PHILOSOPHY.
The era of the subversion of the western empire, A.D. 476, presents a
point from which a step forward, and a change for the better in human
affairs, was distinctly marked. It was one from which we may most
advantageously survey the field of political and moral philosophy.
The exterminating swords of barbarian conquerors left scarcely a
vestige of former systems behind them. A deluge of new influences
prevailed, and the moral aspect of earth was transformed. Men came
upon a broader stage, amid more expanding scenes, and were soon acting
a new character under impulses and in situations before unknown.
Standing on this elevation, we see that old things have passed away,
and all things have become new; mental pursuits in general have assumed
an augmented interest, and especially is philosophy improved in its
influence, accelerated in its progress, and enlarged in its extent. As
the gorgeous but unsatisfactory pictures of oriental mysticism gave
place to the fervor and fluctuations of more intellectual destinies in
Greece--gleams of grandeur and wide tracks of gloom--and as this in
turn fell before the gradual rise, broad dominion, and fatal decline of
mighty Rome, so the latter sank in darkness, but the night of its tomb
was soon seen to rest on a horizon of immortal day, which eventually
rose to the zenith with augmented splendor. The Hyrcinian forest teemed
with nascent states, and islands which the empress of the seven hills
had known only to despise, assumed an imposing attitude to produce a
language and dictate laws over realms wider than Rome ever knew.
Greek and Roman philosophy comprised the free efforts of reason to
acquire a knowledge of first principles and the laws of nature,
without a clear consciousness of the method most conducive to such
attainments. The philosophy of the middle ages endeavored to attain the
same end, but under the influence of a principle superior to itself,
derived from revelation. In the course of transitional progress, it
fell into a spirit exclusively dialectic, whence it emerged through
fresh and independent exertions toward the discovery of fundamental
principles. Thenceforth a combination of all human knowledge, in a more
complete and systematic form, has tended with unfaltering success to
explore, found, and define the principles of philosophy as a science.
This, like every other element of cotemporaneous civilization, had its
successive periods of origin, foundation, and development, stretching
over a wide space, of which the twelfth century formed the middle
line. Previous to that epoch, the various elements were disengaging
themselves, and entering into a higher, as well as more practical
amalgamation, which was destined rapidly to achieve the widest possible
good.
The early fathers of the Greek church went deeply into the current of
oriental speculation, and they are worthy of special research, since
so many golden grains of philosophy may be picked up in that sacred
stream. It has already been shown, that by a range of imaginative
reasoning, which soared far above the world of sense and outward
experience, Plato sought a return to the supreme Godhead, infinitely
exalted above all nature, deriving his chief proofs from immediate
intuition and primeval revelation, or profound internal reminiscence.
This fundamental tenet of the prior existence of the human soul
was closely allied to the Indian doctrine of the metempsychosis,
and, regarded in a literal sense, must be equally rejected by true
Christian philosophy. But if we are to consider this Platonic notion
of reminiscence under a more spiritual view, as the resuscitation of
the consciousness of the divine image implanted in our souls, or the
soul's perception of that image, this theory would then coincide with
evangelical doctrine, and we ought not to wonder that this Platonic
mode of thinking became the first great philosophy of revelation which
was fashioned and promulgated in a mediæval form. It was most adapted
to captivate the profoundest Christian thinkers, and pour a sweet
solace into their aspiring hearts; hence, the prevalency of this system
in the schools, until the end of the twelfth, and the beginning of
the thirteenth century. Many leading minds even believed that they
discovered in it the types of their own religious views. The symbolical
fancies of Timæus respecting physical phenomena, were taken up with
spirit, and erroneous ideas respecting the laws of creation long
prevailed, although the mathematicians of Alexandria had demonstrated
their fallacies. Nevertheless, under various forms, the echo of
Platonism was propagated from Augustin to Alcuin, far into the middle
ages.
