The scholastic questions were called _Questiones Quodlibeticæ_; and they
were generally so ridiculous that we have retained the word _Quodlibet_
in our vernacular style, to express anything ridiculously subtile;
something which comes at length to be distinguished into nothingness,
"With all the rash dexterity of wit."
The history of the scholastic philosophy furnishes an instructive theme;
it enters into the history of the human mind, and fills a niche in our
literary annals. The works of the scholastics, with the debates of these
_Quodlibetarians_, at once show the greatness and the littleness of the
human intellect; for though they often degenerate into incredible
absurdities, those who have examined the works of Thomas Aquinas and
Duns Scotus have confessed their admiration of the Herculean texture of
brain which they exhausted in demolishing their aërial fabrics.
The following is a slight sketch of the school divinity.
The christian doctrines in the primitive ages of the gospel were adapted
to the simple comprehension of the multitude; metaphysical subtilties
were not even employed by the Fathers, of whom several are eloquent. The
Homilies explained, by an obvious interpretation, some scriptural point,
or inferred, by artless illustration, some moral doctrine. When the
Arabians became the only learned people, and their empire extended over
the greater part of the known world, they impressed their own genius on
those nations with whom they were allied as friends, or reverenced as
masters. The Arabian genius was fond of abstruse studies; it was highly
metaphysical and mathematical, for the fine arts their religion did not
permit them to cultivate; and the first knowledge which modern Europe
obtained of Euclid and Aristotle was through the medium of Latin
translations of Arabic versions. The Christians in the west received
their first lessons from the Arabians in the east; and Aristotle, with
his Arabic commentaries, was enthroned in the schools of Christendom.
Then burst into birth, from the dark cave of metaphysics, a numerous and
ugly spawn of monstrous sects; unnatural children of the same foul
mother, who never met but for mutual destruction. Religion became what
is called the study of Theology; and they all attempted to reduce the
worship of God into a system! and the creed into a thesis! Every point
relating to religion was debated through an endless chain of infinite
questions, incomprehensible distinctions, with differences mediate and
immediate, the concrete and the abstract, a perpetual civil war carried
on against common sense in all the Aristotelian severity. There existed
a rage for Aristotle; and Melancthon complains that in sacred assemblies
the ethics of Aristotle were read to the people instead of the gospel.
Aristotle was placed a-head of St. Paul; and St. Thomas Aquinas in his
works distinguishes him by the title of "The Philosopher;" inferring,
doubtless, that no other man could possibly be a philosopher who
disagreed with Aristotle. Of the blind rites paid to Aristotle, the
anecdotes of the Nominalists and Realists are noticed in the article
"Literary Controversy" in this work.
Had their subtile questions and perpetual wranglings only been addressed
to the metaphysician in his closet, and had nothing but strokes of the
pen occurred, the scholastic divinity would only have formed an episode
in the calm narrative of literary history; but it has claims to be
registered in political annals, from the numerous persecutions and
tragical events with which they too long perplexed their followers, and
disturbed the repose of Europe. The Thomists, and the Scotists, the
Occamites, and many others, soared into the regions of mysticism.
Peter Lombard had laboriously compiled, after the celebrated Abelard's
"Introduction to Divinity," his four books of "Sentences," from the
writings of the Fathers; and for this he is called "The Master of
Sentences." These Sentences, on which we have so many commentaries, are
a collection of passages from the Fathers, the real or apparent
contradictions of whom he endeavours to reconcile. But his successors
were not satisfied to be mere commentators on these "sentences," which
they now only made use of as a row of pegs to hang on their fine-spun
metaphysical cobwebs. They at length collected all these quodlibetical
questions into enormous volumes, under the terrifying form, for those
who have seen them, of _Summaries of Divinity_! They contrived, by their
chimerical speculations, to question the plainest truths; to wrest the
simple meaning of the Holy Scriptures, and give some appearance of truth
to the most ridiculous and monstrous opinions.
One of the subtile questions which agitated the world in the tenth
century, relating to dialectics, was concerning _universals_ (as for
example, man, horse, dog, &c.) signifying not _this_ or _that_ in
particular, but _all_ in general. They distinguished _universals_, or
what we call abstract terms, by the _genera_ and _species rerum_; and
they never could decide whether these were _substances_--or _names_!
That is, whether the abstract idea we form of a horse was not really a
_being_ as much as the horse we ride! All this, and some congenial
points respecting the origin of our ideas, and what ideas were, and
whether we really had an idea of a thing before we discovered the thing
itself--in a word, what they called universals, and the essence of
universals; of all this nonsense, on which they at length proceeded to
accusations of heresy, and for which many learned men were
excommunicated, stoned, and what not, the whole was derived from the
reveries of Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, about the nature of ideas, than
which subject to the present day no discussion ever degenerated into
such insanity. A modern metaphysician infers that we have no ideas at
all!
Of the scholastic divines, the most illustrious was Saint THOMAS
AQUINAS, styled the Angelical Doctor. Seventeen folio volumes not only
testify his industry but even his genius. He was a great man, busied all
his life with making the charades of metaphysics.
