CHAPTER XIV

PATRISTICS.――THE HELLENIZING OF THE GOSPEL

=The Early Situation of Christianity.= The Orient was the source

of the Gospel, as of the other religions of this time. The power

of Christianity lay in the spontaneous force of its pure religious

feeling, with which it entered the lists for the conquest of the world.

Christianity was not a philosophy, but a religion. It appealed to

a different class than did the Alexandrian schools. The lower class

received it first, and so the questions of science and philosophy

occupied the early Christians but little. They were neither the friends

nor the foes of Hellenism, and they took no interest in political

theories. The Christian society was a spiritual cosmopolitanism, which

was inspired and united by belief in God, faith in Christ, and in

immediate communion with Christ. Conviction of the Second Coming of

the Lord determined the conduct of the early Christians. Indeed, that

moral reformation and moral conduct were the dominating aims of the

Christian communities is proved by the following facts: the documents

dealing with Christian life of that time are almost wholly moral; the

discipline upon the members was for moral and not doctrinal reasons.

Still these early Christians had some simple doctrines, which were

seemingly taken for granted; and the danger is, to conceive the early

Christians as either (1) too simple or (2) too ignorant. They believed

that there is one God, that man has personal relations to God, that

history has a dramatic course, that right was God’s command and

absolutely different from wrong, that the Last Judgment would surely

come.

But about the middle of the second century Christianity was obliged

to change its attitude towards both science and the State. Between 150

and 250 a great change took place among the Christians. The documentary

records are full of doctrinal struggles, so that little room was

left for recording the struggles for moral purity. Morality became

subordinated to belief, and the intellectual side of Christianity

was emphasized at the expense of the ethical. The Second Coming of

our Lord was less emphasized. This doctrine was either pushed into

the background or its realization was looked upon as not immediate.

Furthermore, the Christian sect had spread over the empire and had come

into positive relations both with circles of culture and with political

affairs. Various statistics of the numerical growth of the Christians

are given; among them is the following statement: in 30 A. D. they

numbered 500, in 100 A. D. 500,000, in 311 A. D. 30,000,000. In

the second century the self-justification of Christianity could no

longer be put upon the basis of the feelings and inner convictions.

It must justify itself to the world without, and to its own cultured

communicants as well. It was being attacked by philosophy, and, unless

its own further growth were to be thwarted, it found that it must use

the weapons of philosophy. Its increase of power antagonized both the

Roman state and Hellenistic culture, and from 150 to 300 the fight

between Christianity and the old world of things was to the death.

Christianity eventually conquered Rome and Hellenism; but this would

have been impossible if it had maintained its original attitude of

indifference to culture. Its success was due to the wisdom that it has

since so often shown. It adapted itself to its new situation by taking

over and making its own the culture of the old world, and by fighting

the old world with that culture. Christianity thereby shaped its own

constitution into such strength that it could obtain possession of the

state with Constantine in 300. From this impregnable political position,

it was able to deal with its rivals on an entirely different footing.

When old Rome fell in 476, the church did not fall with it, but on the

contrary it came into possession of the city.

But this political success was the result and not the cause of the

growth of Christianity. It could never have conquered so intrenched a

government as Rome, if it had not first been victorious over the more

persistent civilization of Greece. It made itself inherently strong

by Hellenizing itself――strong both for polemical and for constructive

purposes. But it is obvious that little philosophical originality may

be expected during this period. When the church fathers began to employ

Hellenistic philosophy, they took it on the whole as they found it.

They varied it only to suit their own legitimate purposes. Christianity

entered the religious controversies of the time when victory would

belong to the sect which could use Greek civilization most effectively

in defending itself against the hostility of other religions, and in

constantly renewing the confidence of its devotees.

But in the adoption of Hellenistic culture the church created a new

danger to itself. It must guard its own conceptions lest they be

smothered by this same Hellenism. It must keep its fundamental beliefs

in their integrity. Greek philosophy must be a servant so constrained

as to bring out only the implicit meaning of the fundamental Christian

doctrines. Philosophy must not corrupt these doctrines and transmute

them into Hellenism. The simple faith of the first century and its

doctrines must be so formulated by Hellenic wisdom that it would be

stated for all time. The church needed a dogmatic system, a creed that

could forestall any future innovations. The long series of œcumenical

councils of the church, beginning with the Council of Nicæa in 325,

were united efforts in this direction. After that first council, dogma

became more gradually fixed and, from time to time, this and that group

of men were separated from the church as heretical.

Patristics is this philosophical secularizing of the Gospel which

accompanied the internal and external development of the church body

during the two or three centuries after the year 150 A. D.

=The Philosophies influencing Christian Thought.= The Greek

philosophies most influential upon the development of Christian

doctrine were Stoicism and neo-Platonism. The philosophy of Philo was

also influential, but it was really only a bridge from philosophical

Judaism to Christian theology. It contained both Stoicism and Platonism

in an unsymmetrical form, and Philo’s writings “contain the seeds

of nearly all that afterwards grew up on Christian soil.”[44] Greek

philosophical influence upon the early Christian world was felt in two

ways: in ethical theory and practice; in the construction of theology.

During the fourth century Stoic ethics of a Cynic type replaced the

early Christian ethics. The basis of Christian society was no longer

the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, but rather that of Roman

Stoicism. This is shown by the character of that book on morals (_De

Officiis Ministrorum_) by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (340–397). In

theology the Christian doctrine had no need to borrow from the Greeks

the conception of the unity of God or that of the creation of the world

by God. But the Greek influence is seen in the doctrines on subjects

allied to these: mainly on the questions of _the mode of creation_ and

_the relation of God to the material world_. In the discussion of these

questions the influence of the Stoic monism, tending toward dualism,

and the influence of Platonic dualism, tending toward a threefold

conception of God, Matter, and Form, will appear in the examples which

subsequently follow.

The most formidable opponent of Christianity during this time was

neo-Platonism, but neo-Platonism and Christianity were not, however,

long separated. Although neo-Platonism met its fate at the hands of

scholasticism, it influenced in a thousand ways both orthodox and

heretical Christianity. The rivalry of these two bodies ended――and with

it came the ending of the Hellenic-Roman period of philosophy――in a

complete and original theology. This was the theology of St. Augustine,

who marks the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages.

=The Periods of Early Christianity= (30 A. D.–476 A. D.).

1. Introductory Period, 30–200.

(1) Period of Primitive Faith (during the 1st century A. D.).

With great simplicity of doctrine and ceremonies the

Christians were preparing through faith and the practice

of virtue for the Second Coming of our Lord.

(2) Period of the Earlier Formulation and Defense of Christian

Doctrine (during the 2d century A. D.).

(a) The Apologists (2d century).

(b) The Gnostics (2d century).

(c) The Old Catholic Theologians (2d and 3d centuries).

2. Development Period (200–476).

(1) The Period of Actual Formulation of Doctrine (200–325).

The Catechetical School of Alexandria――Origen (3d century).

(2) The Period of the Establishment of Dogma (325–modern

times) as seen in the Council of Nicæa and other œcumenical

councils. It was a period in which church dogma was

developed on the basis of doctrine already established.

While the origin and development of the Christian church is an

interesting story in itself, only one aspect of it is germane to the

history of philosophy. That is the influence of Hellenism upon the

formation of the theology of the church. The origin and development of

the church organization lies beyond our field. Also the periods before

the influence of Hellenism――the Period of Primitive Faith during the

first century, and the period after dogma had become well established,

the time after the Council of Nicæa in 325――will be omitted from our

discussion here. Only the period of the Earlier Formulation and that

of the Actual Formulation of Doctrine, that is, the one hundred and

seventy-five years (150–325), are of interest to us. This time is known

in history by the name of the period of Patristics.

=The Apologists.= Only such Christians as were trained in Greek

philosophy could rally to the first defense of the Christian doctrine.

The new faith was, on the one hand, on the defensive against the

mockery of Greek wisdom, and, on the other hand, it was obliged to take

a positive stand to show that it was the fulfillment of the human need

of salvation. The Apologists tried to make the Christian teaching as

consistent as possible with the results of Greek philosophy and, at the

same time, to read into Greek philosophy Christian meanings. They did

not at all intend to Hellenize the Gospel, but they wanted to make it

seem a rational one to the cultured world. “Christianity is philosophy

and revelation. This is the thesis of every Apologist from Aristides

to Minucius Felix.”[45] Their very act of defense was unintentionally

the first step toward the incorporation of Greek philosophy as a

part of Christian teaching. The most important Apologists were Justin

Martyr (100–166), Athenagoras (d. 180), and among the Romans Minucius

Felix (about 200) and Lactantius (d. 320). The life of Justin Martyr is

characteristic. He was born in Sichem, Samaria, but was Greek in origin

and education. Having investigated several systems of philosophy and

religion, he came to the conclusion that the Christian religion was the

only true philosophy, and he died in defense of it at Rome.

To prove that Christianity is the only true philosophy, the Apologists

asserted that it alone guaranteed correct knowledge and true holiness

here and hereafter. They proclaimed its preëminence because it is a

perfect revelation of God through Jesus Christ. Since man is imprisoned

in the world of the senses and ruled by dæmons, he can never be saved

except through a perfect revelation. To be saved is to become rational,

and man can become rational only by divine aid. Revelation has not

been restricted to Christianity, but God’s inspiration has been at

work in all mankind. The truth in Socrates, Plato, and Pythagoras has

not been their own, but has sprung from this same divine inspiration,

for truth never is the product of man’s unaided reason. Socrates and

Plato got their truth in part from God’s direct revelation to them, in

part indirectly from reading the works of Moses and the prophets. But

revelation outside of Christianity has not been complete nor continuous.

The first perfect revelation was in Jesus Christ, for He is the first

to reveal the divine Logos completely. He is the first in whom the

Logos has become man. He is the Son of God because the complete essence

of the inexpressible Deity is unfolded in Him.

The Apologists thus identified reason and revelation. The Logos is the

same in revelation, nature, or history. The Stoic conception of the

Logos, which Philo had stripped of its materialistic character, was

identified with Christ and revelation. Justin could regard as inspired

what the Greeks had looked upon as natural in their own doctrines.

Christ is the world-reason, in whom the divine has been incarnated, and

the Apologists had the enormous advantage over the neo-Platonists of

being able to point to Jesus as the definite and historical incarnation

of God. The Apologists could summon the prevailing Platonic dualism of

God and matter to their aid in showing the need of such a revelation;

for matter is altogether without reason and goodness. Thus a summary of

their doctrine is as follows: the world is bad and needs a revelation;

the Logos of God has always been present in history, but has especially

appeared in Jesus Christ, the man, in order to redeem men from their

sin and establish the kingdom of God.

=The Gnostics.= Gnosticism is the name applied to a movement of hostile

reconstruction of Old Testament tradition instead of a spiritual

interpretation of it. It was a great syncretic movement in the second

and third centuries, which sought to form a world religion in which men

should be rated on the basis of what they intellectually and morally

knew. The Gnostics tried to transform the Christian faith in a large

way into knowledge that would still be Christian; and their efforts

show how strong the philosophical interest among the Christians

was beginning to be. The conditions for the development of such a

doctrine as Gnosticism were everywhere present in the empire, yet two

principal centres are pointed out: one at Alexandria and the other

in Syria. Gnosticism was a most fanciful mixture of Oriental and

Occidental cults and mythologies, very much more fantastic than either

neo-Pythagoreanism or neo-Platonism. It was a philosophy in which the

essential Christian principles were lost under the weight of esoteric

knowledge. The Gnostics themselves were steeped in Hellenic culture,

and in many localities formed only bands of Mysteries. They finally

lost all sympathy with the Christians, and were classed as heretics by

the church. The leading Gnostics were Saturninus, Carpocrates (about

130), Basilides, Valentinus (about 160), and Bardesanes (155–225). Only

a few fragments of their many writings remain, and about all that we

know of their doctrines is what their opponents say of them. Valentinus,

the most notable, was born at Rome and died at Cyprus. Bardesanes

was born in Mesopotamia. Carpocrates lived at Alexandria and was a

contemporary of Basilides, who was a Syrian. The records of their

careers are very meagre.

The Gnostics were the first philosophers of history.[46] They undertook

to make Christianity a world religion by conquering Hellenic culture

for Christianity and Christianity for Hellenic culture. The only way

they could do this was by dislodging Christianity from its historical

anchorage in the Old Testament. The Gnostics were in open hostility

to Judaism. They transformed every ethical problem into a cosmological

problem, they regarded human history as the continuation of natural

history, they viewed the Redemption as the last act in the cosmic drama.

This shows how closely related their teaching was to that of Philo

and Plotinus and how consistent with the theoretic spirit of the time.

Since the salvation of the world by Christ stands as the central point

of their philosophy of history, their philosophy of history amounted to

a philosophy of Christian history.

The victory of Christianity over paganism and Judaism was conceived

allegorically by the Gnostics as the battle of the gods of these

religions. The Redeemer was then conceived to appear at the

psychological moment and to win the victory; and this appearance of

Christ as Redeemer is not only the highest point in the development of

the human race, but it is the dénouement in the drama of the universe.

Nature was therefore conceived by them to be a battle-ground of the

gods and the strife to be waged between the forces of good and evil.