The philosophy of Aristotle was based upon ample and substantial
logic, and from the beginning was a wonderful _organum_,
admirably adapted to the uses of scientific truth. His perspicacious,
piercing, and comprehensive intellect reduced all the historical
and philosophic principles of preceding ages and of his own time,
to the exactest system, and for twenty centuries he remained the
master-guide. Considered merely as an effort of unassisted reason,
the ethics of Aristotle have an extraordinary interest; but as a
scientific introduction to divine revelation, and in all important
moral questions, the Stagyrite is far from being so valuable a guide
as Plato. It was an ominous gift to western Europe, when the works
of Aristotle were brought from the East, translated into Arabic,
and thence turned again into Latin almost as obscure. The Christian
philosophers belonging to the first period of the middle ages, such
as Bernard and Abelard of France, Anselm, and Scotus Erigena, the
cotemporary of Alfred of England, were incomparably more luminous
and forcible than the schoolmen of succeeding times, being much more
free from idle logic and empty subtleties. Apparently, it would
have been much better if the powerful emperors and potentates who
patronized science had brought away with them, from the Latin empire
at Constantinople, those philological treasures which there abounded,
instead of fostering a universal and irresistible rage for the most
metaphysical of authors, and whom it was quite impossible for them
to comprehend. But the strange proceeding was overruled for the
greatest benefit. The whole foundation of the scholastic philosophy
was doubtless thoroughly false, and inflicted great injury, not only
on theology, but on the whole range of mediæval thought. But when
the evil became most formidable, a mighty service was rendered to
mankind, when acute and sagacious men like Thomas Aquinas, endowed
with exalted philosophical talents, adopted the old Aristotelian
rationalism, and founded thereon a system in which they attempted to
reconcile philosophy with faith, and thus avert from their age the
dangerous consequences of false dialectics. This, however, was no true
reconciliation, and the rationalism of the middle age afterward broke
into a violent collision with the divine doctrines to which it had
been unnaturally allied. But before this extreme was arrived at, the
resuscitation of a nobler rationalism began, and gradually obtained
the mastery over leading minds, producing a radical change in the
whole spirit of literature and science. Philosophy passed through
a very important renovation, and its profoundest votaries began to
set themselves wholly free from the authority of Aristotle in his
own department, and proceeded to the unfettered investigation of the
deepest and most solemn problems. Their main purpose, indeed, was, as
one of them declared, to compare the tenets of former teachers with the
original handwriting of God, the world and nature.
The now almost forgotten contest between the _Realists_ and
_Nominalists_ of the middle ages, exercised a decided influence
upon the final establishment of the experimental sciences. These were
the two philosophic schools which labored respectively to bridge the
apparently impassable "gap between thought and actual existence,
and the relations between the mind which discerns, and the objects
which are discerned." According to Humboldt, "The Nominalists, who
only admitted a subjective existence to belong to general ideas in
the imagination of man, after many oscillations, ultimately in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries became the victorious party. From
that great aversion to mere abstractions, they first arrived at the
necessity of experience, and of increasing the physical basis of
knowledge. This direction of their ideas had, at any rate, a secondary
influence upon empirical natural science; but even while the views
of the Realists still prevailed, the acquaintance with the Arabian
literature had diffused a love for Nature's works, in happy contrast
with the study of theology, which otherwise absorbed every thing.
Thus we see, that in the different periods of the Middle Ages, to
which we have been perhaps accustomed to attribute too great a unity
of character, in very different courses, namely, in the ideal and the
experimental way, the great work of distant discoveries, and the
possibility of their being of avail in the extension of the general
ideas of the earth, were gradually advanced."
The Arabians cultivated philosophy with characteristic ardor, and
founded upon it the fame of many ingenious and erudite men. Al-Farabi,
in Transoxiana, died in 950. It is affirmed that he spoke seventy
languages, wrote upon all the sciences, and collected them into an
encyclopædia. Al-Gazeli of Thous, who submitted religion to the test
of philosophy, died in 1111. Avicenna, from the vicinity of Chyraz,
who died in 1037, was a profound philosopher, as well as a celebrated
physician. Averrhoes of Cordova, was the most erudite commentator on
the works of Aristotle, and died in 1198. The system of the great
Macedonian metaphysician was well fitted to the mathematical genius of
the Arabians, and they worshiped him as a sort of divinity. According
to their belief, all philosophy was to be found in his writings, and
they explained every problem according to his arbitrary rules. In
the preceding chapter, we have seen with what success the Arabians
cultivated all the sciences; and let us here add that, while of all
their studies, philosophy was the one in particular which penetrated
most rapidly into the West, and had the greatest influence in the
schools of Europe, it was the one, in fact, the progress of which
was the least real. The ardent sons of Shem were more ingenious than
profound, more abstract than practical, and attached themselves rather
to the subtleties of fancy than to the substantial ideas of reason.
They possessed many qualities which enabled them to dazzle, but few
attributes of a character adapted to instruct. More enthusiastic than
enterprising, they were willing to place themselves under the supreme
dictation of another, rather than to feed their own minds at the
original sources of knowledge. They gathered up much that had been
produced by their superiors in the East, and brought it forward as the
nourishment of still nobler races destined to succeed them; but they
produced little that was native to themselves, especially in the realm
of philosophy, and now exert absolutely no influence on western mind.
