ANNEX LIBRARY CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM The Sage School of Philosophy Cornell University Library arV153 Mediaeval philosophy or A treatise of 3 1924 031 193 539 olin.anx Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031193539 ^U^^ *W MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY A TREATISE MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY %\t Jfiftjj to % Jmtrftmtjj €mturQ, FEEDEEICK DENISON MAUEICE. PROFESSOR or CASUISTRY AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OP CAMBRIDGE. NEW EDITION. |t oxibati : MACMILLAN AND CO. 1870. ex/ V /5"3 A /7*" TO A. J. SCOTT, ESQ., principal of owbn's college, Manchester. My dear Scott, Though this treatise is a manual for the use of students, not a book which can have much interest for scholars, you will perceive that it has cost the compiler of it some time. I hope the time has been honestly bestowed, and that I may help a few young men, who know the names of the great mediaeval doctors, to believe that they were not doctors merely — that their thoughts, even when they appear to us most grotesque, had some connection with human life and human history. A very eminent writer, whose judgment on the art of the Middle Ages is entitled to the highest respect, has lately expressed unbounded con- tempt for the subjects which are discussed in this volume. I do not think he can speak more bitterly than I have spoken, here and elsewhere, of metaphysical and even of moral questions, when they are left to the schools, still more when they become the gossip of withdrawing rooms. I do not think he can be more tormented than I am by the words " objective " and " subjective," as they are used in our day. I do not think he can be more earnest than I am in protesting against the impor- tation of philosophical formulas from Germany, which may have a sound meaning there, but which will generally conceal the absence of one amongst us. But because I agree with him so far, I consider that he is taking a very unsafe course indeed when he treats the questions which occupied the most earnest minds, at the time when Gothic cathedrals were conceived and raised — when art was, we are told, in its purest form — as if they were of no worth to beings to whom God has given not only eyes, but also thought and speech. As long as men have these gifts they must be moralists and metaphysicians. Those who sneer most at the names, will assume the characters in their discussions upon their own pr o.per topics. If artists d o jiot wholly abandon the human face , VI DEDICATION. divine for trees and flowers, they must ask what it speaks of. And then they will be involved in the questions which are considered here. They must ask themselves seriously whether all nature, all art, all individula existence, all human society, has not a moral and metaphysical founda- tion ; if not, whether they have any foundation at all. The faith that there is this foundation, and that it should be sought for, and that it may be found, was strong in the mediaeval doctors ; the little acquaintance with them which this book indicates, makes me certain that it was. The world around them, the words they spoke, all that they had learned from their fathers, all that was weak, all that was firm, in the civil and ecclesiastical order in the midst of which they lived, told them of a ground which must be beneath words, traditions, opinions, social arrange- ments. The names justice, right, truth, love, must, they thought, point to realities ; to dwell in them, must be the eternal blessedness of man ; to dwell in that which is contrary to them, his eternal curse. If we could see how these convictions worked in them — how they strove, how they hoped, how they blundered in their efforts to find their way through nature, through words, through opinions, to this divine and permanent ground — we should gain, I think, some lessons, perhaps some encourage- ment, for ourselves, as well as an increased sympathy with them. Here- after I hope some person will arise who has both knowledge and insight for the task of illustrating their successes and their failures. This book is merely a hint of what might be done. If it points out an honest method, I have little doubt that' it will soon " make itself useless." Some lectures which you once gave — I only heard one of them — on Anselm, on Bernard, and on the thirteenth century, would, I am sure, if they were worked out, do effectually what I have tried to do. Certain remarks which you made in them respecting Abelard, have helped me to correct a very imperfect and erroneous notion I had formed of his place in history. But I have profited still more by some words you once dropped in conversation, on the subject of Dante. They seemed to me to throw a light upon the relation between the thoughts of our time and of his time — upon the relation between speculation and life, which might guide one through many of the labyrinths into which I have led my readers, and in which many will say I have lost myself. If you had written a book of this kind, you would have been able to illustrate the physical as well as the moral studies of the Middle Ages. All I can do is to turn my ignorance of much that nearly all my con- temporaries are familiar with, to this account: I can enter into the difficulties of those who were stumbling in all their natural inquiries ; I can abstain from any contempt for them which would rebound with tenfold violence upon myself. It is a negative merit, one not likely to excite much envy; therefore I may make the most of it. The Middle Age DEDICATION. Vli discussions on words and their connection with things, have also been less offensive to me than they are to many, because I have been forced to go through some of them myself in the effort to escape from the tyranny, of words in our own day. Logical trifling is very detestable ; but there is another kind of trifling belonging to the age of clubs and newspapers, which I find at least equally dangerous. We are commanded, under the penalty of being called dishonest traffickers with words, palterers with them in a double sense, to take them at exactly their market value, though one is not informed at what bourse that value is settled, or which of the varying reports that every sect and school puts forth about it, we are to assume as the authentic one. I hold cheating with words to be in all respects more wicked as well as more mischievous than cheating with cards. The man who does the latter act is playing with a worthless instrument ; he probably injures men who are as great rogues as himself, or dupes who may be saved from future ruin by a present loss ; he brings into discredit that which one wishes to be discreditable. The other is abusing the holiest and divinest instrument, — he is making the whole com- merce of life suspicious — he is leading the most earnest men to despair of attaining the only object which is worth living for. If the one is banished from the fellowship of his own class, ought not the other to be excommunicated by all good men ? But to be accused of cheating with words is a very different thing, for that we ought all of us to be pre- pared. And I think the study of these Middle Age controversies about words may both assist us in avoiding the crime, and in enduring the reputation of it. Pray forgive this long dedication, as well as my presumption in offering you a book about a subject which you understand so much better than the writer of it. I had some scruple in presenting it to you, knowing that from many opinions in it you would entirely dissent ; and knowing also, from some painful experience, that I may do injury to the reputation of a friend by associating my name with his. But I could not deny myself the blame of saying how much I owe to your kindness and wisdom, and that I am, Most affectionately yours, F. D. MAURICE. KlKCULLEN, GALWAY, September 15, 1856. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. — Introductory. — Latin Philosophy after Augustus and before Gregory the Great. Page Boethius — His Life, .... .1-3 His philosophical character, . . . 3-4 His Treatise on Unity.. ..... 4-6 His Treatise on Arithmetic, . . 6-8 His Books of Geometry, ..... 8-9 > His Logical Treatises, . ... 9-14 Was he a Pagan or a Christian 1 ... 14-16 Analysis of the Consolations, . . . 16-27 General Estimate of Boethius, . . . 27-28 CHAPTER II. — Period from Gregory the Great to the beginning of the Tenth Century. Philosophical and Theological Debates in the East previous to the Appearance of Mahomet, ..... 29-30 Effect of his appearance upon the Greeks, .... 30-31 Effect of Mahometanism upon the West, . . . 31-33 The Latin and the Goth, — their relations to each other, . 33-34 The New Civilization in the West, .... 34-36 Age of Charlemagne, . . . . . . . 36-39 Controversies in the Ninth Century on Predestination and Transub- stantiation, ....... 39-44 Johannes Erigena — His Metaphysical genius, . . . 45-46 Examination of Guizot's Statements respecting him, . . . . 46-54 His position in the Ninth Century, . . 54-56 Analysis of the Five Books on the Natwe of 56-79 CHAPTER III. — From the beginning of the Tenth to the end of the Eleventh Century. General Character of the Tenth Century, .... 80-81 Influence of Mahometan Learning on Christians, . . . 81-82 x contents. Pope Geebekt, The Eleventh Century — the Normans, The Monastery of Bee, Lanfranc, His relations with Berengarius, Anselm — His Life and Character, His Monologue, His Proslogion, His Argument with Gaunilon, His Dialogue on Truth, His Dialogue on the Will, His Dialogue on the Grammarian, CHAPTER IV.— The Twelfth Century, The Monasteries, the Military Orders, the Universities, Peter Abelard — His Autobiography, Abelard at Paris, Abelard a Theologian, Abelard and Heloisa, His Book on the Trinity, His relation with Bernard, His Correspondence with his Wife, His sojourn at Clugni, His last days, t Relation of Ahelard's Logic to his Theology, , Ahelard's supposed Treatise on Genera and Species, Abelard' s Sic et If on, General View of his position, Hugo de St. Victore — A contrast to Abelard, His Book De Sacramentis, His Didascalon, . Political Movements in the Middle of the Century, Peter the Lombard — His Character, The Boole of Sentences, John of Salisbury — His position, . The Polycraticus, CHAPTER V.— The Thirteenth Century, The Mendicant Orders the Beginners of a New Age, Mahometan Philosophy, its connection with Mahometan Faith Relation of Mahometan to Christian Philosophy, Albertus Magnus — His relation to his time, His Life, Specially a Philosopher, > His Logical Treatises, His Physical Treatises, His Psychology, His Ethics and Politics, His Metaphysics, Pagb 82-84 84-85 85-86 86-88 88-92 92-97 98-101 101-102 102-106 106-109 109-110 110-111 112-162 112-116 116-117 117-119 119-120 120-121 122-123 123-125 125-126 126-127 127-129 129-132 132-138 138-141 141-142 143-144 144-146 146-148 148-150 150 150-156 155-156 156-162 163 163-168 168-171 171-173 173-174 174-176 176-177 177-179 179-180 180-181 181-182 182-184 CONTENTS. Thomas Aquinas — How distinguished from Albert, His Life, . Aquinas a Doubter and a Dogmatist, His Questions on Power, Estimate of his Method, The Summa Theologies — The First Part, The Prima Seoundse, The Secunda Secundse, The Franciscans. 1. Bonaventuba— His Life, . His Reduction of Arts to Theology, 2. Duns Scotus— His Life, His Book On First Principles, 3. Eogek Bacon— His History and Persecutions, 4. Raymond Lully— His Life, His Ars Brevis, His Lamentations of Philosophy, CONCLUSION, XI PiOE 184-185 185 188-190 190-193 193-194 194-197 198-206 206-212 212-215 215-222 223-224 224-233 233-239 239-244 244-247 248-251 251-253 MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 5 1. The Latin world, as we have explained already, will occupy us, scone of tha almost exclusively, in this division of the history of Moral and ¥" t0, y, Metaphysical Philosophy. The East, henceforth, becomes the C " a& background of the picture. On the management of that back- ground, it may greatly depend, whether the more prominent figures are presented distinctly, and in their proper relations, to the eye of the spectator. But he must be made to feel what is the subject of the sketch, and what are the subordinate and accessary portions of it. 2. To the end that the reader might fully understand the differ- ontyone ence in this respect between the first six centuries after the JSpi ™ !* Christian era and those which follow them, we pursued the history in the tomer of Greek philosophy till its termination in the reign of Justinian, 8ketclL not suffering ourselves to be diverted from this object by some very celebrated Eoman names. One conspicuous exception, in- deed, we were obliged to make : Augustin, though a Latin, and though his influence on Latin thought has been so remarkable, could not be passed over. He belonged, emphatically, to the age in which Platonism was the prevailing faith of thoughtful students, whether they sought to satisfy the questions which Plato raised by the help of the New Testament, or through the old mythologies. There was another name, only second, as we hinted, in importance to his, which we expressly reserved for the present volume ; because, though the man who bears it belongs to a period earlier than that from which we commence, he has many of the most remarkable characteristics of the later time, and helped much to determine what those characteristics should be. 3. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was probably born origin of in the year 470 or 475. His father was consul in the year Boetbilia - -;t B " l AGE OP THE OSTROGOTH. Minister under Theodoric Hispnblic and domestic character. Suspicion of bis fidelity. His misfor- tunes. Connection of bis thoughts nith his life. 487 ; his grandfather was prefect of the Praetorian guards, and was put to death by order of Valentinian III. He had, therefore, a close hereditary sympathy with the old names and glory of the republic, as well as the strongest and saddest evidence what a miserable and feeble tyranny was permitted to enact its latest crimes in the city of Brutus and Cicero. It cannot be supposed that a young man, bred among these associations, and fully sym- pathizing in them, can have mourned long and deeply over what we call the extinction of the Western Empire. At all events, he must have hailed, as the termination of anarchy, and the prepara- tion for a better social order, the accession of Theodoric the Goth. He seems to have been an early friend of that monarch, and to have made the best use of his friendship, when he obtained from him the consulship. In that office, he became a faithful administrator of the public revenues. He put the coinage upon a reasonable footing. Finding Italy in a state almost approaching to famine, he took care that the exactions for the support of the army, by! which Campania had been almost ruined, should be relaxed. He became the champion of those who had been the victims of false accusations — a scourge of spies and informers. His domestic life was pure, worthy of a Roman statesman. He was tenderly at- tached to his wife, Rusticiana. His sons appear to have been worthy ; they were created consuls during their boyhood. Such a man would make himself bitter enemies. The profligate courtiers, whose hatred he had deserved, might have many excuses for re- presenting that he was sighing for the older days before the Ostro- gothic rule had commenced. Theodoric had reason to suspect that many, especially of his orthodox subjects, would look for protection against him to the emperor of the East He became more suspicious as he grew older. It was a plausible suggestion, readily entertained, that Eoethius was intriguing at Constantinople to obtain greater power for the senate. If he had ever cherished so idle a dream, the conduct of the senators to himself must have convinced him of its folly. They abetted his accusers. Theodoric threw him and his father-in-law into prison at Ticinum. Their goods were confiscated. After some years both were put to death, in the sight of their friends. The king is said to have lamented his crime before his own death, which was regarded as the punish- ment of it. The widow of Boethius, according to Procopius, was forced like Belisarius, in the next age, to beg her bread. 4. Those who would understand the life of Boethius the philo- sopher, must know him first of all as a patriot That is his truest character. By that, he is at once distinguished from the Athenian schooimen, whose writings we examined in the last part of this sketch. A tradition, founded upon the misunderstanding of a passage in a letter of Cassiodorus, has given rise to the opinion ROMAS FEELING STILL ALIVE. 3 that he visited the Greek schools, and was a hearer of Proclus. It is probable that he never left Italy. The praise which his correspondent means to bestow upon him is, that he imported Greek wisdom into that country, and made it Eoman. To this fame, he is assuredly entitled. And it is by ascertaining what part of Greek wisdom such a Eoman as Boethius would desire to naturalize, that we perceive the direction which thought was begin- ning to take in the West, and which it would take far more deter - minately, under other influences than his, but yet not without his influence, two or three centuries afterwards. 5. We have observed in many instances, how the reverence for His Roman law and order, in which lay the strength of the Roman, disposed " er ' him, when he had received the Greek teaching, to seek for that in the world of nature, which he found continually contradicted, in the world of human beings. Even the Epicurism of Lucretius illustrated the assertion. Though he seemed to refer everything ^^d^^^hc was really craving for something less irregular, more siB^^WII»principle, than the caprices of politicians, and the unrighteous gods of the Pantheon permitted him to behold. The Stoic Seneca fled to nature for the same reason. There only wherein he he could discover the quiet undisturbed order, which the philoso- JSJIiJJL,,"* pher was to reproduce in his own life. Boethius felt neither the j^ins and disgust for affairs which characterized the earnest mind of the poet, nor the resignation to evil, which the courtier made it his business to cultivate. He had striven to be a righteous man himself, and he had to struggle against unrighteousness not in the closet only, but in the world. But he too wanted to study laws where he could see that they were obeyed. If there was only an approxi- mation to right in the Roman polity, he must contemplate, and encourage his countrymen to contemplate, some other polity where decrees which wisdom and truth had enacted were never infringed. Such a polity, Plato had said must exist. It was morally and why he has spiritually true, though it was nowhere realized. It was implied Sathywith in the societies of men ; though every society of men might be at « a t°- variance with it. No such vision could present itself to the mind of a man trained in affairs, occupied with outward politics, reminded continually of all their anomalies. To a certain extent Boethius was imaginative, but he distrusted his imagination, and was afraid to believe that there was any truth corresponding to the hopes which it suggested. But in numbers, in lines, in forms, in musical notes, in the motions of the heavenly bodies, there were principles which evidently did not bend to accident or circumstance, — which could not be adjusted, or swayed, at the pleasure of any tyrant. In the investigation of these primary elements, these grounds of the universe, there was rest for a mind which felt that it had no right to shrink from the trivialities of detail, or the vulgarities of PHYSICAL STUDIES. The Platoni- cal idea\of Arithmetic and Geome- try. TlieBoethian idea. Science ac- cording to Ari&totle. Liter, de Unitate et Uno. human passions, but which felt also, that it must have something substantial and constant, as a counteraction to them, and a safe- guard against them. 6. It will be perceived by the reader that a man who took up the studies of arithmetic, geometry, music, or astronomy from such motives as these, will have agreed with Plato in his estimate of their importance, but will have differed from him greatly in his judgment of their nature, and of the use to which they should be turned. When Plato commanded that no one should enter his halls who had not been disciplined in geometry, he believed, no doubt, that the student would be led by this preparation to seek for that which is, in every subject which he examined ; to endure no ' shadows or appearances which offered themselves in exchange for it. He would be led by the method of geometry to seek in a par- ticular case, for the principle which governs all such cases; not to heap together a multitude of observations and merely deduce a general and probable maxim from them. Boethius exjMj^ij certainty in the principles concerning numbers and l^^^HrWie could ever apply to human acts and wills ; but the evenness and harmony to which he became used in one region would reappear in the justness and proportion of his purposes and of his acts, when he was met by disturbing forces which swayed him to the right or to the