The good gets the victory by means of Christ. The battle was conceived

in the neo-Pythagorean form of the dualism of matter and spirit, but

was expressed in mythical terms. The heathen gods and the god of the

Old Testament, who took the form of the Platonic demiurge, were the

powers in the world which the highest God had to overcome.

The dualism of good and evil was conceived to be the same as between

spirit and matter, and was elaborated in a fashion true to the

Alexandrian school. The space between God and matter was conceived to

be filled in by a whole race of dæmons and angels, arranged according

to the Pythagorean numbers. The lowest was so far from the divine

perfectness as to be in touch with matter, and he is the demiurge who

formed the world. The battle then was between good and evil, light and

darkness, until the Logos, the Nous, Christ, the most perfect of the

intermediary beings, came down and by incarnation released from matter

the imprisoned spirits of men and even of the fallen angels, like the

demiurge. This is, in brief, the Gnostic explanation of history.

This dualism was quite consistent with contemporary Christian ethics,

which had then become Stoic. But this dualism was not consistent with

monotheism, the fundamental Christian principle. The internal danger

in Patristics――of swamping the fundamentals of Christianity through

Hellenizing them――appears thus early. The early Christian found at

the beginning an antagonism between his fundamental monotheistic

metaphysics and Greek dualistic ethics.

=The Reaction against Gnosticism.――The Old Catholic Theologians.=

We have seen that the original position of the Christians was one

of indifference to both politics and philosophy; that then came the

employment of Hellenism in the defense of the Gospel. This resulted

in the extreme attempt of the Gnostics to transform Christianity into

a factor in a cosmic theosophy. Gnosticism had tried to capture the

new religion by force and make it subserve the interests of Hellenic

and Oriental philosophy. This danger was averted only after years

of controversy. Gnosticism was the gravest danger that the early

church had to meet, and the Gnostics left their mark upon the church,

although they were expelled; for the church never returned to its

original simplicity of doctrine. Gnosticism, however, produced an

extreme reaction, for a time, against the use of philosophy, and was

represented by the “Old Catholic Theologians,”――Irenæus (140–200),

Tertullian (160–220), and Hippolytus. These theologians stood against

turning faith into a science and tried to limit dogma to the articles

of the baptismal confession interpreted as a rule of faith. Tatian (170)

saw in Hellenism the work of the devil. Irenæus conceived a unity in

the process of creation and redemption,――creation as a divine method of

bringing humanity up into the church by way of redemption. Tertullian

went so far as to affirm that the Gospel is confirmed by its being in

a certain sense contradictory to reason. _Credo quia absurdum._ By this

he means, not that faith rests in things absurd, but that faith rests

in things so far above reason as to make reason absurd. This reaction

was against Gnosticism and not against rationalism, for these men used

both philosophy and tradition to support their arguments.

The reaction against a systematic theology failed to establish itself,

for the need of Greek philosophy was found to be necessary. The result

was that a median position was taken by the help of Greek philosophy

in the formulation of the dogma of the church. This was scientifically

stated by the Alexandrian School of Catechists, of which Clement and

Origen were the leaders.

=Origen (185–254) and the School of Catechists.= Origen, whose surname

was Adamantine, was an early teacher in the School of Catechists, which

had been under the direction of Clement. Like Plotinus, Origen had been

a pupil of Ammonius Saccas. Origen endured much persecution on account

of his teaching, and had to flee from Alexandria to Cæsarea and Tyre,

where he spent his old age. He was the most influential theologian

of the Eastern church, and he was the father of Christian theological

science.

In manner of life Origen was a Christian; in his thought he was a Greek.

He was the Christian Philo, although he was a rival to the neo-Platonic

philosophers. His Christian theology competed with the philosophical

systems of his time. It was founded on both Testaments, and it also

united in a peculiar way toward a practical end the theology of both

the Apologists and the Gnostics. He was convinced that Christianity

could be expressed only as a science, and that any form of Christianity

without scientific expression is not clear to itself. Although the

church was offended at some of his doctrines, it made his philosophical

principle and his theory of development its own. In trying to state

Christianity in terms of intellectual knowledge, Origen did not make

the mistake of burying its principles under philosophy or mythology,

as was the case with the Gnostics. The Gnostics had created a new

Christianity; Origen developed Christianity from within itself. He was

an orthodox traditionalist, a strong Biblical theologian and idealistic

philosopher. He maintained that there were several ways of interpreting

the Scriptures (allegorical interpretation). The masses see only

the somatic or outward meaning as it has been developed in history.

A deeper or moral interpretation gives a psychical meaning to the

Gospel truth. More profound still is the spiritual interpretation,

which gives to the Gospels a pneumatic or spiritually esoteric meaning.

Christianity is superior to all other religions because it is a

religion for all classes, even for the common man. Christianity is the

only religion which, without being polytheistic, can have its truth in

mythical dress.

The aim of Origen was less to show how the world came to be, than to

justify the ways of God to men in the world’s creation and history.

The central principle in his teaching is spiritual monotheism. God

is an unchanging spirit, the author of all things, and He transcends

human knowledge. What distinguishes Him most is the absolute causality

of His will. He is essentially creative, and this creative activity

is co-eternal with Himself. God can have no dealings with changing

individuals directly, since although creative He is unchanging. He has

direct connection only with the eternal revelation of His own image,

the Logos. The Logos is a person, a special hypostasis, the perfect

likeness of God with nothing corporeal about him. He is not _the_ God,

but still God, yet a second God, with no sharing of divinity.[47] The

Holy Spirit bears the same relation to the Logos as the Logos to the

Father. In his relation to the world the Logos is the Idea of Ideas,

the norm according to which things are created.

Origen followed Philo in believing that the original creation consists

of a world of beings that are pure intelligences, and that the cause

of creation is God’s goodness. He further believed that the Logos or

Wisdom of God is God’s Son. Both the creation of the ideal world of

intelligences and the existence of the Son is from eternity. The origin

of the visible world is to be contrasted with this eternal creation.

The visible world had its beginning in time and is only one of a series

of worlds. It will finally return to God, and has in God its beginning

and end. Thus man lives in a visible world of time with eternities on

either side. Creation, viewed as a whole, is everlasting, and consists

of an endless number of beings who are destined to become a part of

the divine holiness and to participate in the divine blessedness.

These beings are endowed with freedom of will, and they fall away from

God. The visible world of matter has been created to purify the fallen

spirits, and in consequence we find materialized spirits graded into

angels, stars, mankind, and evil dæmons.

In his emphasis on the will as the fundamental mental part of man,

Origen is distinctly Christian and opposed to Greek intellectualism.

The will of God and the will of man form the corner stone in his system.

The will of God is the eternal development of His being, but the will

of spirits is their temporal free choice. The will of God is reality

itself; the will of spirits is phenomenal and changing. Freedom of

the will of the spirits is the ground of their sin, and consequently

of their materiality. Thus it is by the freedom of the spirits that

Origen explains evil and the existence of imperfect matter without

impeaching the eternal purity of God. Origen thus reconciled the

ethical transcendence of God as creator with his immanence in the

material world. God is the creator without being the creator of

sin. _Through the conception of free-will Origen reconciled the two

antithetical principles of Christian metaphysics: faith in divine

omnipotence and consciousness of sin._

The function of the church is thus an important one in the divine plan.

For the fallen spirits try to rise by their own wills from the matter

to which they are condemned for purification. They never lose their

divine essence, however low they may fall. They cannot rise alone, nor

are they compelled to, but they always have the help of divine grace,

which is always active within man and has also been perfectly revealed

in Jesus Christ. After the manner of the Apologists, Origen makes use

of the Stoic and Platonic conceptions, for the eternal Logos takes

form in the divine-human unity of Jesus. Through His physical suffering

redemption is made possible to all believers, and through His essence

illumination has been brought to those especially inspired. There are

different grades of redemption: faith, or a religious understanding of

the perceptual world; knowledge of the Logos; final absorption in God.

All shall finally be saved through the combined forces of freedom and

Grace, and then shall all material existence disappear.

The controversies within the church during the succeeding centuries

over the theory of Origen are theological rather than philosophical,

and so our account of the relation of Greek philosophy to Christianity

in the Hellenic-Roman period closes here. Origen’s undertaking was

a private one, approved at first in only limited circles and on

the whole disapproved by the church. In his scientific dogmatics

the particular changes which he planned pertain especially to the

conception of salvation and the place of Christ in the universe. In

his teaching about Christ he emphasized more the cosmological than the

soteriological aspect, but neither was fully developed. The history of

the early church shows that Christianity seized the ideas of ancient

philosophy and insisted on revising them with its own religious

principle before it used them. We shall find that the next period is

introduced by a greater than Origen, in whom again the Christian and

the ancient worlds will meet in new and richer combination,――St.

Augustine.

BOOK II

THE MIDDLE AGES (476–1453)

CHAPTER XV

CHARACTERISTICS AND CONDITIONS OF THE MIDDLE AGES

=Comparison of the Hellenic-Roman Period and the Middle Ages.= The

Middle Ages can be conveniently remembered as approximately the 1000

years between the fall of old Rome, in 476, and the fall of new Rome

(Constantinople) in 1453. Together these two periods make a long and

a philosophically unproductive stretch of 1800 years. The intellectual

materials which the two periods possessed, differ but little, although

during the first half of the Middle Ages such materials were very few.

There is, however, a decided difference in the way the two periods

look at things. The ancient had started with Aristotle’s interest

in knowledge for its own sake; the ancient had passed from that to

the need of knowledge in ethical conduct; he had finally made use of

knowledge only in formulating religion. On the other hand, the history

of thought in the Middle Ages was exactly the reverse. The mediæval

man starts satisfied with religion as thus formulated by the preceding

period, and seeks to regain pure knowledge. The perspective in the

two periods is therefore different. Hellenic thought began in freedom

and ended in tradition; mediæval thought begins in tradition and,

borne by the youthful German, who brings with him few original ideas,

pushes forward toward freedom. No doubt one can discover in mediæval

times many fresh transformations of ancient thought and a new Latin

terminology, but, on the whole, all the problems of the Middle Ages,

as well as their solutions, can be found in antiquity. One may find,

too, the germs of modern thought in the Middle Ages, but they come

from mediæval pupils and not from mediæval masters. In the Middle Ages

humanity is again at school; its problems appear in succession, but

they always are expressed in the conceptions of the ancients.

=The Mediæval Man.= Antiquity had brought together three

civilizations,――those of Greece, of Rome, and of Christianity. Greek

civilization in the form of an intellectual culture, called Hellenism,

had been superimposed upon Roman political society. The result

was a society with a twofold stratum, and in such a society the

Christian church had grown as an organization of controlling cultural

and political influence. It was into this society that the German

barbarians, by a series of invasions, entered during the first three

centuries of the Middle Ages.

The Middle Ages began and antiquity ended when these German tribes

finally broke down the barriers of the Roman empire. It was a new

period; for a new race had taken upon itself the responsibility of

bearing the burden of the future of western Europe. The German was of

course unconscious of the magnitude of his self-imposed burden, for the

German was young, vigorous, and moved by primitive instincts. He had

leaped into the world’s fields as a conqueror; he remained as a laborer.

At the beginning the German seemed likely to destroy the entire product

which antiquity had bequeathed. He was quite unprepared to assimilate

the rich fruits of that ancient civilization. He had, indeed, less

mind for the elaborate forms of Greek philosophy than for the lighter

forms of Greek art. In his first contact he could understand neither.

Moreover ancient society was so weak that it could not educate him,

who was its conqueror, into its culture. Nevertheless, there was one

element in that ancient society that did appeal to the German. That

was the spiritual power of the Christian church. Alone amid the ruins

of antiquity the power of the church had grown so strong that the men

of the north bowed before it, and religion accomplished through the

emotions of the Germans what art, philosophy, and statecraft failed to

achieve. The preaching of the Gospel laid hold of the feelings of these

primitive people, for the church in its pretensions, and sometimes in

fact, represented the old Roman political unity. Moreover the church

was also the repository of what was left of Greek science. The church

expressed for the German his own ideal of the personal inner life.

The Germans became the supporters of the church, and in this way the

protectors of ancient culture. Mediæval history in western Europe

is therefore the record of the development of the Germans under the

influence of the Christian church. In contrast with the development

of the Eastern church, which was the development of a state church,

the Western church was the development of an ecclesiastical state. The

Western church, and not the later empire, was the true successor of the

Roman empire. Thus the early beginnings of the Middle Ages rested with

the church, but the later development of the Middle Ages rested with

the German people.

=How the Universe appeared to the Mediæval Man.= The mediæval man had

very indistinct ideas about the world around him, since his interest

did not lie in the earthly realm, but in the spirit that controlled

it. He was content in his sciences with conclusions without their

demonstrations. Although it is said that relations of space and number

are never indistinct in the mind of the civilized man, the man of the

Middle Ages certainly did not possess such conceptions in so vigorous

a manner as to enable him to discover new truths. We must, furthermore,

make a sharper distinction between mediæval popular opinion and

mediæval scientific opinion than we should about popular and scientific

opinion of modern times; for the results of science did not reach the

people then as now. To the ordinary mediæval man the world in which he

lived was what it appeared to be to his eye. The earth was flat; the

sky was a material dome, which sustained the waters of the world above

it. Through this sky-floor the water sometimes breaks and the earth

receives showers of rain. These popular notions sometimes appeared in

the verse of the time.

