial pain. Heaven they had more rarely visited. Dante gave little attention to any so-called “forerunners,” save only two, Paul and Virgil. The former was a warrant for the poet’s reticence as to the manner of his ascent to Heaven;[680] the latter supplied much of his scheme of Hell. Yet there were one or two others possessed of some affinity of soul with the great Florentine, who perhaps knew nothing of them. One of these was Hildegard of Bingen, with her vision of the spirits in the cloud, and her pungent sights of the bitterness of the pains of hell.[681] Another sort of affinity is disclosed in the allegorical Anticlaudianus of Alanus de Insulis, in which Reason can take Prudentia just so far upon her heavenly journey, and then gives place to Theology, even as Virgil, symbol of rational wisdom, gives place to Beatrice at the summit of the Mount of Purgatory.[682] Dante might have drawn still more enlightenment from the De sacramentis of Hugo of St. Victor, in which the rational basis of the universal scheme of things is shown to lie in the principle of allegorical intendment. Yet one finds few traces of Hugo in Dante except through Hugo’s pupil, Richard, whose works he had read. That such apt forerunners should scarcely have affected him shows how he was taught and inspired, not by individuals, but by the entire Middle Ages. One observes mediaeval characteristics in the Commedia raised to a higher power. The mediaeval period was marked by contrasts of quality and of conduct such as cannot be found in the antique or the modern age. And what other poem can vie with the Commedia in contrasts of the beautiful and the loathsome, the heavenly and the hellish, exquisite refinement of expression and lapses into the reverse,[683] love and hate, pity and cruelty, reverence and disdain? These contrasts not only are presented by the story; they evince themselves in the character of the author. Many scenes of the Inferno are loathsome:[684] Dante’s own words and conduct there may be cruel and hateful[685] or show tender pity; and every reader knows the poetic beauty which glorifies the Paradiso, renders lovely the Purgatorio, and ever and anon breaks through the gloom of Hell. Another mediaeval quality, sublimated in Dante’s poem, is that of elaborate plan, intended symmetry of composition, the balance of one incident or subject against another.[686] And finally one observes the mediaeval inclusiveness which belongs to the scope and purpose of the Commedia as a Summa of salvation. Dante brings in everything that can illuminate and fill out his theme. Even as the Summa of St. Thomas, so the Commedia must present a whole doctrinal scheme of salvation, and leave no loopholes, loose ends, broken links of argument or explanation.The substance of the Commedia, practically its whole content of thought, opinion, sentiment, had source in the mediaeval store of antique culture and the partly affiliated, if not partly derivative, Latin Christianity. The mediaeval appreciation of the Classics, and of the contents of ancient philosophy, is not to be so very sharply distinguished from the attitude of the fifteenth or sixteenth, nay, if one will, the eighteenth, century, when the Federalist in the young inchoately United States, and many an orator in the revolutionary assemblies of France, quoted Cicero and Plutarch as arbiters of civic expediency. Nevertheless, if we choose to recognize deference to ancient opinion, acceptance of antique myth and poetry as fact,[687] unbounded admiration for a shadowy and much distorted ancient world, as characterizing the mediaeval attitude toward whatever once belonged to Rome and Greece, then we must say that such also is Dante’s attitude, scholar as he was;[688] and that in his use of the Classics he differed from other mediaeval men only in so far as above them all he was a poet. Lines of illustrative examples begin with the opening canto of the Inferno, where Dante addresses Virgil as famoso saggio, an appellative strictly corresponding with the current mediaeval view of the “Mantuan.” Mediaeval also is the grouping of the great poets who rise to meet Virgil, first Homer, then Orazio satiro, and Ovid and Lucan.[689] More narrowly mediaeval, that is, pertaining particularly to the thirteenth century, is Dante’s profound reverence for the authority of Aristotle, il maestro di color che sanno.[690] It may be that the poet’s sense of the enormous, elect, importance of Aeneas,[691] and his putting Rhipeus, most righteous of the Trojans, as the fifth regal spirit in the Eagle’s eye,[692] belonged more especially to Dante as the Ghibelline author of the De monarchia. But generically mediaeval was his acceptance of antique myth for fact, a most curious instance of which is his referring to the consuming of Meleager with the consuming of the brand, to illustrate a point of physiological psychology.