left. It is not necessary to suppose that he sought no other and more powerful help against these forces ; he must have been aware from experience how little, considerations drawn from the natural world can be brought to bear, in moments of inward con- flict and temptation. What we mean to intimate, is, that he wished to produce in himself a certain even habit of mind, rather than to familiarize himself with any lofty idea ; and that he looked upon physical studies chiefly as contributing to this object, by the very difference which exists between them and human studies. In other words, he was pursuing the Aristotelian mean. The righte- ousness he aimed at was that which is so strikingly exhibited in the fourth book of " The Ethics," and which in fact explains the whole of that master work. And his idea of science stood in the closest relation to his idea of the end of life. To know the limita- tion and boundaries of those things which are the subject of human thought, was according to him to know them. This may not have been all that he meant by science ; it is not all that Aristotle, or any man at any time, meant by it. But on the whole this is a fair representation of his habitual conviction, and it marks him out as the true successor of Aristotle in the West, as the beginner, classic and Ciceronian though he was, of that which we are wont to call the Barbaric or Gothico-Latin philosophy. 7. The first treatise of Boethius which it behoves us to notice, is the short one " On Unity and the One." The following sentences PURSUIT OP UNITS'. 5 are, it seems to us, very important with a view to the understanding of the mind of our anthor. "Unity is that in virtue of which anything whatsoever is affirmed to be one. For whether it is simple or compound, spiri- tual or corporeal, a thing is one by reason of its unity ; nor can it be one except by reason of its unity; as a thing cannot be white except from whiteness. But not only is it one by reason of its unity, but also it is only so long that which it is, as long as there is unity in it. When it ceases to be one, it ceases to be that which it is ; whence comes the maxim, that whatever is, is therefore because it is one. For all being, in things created, belongs to form. But there is no being in form merely, but only Definition of when form is united to matter. Being, say the philosophers, is the Being " indwelling of Form in Matter. From the conjunction of form with matter, something that is one, is constituted. The destruction of a thing is nothing else than the separation of form from _ader will perceive that Boethius is here dealing with inference our modes of thinking and speaking about Being and Unity, not g™™ thispas " with Being and Unity as the grounds of all thought and speech. It • is the more necessary to make this remark, because there is good reason to think, that he was not aware of the distinction himselt. It does not appear, that he ever suspected that there was or could be another way of looking at the subject, than that which he followed. He probably read the Platonical philosophers with approbation and sympathy, because he read them according to Aristotle, unconsciously translating them and fitting them into his moulds. The words "Form and Matter" which he introduces Form ana into this Treatise on Unity, were the common and debateable Matter - ground between the two schools. Everything depended on the manner in which they were used. Aristotle perfectly understood that he was not using the word Form in the sense in which his master used it : he is most careful to tell us so in every treatise, ethical, dialectical, metaphysical. Few ,of his Greek followers per- ceived as he did, how radical the distinction was ; even many of the Platonists, while they followed their teacher, did not discern wherein the Stagyrite had diverged from him. For many ages, the Latins were almost wholly unaware that the difference existed, though it was continually perplexing them, and was lying at the root of their most serious controversy. It is interesting and valu- able to observe the confusion in a man whose scholarship would have perfectly qualified him to appreciate the diversities of the great teachers, if his habits of mind had not necessarily chained him to one of them. We must always bear in mind that he under- stands truth and falsehood only in reference to propositions. That which is, is that which can be rightly affirmed concerning any 6 THE PUEE SCIENCES, subject. The One is that which we are obliged to consider one by the laws of our understandings. Treatise on 9. A passage from the opening of the Treatise on Arithmetic Arithmetic, jg a father and a very consistent illustration of this habit of mind. " We say that those things are, which neither grow by expansion, nor are diminished by contraction, nor are changed by variations ; but preserve themselves ever in their own proper force, depending upon nothing which is extraneous to their own nature. Now these are qualities, quantities, forms, magnitudes, littlenesses, equalities, ac- tions, dispositions, places, times, and whatsoever is found in some way or other united in bodies. These things are in their own nature incorporeal ; they live under the law of an immutable substance ; but they, are changed by the participation of body, and pass, through contact with variable things, into instability. These things, there- fore, seeing as it is said they have by nature an immutable sub- stance and force, are truly and properly said to be. Of these things, therefore, that is of those things that properl^^^^a^ which deserve the name of essences, true wisdom profe^BW^^^ us the knowledge. Now of an essence there are two parts. One continuous and united in its different portions, and not distinguished by any boundaries, such as is a tree, a stone, and all bodies of this Magnitudes, universe, which properly are called Magnitudes. Others consist of separate and determinate portions, and are brought into one by accumulation, as a flock, a people, a choir. For these the proper Moiutndes. name is Multitude. Again, to this head of multitude we refer certain things that are in themselves, as three or four, or any number what- soever, which require nothing else that they may be. But some do not exist by themselves, but are referred to something else, as double, half, next but one, next but two, and so forth. To magnitude, again, belong some things that are stationary, some that are turning Provinces of about in perpetual rotation. The first class of multitudes, those andMusfc. which are such in themselves, Arithmetic contemplates. Those which are relative belong to Music. Of immoveable magnitude, Provinces of Geometry takes cognizance. The knowledge of the moveable 2d AsS- the Astronomer promises us. If the inquirer does not recognize nomv. these four portions of knowledge, he cannot find truth, and unless he behold truth, no one can be said to have wisdom. For wisdom is the knowledge and entire comprehension of those things which truly are. And I tell any one who despises these different paths of wisdom, that he is no true philosopher. For philosophy is the love of wisdom which, in despising these, he has already despised. I would add further that multitude proceeding from a limit, increases infinitely. Magnitude, on the contrary, beginning from a finite quantity, admits of infinite division. This infinity of nature and its indeterminate power, philosophy voluntarily repudiates. For nothing which is infinite can be gathered together in knowledge, THE QUADRIVItJM. 