successive academical generations it seems strange that in 1209
Aristotle should have been forbidden under excommunication, and in
1231 restored to such favour that for the disciples of Albert and St
Thomas the master almost attained the authority of a father of the
church; the explanation probably is that "Aristotle" meant for a time
the paynim interpretations of Toledo, particularly of the Physics (the
Metaphysics were not translated from the Greek till about 1220); and
meant not this only, but also liberal quotation and incorporation of
the writings of Arab philosophers. To show how learning, even in the
University of Paris, lay under ecclesiastical control, some extracts
from the Edicts of the Synod of Paris and of Gregory the Ninth may be
cited in illustration:--After directing that "Corpus magistri Amaurici
extrahatur e cimiterio, et projiciatur in terram non benedictam" the
Synod farther orders that the "Quaternuli ["Quaternuli" is translated
by Ducange, Quatuor quartæ chartæ, seu octo folia: i.e. the octavos]
magistri David de Dinant, ... afferantur et comburantur; nec libri
Aristotelis de naturali philosophia, nec Commenta legantur Parisiis,
publice vel secreto. Et hoc sub poena excommunicationis
inhibemus.... De libris theologicis scriptis in romano, præcipimus
quod episcopis diocesanis tradantur, et Credo in Deum et Pater noster
in romano, præter vitas sanctorum." The order two years later
confirming these prohibitions differs but in form. Even the Bull of
Gregory in 1231, relieving the schools of this proscription, says, "Ad
hæc jubemus ut magistri artium unam lectionem de Prisciano et unam
post aliam ordinarie semper legant, et libris illis naturalibus, qui
in concilio provinciali ex certa causa prohibiti fuere, Parisiis non
utantur, quousque examinati fuerint, et ab omni errorum suspicione
purgati." The pope adds paternally, "Magistri vero et scholares
theologiæ, in facultate quam profitentur, se studeant laudabiliter
exercere, nec philosophos se ostendant, sed satagant fieri theodocti:
nec loquantur in lingua populi, et populi linguam hebræam cum azotica
confundentes" [azotica or arethica means the profane tongue (Ducange);
Hebrew being a Sancta lingua]. The pantheistic outburst of the later
twelfth century, although deriving in part from Erigena, was probably
fed by the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias. This commentary was
widely read in Arabic and Arab-latin translations, the latter of which
were made, as we know (v. A. Jourdain, p. 123 and seq.), by Gerard of
Cremona (d. 1187). Alexander's more material interpretation of [Greek:
hylê] involved the return of All into God; hence no resurrection, no
future life. In his followers these doctrines become grosser and
grosser, and, fused with other Arabian doctrine, prepared for and
afterwards strengthened the Averroism of Padua, in the XV-XVIth
century, in which system it was taught that the universal soul,
dipping for the time into the individual man, is at death resumed into
the universal soul. This virtual denial of personal immortality was of
course bitterly resented by the Church. (Vid. p. 68, note.) Thus from
the thirteenth century onwards pantheistic infidelity survived and
even defied the menaces and the punishments of the Church.
[22] Both Albert and Aquinas were inconsistent. Hauréau points out
that St Thomas was a vitalist in physics, an animist in metaphysics, a
nominalist in philosophy, and a realist in theology. "Il a cherché à
reconcilier des morts (i.e. Plato and Aristotle) qui, toute leur vie,
se sont contredits." But even sceptics contradict themselves; and it
is fair to add that St Thomas pushed universals back to immanence in
the Divine mind. For Plato the ideas are thoughts of universal mind;
for Aristotle God, or Nature by its thoughts or plans determines the
lines of phenomena: thus Plato and Aristotle were more alike than
Thomas knew, or Hauréau admits. There was no such thing of course as
The Scholastic Philosophy, of which I read again but the other day in
a modern work. Scholasticism is the very various teaching of the
schools of the XI-XVth centuries; though its general tendency was to
search rather into the origin and nature than into the functions of
being. The philosophy of the thirteenth century on the whole was
eclectic;--though perhaps eclectic by confusion rather than by
reconciliation. The rule of authority prevented an appreciation of the
relative values of opinions; the recognised authorities were equally
true, and had to be dovetailed together somehow. Critical
interpretation had not begun.