[693] Antique heroes, even monsters, seem as real to him as the people of Scripture and history. It is not, however, his mediaevalism, but his own greatness that enables him to lift his treatment of them to the level of their presentation in the Classics. Noble as an antique demigod is the damned Jason, silent and tearless, among the scourged;[694] and Ulysses is as great in the tale he tells from out the lambent flame as he was in the palace of Alcinoos, telling the tale which Dante never read.[695] The poet, especially in the Purgatorio, constantly balances moral examples alternately drawn from pagan and sacred story. This propensity was quite mediaeval; for throughout the Middle Ages the antique authority was used to fortify or parallel the Christian argument. Yet herein, as always, Dante is Dante as well as a mediaeval man; and his moral examples, for the aid of souls who are purging themselves for Heaven, are interesting and curious enough. On the pavement of the first ledge of Purgatory, Lucifer is figured falling from Heaven and Briareus transfixed by the bolt of Jove; then Nimrod, Niobe, Saul, Arachne, Rehoboam, Eriphyle and Sennacherib, the Assyrians routed after Holophernes’ death, and Troy in ashes.[696] On the third ledge, as instances of gentle forgivingness, he sees in vision the Virgin Mary, and then appear Peisistratus (tyrant of Athens) refusing to avenge himself, and Stephen asking pardon for his slayers.[697] But the most wonderful instance of this combining of the Christian and the antique, each at its height of feeling, occurs in the thirtieth canto of the Purgatorio, where angels herald the appearance of Beatrice with the chant, Benedictus qui venis, and, as they scatter flowers, sing Manibus o date lilia plenis. This unison of the hail to Christ upon His sacrificial entry into Jerusalem and the Virgilian heartbreak over the young Marcellus, shows how Dante rose in his combinings, and how potent an element of his imagination was the antique.[698] Of course the plan of Hell reflects the sixth Book of the Aeneid, and throughout the whole Commedia the Virgilian phrase rises aptly to the poet’s lips. “Thou wouldst that I renew the desperate grief which presses my heart even before I put it into words,” says Ugolino, nearly as Aeneas speaks to Dido.[699] And in the Paradiso the power of the Dantesque reminiscence rouses the reader, spiritually as it were, to emulate the glorious ones who passed to Colchos.[700] A more desperate passage was the lot of those who must drop from Acheron’s bank into Charon’s boat;—the whole scene here is quite reminiscent of Virgil. The simile: “Quam multa in silvis auctumni frigore primo
Lapsa cadunt folia,” is even beautified and made more pregnant with significance in Dante’s “Come d’autunno si levan le foglie
L’una appresso dell’altra....”[701] On the other hand, the threefold attempt of Aeneas to embrace Anchises is stripped of its beautiful dream-simile in Dante’s use.[702] A lovelier bit of borrowing is that of the quick springing up again of the rush, the symbol of humility, l’umile pianta, with which the poet is girt before proceeding up the Mount of Purgatory.[703]With Dante the pagan antique represented much that was philosophically true, if not veritably divine. In his mind, apparently, the heathen good stood for the Christian good, and the conflict of the heathen deities with Titan monsters symbolized, if indeed it did not continue to make part of, the Christian struggle against the power of sin.[704] We may be jarred by the apostrophe: “... O sommo Giove,
Che fosti in terra per noi crucifisso.”[705] But this is a kind of Christian-antique phrase by no means unexampled in mediaeval poetry. And we feel the poetic breadth and beauty of the invocation in which Apollo symbolizes or represents, exactly what we will not presume to say, but at all events some veritable spiritual power, as Minerva does, apparently, in another passage.[706] In such instances the antique image which beautifies the poem is transfigured to a Christian symbol, if it does not present actual truth. Yet however universally Dante’s mind was solicited by the antique matter and his poet’s nature charmed, he was profoundly and mediaevally Christian. The Commedia is a mediaeval Christian poem. Its fabric, springing from the life of earth, enfolds the threefold quasi-other world of damned, of purging, and of finally purified, spirits. It is dramatic and doctrinal. Its drama of action and suffering, like the narratives of Scripture, offers literal fact, moral teaching, and allegorical or spiritual significance. The doctrinal contents are held partly within the poem’s dramatic action and partly in expositions which are not fused in the drama. Thus whatever else it is, the poem is a Summa of saving doctrine, which is driven home by illustrations of the sovereign good and abysmal ill coming to man under the providence of God. One may perhaps discern a twofold purpose in it, since the poet works out his own salvation and gives precepts and examples to aid others