7 or comprehended in the mind. Therefore reason hath made a wisdom and selection for itself of those things in which she may exercise ^m^p 11 ?- her skill, as a searcher of truth. For she hath chosen out of the plurality of infinite multitude, a certain term of finite quantity, and rejecting the divisions of interminable magnitude, hath sought out for herself definite spaces for knowledge. It is clear, then, that whosoever has overlooked these, has lost the whole doctrine of philosophy. This, then, is that quadrivium in which those must philosophy travel whose mind being raised above the senses, is brought to the jS wa ?or 8 lefl" heights of intelligence. For there are certain steps, by which m«on. we must advance and mount, in order that these studies may again illuminate that eye of the mind, sunk and almost blinded in the senses of the body, which, as Plato says, is much more worthy to be opened and made effectual, than many eyes of the body, seeing that by that light only, can truth be sought out or beheld. Which then of these sciences is to be studied first? iMust it not be that which has a sort of maternal relation to all the rest ? Now this is arithmetic. For this is before all studies, not only because God the founder of this earthly fabric, had it with wvisioiL 6 ' 1 " Him originally as the exemplar of His own design, and framed ac- cording to it all things whatsoever, which, His reason comprehending piace of these, found their harmony in the numbers of a determined order. f m jJy eHS But in this also is arithmetic proved to be before other studies, studies, because the destruction of that which is first in nature involves the destruction of that which is subsequent to it, whereas the converse is not true." We must condense his arguments in support of this proposition, but they cannot be passed over. " If you take away the nature of the animal, you take away man ; but the animal may remain though man perishes. In like manner if you Reasons for take away numbers, what becomes of the triangle and the square natj ™o° rdi " in geometry, the very names of which denote the pre-existence of Geometry to Number ; whereas three and four and the names of other an d ofAstre- numbers will not disappear though the triangle and the square and ^j^ t0 the whole of geometry were annihilated. So likewise Musical modulation is denoted by the very names of numbers ; hence it depends upon number, and must perish with it. Astronomy of course follows the same rule. For both geometry and music, which have been shown to be subordinate to arithmetic, are pre- sumed in astronomy. Circles, the sphere, the centre, the parallels, all belong to geometrical discipline. Moreover all motion is sub- sequent to rest, and geometry has been defined to be the science of the moveable, astronomy of" the immoveable. Every one knows that the stars move according to the laws of harmony. Music therefore must precede the study of the courses of the stars." 10. It would be difficult to select a passage of the same length, a prophetical as prophetical of the method of study in the Middle Ages as this ?****&<>• THE NEW EDUCATION. Logic really assume/1 as the study of studies. Imprison- ment in for- malities. Books on Geometry, lib. ii., near the end. Bonitas dif- fin ita et sub scientia cadens, animoque semper imitabilis, et prima natnra est ; infinitum vero malitice dedecus nullis 1 rincipiis nexum, &c one. The rapid arrangement of the Quadrivium, with the reasons that are assigned for it, the mixture of peremptory dogmatism with ingenious reasoning, the glimpses of a high intelligence and per- ception of the destiny of man, with the boldest presumption about the order of the universe and the scheme of its author, will explain themselves more and more as we advance in our history. But beneath all these Aristotelian tendencies, — hardened, legalized, and yet dignified by the Roman intellect, which was adopting them, — lies ^ that deification of Logic which belonged to the original teacher, but which was to produce far more startling and serious results in his disciples of the later world. Qualities, quantities, magnitudes, multitudes — who does not see that these names were building a prison for Boethius of which the walls were far higher and more impenetrable than those of the one to which Theodoric consigned him ? There was positively no escape above, below, through ceiling, or pavement, for one confined within this word-fortress ; scarcely an aperture, one would have thought, for air or light to enter in!»" And yet we shall find that they did enter through both the material and the formal ramparts, within which a brave and noble spirit was enclosed, and that many in after times found not only deliver- ance out of this confinement, but a certain amount of blessing and benefit in it. Indeed it is not possible to read the extract we have given, without perceiving in it the outlines of an education which modern Europe was to discover for itself and to pass through; an education based upon the acknowledgment of an order in the universe, however that order might be limited by human concep- tions ; therefore holding out a promise that after a proper period of pupilage, whatever was forced and unnatural in the system would be broken through, — whatever there was of true method latent in it would then or afterwards come forth, and prove itself a way to knowledge and to freedom. 11. There is much in the two books on Arithmetic which the student of Middle Age philosophy ought to consider ; but we must pass over these as well as the five on Music. Respecting the two on Geometry, we must also be silent, only calling the attention of the reader to an important and characteristic passage near the close of the treatise, where Boethius sums up the history and the benefits of this study. In that passage, we discover the link between the practical moralist and politician, and the scientific doctor. All good- ness and all truth he affirms to be fixed, and defined ; whereas the nature of evil and error is infinite and refuses to be reduced under laws or principles. The office of the mind is to govern and coerce the passions which are always seeking to break loose. That mind receives strength and stability from culture in the pure sciences. This hint must not be forgotten. It will receive illustration, by and by, from moralists and theologians, with whom Boethius had not THE HIGHER WISDOM. 