[23] The objection should not lie against hair splitting, for thought
cannot be too penetrating; but against the splitting of imaginary
hairs.
[24] M. Charles Jourdain thus describes the procession of Rector,
doctors and disciples of the University of Paris at the beginning of
the fourteenth century. At the end of this century its decay began.
[25] For Aristotle the principle of individuation was matter and form
(vid. note, p. 33); for Averroes it was form; for St Thomas it was
matter. For all "vitalists" the identity of form, soul and life is
essential; thus Stahl regarded soul as bestowing on body all activity,
as determining all vital functions. In Aristotle [Greek: psychê] is
untranslatable = anima and animus--soul and vital principle. [Greek:
Pneuma] again in various writers may mean anything, from air to spirit
or other essence; cf. Arist. De Generat. An. II. 3, and the "aura" of
Harvey, and even of Haller in the same connexion as the fertilising
element.
[26] Not for all, not for the greatest of them! Aristotle, in vain,
warned later generations against prophesying what seems likely,
instead of looking to see how things come about:--"[Greek: ouk alêthê
legontes, alla manteuomenoi to symbêsomenon ek tôn eikotôn, kai
proslambanontes hôs houtôs echon prin ginomenon houtôs idein]." (De
Gen. Anim. IV. i.) "Croire tout ce qu'on rêve," if useful and possibly
admirable in its day, in "neo-Hegelians" is a little stale.
[27] Thus, in ascending from general to more general, in the most
general will be sought unique and perfect being; the primary cause and
sole object of science--the [Greek: autozôon] of the Alexandrians:
whereas by successive eliminations utter abstractions would become
utter vacuity. To such realists all subordinate beings are integral
parts of the primary being. It would serve no useful end here to
analyse these doctrines, or to indicate the pythagorean or stoical
elements of them; for platonists and realists had their schools and
degrees of subtlety; and Plato himself was inconsistent. Some brought
secondary agents--demiurges or angels--into more creative activity,
others carried creative reason back to the ideal good, and so on.
[28] Held by Gilbert, and attributed to Averroes; but older than
Averroes. In turning to Francis Bacon's hypothesis I read (Ed. E. and
S. II. 263. Hist. Densi et rari--chapter, "Dilatationes per spiritum
innatum se expandentem," a Paracelsian sort of chapter) "Pulsus cordis
et arteriarum in animalibus fit per irrequietam dilatationem
spirituum, et receptum ipsorum, per vices." The muscular quality of
the heart was known to Galen, forgotten, and rediscovered. Spiritus
vitalis, for Bacon, was "aura composita ex flamma et aere" (cf. Æn.
VI. 747). Glisson has been fortunate in two generous judges, in Haller
and Virchow; it would ill become me to depreciate a distinguished
Fellow of my own College, and as a clinical observer Glisson had
considerable merits; but as a physiologist he was sunk in realism. He
was happy in the invention of the technical term "irritability," but
for him this virtue was as metaphysical an essence as the vital
spirit; his prime motor was not physical. As a philosopher I fear the
independent reader of his works will find him fanciful and wearisome.
[29] Herein Harvey's sagacity brought him towards the truth. "Air," he
says in the _De generatione_, "is given neither for the cooling nor
the nutrition of animals ... it is as if heat were rather enkindled
within the foetus (at birth) than repressed by the influence of the
air." Boyle (who says that he worked under the influence of Harvey's
discoveries) carried this matter forward by most interesting and
sagacious experiments with his air-pump. For the layman, I may add
that (to speak generally) before Harvey's time respiration was
regarded not as a means of combustion but of refrigeration. How man
became such a fiery dragon was the puzzle!
[30] Perfection was attributed, not only by medieval philosophers but
also by Plato and Aristotle, to the circle. Circular movement was
therefore the most perfect, and therefore again must be that of the
planets. This is a good illustration of the almost necessary tendency
in the earlier excursions of thought to equate incoordinates, and to
fill gaps in reasoning from alien sources.