and help truth and righteousness on earth. The subject is man as rewarded or punished eternally by God—says Dante in the letter to Can Grande. This subject could hardly be conceived as veritable, and still less could it be executed, by a poet who had no care for the effect of his poem upon men. Dante had such care. But whether he, who was first and always a poet, wrote the Commedia in order to lift others out of error to salvation, or even in order to work out his own salvation,—let him say who knows the mind of Dante. No divination, however, is required to trace the course of the saving teaching, which, whether dramatically exemplified or expounded in doctrinal statement, is embodied in the great poem; nor is it hard to note how Dante drew its substance from the mediaeval past. The Inferno, which is the most dramatic and realistic, “Dantesque,” part of the Commedia, and replete with terrestrial interest, is doctrinally the least rich. Its doctrine chiefly lies in its scheme of punishment, or divine vengeance, for different sins. Herein Dante followed no set series like the seven deadly sins expiated in Purgatory. Neither the Church nor authoritative writers had laid out the plan of Hell. Dante had in mind Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, also Cicero’s De officiis,[707] and, structurally, Virgil. His scheme also was affected by his own character, situation, and aversions, and assuredly by the movement of its own composition. At the mouth of Hell the worthless nameless ones and the neutral angels receive their due. Then after the sad calm of the place of the unbaptized and the great blameless heathen, the veritable Hell begins, and the series of tortures unfold, the lightest being such as punish incontinence, while the most awful are reserved for those fraudulent ones who have betrayed a trust. Dante’s power of presenting the humanly loathsome does not let the progress of hellish torment fail in climax even to the end, where Brutus, Cassius, and Judas are crunched in the dripping mouths of Lucifer at the bottom of the lowest pit of Hell.The general idea of hell torments came to the poet from current beliefs and authoritative utterances, ranging from the “outer darkness” of the Gospel to the lurid oratory of St. Bernard. Dante’s thoughts were drawn generically from the stores of mediaeval convictions, approvals, and imaginings: they were given to him by his epoch. Of necessity—innocently, one may say—he made them into concrete realities because he was Dante. Terrifying phrases and crude ghastliness were raised through his dramatic power to living experiences. The reader goes through Hell, sees with his own eyes, hears with his own ears, and stifles in the choking air. Doubtless the narrative brought fear and contrition to the men of Dante’s time. But for us the disproportion of the vengeance to the crime, the outrage of everlasting torments for momentary, even impulsive sin, is shocking and preposterous.[708] The torments themselves present conditions which become unthinkable when we try to conceive them as enduring eternally. Human flesh, or implicated spirit could not last beneath them. And as for our impulses, there is many a tortured soul with whom we would keep company, for instance, with the excellent band of Sodomites—Priscian (!) Brunetto Latini, and those three Florentines whose “honoured names” the poet greets with reverence and affection.[709] One might even wish to make a third in the flame which enwraps Diomede and Ulysses. In fact, Dante’s dramatic genius has brought the mediaeval hell to a reductio ad absurdum, to our minds. The poet is of it too. He can pity those who touch his pity. And how great he can be, how absolute. There is compacted in the story of Francesca all that can be thought or felt over unhappy love. Yet Dante never doubts the justice of the punishment he describes; sometimes he calmly or cruelly approves. Nel mio bel San Giovanni! How many thousands have quoted these detached words to show the poet’s love of his beautiful baptistery. But, in fact, he refers to the little cylindrical places where stood the baptizing priests, in order to bring home to the reader the size of the holes in the burning rock from which protruded the quivering feet of Simoniacs![710] It appears that the souls of all the damned will suffer more when they shall again be joined to their bodies after the resurrection.