The mediæval scientific opinion was based on the theory of Ptolemy and

his school of Alexandrian astronomers, who lived in the second century

A. D., some details to the theory having been added by the Arabians.

Ptolemy says, “The world is divided into two vast regions; the one

ethereal, the other elementary. The ethereal region begins with the

first mover, which accomplishes its journey from east to west in

twenty-four hours; ten skies participate in this motion, and their

totality comprises the double crystalline heaven, the firmament and

the seven planets.” (See diagram.) The mediæval man of science thought

that, inasmuch as he was upon the earth, he was therefore standing

at the centre of things. Directly above him was the cavity of the sky,

ruled by the moon; and below the moon were the four elements,――fire,

air, water, and earth. This region was the realm of imperfection.

But above the moon the scientist saw a series of nine other heavens,

each with an orderly revolution of its own; and beyond all is God.

The universe was therefore to Ptolemy a great but a limited sphere,

consisting of ten spheres one inside another (like the rings of an

onion). Each planet moved with the motion of its own heaven (or sphere),

which was sometimes called “crystalline” because it was transparent.

The movements of the heavenly bodies, each in its own revolving heaven,

were contained in the whole sphere, which revolved with a motion of

its own. By ascribing other movements to the planets within their

respective heavens, the mediæval astronomers were able to predict every

conjunction and eclipse to the minute. These separate movements of the

planets were called epicycles, the form of which is shown in the

diagram on the opposite page.

Illustration: PTOLEMAIC COSMOGRAPHY

A diagram showing the division of the universe

into the ten spheres or heavens

(From the private library of Professor R. W. Willson

of Harvard University)

Such a scientific astronomy would easily lend itself to the theological

conceptions of the time. The realm of perfection above the moon was

supposed to be under the direct supervision of God and to be inhabited

by spirits. Thus the conjunction and relation of the heavenly bodies

were thought to have influence upon human life, and they furnished

the basis of the astrology, necromancy, and spiritism so common in the

Middle Ages. The ninth heaven embraced all the others. It swept around

them all, without interfering with their own special motions, and

completed its revolution in twenty-four hours. The ninth heaven was

both the source and the limit of all motion and all change. Beyond it

lies the eternal peace of God, which the Christian astronomer regarded

as “the abode of the blessed.” This was called the tenth heaven or the

Empyrean. This, in Dante’s words, is “the heaven that is pure light;

light intellectual full of love, love of the good full of joy, joy that

transcends all sweetness.” The tenth heaven is Paradise and is within

the life of God. It is important to note that the Ptolemaic conception

of the universe is the background upon which Dante constructs his

_Divine Comedy_ (see diagram, p. 376),[48] and appears in part at

least as the cosmological basis of the _Paradise Lost_ of Milton. For

thirteen centuries――from 200 to 1500――conviction remained unshaken in

the Ptolemaic system of astronomy as an adequate explanation of the

universe.

Illustration: PTOLEMAIC COSMOGRAPHY

(Showing the Epicyclic Movements of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars

in respect to the Earth)

=The Mediæval Man at School.= In the eleventh and twelfth centuries

there was a revival in intellectual interests that was deep and broad,

and the characteristics of this revival will be discussed subsequently

(see Transitional Period, p. 329). Our curiosity, however, is aroused

upon our entrance into the Middle Ages, as to what the man of the early

Middle Ages studied and how much he learned. We must remind ourselves

at the outset of the oft-repeated fact that, on the whole, in western

Europe, for the first five hundred years of the Middle Ages, the only

people who had any book-learning were the churchmen. Furthermore,

with them the learning was very meagre. Their purpose in study will

show this, for it was to enable them “to understand and expound the

Canonical Scriptures, the Fathers, and other ecclesiastical writings.”

The training was as follows:――

1. Theological. Elementary instruction in the Psalms and church music,

but no systematic training in theology,――just enough training to enable

the priest to understand the Bible and the Church Fathers.

2. Secular training. Knowledge in the “Seven Liberal Arts,” _i. e._

the _trivium_――grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; and the more advanced

_quadrivium_,――music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. These names

are suggestive of a vast amount of knowledge, while, in truth, very

little was known or taught in these subjects. Astronomy and arithmetic

were employed to find the time of Easter. Geometry included some

propositions of Euclid without demonstrations. Music included plain

song and a mystic doctrine of number. More was made of grammar, the

study of rhetoric from Latin classics, and dialectics. Dialectics was

logic in the Middle Ages, and its mysteries fascinated the mediæval man.

But even in logic there were only some remnants of the Aristotelian

logic known.

=A Mediæval Library.= Here again is an interesting question: What did

this mediæval churchman read? But we must make a distinction between

books most commonly read, books that the scholars might use, and books

most influential upon thought.

=1. Books most commonly read.= These would be the text-books used in

instruction. They are as follows:――

The _Psalms_.

The _Grammar_ of Donatus.

The Christian poets: Prudentius, _Psychomachia_; Juvencus, _Gospels

in Verse_; Sedulius, _Easter Hymn_.

Dionysius Cato, _Disticha de Moribus_, a collection of proverbs

(moral maxims) in rhyming couplets.

Virgil, Ovid, and the rhetorical works of Cicero.

Æsop’s _Fables_ (in Latin).

=2. Books that the scholars might use.= It is difficult to say what any

particular scholar actually did read, for the libraries of monasteries

differed enormously in the character and number of their books; some

monasteries had several hundred books, some none at all. Some libraries

were composed almost entirely of works of the Fathers; some possessed

a good many works of ancient classical writers. One _might_ expect to

find any one or more of the following works in a scholar’s library:――

Aristotle, _De Interpretatione_ and the _Categories_ in Boëthius’

translation.

This explains why the logical problems occupied the almost exclusive

attention of the first schoolmen.

Plato, the _Timæus_.

This was known to the Irish monks perhaps in Greek, but on the

continent in a translation by Chalcidius. The only other sources

of knowledge of Plato were in the works of Augustine and the

neo-Platonists.

Commentaries on Aristotle,――The _Isagoge_ by Porphyry, in a

translation into Latin by Boëthius, and some commentaries by

Boëthius himself on Aristotle’s _De Interpretatione_ and

_Categories_.

Cicero, the rhetorical and dialectical treatises, such as the

_Topica_, _De Officiis_.

Seneca, _De Beneficiis_.

Lucretius, _De Rerum Natura_.

Augustine’s works and some pseudo-Augustinian writings.

The works of the Church Fathers, Clement of Alexandria and Origen.

The _Pseudo-Dionysius_, translated from the Greek by Erigena.

The encyclopedic collections of some of the last of the scholars

of antiquity, like Cassiodorus, Capella, Boëthius, and the

_Etymologies_ of Isidore of Seville.

=3. The Books most influential philosophically upon the time.= These

were not necessarily the books most widely read, but the epoch-making

books, so to speak. They were as follows:――

Augustine, _City of God_.

Boëthius, _Consolation of Philosophy_.

Aristotle, _De Interpretatione_ and the _Categories_ in translation

by Boëthius.

_Pseudo-Dionysius_, translated by Erigena.

Porphyry, _Isagoge_ translated by Boëthius, an introduction to

Aristotle’s _Categories_.

=The Three Periods of the Middle Ages.=

1. Early Period, 476–1000.

2. Transitional Period, 1000–1200.

3. Period of Classic Scholasticism, 1200–1453.

There is one great natural division line of the Middle Ages, the year

1200. At this time the surging of the western peoples eastward in the

Crusades was at its height, and the works of Aristotle were coming

into western Europe from the East. These events mark a change in the

political and intellectual situation in Europe. But this change did

not take place suddenly. There are intervening two centuries that are

indeed transitional, but at the same time are animated by a distinct

and independent philosophical motive. These two centuries may be set

apart as a period, different from the earlier and the later periods.

We shall call these three periods the Early Period, the Transitional

Period, and the Period of Classic Scholasticism.

The Early Period takes us from the fall of old Rome (476) to the birth

of modern political Europe (1000). It is a period of religious faith

governed by the theology of Augustine. Mysticism has no independent

following, but on the contrary rules within the church. The Christian

principle of individual personality and the Greek Platonic conception

of universal realities are not fused, but they are held without

arousing controversy. This is because the human reason has no standard

code, nor does it yet feel the need of one. The only two philosophers,

Augustine and Erigena, of the period are animated by neo-Platonism.

The Transitional Period extends from the birth of political Europe

(1000) to the arrival of the works of Aristotle (about 1200). This

epoch is one of logical controversy, in which the Christian and the

Greek motives conflict. This controversy gives rise to the first group

of great schoolmen, who discuss the reality of general ideas in their

application to dogma. Mysticism still rules the churchman, but now in a

modified form. Plato has become the standard of the reason in orthodox

circles and Aristotle in those inclined to heresy, but as yet only

fragments of the works of either are known.

The Period of Classic Scholasticism extends from 1200 to the end of

the Middle Ages (1453). It is a period when a theological metaphysics

arises by the side of the logical controversy and predominates over

that controversy. The problem now concerns the respective scopes of

the reason and faith. The period is Aristotelian, and Aristotle’s

philosophy is made the standard code for the churchman for all time.

Mysticism has now no place of authority in the church, but has an

independence. The period contains the greatest schoolmen of the Middle

Ages.

Summary of the Political and Educational Worlds

of the Mediæval Man.

I. _Early Period_, 476–1000.

395 The Roman empire divided into (_Augustine_, 354–430)

Eastern and Western empires.

476 Fall of the Western empire, 476–800 Disappearance of

the Eastern empire lasting municipal and imperial

about 1000 years longer. schools and rise of

episcopal and monastic

375–600 Northern barbarians overrun schools.

the Western empire in series of

invasions. 525 Boëthius died, the last

notable Roman scholar who

knew Greek.

529 Closing of philosophical

Schools at Athens; _founding

of monastic school by

St. Benedict_.

600 Roman power almost entirely in

hands of barbarians.

622–732 Mohammedans conquer Arabia,

Northern Africa, and Spain.

476–800 Dark Ages.

732 Mohammedans repulsed at the

battle of Tours.

600–800 Fusion took place among

German and Roman peoples.

800 Empire of Charlemagne founded. 800–1000 Benedictine Age: _only

Civilization higher than the period in Western Europe

German, lower than the Roman. when education is entirely

in hands of monks_. The

Palace school; episcopal,

cathedral, and monastery

schools.

(_Erigena_, 810–880,

_the forerunner of

Scholasticism_.)

900–1000 Empire of Charlemagne 900–1000 Dark century with

broken up. _Demoralization_. decline of learning.

Invasions by Danes and Northmen

from the north; Saracens IN THE EARLY PERIOD AND THE

from south by sea; Slavs, TRANSITIONAL PERIOD LITTLE

Hungarians, Russians, and Poles OF PLATO WAS KNOWN EXCEPT

by land. The church demoralized, IN THE FORM OF NEO-PLATONISM

Papacy temporarily disappears, AND LITTLE OF ARISTOTLE

feudalism replaces empire. EXCEPT OF FRAGMENTS OF HIS

LOGIC.

II. _Transitional Period_, 1000–1200.

1000 France and Germany get their _First Scholasticism._

first form as nations just (Anselm, 1033–1109)

before this year; England just (Roscellinus, d. 1110)

after. _Beginning of new birth (Abelard, 1079–1142)

of Europe_, caused by

conversions of northern nations, 1000 Passion for inquiry takes

by enlightened rule of the the place of the old routine.

Ottos, by regeneration of

Papacy, by development of civic 1160–1200 Traces of the

life. origination of the earliest

_Beginning of political order, universities.

ecclesiastical discipline, and

social tranquillity._ 1150–1250 Translation into

Revival of architecture Latin directly from Greek

followed by renewal of art. The of the works of Aristotle,

Romanesque appeared about 1000, previously unknown in Western

the Gothic about 1150. Poetry Europe.

of Trouvères in north and of

Troubadours in south.

III. _Period of Classic Scholasticism_, 1200–1453.

1200 Crusades at their height. 1200 The Mendicant Friars.

_Classic Scholasticism._

1200–1453 Commerce of Europe with (Thomas Aquinas, 1224–1274.)

Asia begins to grow to large (Duns Scotus, 1270–1308.)

proportions in countries on the (William of Ockam,

Mediterranean. The Third Estate 1280–1349.)

grows in strength, national

governments prevail over the 1300–1453 The period is well

feudal system. supplied with schools.

1350–1453 Deterioration of

Scholasticism.

CHAPTER XVI

THE EARLY PERIOD OF THE MIDDLE AGES (476–1000)

=The General Character of the Early Period.= It is no accident that

these five hundred years of the Middle Ages were spiritualistic. Both

the political disturbances and the intellectual inheritance from the

Hellenic-Roman period made the period such. The troubles during the

long death agony of the Roman empire had deprived the people of their

interest in this world. The world of kingdoms and material things

presented no ideals; and the age would have been pessimistic had not

the Church through Augustine presented a heavenly ideal and the means

to win that ideal. Both what the material world had taken away from

man and what the spiritual seemed to offer him, made the age an age

of faith. The principle of inner spirituality was moved to a central

position. All things pointed to the supernatural and the transcendent.