The human spirit was not less active and indomitable in the middle
age than at earlier periods; and although it was placed under the
severest religious restrictions, it still sought to render to itself
an account of its speculative belief. The more methodical system of
instruction which originated in the cloisters, and ascended thence to
the universities, gave rise to diversified sects, whose impassioned
conflicts occasioned increased liberty of disquisition. For a long time
the scholastic philosophy was exercised in a circle it did not itself
trace, and which it dared not pass; but meanwhile it was approaching
emancipation, and grew finally into a bolder strength and traversed
broader realms. Still it was not thought in that exact form and
absolute freedom which should characterize philosophy, and the pedantic
system therefore ended with the age it was created to serve.
The scholasticism which was so marked a peculiarity of the age of Leo
X., was the labor of intellect in the service of faith, and we know
its starting point, its progress, and its end. It arose with the new
society of that formative era, and arrived at perfect dominion after
having been delivered from all the ruins of the ancient civilization,
when the soil of Europe had become more firm and capable of receiving
the foundations upon which a nobler and broader social compact might
arise. Charlemagne, who with one hand arrested the Saracens in the
South, and with the other resisted the barbarians of the North, became
the type and leader of western civilization in the dawn of the third
great period; and, succeeded by Charles the Bald and Alfred the Great,
carefully fanned the sparks of ancient culture, in order to rekindle
the flame of progressive science. It was he who first opened the
schools, and originated scholasticism. As the Mysteries of olden times
had been the primary source of Greek philosophy, so the convents of the
eighth century were the cradle of the ethical systems we still possess
and desire to improve.
Scholasticism commenced in the absolute submission of philosophy to
theology, advanced to the separation of these two spheres of mental
exercise, and culminated in the entire independence of thought. The
first epoch comprised, with the inspired Scriptures, the Christian
fathers generally, and especially those of the Latin church, of whom
Augustine was the chief. The little knowledge in this department that
had escaped barbarism was then principally contained in the meagre
writings of Boethius, born in 470, and senator of Theodoric; of
Capella, born at Madaura, in Africa, about 474; of Mamert, at Vienna,
who died in the year 477; of Cassiodorus, who flourished in the
first half of the sixth century; of the Venerable Bede, who opened
the chief sources of British civilization at the end of the seventh
century; and of that other Anglo-Saxon, Alcuin, born at York, 726,
and whom Charlemagne placed on the heights of mediæval culture, at
the head of the regeneration of mind at large. John Scot, or Johannes
Scotus Erigena, as he was called because an Irishman, lived long at
the court of Charles the Bald, and afterward returned to England at
the invitation of Alfred the Great, to teach at Oxford, where he died
in 886, expressed the great text of his cotemporaries which they all
labored to expound and exemplify: "There are not two studies, one
of philosophy, and the other of religion; true philosophy is true
religion, and true religion is true philosophy."
Anselm, born in Piedmont in 1034, Prior of Bec in Normandy, and,
at the time of his death, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the true
metaphysician of this epoch. He was called the second Saint Augustine,
and his writings achieved a remarkable progress. To him is accredited
the argument, which draws from the idea alone of an absolute maximum
of greatness, of beauty, and of goodness, the demonstration of the
existence of its object, which can be only God. This was doubtless
inspired by the genius of Christian idealism, and was so effectively
elaborated by Saint Anselm that it is supposed to have extended its
influence even down to Leibnitz and Descartes.
Another beautiful classic spirit, who struggled and triumphed in the
midst of mediæval gloom was Abelard. Born near Nantes, in 1079, and
having acquired all the strength that could be furnished by provincial
knowledge, he went to Paris, where from a pupil he soon became a
rival of the most renowned masters, and thenceforth for a long time
in dialectics ruled supreme. He attracted such multitudes of scholars
from all parts of Europe, that, as himself said, the hotels were
neither sufficient to contain them, nor the ground to nourish them. He
moved the church and the state, eclipsed Roscellinus and Champeaux,
having Arnold of Brescia among his friendly disciples, and a powerful
adversary in the great Bernard. We are told that this "Bossuet of the
twelfth century" was handsome, was a poet, and musician. He wrote songs
which amused the refined, gave lectures which absorbed the profound,
and both as canon and professor, was regarded with the most absolute
devotion by that noble creature, Heloise, who loved like Theresa the
saint. As a hero who was active to reform abuses and wise to enlighten
barbarism, the chief of an advancing school, and the martyr of exalted
opinions, Abelard was indeed an extraordinary personage.