[711] The Inferno fully exemplifies the doctrinal statement obscurely set over the gate which shut out hope: moved by justice, the Trinity, “divine power, supreme wisdom, primal love, created me (Hell) to endure eternally.” Dante follows this current authoritative opinion, stated by Aquinas. Here one may repeat that Dante is the child of the Middle Ages, rather than a disciple of any single teacher. If he follows Aquinas more than any other scholastic, he follows Bonaventura also with breadth and balance. These two, however, were themselves final results of lines of previous development. Both were rational and also mystically contemplative, though the former quality predominates in Thomas and the latter in Bonaventura. And in Dante’s poem, at the end of the Paradiso, Theology, the rational apprehension of divine truth, gives place to contemplation’s loftier insight. Dante is kin to both these men; but when he thinks, more frequently he thinks like Thomas, and the intellectual realization of life is dominant with him. This was evident in the Convito; and that the intellectual vision constitutes the substance of the Commedia, becomes luminously apparent in the Paradiso.[712] It is even suggested at the gate of Hell, within which the wretched people will be seen, who have lost the good of the Intellect,[713] by which is meant knowledge of God. The Purgatorio presents more saving doctrine than the cantica of damnation. Its Mount with the earthly paradise at the top, may have been his own, but might have been taken from the Venerable Bede or Albertus Magnus.[714] The ante-purgatory appears as a creation of the poet, influenced by certain passages of the Aeneid and by ancient disciplinary practices which kept the penitents waiting outside the church.[715] The teaching of the whole cantica relates to the purgation of pride, envy, anger, accidia (sloth), avarice, gluttony, lust. These are the seven deadly sins whose provenance is early monasticism.[716] Through their purgation man is made pure and fit to mount to the stars. We shall not follow Dante through the Purgatorio and Paradiso, or observe in detail the teachings set forth and the sources whence they were derived.[717] But a brief reference to the successive incidents and topics of instruction will show how the Commedia touches every key of saving doctrine. The soul entering Purgatory goes seeking liberty from sin,[718] and as a first lesson learns to detach itself from memories of the damned.[719] It receives some slight suggestion of the limits of human reason;[720] and is told that according to the correct teaching there is one soul in man with several faculties.[721] It learns the risk of repentance in the hour of death;[722] and the efficacy of the prayers of others to help souls through their purifying expiation; also, that, after death, souls can advance only by the aid of grace.[723] The symbolism of the gate of Purgatory teaches the need of contrition and confession. Upon the first ledge, the proud do penance, disciplined with examples of humility, and through the Lord’s Prayer are taught man’s entire dependence upon God. It is fitting that Pride should be the first sin expiated, since it lies at the base of all sins in the Christian scheme. Much doctrine is inculcated by the treatment of the different sins and the appositeness of the hymns sung by the penitents.[724] Ascending the second ledge, Virgil, i.e. human reason, expounds the first principles of the doctrine of that love which is of the Good.[725] Next is set forth the theory of human free-will and the effect of the spheres in directing human inclination—all in strict accord with the teaching of Thomas;[726] and then, still in accord with Thomas, the fuller nature of love (or desire) is expounded, and the allotment of purgatorial pains in expiation of the various modes of evil desire or failure to love aright.[727] These fitting pains are as a solace to the soul yearning to accomplish its purgation.[728] Next, generation is explained, the creation of the soul, and the manner of its existence after separation from the body, according to dominant scholastic theories.[729] In the concluding cantos of the Purgatorio, much Church doctrine is symbolically set forth by the Mystic Procession and the rivers of the earthly paradise, Lethe and Eunoe—the latter representing sacramental grace through which good works, killed by later sins, are made to live again.[730] The earthly paradise symbolizes the perfect happiness of life in the flesh, and the state wherein man is fit to pass to the heavenly Paradise. Besides doctrine directly bearing on Salvation, the Commedia contains explanations by the way, needed to understand Dante’s journey through the earth and heavens, and give it verisimilitude. Apparently these explanations were also intended to afford a sufficient knowledge of the structure of the universe. The Paradiso abounds in this kind of information, largely physical and astronomical. Its first canto offers a general statement, beautifully put, of the ordering of created things. In this instance, the instruction is not exclusively astronomical or physical,[731] but touches upon animated creatures, and follows Thomist teaching. Another interesting instance is the explanation in the second canto of the spots on the moon and then of the influence of the heavens. Here the astronomical matter runs on into elucidations touching human nature, even that human nature which is to be saved through saving doctrine. In this way the Christian-Thomist-Dantesque scheme of knowledge holds together. The Commedia is the pilgrimage of the soul after all wisdom, and includes, implicitly at least, the matter of the Convito. The Paradiso contains the chief store of saving knowledge. It sets forth the ultimate problems of human life and divine salvation, with due emphasis laid upon the limitations of human understanding. Dante, conscious of the strenuousness of his high argument, warns off all but the chosen few. A first point learned in the heavenly voyage is that no soul in Paradise desires aught save what it has; since such desire would contravene the will of God. Paradise is everywhere in Heaven, though the divine grace rains not upon all in one mode.