Men dwelt upon the nature of God, the number and rank of the angels,

the salvation of the soul. In this, as in the Transitional Period

following, little was known of Aristotle except some fragments

of his logic; and little was known of Plato except in the form of

neo-Platonism. But in this period (before the year 1000) the pupil was

instructed in both Aristotle and Plato, and held them both together

without controversy. Mysticism had little independence of church

doctrine, as appears in the case of Erigena, the consequences of whose

doctrine were not at first seen. The monastery became the fundamental

social organization and the central social force. Organized ascetic

life permitted an absorbing contemplation of heaven. Prayer superseded

thought; faith prescribed knowledge. The intellectual world was

dominated by neo-Platonic idealism, and the all-important topic in

men’s minds was that of God’s grace. Augustine stood at the beginning

of the period and organized its conception of grace for it. Erigena

stood near the end and stated the neo-Platonism of the period in

extreme form, presenting the issue for the scholasticism of the many

years to come. The presentation of the doctrine of these two men will

therefore be the philosophical exemplification of the attitude of the

time.

Illustration:

MEDIÆVAL GEOGRAPHY. THE COSMAS MAP, A. D. 547

=From J. Keane’s _Evolution of Geography_=

(Cosmas was an Egyptian monk who had once been a merchant

and traveler. He did not use the records of his own travels to

supplement the Greek and Roman plans, but he laid down as a fact

that the earth is flat. Then he piously adduced evidence from

the Scriptures to support his view. The maps drawn by Cosmas are

the earliest Christian maps that have survived. Their crudeness,

compared with the maps of the Romans and Arabs, reveals the low

state of knowledge among the Christians.)

=The Historical Position of Augustine.= The Middle Ages were

inaugurated by a mind of the highest order,――Augustine.[49] If one were

to select the most influential figures in the history of philosophy,

Augustine might be chosen to stand with Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza,

and Kant. “In some respects Augustine stands nearer to us than Hegel

and Schopenhauer.”[50] For the church, but no less for the period, it

was a fortunate circumstance that Augustine should have lived just as

antiquity was closing and the mediæval period beginning. Through him

the various influences of the past were gathered up and presented in

a scientific statement for the Middle Ages. “The history of piety and

of dogma in the West was so thoroughly dominated by Augustine from the

beginning of the fifth century to the era of the Reformation, that we

must take this whole time as forming one period.”[51]

In his relation to antiquity Augustine drew especially upon the

fundamental teachings of St. Paul, the neo-Platonists, and the

Patristics for the presentation of his own doctrine. He was familiar

with a great number of the doctrines of antiquity, and was the medium

of their transmission to the Middle Ages. He does not seem to have

known the system of Aristotle, but the importance which he attached to

the dialectic in the explanation of the Scriptures contributed a good

deal to the use of the logic of Aristotle by the scholastics of the

Middle Ages. He had some knowledge of the Pythagoreans, the Stoics, and

the Epicureans through the writings of Cicero. But the most important

philosophical influence upon Augustine was the neo-Platonic teaching

of Plotinus and Porphyry. Neo-Platonism, the Pauline theology, and the

Patristic are the large factors in the doctrine of Augustine.

In his relation to the Middle Ages, what in brief was the position of

Augustine? By means of neo-Platonism and a discriminating psychological

analysis _he transformed the previous belief in God as a ♦judge into a

belief in the personal relations between God and man_. That is to say,

he carried out monotheism spiritually, and in doing this the influence

of neo-Platonism is very strong in him. Augustine made one of the

centres of his teaching the living relation of the soul to God. He took

religion out of the sphere of cosmological science, where it had been

placed by Origen and the Gnostics, and made it personal. Furthermore,

he offered with this new ideal a plan of salvation; for Augustine made

it his task to show (1) what God is, and (2) what the salvation of the

soul requires. Whereas before Augustine the only dogmatic scheme had

presented the place and function of _Christ_ in salvation, Augustine

was interested in the place of _man_ in salvation. Thus he elaborated

monotheism into spiritual monotheism and delineated the inward

processes of the Christian life, _i. e._ of sin and grace. This

important advance made by Augustine must be attributed to the influence

of philosophy――neo-Platonism――upon him.

But it must not be supposed that the total teaching of Augustine

and the total influence of his thought is contained in this single

change in Christian piety, as we have stated it. The various Pagan and

Christian elements, as they lie in his system, have little coherence;

and Augustine does not settle the rival claims between them. As

the mediæval period advanced, what in his teaching had been a mere

incoherence became in the hands of others positive discord. He gave

the church impulses of the highest spiritual quality, but he left no

well-organized capital. These impulses toward spiritual piety have

never been lost, but the profusion of ideas and views in Augustine,

unharmonized by himself, were also a permanent bequest to posterity

that produced both vital movements and violent controversies. The legal

and moral party of the church resisted his teaching at the beginning,

and in the sixth century, under the influence of Gregory the Great,

toned down Augustine’s teaching in the direction of a conception of

the church as a juristic organization.

Augustine was thus the beginner of a new line of development by his

incorporation of neo-Platonism into Christian doctrine and by his use

of the dialectic to present, defend, and develop the doctrine of the

church. Although the years of his life fall in antiquity, although he

is the collector of all the threads of the neo-Platonic and Christian

religions, he belongs in the Middle Ages as the teacher of the Middle

Ages. His doctrine acted as an authoritative spiritual guide for the

new German peoples. They took up the problems of antiquity from the

new point of view of individual spirituality, and created out of them

the philosophy of the future. But philosophically Augustine was far

in advance of his age, and in the intellectually torpid times that

followed him little philosophical development could be expected. Not

until after Charlemagne does philosophical development springing from

Augustine appear. Later Luther and the Reformation reverted to him, and

our modern philosophy is founded on the principle which he made central

in his conception of piety.

=The Secular Science.= At the same time it must not be supposed that

the teaching of Augustine was by any means the only source from which

this first period of the Middle Ages drew its materials of knowledge.

A glance at the list of books in a mediæval library (see p. 327)

will not confirm such a supposition. Augustine does not include in

his doctrine――massive as it is――all the factors that finally made

up mediæval civilization. Even at the beginning there was a tendency

toward secular science derived from Plato and Aristotle. Noticeable as

this was at first it became prominent later. Secular science tried at

first to modify scholasticism, and then later to gain an independence

for itself. The doctrine of Augustine did not contain the germs of

science. But at the start the Middle Ages had writings on science in

the inadequate compendiums of Capella, Cassiodorus, and Boëthius, and

in the fragments of the logic of Aristotle.

=The Life of Augustine= (354–430). Aurelius Augustine, often called

“the Plato of Christianity,” was born in Thagaste, Numidia. His

father was a Pagan, his mother a Christian; and it was his mother

who contributed chiefly to the formation of his character. He was

a boy of brilliant gifts, and was educated in the schools of Madaura

and Carthage. At Carthage his life was full of dissipation, which he

has described in his _Confessions_. He took up in succession all the

scientific and religious problems of his time. He gave up the teaching

of rhetoric, which he had practiced in several towns in Asia Minor and

Italy, and began to study theology. He was troubled by his religious

doubts and tried to find relief first in Manichæism, then in the

skepticism of the Academy, and then in neo-Platonism. He was converted

to Christianity through three influences: his study of Plato, the

eloquence of St. Ambrose, and the unremitting moral influence of his

mother. He became a priest, then a bishop, and was untiring in his

activity both in the practical organization of the church and in the

theoretical construction of its doctrines. He was especially active

in his literary attempts to refute the Pelagian and Manichæan heresies,

whose doctrines he had previously professed. His life falls at the time

when the barbarian invasions were beginning and when Rome was crumbling.

Moved by his Platonic idealism, he wrote his _City of God_, which, in

an elaborate philosophy of history, shows that God’s city is not on

earth, but in heaven.

=The Two Elements in Augustine’s Teaching.= The great masses of thought

in Augustine’s mind reveal motion in two directions. On the one hand,

he is the theologian who holds on high the conception of the authority

of the church. On the other hand, he is the philosopher who speaks

for the principle of immediate certainty for the individual. These

are two foci about which his thought is in constant flux and often

in contradiction. Augustine has, therefore, two criteria for truth:

the truth that comes from an authority without, and the truth that

comes from consciousness itself. _The authority of the church and the

authority of the immediate consciousness of the individual_――these are

the two central thoughts in Augustinianism. Augustine’s conception of

the authority of the church acted upon him as a lofty ideal which both

inspired and at the same time constrained his speculations. As he grew

older he gravitated more and more toward it, and thereby became more

conservative. But it was the other central thought――the authority of

immediate consciousness――which he made the basis of a philosophy of

original power. Through this he transcended his own time and became

himself a modern, leading the Middle Ages up to him.

Augustine did not define accurately the spheres of philosophy and

theology. He did not show whether reason or revelation had the

higher authority. He did not try to decide between the _intelligo ut

credam_ and _credo ut intelligam_, that is, between the respective

authorities of reason and faith. That became, in consequence, a central

philosophical problem for the schoolmen. Nevertheless, the great

inheritance which Augustine left the world was along the philosophical

line of _intelligo ut credam_ (of knowledge as the basis of faith

instead of faith as the basis of knowledge).

=The Neo-Platonic Element: the Inner Certainties of Consciousness.=

Augustine was not original in making the starting-point of his

philosophy the inner certainties of consciousness. That was the point

of view of his time, and the starting-point of the ascetic tendency

both of Christianity and of neo-Platonism. He was dissatisfied with

the world without, and turned away from it to the world within to find

reality. But this had been a growing tendency ever since the time of

Plato. Augustine’s originality lies in his psychological description

of these certainties. He is the master of self-observation and

introspection. He can describe inner experiences as well as analyze

them. He puts his philosophy upon a solid anthropological basis by

developing a psychology of the certainties of consciousness. In doing

this he placed the inner experience in the central position of control.

Thus he reached a well-defined position of “internality” for which

the Stoics, Epicureans, neo-Platonists, and the preceding Christian

theologians had been groping; thus he anticipated Descartes and modern

philosophy.

Man clings to life in spite of all its evils. This shows that there

is a reality for the soul. The material world may pass away, but the

reality of soul-life is assured. Man’s inner life is ever present and

cannot be imaginary. The fact that there is such a thing as probability

implies the existence of certainty. Where shall I look for certainty?

In myself. Certainty is there as a fact of inner observation. There are

my inner mental states――my sensations, feelings, etc., whose existence

cannot be doubted even if the existence of the objects to which they

correspond is doubted. I am certain also of my own consciousness

at that moment. To doubt my existence is to assert my existence. To

doubt also implies that I will remember, live――for doubt rests upon

these former ideas. The temporary character of the material world

only strengthens the reality of this inner world. The existence of the

material world cannot be demonstrated, and so man is driven inward to

find a basis for its reality. Thus by a deep insight, although without

much logical reasoning, Augustine transcends Aristotle, and anticipates

modern thought by finding reality in the _unitary personality_, whose

existence is an inner certainty.

But Augustine is driven farther inward; for the certainty of the

existence of God is involved in this inner certainty. My doubt about

the character of the world of material things implies that their truth

exists and that I have the capacity for measuring it. Such truths

are universal. They transcend the individual consciousness, and their

mutual agreement unites all rational beings in a common standard. On

the other hand, this unity of truths implies the existence of God.

Truths are the Ideas (Platonic) in God’s mind.[52]

Full knowledge of God is denied to man in this life, but, nevertheless,

all morality consists in love for God; all science is only an interest

in the working of God in nature; all the beauty in the world around

us points to the harmonious ordering of God; the history of the world

is only the free act of God. Thus, in brief, does Augustine centralize

the principle of inner spirituality――of “internality.” Thus does he put

into control the certainty of consciousness.

This was Augustine’s great contribution to the world both in the sphere

of philosophy and religion. We shall see how important this principle

is in our tracing of modern philosophy. Its importance upon the growth

of religion was so very great that we cannot pass it by without remark.

“Augustine was the reformer of Christian piety.” In the midst of

religion he discovered religion. He looked into the human heart and

found it to be the lower good; he looked to God and found Him to be

the higher good. In love for God, man becomes exalted to another being.

This is the “new birth.” By this personal religion nature and grace are

separated, but morality and religion are united. Sin is the disposition

to be independent by living in a state of unrest in the desires. Sin

is a state of lust and fear. All is sin in the heart of the natural

man――in the heart apart from God. The pre-Augustinian religion of

morality and baptism, animated by hope and fear, was supplanted by him

with the conception of the desire to be happy by sharing in the bliss

of God. Augustine passed from Christian pessimism to Christian optimism,

to a confidence in pardoning grace. By faith and love God calls us

back to himself and the soul acquires what God requires. Religion

is personal and a thing of the heart. “Love, unfeigned humility, and

strength to overcome the world, these are the elements of religion and

its blessedness; they spring from the actual possession of the loving

God. This message Augustine preached to the Christianity of his time

and of all times.”[53]

But Augustine philosophically breaks with his own Platonism at one

point, and finds not in the intellect, but in the will, the primary

characteristic of this consciousness of inner certainty. The will is

the inmost core of our being. All our mental states are formed under

the direction of the purposes of the will. The striking exception to

this is the cognition of the higher divine truth, in the presence of

which the mind can be only passive. Revelation cannot be the production

of the finite activity, but it is an act of grace before which the will

is expectant and passive. Knowledge of the divine truths of the reason

is the blessedness that results from the will of God and not of man.

The will of man is transformed into faith, and yet even then an element

of the human will is present, although passive, for the appropriation

of the truth is an act of will. Thus, in regard to this difficult

subject of the nature of the will, there are two observations to be

made: (1) Augustine conceives the will, memory, and intellect as so

intimately related as not to be faculties of the personality like the

properties of a substance. They rather form an indissoluble unity of

the substance of the soul. (2) The will is theoretically free, and

Augustine is one of the most forcible defenders of free-will because

he is also a defender of ethical responsibility and the justice of God.

Theoretically the will is a force existing above sensuous nature and

formally possesses the capacity of following or resisting inclination.

Actually it is never free to choose, but it has the higher function of

being determined by the Good. Only the good will is free.[54]

=The Authority of the Church according to Augustine.= With the fall

of ancient Rome, the church was hard pressed, for the young peoples

who came into the church were Arian and the only German Catholic nation

was the Franks. Augustine was a man of vigor, but he seemed to lack the

peculiar power of forcing the church to adopt as dogma the truths for

which he stood. He always submitted himself absolutely to the tradition

of the church, and yet in a general way he accomplished two things for

the church at large: (1) He established tradition as the authority and

law of the church; (2) He offered the church a scientifically

constructed plan of salvation.

There now appears in Augustine’s teaching the second centre

around which the masses of his thought group themselves. This

is his conception of the church in its authority and law. Here is

the principle of universality――and historical universality――and it

runs counter to the principle of spiritual individualism which his

psychological analysis had built up. Augustine is just as vigorous

a champion of the idea of the church as the means to salvation as he

is champion of the individual certainty of truth. The two antithetical

propositions lie together in his mind. As a pietist, he was an

individualist; as a priest, he was a loyal subject to dogma. We have

discussed his teaching as it centred about man; now the discussion

centres about God as represented by His church. In practical life the

will of man is important, but in the eternal life the central influence

is the grace of God. Between the will of man and the grace of God there

is a chasm. This is felt the more by Augustine, and the necessity of

a God-centred doctrine seems the greater, when he beholds the contrast

between the perfectness of God and the evil world of men. Evil now

appears to him as a great stream flowing through the world. Humanity

is by nature void of God. Theoretically man is free, but in the actual

world he is chained to his senses and to sin. Adam, the first man,

alone could have possessed freedom; but Adam in his freedom sinned, and

his sin was that of the whole human race. Sin is therefore original to

all men now living, and no man personally deserves salvation, however

meritorious his conduct. Moreover, as the result of Adam’s sin, all men

would be damned were it not for the grace of God. The God-man by death

brought power to replenish empty humanity with divine love. Divine love

is the beginning, middle, and end of salvation. Out of this love God

has sent His Son and founded His church. Universal man died, and only

universal man can save. Belief in Christ is the only means of salvation,

yet belief in Christ comes only by God’s grace, and divine grace is not

conditioned on human worthiness. Thus it is only by grace even now that

man is saved; and no injustice would be done to men were all damned. On

the other hand, divine justice demands that some men at least should be

excluded from salvation in order that the punishment for Adam’s sin be

permanently maintained. The choice of the favored ones depends entirely

upon the unsearchable decree of God. These are elected as monuments

of His loving grace, while the others are elected to be damned as

monuments of His justice. The apparent calamity to the majority of

mankind only shows the goodness of God the more. For, in the first

place, evil is not positive like the good. It is only negative and

primitive――the absence of the good. The condemnation of the wicked is

therefore no defect in this theocratic system. In the second place,

the wicked only receive justice, for the salvation of only a few is a

gratuitous act of love, which testifies to God’s mercy. But, after all,

it is the integrity of the whole spiritual imperial government of God

that is the important thing to consider. The King is law and goodness,

and all His subjects are testimonies of His magnificent power.

=The Dark Ages= (476–800). The traditional estimate of the Middle Ages

as altogether “dark” has been revised by modern scholars. The period

now called the Dark Ages has been restricted to the three hundred years

between the fall of old Rome (476) and the founding of the empire by

Charlemagne (800). Moreover, it is now thought that even in that period

the intellectual conditions were better in Italy than north of the

Alps. In northern Italy the lay teacher seems always to have existed;

and education never to have fallen entirely into the hands of the

monastery as it did in northern Europe between 800 and 1000. After

800 the content of education north and south of the Alps seems to have

been different. Everywhere, to be sure, education was comprised by the

“seven liberal arts,” but the emphasis in the two regions was different.

North of the Alps the dialectic was made important, and theology and

logic flourished. In Italy the emphasis was upon grammar and rhetoric,

and “literary Paganism” was always kept alive. Thus, when the revival

came in 1200, it appeared in the form of theological controversy north

of the Alps, while in Italy in the form of legal science. The analysis

in the summary of the Middle Ages given above (see p. 330) applies more

truthfully to the northern countries than to Italy. At the same time

it is more pertinent to the history of thought, for in these northern

regions, especially at Paris, mediæval philosophy was developed.

Nevertheless, it is easy for the modern scholar to go too far in trying

to play fair with the Middle Ages. The first three centuries of this

time were a Dark Age everywhere in Europe. Wave after wave of barbarian

invasion swept over the land. It is not so much a matter of surprise

that four hundred years lie between the first two philosophers,――but

the matter of surprise is that there were any philosophical fruits

whatever. In this respect the year 529 is significant――significant

both in pointing backward to ancient culture and also in pointing

forward to the feeble effort to retain some of that culture. In 529

Justinian abolished the philosophical Schools at Athens; in 529

also, St. Benedict founded his monastic school at Monte Cassino (near

Naples). These two events stand for the death of antiquity and the

birth of mediæval life. In this beginning of the monastic movement by

St. Benedict in western Europe was lodged, as it turned out, the hope

of education for the mediæval man. During the two hundred years between

the year 800 and the year 1000 mediæval education was entirely in the

hands of the monks.

=The Revival of Charlemagne= (800–900). The darkness of the

Early Period of the Middle Ages is broken by the somewhat abortive

renaissance of Charlemagne. Connected with this revival is the name

of John Scotus Erigena (810–880). Note that during these five hundred

years there are only two notable philosophers, Augustine and Erigena.

Note that a span of four hundred years lies between them. Also note

that the first philosopher, Augustine, was a Roman and the second,

Erigena, was an Irishman. Thereby hangs a tale. During all those long

centuries of the Dark Ages after Augustine and until Charlemagne,

the light of science shone scarcely in northwestern Europe. In the

whole western hemisphere there were only three places where learning

prospered: one was in the far east, among the Arabians; another was

at Constantinople; the third was in the far west, in Britain. Thus it

was from Britain that Charlemagne had to call his educators, Alcuin and

Clement, to promote learning among the Franks; and it was from Britain,

too, that his successor, Charles the Bald, called the Irishman, Erigena,

for the same purpose. During the renaissance of the great Charles

and his successors, Irish scholars could be found in every monastery

and cathedral in the empire. The teaching was soon called the “Irish

learning.” Still it must be said in qualification that the renaissance

at the court of Charlemagne was a rather childish attempt to unite

antiquity with theology. Excepting in the case of Scotus Erigena, the

revival was very feeble. It consisted of a new effort to understand

Augustine, to master the simplest rules of logic, and to think out

dogma by means of Hellenism. The period from 800 to 1000 is called

the Benedictine Age, because learning was entirely in the hands of the

Benedictine monks. From the impulse given by the Irish scholars many

celebrated monastic and cathedral schools originated, like those of

Tours, Fulda, Rheims, Chartres, and the school at Paris. From the many

monastic schools emerge the names of Alcuin of York, Rhabanus Maurus of

Fulda, and Gerbert at Rheims. But among these scholars the only one of

philosophical importance is John Scotus Erigena.

=John Scotus Erigena (810–880): Life and Teaching.= When his

contemporaries were only lisping at philosophy and his immediate

successors were absorbed in disconnected problems, Erigena worked

out a connected system. Like Augustine, Erigena stood far in advance

of his age. He was not only the one great thinker of the revival of

Charlemagne, but he was one of the most remarkable personalities of the

Middle Ages. Born in Ireland, he had the benefit of an education in the

schools of that centre of learning, which he could not have obtained

on the continent of Europe. In 853 he was called by Charles the Bald

to carry on the work begun by Alcuin under Charlemagne. Three centuries

after his death the church condemned him as a heretic (1209) on account

of his writings on predestination and transubstantiation. His learning

was so great that he has been called “the Origen of the North.” He

read Greek, and this was a rare accomplishment in those days, for even

Alcuin scarcely knew the Greek alphabet. His most notable original work

is _De Divisione Naturae_, which was neo-Platonism in Christian dress.

His most influential work was his translation of the _pseudo-Dionysius,

the Areopagite._ It proved, in fact, to be one of the most influential

books of this period, and was instrumental on account of its large

circulation in propagating neo-Platonism in the Middle Ages.

Erigena was neither a scholastic nor a dialectical theologian. He

neither assailed nor defended church doctrine. He calmly pushed

neo-Platonism to the borders of pantheism. He was an Irishman with

a Greek mind, a neo-Platonist under the veil of a Christian mystic.

No churchman ever expressed neo-Platonism so frankly. The writings

from which Erigena got his doctrine are called the _Pseudo-Dionysius_

writings because the authorship was falsely attributed to a companion

of St. Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite. They were, however, probably

written in the fifth century, for they are essentially neo-Platonic and

border on pantheism. Erigena translated them at the request of Charles

the Bald, and their appearance produced great astonishment in Europe

(858–860). Erigena’s own work, _De Divisione Naturae_, is an extreme

pantheistic statement of the doctrine in the _Pseudo-Dionysius_.

Briefly stated Erigena’s teaching is as follows. God is an

incomprehensible being and can be described only in negative terms

(negative theology). (See chapter on Philo.) God is the same as Being

or Nature, and He unfolds Himself as a fourfold series. These are:

God, the world in God, the world outside God, God after the world

has returned to Him. God contains in Himself through the Logos all

the primordial types of things formed before creation. Creation is

the logical unfolding of particulars from the universal. Immortality

consists in the particulars again becoming universal. In the types

of things God is creating Himself, and they are graded from God down

to concrete objects. But all will finally return to God, and Erigena

thought he found analogies of this return everywhere in nature.

=The Greek Principle which Erigena formulated for the Middle Ages.=

These details of the teaching of Erigena are unimportant except as they

throw light upon that Greek underlying principle which he formulated

for the Middle Ages. _The Real is the Universal. The more universal a

thing is, the more real and therefore the more perfect it is._ If we

have an idea of a universal, that universal has existence because it is

universal. The idea of God is universal, therefore God exists. The idea

of the world is a universal, but not so universal as the idea of God,

and therefore not so surely existent. But the idea of the world has

more reality than the idea of a tree. Mediæval philosophy becomes from

this time on _a logical theism_. In the case of Erigena it is a logical

pantheism. The world is a logical mosaic. Real dependence is logical

dependence, and what we in modern times call the causes and effects

between natural objects are regarded by the Middle Ages as sufficiently

explained if put in logical arrangement. This is the core of mediæval

thinking, and the student will fail to understand the civilization of

the Middle Ages unless he grasps this central principle.

But this realizing of the logical universal is Greek and betrays

the fundamentally Greek character of mediæval civilization. The

objective spiritual church has merely taken the place of objective

nature. Mediæval history is a conflict between Greek universalism

and the Christian conception of the individual. In Erigena the Greek

element appeared in overwhelming dominance. Erigena is a smaller

Augustine――Augustine uncontrolled by great masses of thought and

uninspired by practical ideals of building up the church. Erigena is

a “belated Gnostic.” Why was it that his neo-Platonic pantheism did

not overcome entirely the individualistic element in Christian dogma?

Why, on the contrary, did it bring out far-reaching issues of conflict

when a century later the significance of his teaching was understood?

Because inherently and fundamentally in the nature of the German

peoples, as appearing in their customs and laws, was the conviction

of the rights of the individual personality. In the teaching of the

Christian fathers the element of the spiritual personality found a deep

echo in the German nature. The German could tolerate and did actually

live under the later church doctrine of a moderate realism; but the

measured calm of the Greek pantheistic conception of Erigena deprived

the German of all his inherited ideals. Thus when intellectual activity

was aroused a century later, the conflict became hot over the issue in

Erigena’s doctrine. Erigena was the forerunner of the scholastics. It

was he who tossed the apple of discord among the thinkers of the Middle

Ages.

=The Last Century of the Early Period= (900–1000). The century

following Erigena was one of demoralization. All learning declined with

the renewed invasions from the north, east, and west. The empire of

Charlemagne was broken up and the Papacy temporarily disappeared. There

is a persistent tradition that the Christians at this time believed the

end of the world to be near. This has been proved to be a legend, but

back of it lies the truth that there was a fresh rise of piety which

lasted until 1300. With this movement we enter upon the next period of

the Middle Ages.

CHAPTER XVII

THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD (1000–1200)

=The General Character of the Transitional Period.= The first century

of the Transitional Period was as different from the last century of

the Early Period in its intellectual attitude and emotional tone as can

be imagined. It was the century of the new birth of Europe――a century

when the beginning of political order was accompanied by a passion for

inquiry. The spirit of pietism took possession of all institutions――and

in the thirteenth century the mediæval system seemed to have reached

its perfect form. The Transitional Period gives meaning to the Crusades.