9 much in common ; its immediate explanation may be found in his own Logical Treatises, to which we must now turn. 12. These consist of commentaries upon the " Categories of Logical Aristotle," upon the " Book of Interpretation," upon both the Treatocs - treatises on "Analytics," on "The Topics" and on the " Confutations of the Sophists." As these books are intended to form a course of instruction for Eoman students, Boethius introduces them with two dialogues and three books of commentaries on Porphyry, one in Por- of whose treatises he regards as the best vestibule to the Aristo- jjJaTogfa telian temple. Not much pains are taken to make the dialogues victormo dramatic. After a very short opening in the manner of Cicero, our statesman proceeds at once to business, giving Latin equivalents for several familiar Greek technicalities, and then explaining the relation of accident to substance, and the purpose of definition. We have, however, in his introduction some general observations, necessary, he conceives, to the understanding of this subject, which throw great light upon his method of thinking. 13. " It would be desirable," he says, "first of all to consider Diaioimei what philosophy itself is. Philosophy is the love and pursuit of osop y " wisdom, and in some sort the fellowship with it. By this wisdom, we must not understand that which has to do with special arts or with some mechanical science, but that which needs nothing besides itself, that which is the quickening mind and the primeval principle of things. This love of wisdom is the illumination of the intelligent mind from the pure wisdom, the drawing back and calling, as it were, that mind to herself. So that it may seem as much the pursuit of divinity as the pursuit of wisdom, the friend- ship of the pure mind with its object. This wisdom, therefore, imposes the worthiness of its own divinity upon every kind of souls which occupy themselves with it, and brings them to the force and purity of their true nature. Hence arises the truth of speculations and thoughts and the holy chastity of acts. Which consideration enables us to ascertain the proper division of philosophy. Philo- philosophy sophy being the genus, there are two species of it, one theoretic or actiY& tIC *" speculative, the other practical or active. There will be as many species of speculative philosophy as there are subjects for reasonable speculation. There will be as many species and varieties of virtues as there are diversities of acts. Of theoretic philosophy there are Three aw- three subjects, the intellectible, the intelligible, and the natural." theoretic. ° Fabius, one of the persons in the dialogue, is surprised at the newly- coined word intellectible. It is explained to mean "that which is one and the same in itself, consisting always in its own divinity ; that which is never perceived by the senses, but only by the mind and intellect." It belongs, therefore, to the contemplation of God and to the incorporeal nature of the mind. It is that part of philosophy which is called.by the Greeks Theology. Things intelligible 10 BOLDNESS OP BOETHIUS. have a close connection with the intellectible, look up to them, and acquire a higher and purer nature by commerce with them, but by their relation with bodies, under the power of which they may sink, Divisions »f are differenced from them. The third part of speculative philosophy 3o™o t ii alpll! "' s Physiology) an d concerns the natures and passions of bodies. Practical philosophy is likewise divided into three parts. The first concerns the growth of the individual soul and its adornment with all virtues. The second has to do with the care of the state. The third with economy or the management of property. Thcpiaceof 14. We might have expected Boethius to tell us under which of Logic these different heads of philosophy Logic is to be reckoned. But such a course would not have been consistent with the tendencies of his mind. He intimates at once that logic is not so much a part of philosophy as that which binds all the parts of it together. He has been obliged to assume it, in making the division which he has just attempted. If he had not started from genus and species, what should we have known about philosophy or that which is speculative and active ? All his definitions have involved differences, properties, accidents. Grammar, rhetoric, the whole force of argument, are involved in logic. Our main business, therefore, is to understand what the right order in studying logic is ; then we shall understand the very principle of order. He traces rapidly Principles of the relation between the different books of Aristotle, shows why Method. t jj e Categories must needs be first, and why something is neces- sary to prepare the reader for them. The primary distinction, he says, is between substance and accident. The nine conditions of quality, quantity, relation, place, time, position, possession, doing, suffering, are all conditions of accident. Therefore, it was neces- sary to say something beforehand about substance and accident; in fact we must have a knowledge of the laws of division, before we have a knowledge of these primary divisions. Porphyry,he says, sup- plies the want. His introduction, about the genuineness of which Boethius affirms there is no doubt, is the proper manual for the beginner. He then proceeds to comment on the book, paragraph Difficulties by paragraph. In these elements of the study, one might hope to oftostud*' esca P e an J r great and dangerous perplexities. But no. The logical Hercules must be assaulted by serpents while he is yet in his cradle. It is just at this very point of the subject, that those monsters which were to acquire in after times the terrible names of Nominalism and Realism lift up their crests and threaten us with destruction. Porphyry, with true Greek dexterity, foreseeing the perils of the battle, avoids it. Our Roman, with the valour of his race and his own personal intrepidity, rushes into it at once, and thus gravely and peremptorily decides a question in which the doctors of Europe for centuries were, one after another, to engage. 1 5. " What does Porphyry mean," inquires Fabius, " by saying DOCTRINE OF CONCEPTIONS. 11 that he merely touches and passes over certain points which elder commentary ' •> on the lirst paragraph. philosophers had discussed at great length? He means this;". on,e answers our author, " he omits the question whether genera and species have an actual subsistence, or dwell in the intellect and mind alone; whether they be corporeal or incorporeal; and whether they are separate or joined to the things which our senses perceive. On these matters, seeing that the disputation was a deep one, he promised to be silent. But let us, holding the reins of self- restraint tightly, touch a little upon each one of them." The question is stated in this way. " Seeing that the mind of man is multiform, it understands things subjected to the senses, by the senses and senses, according to their own quality. Conceptions, formed by a ^^i" 10 " 11 process of contemplation out of these, it uses as a road to the understanding of incorporeal things. So that when I see individual men, I both am sure that I have seen them, and further I boast that I have understood that they are men. The intelligence