[732] Beatified souls do not dwell in any particular star, though Plato seems to say so. Scripture condescends to figure the intelligible under the guise of sensible forms, as Plato may have done.[733] Broken vows and their reparation are now considered. Then the history of the Roman Eagle brings out the fact that Christ was crucified under Tiberius and His death avenged by Titus, which leads on to the explanation of the Fall and the Redemption, occupying the seventh canto. The next offers comment upon the divine goodness and the diversity of human lots; and shows how the bitter may rise from the sweet. With deep consistency the poet exclaims against the insensate toilsome reasonings through which mortals beat their wings downward, away from God.[734] In canto thirteen the reader is enlightened regarding the wisdom of Adam, of Solomon, and of Christ; and then as to the existence of the beatified soul before and after it is clothed with the glorified body of the Resurrection.[735] Incidentally the justice of eternal punishment is adverted to.[736] The depth of the divine righteousness is next presented,[737] and its application to the heathen, with illustrations of God’s saving ways, in the instances of certain princes who loved righteousness, including Trajan and the Trojan Rhipeus.[738] The incomprehensibility of Predestination next receives attention. Now intervenes the marvellous and illuminative beauty of canto twenty-three, preceding Dante’s declaration of his creed, upon interrogatories from the apostles, Peter, James, and John. In this way he states the dogmatic fundamentals of the Christian Faith, and the substantiating rÔles of philosophic argument and authority.[739] After this, the vision of the hierarchies of angels leads on to discourse upon their creation and nature, the immediate fall of those who fell, the exaltation of the steadfast with added grace, and the mode and measure of their knowledge. Thomas is followed in this scholastic argument. With the vision of the Rose, rational theology gives place to mystic contemplation;[740] and further visions of the divine ordering precede the prayer to the Virgin, with which the last canto opens—that prayer so beautiful and so expressive of mediaeval thought and feeling as to the most kind and blessed Lady of Heaven. This prayer or hymn is made of phrases which the mediaeval mind and heart had been recasting and perfecting for centuries. It is almost a great cento, like the Dies Irae. After the Lady’s answering benediction, there comes to Dante, in grace, the final mystic vision of the Trinity, enfolding all existence—substance, accidents and their modes, bound with love in one volume. Supreme dogmatic truth is set forth, and the furthest strainings of reason are stilled in supersensual and super-rational vision, which satisfies all intellectual desire. This vision, vouchsafed through the Virgin’s grace, assures the pilgrim soul: the goal is reached alike of knowledge and salvation. One may say that the Commedia begins and ends with the Virgin. It was she who sent Beatrice into the gates of Hell to move Virgil—meaning human reason—to go to Dante’s aid. The prayer which obtains her benediction, and the vision following, close the Paradiso. So the teaching of the poem ends in mediaeval strains. For the Virgin was the mediaeval goddess, beloved and universally adored, helpful in every way, and the chief aid in bringing man to Heaven. But no more with Dante than with other mediaeval men is she the end of worship and devotion. Her eyes are turned on God. So are those of Beatrice, of Rachel, and of all the saints in Paradise. As for man on earth, he is viator, journeying on through discipline, in righteousness and beneficence, but above all in faith and hope and love of God, with his eyes of knowledge and desire set on God. God is the goal, even of the vita activa, which is also training and enlightenment. Loving his brother whom he hath seen, man may learn to love God—practising himself in love. Even Christ’s parable, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these,” rightly interpreted, implies that the end of human charity is God: the human charity is preparation, obedience, means of enlightenment. The brother for whom Christ died—that is he whom thou shalt love, and that is why thou shalt love him. In themselves human relationships are disciplinary, ancillary, as all the sciences are ancillary to Theology. Mediaeval religion is turned utterly toward God; the relationship of the soul to God is its whole matter. It is not humanitarian: not human, but divina scientia, fides, et amor, make mediaeval Christianity. Thus Dante’s doctrine is mediaeval. Toward God moves the desire of the viatores in Purgatory, though they still are incidentally mindful of earth’s memories. In Paradise the eyes of all the blessed are set on Him. Because of the divine love they may for a moment turn the eyes of their knowledge and desire to aid a fellow-creature; the occasion past, they fix them again on God: thus the Virgin, thus Bernard, thus Beatrice. As a son of the Middle Ages, Dante was possessed with the spirit of symbolism. Allegory, with him, was not merely a way of expressing that which might transcend direct statement: it embodied a principle of truth. The universally accepted allegorical interpretation of Scripture justified the view that a deeper verity lay in allegorical significance than in literal meaning. This principle applied to other writings also. “Now since the literal sense [of the first canzone] is sufficiently explained, it is time to proceed to the allegorical and true interpretation.”[741]In the Vita Nuova and somewhat more lifelessly in the Convito, Dante explains that it is his way to invest his poetry with a secondary or allegorical sense. He proposes in the latter work to carry out the formal notion of the four kinds of meaning contained in profound writings—literal, allegorical, moral, anagogical.[742] He never holds himself, however, to the lines of any such obsession, but is content in practice with the literal and the broadly allegorical sense.[743] Even then the great Florentine occasionally can be jejune enough. The conception of the ten heavens figuring the Seven Liberal Arts along with metaphysics, ethics, and theology, as a plan of composition for the Convito,[744] was on a level with the structural symbolism of the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Capella. Yet the likening of Ethics to the primum mobile and Theology to the Empyrean has bearing on Dante’s, and the mediaeval, scheme of the sciences, among which Theology is chief. Allegory moulds the structure and permeates the substance of the Commedia. For this Dante himself vouches in the famous dedicatory letter to Can Grande, where his thoughts may be heard creaking scholastically, as he describes the nature of his poem, and explains why he entitled it Commedia: “Literally, the subject is the state of souls after death taken simply. If, however, the work be accepted allegorically, the subject is man, according as by merit or demerit through freedom of choice (arbitrii libertatem) he is subject to Justice, rewarding or punitive.” This is the positive statement emanating, in all probability, from the poet. Perhaps it is as well that he did not live to inaugurate the series of Commentaries upon his poem, which began within a few years of his death and show no signs of ceasing.[745] So it has been left to others to determine the metes and bounds and special features of the Commedia’s allegorical intent. The task has proved hazardous, because Dante was such a great poet, so realistic in his visualizing and so masterful in forcing the different phases of his many-sided thoughts to combine in concrete creations. His drama is so living that one can hardly think it an allegory. Evidently certain matters, like the Mystic Procession and its apocalyptic appurtenances in the last cantos of the Purgatorio, are sheer allegory. Such, while suited to suggest theological tenets, are formal and lifeless, a little like the hieratic allegorical mosaics of the fourth and fifth centuries, which were composed before Christian art had become imbued with Christian feeling.[746] Indeed, doffing for an instant one’s reverence for the great poet, one may say that from the point of view of art and life, Dante’s symbolism becomes jejune, or at least ceases to draw us, according as it becomes palpable allegory.[747] Beyond such incidents one recognizes that the general course of the poem, its more pointed occurrences, together with its chief characters and the scenes amid which they move, have commonly both literal and allegorical meaning.