“If ever ideals were carried out in the world and gained dominion

over souls, it happened then.”[55] “It was as if the world had cast

aside its old garment and clothed itself in the white robe of the

church.”[56] The ardor of the Crusades was the specific expression

of this religious revival. All the pent-up energies of the previous

mediæval life were passing through a rapid period of growth.

Philosophically this period is the time when neo-Platonic mysticism, as

elaborated by Erigena, came into conflict with the Christian conception

of the individual. These two motives had been held together without

controversy in the Early Period; now they develop into controversy. The

philosophical theories evolved by this controversy go by the name of

scholasticism. While theoretically secular studies were supposed to be

discarded and ancient literature was considered to be the temptation

of the devil, yet practically one is surprised to find a trained skill

in the use of dialectic, and the employment of many of the materials of

antiquity as a means of culture and the refutation of heresies. There

was a knowledge of the classics, of dialectic, of neo-Platonism, and

of Augustine. The spirit of Platonic realism prevailed among the group

of schoolmen of these two centuries. The problem before this group is

different from that presented to the schoolmen of the next period. The

scholastics or schoolmen of this period whom we shall consider in some

detail are,――

Anselm, 1033–1109.

Roscellinus, d. 1100 about.

Abelard, 1079–1142.

=What is Scholasticism?= In a general sense scholasticism is

philosophic thought, but historically the term is usually restricted

to the philosophic thinking of the Middle Ages. It has been pointed

out that scholastic philosophy does not differ from any other

philosophy. It had its prejudices, its dependence on authority, its

employment of deduction, its use of observation――like all philosophy.

The scholasticism of this time, however, is distinguished by its

general reference to church dogma as authority and its imperfect use

of experience. The scholasticism of the Middle Ages may therefore

be defined as the application of dialectic or logical methods to the

discussion of theological problems. It was the attempt to present the

doctrine of the church in a scientific system of philosophy. Sometimes

such an attempt resulted in heresy when the result was a changing of

dogma. Generally, however, the scholastic was not so ambitious, for

he usually sought to keep within the authoritative doctrines of the

church. He feared the anathema of the church. Scholasticism therefore,

in general, had two characteristics: (1) It assumed that church dogma

was unquestionable and infallible; (2) It tried to clarify dogma by

rational explanation, or to show that dogma was at least not contrary

to reason. Dogma may in some cases be explained by the reason. In some

cases it may be so far above reason that the only thing the reason

can say is, “The doctrine does not contradict me.” In the words

of an eminent churchman, “Dogma says, _Deus homo_ (God became man).

Scholasticism asks, _Cur deus homo?_ (Why did God become man?)”

Revelation is assumed; scholastic philosophy is permitted; independent

rational science is denied. The remainder of the history of the Middle

Ages shows no conscious attempt to form a new body of doctrine for the

church; and only here and there does there appear an effort to modify

the existing doctrine. The thinkers are employed in this scholastic

clarifying of the doctrine. In this period scholasticism takes the form

of the logical problem of the relation of universals and particulars.

In the period of Classic Scholasticism this logical problem changes

into the metaphysical one of the respective scopes of reason and faith.

The problem of the relation of universal conceptions to particular

experiences had become a central one to the Greeks after Socrates.

(See summary, p. 103.) It was natural that the same problem should

arise with the new mediæval man and should delight him as an

enigmatical question. But conditions were less favorable for the

mediæval scholastic than for the Greek. The mediæval had scanty

literary materials, no opportunity of testing his discussions by

empirical observations, and his mind was untrained. In the Early Period

scholasticism had the character of a mental game in logic. It consisted,

on the whole, in the subtle spinning out of logical questions with the

few fragments of Aristotle as a guide. This was dangerous to faith, but

the church could not prevent it, for it was the only mental diversion

open to monks of the schools of Charlemagne. The arguments often reveal

great mental acuteness, although they have the appearance of triviality.

The schools of the ninth century were given over to barren formalism,

and this threatened to submerge the vigorous movement inaugurated

by Erigena. “Can a prostitute become a virgin again through divine

omnipotence?” “Does a mouse that eats the sacrament eat the body of

God?” “How many angels can stand on the point of a needle?” These

are examples of the prevailing verbal gymnastics of that time, and

such problems can be found even in the works of Peter Lombard, Thomas

Aquinas, and Duns Scotus.

Logically stated the problem is that of the relation of particulars to

universals. It is usually called the problem of the reality of general

ideas. The question was started by a passage in that universally

used text-book of the time――the _Isagoge_ of Porphyry, which was

an introduction to Aristotle’s _Categories_. (See p. 102.) Porphyry

divides the problem into three parts: (1) Do genera and species exist

in nature, or do they exist as mere products of the intellect? (2) If

they are things apart from the mind, are they corporeal or incorporeal

things? (3) Do they exist outside the individual things of sense, or

are they realized in the latter? Upon the problem involved here the

thinkers of the Middle Ages were divided into three schools,――realists,

conceptualists, and nominalists.[57] The realist maintained that the

general idea had reality, while the particular was only a defective

imitation of it. The nominalist, on the contrary, held that the

universal is only a name (_nomen_) or an abstraction derived from the

real particular thing. The conceptualist tried to mediate between the

two by showing that reality exists only in the particular. To use the

mediæval phrases, realism is _universalia ante rem_; nominalism is

_universalia post rem_; conceptualism is _universalia in re_. (See

p. 103 for table of comparison with Protagoras, Plato, and Aristotle.)

The question was of great practical importance to the church. Is the

universal church real and therefore all its dogma authoritative, or are

the particular churches real and authoritative? This was a vital matter

to the churchman of that day who was trying to establish the primacy

of Rome among the separate churches. Furthermore, to show that humanity

was less real than the particular human beings would destroy the

church doctrine of sin and redemption, for these dogmas depended on the

assumption of the solidarity of the human race. The church universal

and its universal dogma were not mere names to the schoolmen, and that

is why the orthodox churchmen were nearly always realists. Religious

principles were universals, while particulars were secular. Dogma had

become fixed, with which traditionally the church had become identified.

To emphasize particular experiences would mean the continual correcting

of tradition and a substitution of private judgment for church decrees.

When nominalism is completely worked out, it will be found to conflict

with church dogma at every point. The result is skepticism. Still the

churchman later saw that there is great danger also in a thorough-going

realism like that of Erigena’s. It became pantheism. Both realism and

nominalism were dangerous doctrines for the church if they were driven

to their logical conclusions.

=Anselm (1033–1109): Life and Position in Mediæval Philosophy.=

Anselm lived during the monastic revival which had begun in the

tenth century. He was in fact the last of the monastic teachers, for

during his declining years occurred the first of the Crusades, and

the epoch following him witnessed the transference of learning from

the monasteries to the universities. He was born of a noble family

in Aosta, Lombardy, and entered in early life the monastery of Bec.

Here he succeeded Lanfranc as abbot, and again he succeeded Lanfranc

in the archbishopric of Canterbury. He was a man of genuine piety, of

speculative bent, and of unswerving faith in the dogma of the church.

As primate of England he resisted with much sagacity the encroachments

of the secular power. His _Cur Deus Homo_ was a treatise on the

doctrine of the redemption and atonement, and was one of the most

important books of the Middle Ages.

Anselm brought about a great change in theological teaching. Berengar

of Tours had but recently made an attack upon the doctrine of the real

presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and was the immediate cause of

the “storm and stress” period of scholasticism that followed. Anselm’s

teacher and predecessor, Lanfranc, had defended the doctrine. The

doctrine had not yet been settled, and each side claimed the basis of

authority. Anselm was therefore a witness of the first attempt to apply

philosophy to dogma, and he was the first to use dialectics with the

serious purpose of defending dogma. From this time on, dialectics

was no longer an intellectual diversion. He, the last of the monastic

teachers, was the first to employ dialectics with the new purpose of

instructing the believer. His entire life was animated by the desire

to add knowledge to faith by the means of philosophy.

Anselm’s scholasticism therefore circulates about the Patristic

theology as a centre; and his spirit and method is so similar to that

of Augustine and the Apologists, that he has been justly called “the

second Augustine” and “the last of the Fathers.” Beside the safe and

traditionally centralized teaching of Anselm, the imaginative pantheism

of Erigena seems like a body that had been loosened from its natural

place and was floating away beyond control. Both Erigena and Anselm

were inspired by the Platonism that until the year 1200 dominated

the Middle Ages. That is, both were realists. The realism of Erigena,

however, expressed in full the mystic element of Platonism. It

destroyed all grades of reality below God, and made unnecessary the

church and its offices. Erigena was an extreme realist; Anselm was

consistent with the attitude of the church in being a moderate realist.

The _credo ut intelligam_ (faith as the basis of intellectual belief)

was the anchor which saved him and became the safeguard of all future

orthodox scholastics. The world to Anselm is a hierarchy of universal

reals, such as the sacraments, the church, and the Trinity. To such

dogmas of the church he applied philosophy, not because they needed

support, but in order to make them clear by analysis. Philosophy shall

only clarify dogma.

=Anselm’s Arguments for the Existence of God.= The so-called “Anselmic

Arguments for the Existence of God” are the best known parts of

Anselm’s teaching, and in the eyes of the churchman place his theodicy

in the “status of a finished science.” To get their cogency we must

remember the underlying thought of mediæval realism; the more universal

a thing is, the more real it is――the more it exists and the more

perfect it is. (See p. 352.) In his _Monologium_ he developed the

so-called _cosmological argument_: A single perfect and universal being

must be assumed as the cause of all lesser beings. God’s essence must

involve his existence. Every other being can be thought as coming into

existence from some external cause, while God alone exists from the

necessity of his own nature. In his _Proslogium_ he elaborated his more

famous _ontological argument_: Man has the idea of a perfect being;

Perfection involves among other qualities that of existence, otherwise

we could think of a more perfect being or one who did possess existence;

Therefore God exists.

=Roscellinus= (d. 1100 about): =Life and Teaching=. Roscellinus,

a canon of Compiègne, was the first scholastic to attempt to modify

dogma by the dialectic,――not that there had not occurred throughout the

history of the church many theological controversies. Before this time

such controversies had on the whole arisen over doctrines that had not

yet become dogma. The particular object of the attack of Roscellinus

was the dogma of the Trinity, and the base of his attack was none other

than philosophy. Roscellinus completely failed in getting the church

to modify this particular doctrine, but he succeeded in a larger way

than he could have imagined. He brought out into distinctness the issue

between reason and revelation. The fundamental question thereafter

was as to the rights of the human reason and the rights of divine

revelation. Roscellinus supplied a powerful shock to faith and awakened

the schools to the consequences of questions which had seemed before to

be merely logical problems.

Roscellinus was a nominalist, and it was from the point of view of

nominalism that he attempted to change the dogma of the Trinity. He

made a life-long defense of the doctrine that the Godhead was three

different substances, agreeing only in certain qualities. This is

tritheism and not a Trinity. But this was only the most striking

example of his application of the general principle of nominalism.

In general, universals are only names and have an existence only in

the human mind. _Universalia post rem._ Individuals alone exist. The

groups formed out of many individuals by addition, or the parts of an

individual formed by division, are mental affairs and have no reality.

Roscellinus was opposed by Anselm, condemned by the church, and obliged

to recant. He fled to England, returned to France, and again preached

his doctrine.

=Storm and Stress.= After the issue was brought to a head by the

nominalism of Roscellinus, the twelfth century was torn in battle

over the reality of general ideas. The realists, on the one hand,

tried to grade universals and to show how universals are related to

particulars――all of which Anselm had left to faith. How do universals,

such as the persons in the Trinity, the church, the sacraments,

exist in one universal God? Grotesque explanations were offered, like

the imaginative work of Bernard of Chartres and the symbolic number

theory of his brother, Theodoric. William of Champeaux, a teacher of

Abelard, almost reduced realism to a pantheism. Nothing exists but

the universal; all individuals are accidental modifications of the

universal. Pantheism was so inherent in the blood of realism that it

was always appearing here and there.

Such pantheistic deductions by the realists brought out nominalism in

opposition, in spite of the repression of nominalism by the authorities

of the church. The nominalists sought protection and authority under

the name of Aristotle, for his conceptualist doctrine was not known

at this time. The few writings of Aristotle then known were very

imperfectly interpreted. One of the most ironical situations in

the history of the Middle Ages is that, up to the Period of Classic

Scholasticism, Plato was the authority of the orthodox and Aristotle

of the heterodox.

=The Life of Abelard= (1079–1142). Abelard had both Roscellinus and

William of Champeaux as teachers. He quarreled with them both and set

up a rival school of his own. He taught in various places and was, with

some interruptions, in Paris from 1108 to 1136. The university did not

exist until a generation after him, but he was its true founder, for

he inaugurated the movement out of which the early universities sprang.

His method was transferred from philosophy to theology and thence to

all studies. It was a _didactic method_ of drawing conclusions after an

empirical enumeration of the _pros_ and _cons_. Abelard was acquainted

with no Greek writings except in Latin translations. His great talent

as a teacher and his keen French intellect, that was impatient of all

restraint, made him, however, the most brilliant of the schoolmen. Two

synods condemned his teaching. Probably his modern popular reputation

rests upon his unfortunate love-relations with Heloise.