My learned friend Sharon Turner has favoured me with a notice of his
greatest work--his "Sum of all Theology," _Summa totius Theologiæ_,
Paris, 1615. It is a metaphysicological treatise, or the most abstruse
metaphysics of theology. It occupies above 1250 folio pages, of very
small close print in double columns. It may be worth noticing that to
this work are appended 19 folio pages of double columns of errata, and
about 200 of additional index!
The whole is thrown into an Aristotelian form; the difficulties or
questions are proposed first, and the answers are then appended. There
are 168 articles on Love--358 on Angels--200 on the Soul--85 on
Demons--151 on the Intellect--134 on Law--3 on the Catamenia--237 on
Sins--17 on Virginity, and others on a variety of topics.
The scholastic tree is covered with prodigal foliage, but is barren of
fruit; and when the scholastics employed themselves in solving the
deepest mysteries, their philosophy became nothing more than an
instrument in the hands of the Roman Pontiff. Aquinas has composed 358
articles on angels, of which a few of the heads have been culled for the
reader.
He treats of angels, their substance, orders, offices, natures, habits,
&c., as if he himself had been an old experienced angel!
Angels were not before the world!
Angels might have been before the world!
Angels were created by God--They were created immediately by Him--They
were created in the Empyrean sky--They were created in grace--They were
created in imperfect beatitude. After a severe chain of reasoning, he
shows that angels are incorporeal compared to us, but corporeal compared
to God.
An angel is composed of action and potentiality; the more superior he
is, he has the less potentiality. They have not matter properly. Every
angel differs from another angel in species. An angel is of the same
species as a soul. Angels have not naturally a body united to them. They
may assume bodies; but they do not want to assume bodies for themselves,
but for us.
The bodies assumed by angels are of thick air.
The bodies they assume have not the natural virtues which they show, nor
the operations of life, but those which are common to inanimate things.
An angel may be the same with a body.
In the same body there are, the soul formally giving being, and
operating natural operations; and the angel operating supernatural
operations.
Angels administer and govern every corporeal creature.
God, an angel, and the soul, are not contained in space, but contain it.
Many angels cannot be in the same space.
The motion of an angel in space is nothing else than different contacts
of different successive places.
The motion of an angel is a succession of his different operations.
His motion may be continuous and discontinuous as he will.
The continuous motion of an angel is necessary through every medium, but
may be discontinuous without a medium.
The velocity of the motion of an angel is not according to the quantity
of his strength, but according to his will.
The motion of the illumination of an angel is threefold, or circular,
straight, and oblique.
In this account of the motion of an angel we are reminded of the
beautiful description of Milton, who marks it by a continuous motion,
"Smooth-sliding without step."
The reader desirous of being _merry_ with Aquinas's angels may find them
in Martinus Scriblerus, in Ch. VII. who inquires if angels pass from one
extreme to another without going through the _middle_? And if angels
know things more clearly in a morning? How many angels can dance on the
point of a very fine needle, without jostling one another?
All the questions in Aquinas are answered with a subtlety of distinction
more difficult to comprehend and remember than many problems in Euclid;
and perhaps a few of the best might still be selected for youth as
curious exercises of the understanding. However, a great part of these
peculiar productions are loaded with the most trifling, irreverent, and
even scandalous discussions. Even Aquinas could gravely debate, Whether
Christ was not an hermaphrodite? Whether there are excrements in
Paradise? Whether the pious at the resurrection will rise with their
bowels? Others again debated--Whether the angel Gabriel appeared to the
Virgin Mary in the shape of a serpent, of a dove, of a man, or of a
woman? Did he seem to be young or old? In what dress was he? Was his
garment white or of two colours? Was his linen clean or foul? Did he
appear in the morning, noon, or evening? What was the colour of the
Virgin Mary's hair? Was she acquainted with the mechanic and liberal
arts? Had she a thorough knowledge of the Book of Sentences, and all it
contains? that is, Peter Lombard's compilation from the works of the
Fathers, written 1200 years after her death.--But these are only
trifling matters: they also agitated, Whether when during her conception
the Virgin was seated, Christ too was seated; and whether when she lay
down, Christ also lay down? The following question was a favourite topic
for discussion, and the acutest logicians never resolved it: "When a hog
is carried to market with a rope tied about his neck, which is held at
the other end by a man, whether is the _hog_ carried to market by the
_rope_ or the _man_?"
In the tenth century[29], after long and ineffectual controversy about
the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament, they at length universally
agreed to sign a peace. This mutual forbearance must not, however, be
ascribed to the prudence and virtue of those times. It was mere
ignorance and incapacity of reasoning which kept the peace, and deterred
them from entering into debates to which they at length found themselves
unequal!
Lord Lyttleton, in his Life of Henry II., laments the unhappy effects of
the scholastic philosophy on the progress of the human mind. The minds
of men were turned from classical studies to the subtilties of school
divinity, which Rome encouraged, as more profitable for the maintenance
of her doctrines. It was a great misfortune to religion and to learning,
that men of such acute understandings as Abelard and Lombard, who might
have done much to reform the errors of the church, and to restore
science in Europe, should have depraved both, by applying their
admirable parts to weave those cobwebs of sophistry, and to confound the
clear simplicity of evangelical truths, by a false philosophy and a
captious logic.