[31] Not only movement but also formative activity. The [Greek: archê
tês kinêseôs] is the efficient cause of Aristotle; for him final
causes direct motion--the [Greek: hou heneka]. Thus dialectic was
taken for dynamics. Even Kant confused cause and effect with reason
and consequence in hypothetical propositions (Benn). Caverni (Storia
del methodo sperimentale in Italia, 1891-5) says that Jordanus
Nemorarius (of Borgentreich near Warburg, d. 1236) made the great
advance of extending the static physics of the ancients to establish
dynamics; and that he introduced the word "moment." In a cursory
survey of the two works of Nemorarius which we have in Cambridge I
have not been able to verify this statement; the notion I have found
but not the word itself.
[32] Vid. p. 44, note 2.
[33] And Goethe:
"Wie Himmelskräfte auf und nieder steigen
Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen!
Mit segenduftenden Schwingen
Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen,
Harmonisch all das All durchklingen."
Faust I. i. 1.
In many of the older poets the same motive is found. Vaughan, a
contemporary of Harvey, says:
"And round beneath it Time in houres, dayes, yeares,
Driven by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved."
The only celestial messenger who has discussed this matter with
mankind was something of an obscurantist. Vid. Paradise Lost, Bk.
VIII.
[34] The word "philosophy" in the Middle Ages signified the pursuit of
knowledge of things human and divine, and of the causes of them. It
was often divided into Physics, Ethics and Logic. Cicero, to some of
whose writings I have referred as then popular, says (in many
passages, e.g. in the Acad. I. and II.) that philosophy "Prima rerum
naturam scrutatur, secunda animum componit, tertia bene disserendi
rationem docet."
[35] Vid. note, p. 77.
[36] The judicious reader will remember in the Letters to Martinus
Scriblerus the "familiar instance" of the jack. "In every roasting
jack there is a meatroasting quality which neither resides in the fly,
nor in the weight, nor in any particular wheel of the jack ... but is
inherent in the jack.... As sensation, reasoning, volition &c. are the
several modes of thinking, so roasting of beef, roasting of mutton,
roasting of pullets, geese, turkeys &c. are the several modes of
meatroasting.... And as the general quality of meatroasting, with its
several modifications as to beef, mutton, pullets &c. does not inhere
in any part of the jack, so neither does consciousness" &c. &c.
[37] Or indeed he shrank from them, as the continual exclusion of
divine interference seemed to him a starvation of moral growth. Vid.
Phædo, 96, the interesting passage beginning "[Greek: egô gar neos ôn
Thaumastôs ôs epethumêsa tautês tês sophias ên dê kalousi peri phuseôs
istorian k.t.l.]"
[38] The encyclopedic method, followed by Francis Bacon, and
perpetuated even in the nineteenth century by some German
metaphysicians, was not the mere collection of matter from any or all
quarters, after the manner of Pliny; nor again mere omniscience; but
was the demonstration of a cosmical theory from all departments of
knowledge. When knowledge was a theological philosophy theologians
were bound to supply thinking men with "Summæ," or comprehensive
applications and casuistries of it. Hugo of St Victor (d. 1141) and
Robert Pullen (d. 1150) were the first scholastic Summists.
[39] Aristotle made many experiments, but experiments are not
necessarily verification; and for the most part his were not. It is
not experiment which makes science but the experimental method. Dr
Payne, in the Harveian Oration of 1896, reminded us that among the
ancients the forerunner of Harvey in this method was Galen.
[40] Those who are curious in manners will observe that during the
last few years the medievalising clergy in England have discarded that
fair linen which in the elder clergy was the emblem and the example of
cleanliness.
[41] "Nemo psychologus nisi prius physiologus," said Johannes Müller.
[42] For example, one man, fixing his eyes on a sublime ideal of
holiness, confesses on his knees that he is a miserable sinner;
another, surveying men about him, repudiates this imputation: it is a
matter of parallax.
[43] Boyle, Essays, 2nd Ed. 1669, p. 119. In his Edition of 1661 Boyle
speaks of the discovery of Harvey "our English Democritus" (published
1628) as commonly accepted. Whereby, he says, other "very plausible
and radicated opinions" (the old schemes of the circulation) ... "are
generally grown out of request."