=Abelard’s Conceptualism. Universals exist in the Particulars.=

Abelard formed the storm-centre of the strife over the technical

relations between particulars and universals. His position has been

misunderstood because he, the pupil and opponent both of Roscellinus

and of William of Champeaux, fought each with the weapons of the other.

He was repelled from pantheism, which appears to him to be the logic

of realism, and he recoiled equally from the sensualistic outcome

of nominalism. Universals are the indispensable forms of knowledge,

and they must therefore have some existence in the nature of the

things which we know. This existence consists of the similarity of the

essential characteristic of things. This likeness is not a numerical

identity, but a unity which makes our knowledge of the particular

things possible. This likeness or similarity between things is the

same as the types created by God. Thus the universal has no independent

objective existence, and on the other hand it is not a mere word

out of all relation to things. The universals exist in three ways:

(1) they exist before the things only as Ideas in the mind of God;

(2) they coexist with the things as the essential likenesses of

things; (3) they exist after the things in the human mind, when it

has knowledge of things. Abelard developed his theory only polemically

and never worked it out systematically. On the technical side of this

question the preceding lines of thought come into an unsystematic

unity. His theory was accepted by the Arabian philosophers and is

practically that of Aquinas and Duns Scotus. With Abelard the problem

was not solved indeed, but it came to a preliminary stop in this

statement――universals have an equal significance, _ante rem_ in the

mind of God, _in re_ in nature, _post rem_ in human knowledge.

=Abelard’s Rationalism.――The Relation between Reason and Dogma.=

The proud, self-reliant, self-conscious Abelard could be nothing else

than a rationalist. He was the type of the controversial metaphysician.

He was the fighting dialectician,――intolerant of restraint, devoid

of respect for authority, seeking the prize of victory at any cost.

Erigena, as a mystic, harmonized reason and dogma because they are

equal; Anselm, as an orthodox scholastic, harmonized them because

reason is subordinate to dogma and conforms to it; Abelard, as a

rationalist, harmonized reason and dogma because dogma is subordinate

to reason and conforms to reason. To Anselm reason merely clarifies

dogma; to Abelard “dogma is only a provisional substitute for reason.”

Anselm never questions dogma, while Abelard calls dogma before the

bar of the reason and then acts as dogma’s advocate. We must try all

dogma in court, and, contrary to modern legal practice, we must doubt

it until it proves its innocence. For “it is through doubt we come to

investigation, and through investigation to the truth.” A good example

of Abelard’s attitude appears in his _Sic et Non_, a treatise in which

he sets the views of the Fathers over against one another so that the

reason may decide upon the truth. Another example of his method appears

in his examination of the doctrine of the Trinity, and in the third

book of _Christian Theology_ he cites twenty-three objections and

in the fourth book answers them. This rationalizing spirit led him

to advocate the doctrine of free-will, to place the responsibility of

moral conduct and theoretical belief upon the individual, to regard

Christianity as the consummation of all religions and not as the

presentation of anything new.

If in these discussions he was more brilliant than profound, if he

wrote upon many questions without solving any, if the weight of his

personality could not prevail in his controversies, it was because the

science of the twelfth century offered him little empirical support

against the actual power of the church and the mighty inward strength

of faith of the people. What means had Abelard to support his position

that rational science should determine faith? Nothing but the hollow

methods of scholastic logic and the traditions of the church――the

very things against which he was rebelling. Abelard set for himself

a problem, but he lacked the means of its solution. It was, however, a

problem that has never vanished from the memory of the European peoples.

The unrest in Abelard’s teaching is representative of the last century

of this period, which he brought to a close. There was growing a

general revolt from the unfruitful methods of the scholastic dialectic,

coupled with feverish desire for knowledge. There was, on the one

hand, a great reaction toward mysticism with the Victorines, Bernard

of Clairvaux and Bernard of Tours, and toward eclecticism with John

of Salisbury and Peter the Lombard. On the other hand, there was

an interesting growth in empirical science. But these theoretical

interests were but eddies in the great current of events. For Jerusalem

and the Holy Land, the memorials in earthly form of all the ideals

sacred to the mediæval mind, had fallen into the hands of the infidel!

The western world was preparing for the rescue, and the Crusades were

the last and the frenzied expression of the Platonic idealism of the

Middle Ages. They bring the first two periods to a spectacular climax.

Is it a mere coincidence that Abelard brings to a close the dominance

of idealism on the theoretic side at the time when earthly symbols of

that idealism were being destroyed?

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PERIOD OF CLASSIC SCHOLASTICISM (1200–1453)

=The General Character of this Last Period.= The first one hundred

and fifty years of this period was the golden age of scholasticism;

the remaining one hundred years was a period of decline. The period

of Classic Scholasticism was a natural growth from the Transitional

Period. At the end of the Transitional Period the church, in spite of

Mohammedans, Jews, heretics, and the classics, outshone all else, and

its life and dogma were the most worth while. In this period appeared a

theology, adequate to its life and dogma,――a theology which was floated

by the wave of piety of the Mendicant Orders. Acquaintance with the

true Aristotle was the needed stimulus. The favorable conditions for

that stimulus were (1) the triumph of the church and papacy, (2) the

intense piety of the Mendicants, (3) the general culture derived from

an inner development of the church and from contact with the East in

Constantinople, Palestine, and Spain. Aristotle and the Mendicants were

the new forces, and they achieved their position against the hostility

of the old Orders, the universities, and the teachers. The triumph was

possible because the new forces contributed nothing really new, but

merely completed the old scheme of things. The new Aristotle, as it

was understood, taught metaphysics, epistemology, and politics in a way

to vindicate dogma as against the opposition of William of Champeaux

and Roscellinus. The Mendicants on their part vindicated all dogma by

blending it with faith on the one hand, and with reason on the other.

The scholasticism of the Transitional Period was predominantly

controversial, while the character of this period, which we are now

entering, is synthetic and constructive. The infusion of fresh blood

into culture, from not only the logical but the physical works of

Aristotle, resulted in the renewal of interest in the dialectic and in

the construction of systems of metaphysics and psychology. _The central

problem now concerns the respective scopes of reason and faith_, and

to its solution logic and psychology are applied. A complete solution

seemed to be made by Thomas Aquinas, which had its literary expression

in Dante. Without the introduction of any new philosophical principle

the world of nature, as interpreted by Aristotle, was apparently

brought by Thomas into theoretical harmony with the Augustinian

conception of the world of grace. But no sooner did Thomas seem to

have formulated scholastic philosophy for all time, than controversy

broke out afresh. For pantheistic mysticism gained its independence

through one of Thomas’s own brother Dominicans, Eckhart; then Duns

Scotus, a Franciscan, drew up a metaphysical programme based upon the

Augustinian theory of the will, and gave a new direction to philosophy;

and furthermore nominalism grew great upon Aristotle’s logic and the

new empirical psychology. For the churchman, philosophy reached its

completeness in Thomas Aquinas. The later tendencies are regarded by

the churchman as deteriorations, and even modern philosophy is looked

upon as but temporizing with the classic system of Thomas.

Illustration:

GROWTH OF MOHAMMEDANISM DURING THE MIDDLE AGES,

SHOWING ITS CONTACT WITH CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION

The Conquests of the Mohammedans during the different epochs are

shown by the different shading and the dates placed on the map.

=The Two Civilizations.= This is one of the periods of thought

resulting from the shiftings of distinct civilizations. We have already

noted the influence of the struggles of the Orient and the Occident in

the Persian wars and in the campaigns of Alexander; and we have lately

seen an entirely new epoch ushered in by the invasions of the northern

tribes into Rome. With the new epoch before us, we find ourselves

confronted with another new ethnic situation. The civilization of the

Mohammedan had grown in mighty strength in the East, had possessed

itself of Asia Minor, northern Africa, and Spain, and was now facing

Europe from the east, west, and south. All through the First Period

of the Middle Ages the Christian and Mohammedan civilizations had

been contestants for supremacy. Only as late as 732 the Mohammedan

claim upon Europe had been defeated at the battle of Tours. Mohammed

(570–632) converted the whole of Arabia to Islam during the ten years

between his Hegira (622) and his death. His successors took Palestine

(637), Syria (638), Egypt (647), Persia (710), all north Africa

(by 707), invaded Spain (711), and were repulsed at Tours (732).

All this occurred within a century, and for the next two hundred

years (800–1000) the Mohammedans harassed Rome and the islands of

the Mediterranean. With the two civilizations facing each other on

the Mediterranean, only mutual religious fanaticism could stand in

the way of their mutual cultural influence. In point of fact, because

of fanaticism the cultures of the two civilizations during the first

centuries of the Middle Ages touched each other but little. In those

first centuries of the Middle Ages, when western Europe was shrouded

in darkness, the schools of the Arabs at Bagdad, Basra, Kufa, and other

cities were enjoying a splendid intellectual life. From 850 to 1100

the centre of learning of the world was in the Arabian cities of the

East.[58] In 1100 the fanatical faction of the Arabians crushed this

intellectual movement in the East, the scholars fled to Spain, and for

a century longer Saracen learning flourished in Spain, especially in

Cordova. In 1200 the Arabian orthodoxy made itself felt in Spain, and

the Arabian scholars there had to find refuge among the Jews or

Christians.

=The First Contact of the Two Civilizations.= From the beginning of

the Middle Ages the point of contact between the two civilizations was

either war or commerce. The Jew was the globe-trotter of that day, and

was constantly bringing into Europe reports of Arabian civilization.

He was a philosopher, a monotheist, a Semite, like the Arab, and he had

an interest in more than commercial matters. About the end of the Early

Period of the Middle Ages he found it profitable to make first Hebrew

and then Latin translations of Arabian learning, and to sell them in

Europe. In this form, between 1000 and 1100, medical and astronomical

knowledge entered Europe. Greek philosophical writings came next in

translations from the Arabic, which had previously been translated from

the Syriac. Thus for the two hundred years, between 1000 and 1200, the

Christian schools were beginning to read portions of Greek philosophy

in Latin, which had previously passed through Syriac and Arabian

(and sometimes Hebrew) translations. Before 1200, there were none

but these Arabic versions. A pertinent example of these was the works

of Aristotle. Before 1200 all of Aristotle’s writings, except the

_Organon_, appeared in Europe in this form, and the _Organon_ as a

whole was not known until 1150. In 1125 some of Aristotle’s physics was

known by the school of Chartres; in 1200 all the physics, metaphysics,

and ethics were known in translations from the Latin and Hebrew. These

were accompanied by Arabian commentaries, which interpreted Aristotle

as if he were a neo-Platonic pantheist. There were many churchmen

interested in the work of translation, as, for example, Gerbert,

and Raymond of Toledo. Roger II of Sicily (d. 1154) and Frederick II

(d. 1250) had their courts filled with Arabian philosophers. Frederick

had many translations made and presented to the Universities of Oxford,

Paris, and Bologna.

Thus the influence of the Arabian upon the Christian culture before the

Classic Period of the Middle Ages was not inconsiderable. But this must

be said of Arabian culture――it was mainly borrowed. Arabia[59] acted

merely as a transmitter of the materials of knowledge from the Greeks

and Hindoos; and so far as philosophy was concerned, the Arab was

returning to Europe, in a perverted form, the Aristotle which had been

deposited with him centuries before. The Mohammedans were the world’s

carriers of a considerable body of science and of many new agricultural

products; and of the amount which they introduced into Europe only

a small portion was their own. At the end of the twelfth century the

Christian at Rome and York was richer in the principles of discovery,

but poorer in the amount of traditional learning and of scientific

wealth, than the Mohammedan at Bagdad and Cordova.

=The Conflict between the Two Civilizations.――The Crusades.[60]=

The rivalry between the two civilizations became intensified into an

open conflict about the year 1100. Up to the year 1000 the Mohammedan

leaders were Arabians, but in the eleventh century these Arabians

were conquered by tribes of Turks or Mongolians from the north of

Asia. These became converted to Mohammedanism, but they had no love

for culture nor reverence for the places in Palestine, which were

sacred alike to the Christian and the Arab. From the fourth to the

twelfth century the pilgrimages of the Christians, individually or in

multitudes, largely increased, but in the eleventh century the new race

of Mohammedan Turks made the access to Jerusalem more difficult. They

began to subject the pilgrims to cruelties, so that the Christian was

beginning to find the door of his Holy Land closed to him. Then did

Platonic Christianity rush to the rescue of those sacred places that

symbolized its ideals. This onslaught upon the Mohammedans came in a

series of surges, traditionally spoken of as the eight Crusades.[61]

The Crusades resulted quite contrary to the expectations of the church,

for the Crusaders failed in permanently recapturing Jerusalem. But the

Crusades accomplished the unexpected thing――they awakened Europe. The

effect of the Crusades upon Europe was far greater than upon the Orient.

The results may be enumerated as follows:――

1. The dormant European intellect was shaken up by contact with the

heathen, whom the Europeans had previously despised, but whom they

found to be their superiors.

2. A new national rivalry was aroused among the Christian soldiers.

This national spirit was helped negatively by the losses among the

feudal lords.

3. Commercial activity was given an immense impulse. A new social

class was formed, which allied itself with the kings against the feudal

lords. Trade was opened with the East, revealing new luxuries and new

needs. Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, and in a secondary way also the German,

French, and English towns, became prosperous commercial centres.