which Conceptions is thus derived, strengthened as it were by the perception of sensible which areta- things, raises itself to a higher level and now apprehends the very eofpoiroi. species of man which exists under the animal, and which contains the individual men ; the mind understands that to be incorporeal, the corporeal particles of which it had assumed in its sensible per- ceptions of the individual men. For to say the truth, that Species Man, which encloses us all within the circle of its name, must not be spoken of as corporeal, seeing that we conceive it by the mind and intelligence alone. The mind then resting itself on the first principles of things, is sublimed by a higher intelligence, with which the body has nought to do. Hereby it comes to pass that the soul of man not only becomes capable of understanding incorporeal things through sensible, but also, of inventing them for itself, and even of creating falsehood. For instance, out of the form of a Formation of horse and a man, the intellect framed for itself the false species of se BBeacs - centaurs. These reflections of the mind which rising from the sensible perception of things to the intelligence, are either perceived or feigned, the Greeks call ?«n«n'*i, and we may call them (visa). The question then is whether we are to suppose that genera and species are truly subsisting, that they are essential and fixed, so that we may believe the species of man has been truly and fairly deduced from individual bodies; or whether they are as much feigned as the animal in the verse of Horace with the human head and the horse's neck, which neither does exist nor could exist. The inquiry is a very subtle one, and one of great practical importance. . If you weigh the truth of things it is impossible to Decision in doubt that these genera and species are true. For seeing that all Ssm.' things that are true cannot be without these five, (genus, species, difference, property, accident.) you cannot doubt that these five things have been true, and understood. They are embedded, 12 WHETHER FORMS ARE TNCOEPOBEAL. compacted, conglutinated in all things. Else why should Aristotle speak about those ten primary names, which signify the genera of things ? Or why should he collect together their differences and their properties, and treat so specially concerning their accidents, unless these were wrapt up in the things and intimately joined to them ? If so there is no question that they are true, and that they are grasped by the certain conclusion of the mind." The question 16. Boethius goes on to maintain that Porphyry, in spite of his vJeai and apparent silence, was really of his mind on this subject, otherwise incorporeal, why should he have discussed the question whether these forms are corporeal or incorporeal ? They must be if they are either one or the other. To this second question our Eoman addresses him- self with equal courage. His decision is this. The incorporeal is the primary nature ; the body is something added on to this ; so that you can never deduce the incorporeal from it. Genus, as such, is neither corporeal nor incorporeal. It includes both as species within it, and may bring both out of itself. Species may be either corporeal or incorporeal. If you put man under substance, you have introduced a corporeal species ; if God, an incorporeal. So with differences. If you compare a quadruped with a biped, the difference is corporeal ; if rational with irrational, the difference is incorporeal. So of property. If the species is incorporeal, the property will be incorporeal ; if corporeal, corporeal. The same principle applies to accidents. Hence all of these, though they may be referred to corporeal or incorporeal subjects, can by no possibility be themselves considered as under the law of corporeal or sensible things. He afterwards adds, "If these five, genus, species, difference, property, or accident, are joined to bodies, they are such as is that primary incorporality which is outside of limits, and yet never is severed from body ; but if to incorporeal, they are such as is a mind which is not united toabody." Fabius confesses his inability to understand this language, and his instructor does not vouchsafe any further explanation than that the terms or limits of which he speaks, are the extremities of geometrical figures, and that the incorporality which has to do with these limits, may be studied in the first book of the very learned Macrobius Theodosius concerning the Dream of Scipio. With this information our readers must also be satisfied. Porphyry's * 7 - We ^° not i nten d to follow this treatise into its details. We Aristotelian- are now launched on the ocean of Latinized Aristotelian dialectics. If we have become somewhat suddenly acquainted with its shoals and quicksands, we may at least hope that we shall have a better chance of not being wrecked on them hereafter. Porphyry is, in many respects, as convenient a guide, for our purpose, as Boethius considered him, for his countrymen in the fifth century. He occupied, as we have seen, a middle position between the pure BOETHIUS AGAINST THE ATOMISTS. 13 philosophers of the Neo-Platonic school and the Theurgists — always inclining to the former, but oftentimes driven into unwilling consent with their opponents. The natural issue of such a mind was in Aristotelianism. There he was safe from the necessity of investigating the problems of the spiritual world, of considering how daemons or gods hold converse with men. Yet, in the forms and conditions of the intellect, he can exercise the abstract talent which his master had cultivated in him ; he could feel that he was not dwelling amidst the sensible things which the theoretical man was to eschew. A mind like his, could very well stand on the edge Difference of Realism without plunging into it. He had learnt to think of the JSSbSuJS spiritual region as a substantial one. He had still the tradition of another higher region when he came down into that of names and terms. For a man bred up in actual business as Boethius was, such hesitation was difficult, almost impossible. The forms were to him ridiculous unless he could treat them as he did the things with which he was habitually conversant. Eealism was, as his argument shows so clearly, not the result of a process of reasoning, but an assumption from which he started. To have had a doubt on the matter, would have seemed to him monstrous. •" 18. In the preface to his larger commentaries upon his own Boetim com- translation of Porphyry, there are some passages respecting the porphyiiu" rise and use of Logic which the student will do well to compare » ** tansto- with the directly opposite views in the first book of the Novum Orga- num. He opens with a triple division of the human mind into the life which it has in common with the vegetables, the sentient life which it shares with other animals, the ratiocinative life which is Division of peculiarly and properly human. This last power, he says, is exer- faculties." cised in four ways, in inquiring whether something is, what it is, of what kind