[44] Haeser says (vol. II. p. 433): "Einen sehr bedeutenden Aufschwung
nahm die Chirurgie im Zeitalter Harvey's bei den Engländern, unter
denen bis dahin kein Wundarzt ersten Ranges aufgetreten war. Nach
kurzer Zeit erlangten die englischen Chirurgen durch allgemeine
Bildung, gründliche Kenntniss der Anatomie, und praktische Gelegenheit
ein entschiedenes Uebergewicht über die bis dahin herrschende
französische Schule." Cf. also Daremberg, Hist. et Doct. vol. I. p.
281 et seq.
[45] In the Medical Magazine (May, June, July, August, and Sept. 1899)
is an interesting essay by Mr D'Arcy Power, "How Surgery became a
profession in London." Mr Power tells us that a scheme for the unity
of the medical profession in London was set on foot in 1423, when the
surgeons were the more highly organised body. A "Rector of Medicine"
was indeed elected (Master Gilbert Kymer). It is not known how long
the conjoint faculty of medicine and surgery lasted in London; but
unhappily for our profession it seems to have been dissolved in a very
few years.
[46] This relation was somewhat one-sided: the philosophers forged
doctrines and presented them to the Church; whereupon the Church
consecrated them to eternity, and the philosophers were not allowed
thereafter to improve or to restore their own creations. "La théologie
n'est quelque chose qu'à condition d'être tout."
[47] As Erigena and Rabanus knew some Greek, Ireland, like Edessa and
Bagdad, seems to have shared the honour of preserving original texts;
we may infer from the doctrines of Erigena that in Ireland the Timæus
was the chief of them.
[48] See Baas, Geschichtliche Entwickelung des ärztlichen Standes,
1896, p. 128. Charlemagne journeyed in Italy where some schools still
existed, and where Priscian, Donatus, Boëtius, Cassiodorus, Augustine,
even Virgil and Cicero were read; thence he called teachers to his
palace schools; and to Lyons, Orleans or Tours. How Paris became the
centre of enlightenment in the Western world is not clear. The "palace
school" probably was of no place, but of the royal retinue; that the
School of Paris was made up of those of St Geneviève, St Germain des
Près and the Cathedral school seems not to be a very probable
conjecture.
[49] The "Arabs" were a mixed throng of orientals; some of them were
Aryans, as the Persians and Nestorians; some were Arabs, Syrians, or
Hebrews. The Nestorians were eminent as physicians, and it is
interesting to this College to know that one of the best translators
of Aristotle into Arabic was Johannitius, a Nestorian physician. The
Eastern peoples, as the Western, owed all to the Greeks except a
double measure of dialectical ingenuity, which was their own, and is
their own to-day. By the incisive methods of Aristotle the Christian
neo-platonists had been variously carved into heretics--such as the
Monophysites; and these when driven eastwards carried Greek to Edessa
and Bagdad: from these centres it was, and from Nisibur in Persia and
elsewhere, that the "Saracens" drew their culture. Aristotle was first
translated into Arabic in the reign of Al Mansur, the son of Harûn al
Raschid (813-833); Avicenna carried the Aristotelian encyclopedia to
its culmination; and Cordova in the tenth century was as full of
fervid disciples as was Paris in the thirteenth. The Arabian medicine
was Aristotle and Galen. The Arabian philosophy was originally built
upon the Alexandrian emanations and hypostases (the soul of the
universe, intelligence the first of creatures, nature and mutability,
and so forth). Essences and forms were produced, as the
"intelligibilia" of "real" knowledge, till, as some one has wittily
put it, "universals became almost palpable." Avicenna indeed
approached understanding from the senses, and Averroes accepted this
right position; but he taught the permanent subsistence of
intelligence, as a sphere in a hierarchy of spiritual principles
independent of matter and persons. In no long time this was turned
into the unity, as opposed to the individuality, of the soul; the
universal soul dipping as it were into the individual, and at his
death returning into the universal; a virtual denial of personal
immortality. Hence the bitter defiance of Albert and St Thomas. The
Averroistic doctrines were enthusiastically propagated on the other
hand by that "malleus Ecclesiae Romanae" Frederick the Second
(1212-1250). The Arabian science consisted in medicine, mathematics,
astronomy, and alchemy. Averroes it was who first asserted the
independence of the spheres of science and religion; a division
popular at the present day, and one which lent itself to many a
convenient subterfuge, in Padua.