[748] Usually it is wise not to press either side too rigorously. The poet’s mind worked in the clearly imagined setting and dramatic action of his poem, where fact and symbolism combined in that reality which is both art and life. Surely the Commedia was completed and rendered real and beautiful through many a touch and incident which had no allegorical intent. Even as in a French cathedral, the main sculptured and painted subjects have doctrinal, that is to say, allegorical, significance, besides their literal truth; but there is also much lovely carving of scroll and flowered ornament and beast and bird, which beautifies the building. For Dante’s purpose, to set out the state of disembodied spirits after death, allegory might prove prejudicial, because of the intensity of his artist’s vision. Much of the poem’s symbolism, especially in the Paradiso, belongs to that unavoidable imagery to which every one is driven when attempting to describe spiritual facts. Such symbolism, however, when constructed with the plastic power of a Dante, may become itself so convincing or compelling as to reduce the intended spiritual signification to the terms of its concrete embodiment in the symbol. In view of the carnality of most sin, one is not surprised to find the place of punishment a converging cavity within the earth. With Dante, as with Hildegard, the sights and torments of Hell are realistically given quite as of course. Perhaps Dante’s Mount of Purgatory begins to give us pause, and its corniced mise en scÈne tends to enflesh the idea of spirit and materialize its purgation. But the limiting effect of symbolism is most keenly felt in the Paradiso, notwithstanding the beauty of that cantica; for its very concrete symbolism seems sometimes to ensphere the intended truths of spirit in a sort of crystalline translucency. It is all a marvellously imagined description of the state of blessed souls. Yet in the final pure and glorious image of a white rose (candida rosa) the company of the glorified spirits is so visualized as to become, surely not theatrical, but as if assembled upon the rounding tiers of seats occupied by an audience.[749] There are topics in which the sheer ratiocination of Thomas is more completely spiritual than the poetic vision of Dante. Dante’s most admirable symbolic creation was also his dearest reality—Beatrice. And while this being in which he has immortalized his fame and hers, is eminently the creation of his genius, the elements were drawn from the many-chambered mediaeval past. Some issued out of the vast matter of chivalric love, with its high heart of service and sense of its own worth, its science, its foolish and most wise reasoning, its preciosity of temper—Dante and his literary friends were virtuosos in everything pertaining to its understanding.[750] This love was of the fine-reasoning mind. The first canzone of the Vita Nuova does not begin “Donne, che sentite amore,” but: “Donne, ch’ avete intelletto d’ amore.” Through that book love is what it never ceases to be with Dante, intelligenza: “Intelligenza nuova, che l’ Amore
Piangendo mette in lui....” The piangendo, the tears, have likewise part; without them love is not had or even understood. The enormous sense of love’s supreme worth—that too is in Dante. It had all been with the Troubadours of Provence, with ChrÉtien de Troies, and with the great Minnesingers, and had been reasoned on, appreciated, felt and wept over, by ladies and knights who listened to their poems. From France and Provence love and its reasonings had come to Italy even before Dante’s eyes had opened to it and other matters. This was one strain that entered the Beatrice of the Vita Nuova, of the Convito, of the Commedia. But Beatrice is something else: she is, or becomes, Theology, the God-given science of the divine and human. Long had Theologia (divina scientia) been a queen; and even before her, Philosophia, as with BoËthius, had been a queenly woman gowned with as full symbolical particularity as ever the Beatrice of Dante. Indeed from the time of the Psychomachia of Prudentius to the Roman de la Rose of De Lorris and De Meun, every human quality, and many an aspect of human circumstance, had been personified, for the most part under the forms of gracious or seductive women. Above all of these rose, sweet, gracious, and potent, the Virgin Queen of Heaven. It came as of course to Dante to symbolize his conception of divine wisdom in a woman’s form. The achievement of his genius was the transfusing combination of elements of courtly love, didactic allegory, and divina scientia, in a creature before whom the whole man Dante, heart and reason and religious faith, could stand and gaze and love and worship. Beatrice was his and of him always; but with the visions and experience of that mature and grace-illuminated manhood, which expressed itself in the Commedia, she comes to be much that she had not been when she lived on earth or had just left it, and Dante was a maker of exquisite verses in Florence; and much too that she had scarce become while the poet was consoling himself with philosophy for his bereavement and the dulling of his early faith. Beatrice lives and moves and has her ever more uplifted being as the reality as well as symbol of Dante’s thoughts of life. With all first love’s idealism, he loved a girl; then she, having passed from earth, becomes the inspiration and object of address of the young maker of sonnets and canzoni, who with such intellectual