4. The power of the Latin church was extended.

5. _The works of Aristotle were introduced in translations direct from

the original Greek._ In the fourth Crusade Constantinople was captured

by the Crusaders (1204), and in this way the treasures of the Greeks

were opened to the western scholars. The complete works of Aristotle

were introduced into western Europe at a time when Aristotle was being

interpreted as a pantheist by the Arabian commentators.

=The Revival of Learning.= The need of learning, that had been felt

in the twelfth century, was now being satisfied. The entire logic

of Aristotle and his entire natural science gave the new materials

for knowledge. These came into Europe within the century between

1150 and 1250, (1) through translations from the Arabic, and then

(2) directly through translations from the Greek. Aristotle’s logic

revived scholasticism and his science became the foundation of

metaphysics. Mediæval thought was ready for this and _there was a

complete readjustment without the introduction of a new philosophical

principle_. The side of Augustine’s teaching that emphasized the

intellect rather than the will, gained by being confirmed by the

systematic intellectualism of Aristotle. The founder of this was

Albert of Bollstaedt; the organizer and literary codifier was Thomas

Aquinas; the poetic expression was Dante. The new centres of learning

were Paris and Constantinople. The centres of teaching were transferred

from the monasteries to the new Universities (1100–1300). Salerno had

its beginnings in the latter part of the eleventh century. Bologna in

law, Oxford in general culture and theology, Paris in the same studies,

show traces of general organization between 1160 and 1200. There were

established seventy-nine of these universities between 1150 and 1500.

They were not “founded,” but grew up as part of this movement.[62]

Illustration:

DIAGRAM OF DANTE’S POETIC CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSE

From Rossetti’s _Shadow of Dante_

(Showing its divisions of Hell (at centre of the earth),

Purgatory, and the nine heavens. The evident plan beneath

this is the Ptolemaic cosmography.)

Nevertheless, the struggle was a full century long before official

recognition of Aristotle came. The name of Aristotle had been

associated with pantheism for many years, on account of the Arabian

versions of his teaching. The neo-Platonic doctrine of emanations,

with its pantheism in the Arabian versions, was a tendency of which

the church had been shy since the days of Erigena. Until the theistic

character of Aristotle’s teaching became assured by the direct Latin

translations from the Greek, there was a powerful reaction against

the whole of the new learning. The church had condemned the _Physics_

in 1209 and the _Metaphysics_ in 1215. But in 1254 Aristotle was

officially recognized, and fifty years later he became the guide of the

church, whom no one could contradict without being accused of heresy.

The Catholic church never showed its ability to greater advantage than

in its dealings with the new problems of this period. The people of

a purely religious epoch now came into possession of Aristotelianism.

For centuries the intellect had been starving on formal logic. An

intellectual revolution was imminent. Here in Aristotle was presented

a rich theory of nature that the church had never considered. Yet it

is doubtful if Aristotle would have been accepted, had the Mendicant

Friars――the Dominicans and Franciscans――not succeeded in establishing

chairs in the University of Paris. These monks did not love philosophy

in itself. They saw, however, that philosophy must be able to defend

itself against infidel philosophy by the weapons of philosophy.

But curiously enough, Aristotelianism, which was the spring of this

renaissance, became, by its incorporation into the church, the great

obstacle to the real Renaissance two hundred and fifty years later.

=The Strength and Burden of Aristotle to the Church.=

=1. The Strength of Aristotle to the Church:= (1) Aristotle elaborated

for the church, with great clearness, the conception of a transcendent

God. This was a weapon for the church against neo-Platonism and

mysticism. (2) Aristotle gave to the church a theory of nature that

supplemented its theory of grace. (3) Aristotle established a

philosophical standard for the truth of things. This proved of great

value to the church because it was under the control of the church.

In the first two periods of the Middle Ages philosophical thought had

a relative independence because it was without a recognized standard;

now philosophy could be controlled by the standard of Aristotle. For

example, with the coming of Aristotle there came certain standard

definitions of substance, person, nature, accident, mode, potency,

and act.

=2. The Burden of Aristotle to the Church:= (1) Aristotle encouraged

a taste for science and analysis. At first the Aristotelian influence

in this direction was very small, but its growth was only a question

of time. (2) Aristotle became for the church a second standard. The

problem for the churchman now became a double one: (a) Is my teaching

consistent with church dogma? (b) Is my teaching consistent with

Aristotle? “My son,” was the reply to a youth who thought he had

discovered spots on the sun, “I have read Aristotle many times and

I assure you there is nothing of the kind in him.” Dogma, not now the

only standard, is not infallible. The reason need not follow dogma, but

its own standard. Revelation became a realm of mystery which the reason

could not reach, but to which it pointed. A doctrine thus might be of

such a nature that it might be philosophically true, but theologically

not true.

=The Predecessors of Aquinas.= Many distinguished names stand at the

close of the Transitional Period and the beginning of the Classic

Period. These express the transitional character of the thought of

the threshold of this time. They show, like Abelard, the tendency

toward rationalism. Alexander of Hales (d. 1264), William of Aubergne

(d. 1249), Vincent of Beauvais (d. 1246), Albert of Bollstaedt, called

Albertus Magnus (d. 1280), show the influence of the new Aristotelian

science. Albert was the teacher of Thomas Aquinas. The attempt of

Thomas to form a theological system for the church was anticipated

by the so-called _Sums_ of the twelfth century, of which the work of

Peter the Lombard was the model. The four books of _Sums_ of Peter

were collections of opinions of the Fathers on questions of dogma. They

show the influence of Aristotle and the method of Abelard. The _Sums_

of Peter became for several centuries the text-book of the schools

and the subject of innumerable commentaries. It was the core of

Classic scholastic literature, and around it grew up the problems of

metaphysics and psychology.

=The Life of Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274).――The Founder of the Dominican

Tradition.= Thomas belonged to a noble house which was related to the

royal family. He studied in the University of Naples, but at the age of

nineteen, upon resolving to enter the Dominican order, he was captured

and kept a prisoner by his brothers. After two years he made his

escape, and, his family having consented to his taking orders, he went

to Cologne under the instruction of Albert. He was then sent to Paris,

where he obtained his degree in 1257. He was a successful lecturer at

Paris until 1261, when he was called by the Pope to teach philosophy

in Rome, Bologna, and Pisa. During this period he composed his greatest

work, _Summa Theologiae_. He declined preferment and finally resided

at Naples. He always enjoyed the highest consideration of the church

authorities.

Thomas, the founder of the “Dominican tradition,” was the first to

formulate Christian Aristotelianism and to draw for the church the

line between the realms of reason and faith. He did not so much create

doctrine as he transformed and assimilated it. The sources from which

he drew were many: the Scriptures, the Fathers, Greek philosophy, and

the teaching of contemporary Arabians and Jews. If, as some historians

maintain, he was not a thinker of the first rank, he at least relieved

the church from a delicate situation by means of a conciliating

theology. Certainly his predecessors and contemporaries stand eclipsed

by him. He satisfied the mediæval demand for order and he prevented

deterioration in the church doctrine. He did not rise above his age,

although he stood at the head of its intellectual movement. He was,

on the contrary, the most perfect expression of scholasticism, and he

was affectionately regarded as _doctor angelicus_ and again as _doctor

universalis_.

=The Central Principle of Thomas’s Doctrine――The Twofold Truth.= The

life-purpose of Thomas was to bring Christianity into closer relation

with civilization and science. He sought to give all departments of

knowledge their rights and at the same time to protect the ascendency

of religion. This was to him the same as bringing Christianity and

Aristotle together, for Aristotle meant to him the entire product of

ancient civilization. To the mediæval world of grace he added a world

of nature, and, fully dominated by the mediæval love of order, he

unfolded so comprehensive a view of life that he included all its

problems. He felt that the natural and the revealed must not become

a contradiction.

To accomplish this Thomas found in Aristotle his own ideal estimate

of things. Looking at Aristotle through his own neo-Platonism, he

naturally found in Aristotle more of the inner and religious estimate

of nature than the facts will allow. Yet it was evident to Thomas that

there was in Aristotle a great interest in nature and a great reserve

on ultimate questions. Nature was, according to Aristotle, an essence

unfolding in a system of grades. This became the central principle of

Aquinas in this form: _Nature is a sketch in outline of the world of

grace_. Before the eye of the religious mind these two truths should

appear: (1) the world of faith and the world of nature are two properly

distinct worlds; (2) the world of faith is a continuation of the world

of nature. The world of grace and the world of nature are two grades of

the whole of existence. Nature is the lower stage of development, and

the point of contact between it and the world of grace is the soul of

man. Religion and philosophy thus have different spheres, but they are

not contradictory. Grace does not destroy, but it perfects nature.

Nature is subordinate to grace as man is subordinate to the Christian,

the state to the church, the Emperor to the Pope.[63]

The difference between philosophy and theology is not that theology

treats of God and divine truths, and philosophy does not. Philosophy

discusses divine truths. But the difference lies here, that theology

views truths in the light of revelation, while philosophy views them

in the light of reason. Yet there are truths that belong to philosophy,

truths that belong to theology, and truths that belong to both. The

problems of the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the

relation of the world to God are theological problems, yet they can

also be demonstrated by the reason of philosophy; but the mysteries of

the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the temporal creation are beyond the

scope of the reason and belong to theology. Philosophy and theology are

distinct, yet they are in harmony. Theology supplements philosophy with

faith; philosophy supplements theology by (1) establishing preliminary

motives, (2) supplying analogies, (3) answering objections. Thomas

accepts both propositions which had divided his predecessors: _credo

ut intelligam_ and _intelligo ut credam_.

Above historical revelation there is something even higher, which could

be called another realm, were it not more of a hope than a possession

of man. Its appearance in the doctrine of Thomas shows the influence

of Plato upon him. It is the immediate union of the individual with

God in mystic ecstasy.[64] It is the dome of the religious temple that

Thomas has built. But Thomas was careful to insist that this heavenly

glory could not be gained except through the offices of the church.

The individual cannot reach God through his own unaided efforts, but

the sacraments of the church form the mysterious background of the

religious life.

=The Problem of Individuality――The Relation of Particulars and

Universals.= The all-absorbing question of the Transitional Period,

of the relation of particulars and universals, became for Thomas and

his successors the problem of individuality. For the schoolman was

obliged to define the individual and fix his place in his Aristotelian

world, if he was to be successful against the pantheism of the Arabian

Aristotelianism. What is the nature and standing of the individual?

What constitutes the difference between individuals? The whole

theological edifice of Thomas would collapse in mystic unity, the

immortality of the soul would be lost and the offices of the church

would be nullified, unless Thomas showed the positive nature of the

individual. In this connection we must remember that on the whole

the Middle Ages had accepted Abelard’s analysis of the problem of the

relation of universals and particulars: the universals exist in three

ways, _ante rem_ or in God’s mind; _post rem_ or in man’s mind; _in re_

or in nature. To Thomas the universals as abstractions (_universalia

post rem_) in the human mind cannot be individuals, for they have no

real existence. To have real existence the universal must exist _in re_,

in the many, as the essence of things; not as abstraction _beside_ the

many.

The question of individuality therefore to Thomas concerns properly

only objects _in re_, or objects in the corporeal world.[65] These

are objects of Form and Matter. The question is, whether the Form or

the matter of corporeal things is the principle of its individuality.

Thomas says that matter is this principle,――not indeterminate matter,

but matter with quantitative determinations. The difference between

earthly individuals is numerical――a difference of time and space

relations. The Forms of nature objects change continually according

to their material conditions, but these conditions do not change.

Nevertheless the quantitative determinations of individuals are not

the cause, but the condition, of their existence.

But the question about the status of beings in the spiritual world,

“separate Forms,” is a more difficult one for Thomas. This is the

problem about God, the angels, and the souls of men. They are evidently

not individualized by matter. What is the principle that distinguishes

them from one another? They are Forms without matter and they are

individualized through themselves, since they have no need of material

determinations. Thus God is distinguished from everything else as

pure Form or pure actuality. He is the unique individual in whom

all differences merge. But so also are the angels actualized through

themselves. What is the difference between God and the angels? God is

an absolute genus; the angel is a relative genus, _i. e._ it is the

only one of its kind. But what is the condition of the souls of men?

Are they all alike or do they have a principle of distinction? Yes,

they are distinguishable, for each soul upon separation from its body

carries with it a love for its former body, and that distinguishes it

from other souls.

=The Primacy of the Will or the Intellect.= Up to this time there

had been no psychological dispute as to which of the faculties was

fundamental. Now the question appears in full force. Much of the

literature of this period is upon the question of the primacy of

the will or the intellect, and it appears to be almost the leading

motive of the time. Augustine had placed the will in the foreground

of his teaching. His successors had never disputed the subject, but

had been engaged in discussing what products of the intellect are

real――the particulars or the universals. With the introduction of the

intellectualism of Aristotle, there almost immediately arose defenders

of Augustine. To them Aristotelianism was too rationalistic. Thomas

follows Aristotle unconditionally, and with him stand the German

mystics. Intellectualism becomes the central principle of what is known

as the “Dominican tradition.” Duns Scotus was a Franciscan monk. He

took up arms for the primacy of the will, and this became the central

principle of the “Franciscan tradition.” On this point the nominalists

were his allies.