[50] Dante, Inf. (XX. 115). Michael Scot translated Averroes from
Arabian to Latin; also the _De cælo_ and _De anima_ of Aristotle,
which reached Roger Bacon about 1230. Thus we may regard Michael as
the founder of Paduan Averroism. All persons who busied themselves
with natural experiment in the Middle Ages were accused of magic; even
Albert did not escape the suspicion or the credit of sorcery.
[51] Renan, Averroès. And to like effect M. Hauréau says, "Le
péripatéticisme d'Averroès ne diffère pas moins de l'antique doctrine
du Lycée que l'Alhambra du Parthenon"; and he compares "le
péripatéticisme d'Albert et d'Aquinas" to the "monuments fiers et
bizarres du Gothique du XIIIme siècle."
[52] I may venture to quote again the "locus classicus":--
"Wel knew he the olde Esculapius,
And Deiscorides, and eek Rufus,
Old Ypocras, Haly, and Galien;
Serapion, Razis, and Avicen;
Averrois, Damascien, and Constantyn;
Bernard, and Gatesden, and Gilbertyn."
Chaucer, C. T. Prol. 429-434 (Skeat's Ed.).
[53] See pp. 24 and 28.
[54] As a school of thought; in fine art of course it was glorious.
[55] Ozanam (Doc. inédits, quoted by Rashdall, p. 78) says this early
light was "une de ces nuits lumineuses où les dernières clartés du
soir se prolongent jusqu'aux premières blancheurs du matin."
[56] Albert--"nostri temporis stupor et miraculum!"--is an attractive
figure, and deserves his renown as the greatest of the medieval sages.
His endowments were richer and wider than those of the great Italian
logician, his pupil, whose name has had a greater vogue, and whose
doctrines are still the accepted discipline of the Church of Rome.
Albert restored Aristotle, and in astronomy and chemistry sought for
truth in nature. That St Thomas was a man of the highest intellectual
power and attainments, an eminence which is claimed for him by many
scholars, as by Mr Vernon in his edition of the Paradise, I cannot
admit; unless it be to a critical scholar who has mastered the
contents of his many folios, if such a scholar there be. For my part,
after reading much of what is written of St Thomas, I have but done
what was possible to me in other such cases; that is, I have run my
eye over the titles of his books and chapters, and formed some rapid
judgment here and there of the ways of his thought. Now I venture to
assert that the ways of the thought of Aquinas, subtle and symmetrical
as they are, lie wholly within the formulas of his age. He left
science for logic, the stuff of thought for its instrument; satisfying
himself with such tinkling cymbals as "Nihil potest per se operari,
nisi quod per se subsistit; ... Impossibile est quod forma separetur a
seipsa ... quod subsistens per se desinat esse" ... and so forth.
Albert though a less symmetrical is a more original genius. To Aquinas
indeed I should hesitate to attribute genius; to Albert it seems to me
this title may be granted, if with some hesitation. "Vir famosus et
erroneus" was Roger Bacon's summary of Albert's career, but Bacon was
scarcely an indifferent witness.
[57] Among the MSS. in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, are letters
of Innocent IV. to the Archdeacon of Canterbury (and others), "Ut
(Episc. Linc.) nepotem suum Fredericum (of Lavagna) in canonicatum in
ecclesia Lincolniensi, proximè vacaturum, inducat, et Resp. Episc.
Linc. in quâ probat talem provisionem esse contra voluntatem et cultus
Dei; ideoque negat se concessurum." I see that the authenticity of
some of these letters has been called in question by M. Charles
Jourdain, but in any case they are contemporary, and consonant with
Robert's acts and character. Moreover, two years before, Innocent had
suspended the bishop for refusing to induct an Italian, ignorant of
English, to a rich benefice in his diocese. I find that Dr Luard, in
1880, had no doubts of the authenticity of these letters (Encycl.