preciosity was intent on building these verses of fine-spun sentiment. Thereafter, when he is in darker mood, she does not altogether leave him, whatever variant attitudes his thought and temper take. And at last the yearning self-fulfilments of his renewed life draw together in the Beatrice of the Commedia. It is very beautiful, and the growth, as well as work, of genius; but it is not strange. For there is no bound to the idealizing of the love which first transfuses a youth’s nature with a mortal golden flame, and awakens it to new understanding. Out of whatever of experience of life and joy and sorrow may come to the man, this first love may still vivify itself anew—often in dreams—and become again living and beautiful, in tears, and will awaken new perceptions and disclose further vistas of the intelligenza nuova which love never ceases to impart to him who has loved. Dante’s mind was always turning from the obvious sense-actuality of the fact to its symbolism; which held the truer reality. With such a man it is not strange that the beloved and adored woman, the love of whom was virtue and enlightenment, should, when dead to earth, become that divine wisdom which opens Heaven to the lover who would follow, for all eternity, whither his beloved has so surely gone. No, it was not strange, but only as wonderful as all the works of God, that she who while living had been the spring of virtue of all kinds and meanings in the poet’s breast, should after death become the emblem, even the reality, of that whereby man is taught how to win his heavenly salvation. Passage after passage in the Purgatorio and Paradiso show that Beatrice is this divina scientia, and yet has never ceased to be one whom the poet loves.[751] Thus it is clear that mediaeval development converges at last in Dante. He, or his Commedia, might be the final Summa, were not he, or rather it, the final poem. Man and work include the emotions and the intellectual interests of the Middle Ages, embracing what had been known,—Physics, Astronomy, Politics, History, Pagan Mythology, Christian Theology,—all bent and moulded at last to the matter of the book. Not the contents of the Commedia is Dante’s own, but the poem itself—that is his creation. Yet even the poem itself was a climax long led up to. The power of its feeling had been preparing in the conceptions, even in the reasonings, which through the centuries had been gaining ardour as they became part of the entire natures of men and women. Thus had mediaeval thought become emotionalized and plastic and living in poetry and art. Otherwise, even Dante’s genius could not have fused the contents of mediaeval thought into a poem. How many passages in the Commedia illustrate this—like the lovely picture of Lia moving in the flowering meadow, with her fair hands making her a garland. The twenty-third canto of the Paradiso, telling of the triumph of Christ and the Virgin, yields a larger illustration; and within it, as a very concrete lyric instance, floats that flower of angelic love, the song of Gabriel circling the Lady of Heaven with its melody, and giving quintessential utterance to the love and adoration which the Middle Ages had intoned to the Virgin. Yes, if it be Dante’s genius, it is also the gathering emotion of the centuries, which lifts the last cantos of the Paradiso from glory to glory, and makes this closing singing of the Commedia such supreme poetry. Nor is it the emotional element alone that reaches its final voice in Dante. Passage after passage of the Paradiso is the apotheosis of scholastic thought and ways of stating it, the very apotheosis, for example, of those harnessed phrases in which the line of great scholastics had endeavoured to put in words the universalities of substance and accident and the absolute qualities of God. Yet one more feature of Dante’s typifying inclusiveness of the past. Its elements exist in him at first without conscious opposition and yet not subordinated one to another, the less worthy to those of eternal validity. Then conflict arises; the mediaeval Psychomachia awakes in Dante. Evidently he who wrote the Convito after the Vita Nuova, had not continued spiritually undisturbed. Had there come dullings of his early faith? Did his mind seek too exclusive satisfaction in knowledge? Had he possibly swerved a little from some high intention? The facts are veiled. Dante wears neither his mind nor his heart upon his sleeve. Yet a reconcilement was attained by him, though perhaps he had to fetch it out of Hell. He achieved it in his great poem, which in its long making made the poet into the likeness of itself. Fitness for salvation is the ultimate criterion with Dante respecting the elements of mortal life, as it had been through the Middle Ages. And the Commedia—truly the Divina Commedia—while it presents the scheme of salvation for universal man, is the achieved salvation of the poet.
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