Nominalism and Realism found a new competitor on the philosophic
stage when the advanced and victorious system of Conceptualism was
established by Abelard. Of this school, John of Salisbury was an
enlightened and polished disciple. To him and his co-laborer in the
same faith and age, Peter Lombard, succeeded the three great masters
who represented the succeeding epoch. Albert the Great, born in
Suabia, was by turns professor at Cologne and Paris. In 1260 he was
bishop of Ratisbon, but soon withdrew from that post to devote himself
exclusively to his philosophical pursuits at Cologne, where he died in
1280. Thomas Aquinas was of a rich and illustrious family, who wished
to give him a good position in the world. But he declined all secular
honors, and became a Dominican, that he might devote himself entirely
to philosophy. He is said to have been an incomparable teacher, and
was called the Angel of the School. His birth occurred near Naples, in
1225; he studied under Albert, both at Cologne and Paris, died in 1274,
and was canonized in 1323. He was not so scientific as his master,
nor so mystical as his compatriot, Bonaventura. He could not dream
of modern equality; but, as a Christian philosopher he recommended
humanity toward the persecuted, and exemplified the high morality he
taught. The English Duns Scotus, born at Dunston, in Northumberland,
according to others at Duns, in Ireland, near 1275, possessed a mind
of uncommon firmness and powerful action. Physics and mathematics
were his forte, while more spiritual themes won the preference and
exercised the skill of Albert and Thomas. Cotemporaries named the first
the seraphic Doctor, and the second the angelic Doctor, but the third
was characterized by another epithet more descriptive of his genius,
namely, the subtile, Doctor subtilis.
Roger Bacon, born in 1214, and whose great scientific capacities were
alluded to in the preceding chapter, was a man who stood alone in the
thirteenth century on account of his linguistic skill and attainments
in philosophy. The poor persecuted Franciscan was three centuries
in advance of his age, but, despite all difficulties, he did much
to promote a movement of mental independence which, soon after his
death made itself rapidly manifest. The separation of philosophy from
theology began to be perfected, and the destruction of scholasticism
was thus secured. Roscelin, a canon of Compiègne, did not a little
toward the attainment of this end, but much more was accomplished by
an English pupil of Duns Scotus, at the commencement of the fourteenth
century. He was named John Occam, born in the county of Surrey, and
is often called simply Occam. He was a successful teacher at Paris,
under Philip le Bel, at the epoch when the political powers strove to
emancipate themselves from the ecclesiastical power. The monk sided
with the sovereign, and wrote against the pretensions of pope Boniface
VIII. Afterward he said to the emperor Louis of Bavaria, "Defend me
with the sword, and I will defend you with the pen," and in like manner
resisted pope John XXII. A man so bold in politics could not have been
timid in philosophy, and his persevering courage procured him the name
of Doctor invincibilis. The spirit of independence was everywhere
aroused under the auspices of Occam, so that the old schools were
quickened, and new masters were produced. Walter Burleigh flourished
about 1337, and wrote commentaries on Aristotle, Porphyry, etc., while
professor at Paris and Oxford. He was author of the first history of
philosophy written in the middle age. Marsile of Inghen, founder of the
university of Heidelberg, died in 1394. Thomas of Strasburg, author
of a Commentary on The Master of Sentences, died in 1357. Thomas of
Bradwardin, Archbishop of Canterbury, was not only a mathematician of
uncommon power, but a great proficient in the more literary departments
of high philosophy. He died in 1439.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after the heated conflicts
between nominalism and realism, another species of philosophy,
mysticism, separated itself from all other systems, acquired
consciousness of itself, exposed its own theory, and by its own name
was called. Near the close of his life, Petrarch abandoned literary
pursuits, in order to devote himself to contemplative philosophy, was
a mystic in belief, and died in 1374. Most of the remarkable men of
this epoch were disciples of the same transcendental faith. Such were
John Tauler, the celebrated preacher at Cologne, and the still more
illustrious author of the "Imitation of Jesus Christ." Whether that
work belongs to Gerson, or to Thomas à Kempis, it may be regarded as
the most perfect reflection of philosophy in those foreboding times,
when the thoughtful, oppressed with doubt, aspired after relief through
reliance on the mercy of God. Scholasticism ceased at the beginning of
the fifteenth century, and was succeeded by mysticism, which continued
till the opening of the seventeenth century, when modern philosophy,
properly so called, began, and is now molding a grander philosophic
age. The mystical polemics which brought all learning to a low ebb at
the epoch of the decline of ancient literature, long lurked faintly
among the cloisters, by the dim lamp of dreaming solitaries, to whom
true science was an unfathomable ocean, of which they vainly strove
to sound the depths, while their only object should have been to sail
across it. But their dogmatical fixedness was overruled for good, since
all the great elements of speculative thought were thus conserved, and
progressive philosophy, nevertheless, like its type and hero, through
night and tempest westward took its course.