Brit. XI. 211). Mons. Charles Jourdain's collected essays, in which he
discusses their authenticity, were published posthumously in 1888; but
his Editor makes the slovenly omission of the dates and places of the
first publications of the several essays.
[58] There were three ways of access to the Greek texts of Aristotle:
by the Arab-latin translations; by translations into Latin direct from
the Greek; and by the use of the Greek text itself. These means were
modified again by the chances of access to particular authors, and, as
in the case of Aristotle for example, to particular treatises. To
ascertain the dates of access to these new sources I have made some
search; and herein I have found great help in the "Recherches
critiques" of Amable Jourdain. We must remember that though the source
of Western culture is not Latin, but Greek, yet its meagre channels in
medieval Europe were Latin; its best tradition lay in Lucretius,
Cicero, Seneca, Virgil. The ill-starred Boetius was the last of the
Grecians. Greek was driven East and West: West into Ireland, where in
the ninth century a few Greek MSS. survived, and were read in the
original by Erigena and his disciples; but this Irish Greek tradition
was soon lost, and there were no teachers of Greek. Yet it seems
certain that, in Oxford, Robert of Lincoln and Adam Marsh had at any
rate learned assistance in the production of some Greco-latin
translations of Aristotle, of the Ethics for example. Dr Jackson has
pointed out to me a passage in Aquinas' Commentary on the Ethics,
where "the presentation of the right reading misspelt, and of a
ludicrous etymology side by side with one which is very nearly right,
seem to show that, whilst Aquinas had about him people who knew Greek,
he himself had no substantial knowledge of it." Grosseteste himself
may have had some efficient knowledge of Greek; "vir in latino et in
greco peritissimus," says Matthew Paris. Dr Jackson (in a private
letter) feels assured that "Roger Bacon was plainly a competent Greek
scholar. Of this there is proof in the _Opera inedita_, edited by
Brewer for the Master of the Rolls." We know also that more than one
scholar of the 11-12th centuries travelled in the East, though, as Dr
Daremberg says, travellers to the East were more apt to bring back
false relics than genuine manuscripts. There was a small Greek
community and a Greek monastery at Auriol, near the old colony of
Marseilles. Still, for lack of masters and materials, Greek then was a
very rare accomplishment; and it is manifest, from much internal
evidence, that Albert had no Greek; though he certainly possessed
Greco-latin translations of some few Aristotelian treatises by other
hands, of the _De anima_ and of the Physics for example, whence he
makes quotations without interspersion of Arabic titles, proper names,
nouns and terms, such as he rather helplessly reproduces in his
rendering of the ninth book of the _De cælo_ and elsewhere. We know
from other sources that a few treatises, such as the _De anima_, and
the first two books of the Ethics, existed in Greco-latin rendering
before the Arab-latin versions of Michael Scot and others (1220-1225).
In later life Albert had the assistance of Aquinas to whom we have
attributed some knowledge of Greek; for we find Aquinas, with the
countenance of Urban the Fourth, not only searching Europe for Greek
manuscripts, sending emissaries to Spain to make versions for him, and
supervising the preparation of translations directly into Latin, but
also personally comparing the Latin translations with the Greek texts
of the Ethics and Politics, and recording variants; variants which
Albert copied from his disciple. (It may be worthy of remark that even
so late as 1586 there were no Greek types in Oxford, and that in 1599
Casaubon (Life by Pattison) could find no compositors for Greek in
Lyons.) The great debt of the West to the Arabs was a new enthusiasm
for learning, and for the "Princeps philosophorum"; not their
travestied texts and unwieldy commentaries, which Roger Bacon,
probably perceiving that his contemporaries swore by the Arab rather
than by the Greek, wished he could burn.
[59] To wonder why Roger Bacon became a clerk and a Franciscan is to
look upon the thirteenth century with the eyes of the nineteenth. The
vision of St Francis had not grown dim; the strange beauty of his life
held men captive still, and his cheerful natural religion still
animated his disciples. None could have said more truly than St
Francis
"While others fish with craft for great opinion,
I with great truth catch mere simplicity."