The interior of the cathedral at Florence, so imposing from its dim
light and great extent, is full of that local interest which connects
itself with a mausoleum of greatness and museum of art. Upon the north
wall is a portrait of Dantè, and behind the choir is an unfinished
Pieta by Michael Angelo, whose fervid and impatient genius designed
so much more than it could possibly execute. Under the crowning glory
of the dome, that masterpiece and model of renaissant architecture,
lie the remains of Giotto and Brunelleschi, in spots marked by
commemorative busts; and the same honor is paid to the remains of
Facino, the great restorer of the Platonic philosophy. It was this
erudite scholar who, at the revival of learning, procured the printing
of Plato, performed the same service for the illustrious leaders of
the later school, and illustrated his edition of the great master with
many commentaries, in which he showed himself an equal adept in the
mysteries of Plotinus and Porphyry, as in the sense of Plato. In order
to give additional zest to the study of Platonism, Lorenzo and his
friends formed the intention of renewing, with extraordinary pomp, the
solemn annual feasts to the memory of the great philosopher, which had
been celebrated from the time of his death to that of his disciples,
Plotinus and Porphyrius, but had been discontinued for twelve hundred
years. The day fixed on for this purpose was the 7th of November, the
supposed anniversary of both the birth and death of Plato. Francesco
Bandini, eminent for rank and learning, was fixed on by Lorenzo to
preside over this ceremony at Florence. On the same day another party
met at Lorenzo's villa at Careggi, where he presided in person. The
new academy of Platonists, in the fifteenth century, embraced a large
number of the most eminent men, the greatest part of whom were natives
of Florence, a fact that may give us some idea of the surprising
attention which was then paid to philosophy, as well as to art,
science, and literary pursuits. In this respect, the birthplace of Leo
X., and the great mental centre of his age stands unrivaled; a species
of praise as indisputable as it is well-deserved.
We have seen that the capacious mind of Aristotle absorbed the whole
existing philosophy of his age, and that it was reproduced, digested,
and transmitted, in a form still preserved, and of which the spirit
early penetrated into the inmost recesses of mediæval mind. Translated
in the fifth century into Syriac, and thence into Arabic, four hundred
years later, his writings furnished the Mohammedan conquerors of the
East with the germs of science which they bore so opportunely to the
West, and thus extended the empire of an exacter philosophy from Bagdad
to Cordova, from Egypt to Britain's occidental shore.
Platonism took deep root in Germany, and was the favorite of the ablest
philosophers; and whether the mystic Reuchlin, or the mathematical
Leibnitz, or the recondite Kant, elaborated their respective theories,
they equally acknowledged the great Greek master to be the one model of
their admiration. Sydenham, Spens, and Taylor, translated him in the
bosom of the English race; and among the British admirers of Plato,
besides the cabalists Gale and More, and the eloquent pupil of the
Alexandrian school, Cudworth, were many of the ablest philosophers and
poets. Not to anticipate the new age, on the border of which shone
the Platonic minds of Milton and Gray, we allude to Berkeley, whose
enthusiastic esteem is well known, and to Bacon, who never speaks
of the political or moral works of Plato without marked respect.
The mighty architects of the age to come, best understood the worth
of those foundations on which they built, and with a noble sadness
sometimes bemoaned the obscurity which progress necessarily throws upon
the superseded past.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, philosophy appeared to
have but one home, Italy; but in the seventeenth century, all Europe
became the field of its culture, and the richest fruits were ripened
by the setting sun. At earlier periods, inventive mind had scarcely
any means of expression, save a single language, and that a dead
one; but in the seventeenth century the Latin became the exception,
and philosophy began to use national tongues, which it enriched and
reformed. At the moment a new world was opened to the sublimest
advance, philosophy admitted to its service only living languages, full
of the future, and which placed it in direct communication with the
masses. Thus it accumulated its resources, concentrated its influence,
and pressed forward in its majestic career, promising soon to become an
independent, universal, and popular power.