it is, lastly, why it is. The mind in virtue of this power, he says, is exercised in the fixed contemplation of things that are present, in the understanding of things that are absent, in the investigation of things unknown. It can conceive of things that do not fall under the senses. It can put names upon things that are absent. What it has perceived intellectually, it can Qnare express in words. This superiority of the ratiocinative faculty to eo?S e anl ^ m00n i an ^ stars, obey the eternal laws which He has given them; the lesser lights quietly yielding to the greater, the sisterorb increasing ordiminishing her horn according to a fixed ordinance, and paling her fires before her brother's brightness'} how it is that night and day succeed each other without disturbance and disorder ; that the cold of winter yields, at its predestined time, to the fervour of summer ; that the leaves which the north wind carries off, the zephyr renews ; that, in short, no one thing in all nature breaks loose from its ancient law, or deserts the work that belongs to its proper place ; but that He who governs all things with a fixed purpose, leaves the acts of man to the mercy of slippery fortune, which crushes the innocent with the punishment that is due to the guilty ; which enthrones perverse manners on high, and enables the wicked to trample on the necks of the just, so that virtue lies hidden in darkness, that lies and perjuries are profitable to those who practise them, that high kings before whom multitudes' tremble, own these as their masters. "Look down," he con-.' eludes, " on this miserable earth, whosoever thou art that holdestt together the bonds of nature. We that are not the worst part of thy great work, are tossed about by every wind and wave of fortune. Mighty Euler, control these waves, and make the earth ; firm with that law by which thou rulest the heavens!'' ': The tree 26. The divine visitor listens with calmness to this outpouring'.! Sntation. of grief and indignation, and then begins to compassionate the-' WHAT IS LOST AND SAVED. 19 Statesman, because he is suffering an exile into which no king or multitude could have driven him, an exile from his own heart's home and resting-place, Seeing that the evil is deeper than she had at first supposed, the gracious physician proceeds to apply such gentle remedies as the weak state of the patient will bear. She brings him to confess that he does not really know what Man is, what he himself is. But he is not to despair. He does recognize at least an order in nature, a Monarch over the world. That is a starting-point of good. From this small spark, true vital heat may be enkindled. Then, in free and lightsome song, she bids him cast away griefs, cast away fears, bid hope and sorrow go together. So will he have a clear eye to see the truth ; so will he be able, amidst a multitude of winding paths, to choose the right. 27. The next book introduces an ingenious argument to prove The govern- that Boethius has no cause whatever to complain of fortune. If he fortune! chooses to accept her as a mistress, he must submit to her ordinary maxims and rules. He knew beforehand what she was. What had she done to him which she had not done to every one of her votaries before ? She had been wonderfully liberal in her largesses to him, had given him wealth, friends, education, station. Let him count them up and see whether any man had ever a larger measure of the things which men value most. If they were gone, did not he know the tenure upon which they were granted ? All this is acknowledged as very reasonable, but it is complained of as quite ineffectual. After all these calculations, the pain of losing is in proportion to the preciousness of the things possessed. Philosophy reminds him that he is not desolate yet of his best treasures. His wife and children are still his, and dearer than ever. It is something to make him confess that he has no right The right to to complain of his whole state. How many are there who would considered, feel themselves almost in Heaven, if they had but the relics of his good fortune ? How few things taken from the stock of a man used to all indulgences, will make him miserable ! How little added to the stock of those who are unused to it, will make them happy ! The result is this ; is there anything that is more precious to thee than thyself? Then if thou art master of thyself, thou wilt possess that which neither thou wilt wish to lose, nor fortune will be able to take away. The victim of feeble, faltering, outward felicity, either knows that it is mutable, or does not know it. If he does not know it, how can he be happy, seeing that he is shut up in the prison of ignorance ? If he does know it, how can he be happy, since he must be continually tormented by fear ? Then comes an analysis of the different elements of this external felicity, worth of Is it money? But that you must part with before it is worth J™^ anything ; you wish to be rid of it, when you prize it most. Is it jj^ al the beauty of the surrounding world ? But this you cannot feme, ' 20 HiTPHTESS itfTD GOOD. being a philosopher. appropriate ', you may enjoy it, but it is not yours. Is it' the dignities and honours of the world ? But these come to the greatest villains; and since contraries cannot exist in harmony, it is impossible that they can have any good in themselves. Mime belongs to the musician, rhetoric to the rhetorician ; there can be no natural good in these things, seeing they have no natural affinity with the good man. Or is.it a. great name? Boethius confesses this weakness. He wants space and means for action, that the virtue which is in him may not wear, itself out and die in silence. Philosophy admits that this is the last infirmity of noble minds. But yet an Astronomer who has taken any account of the vastness of the universe, should consider within what contemptible limits the widest fame circulates. Cicero was born in the very maturity of Eoman glory, yet the fame of the Eoman Republic had not then passed the Caucasus. How far then could the name of its noblest citizen have travelled ? Perhaps, however, it is the fame of being a philosopher that he covets ? His monitress can tell him a good The glory of story about that ambition. A man who wanted to pass himself for a sage was told by a severe critic, that he should acknowledge him to be one, if he could bear injuries mildly and patiently. The aspirant exhibited patience under some affront, and then exclaimed, " Do you think that I am a philosopher now ?'' "I should have thought so," said the keen-sighted judge, "if you had held your tongue." But after all, so Philosophy concludes this portion of her lessons, " I have a good word to say for fortune as well as a bad one. There is a time when she acts as a real benefactress to man. When she smiles sweetly upon him, she is a liar ; when she changes her tone and proves her instability, she is always true. In her first shape she is tempting men away from the true good ; in her second she is bringing them back to it." 28. It will be remembered that there was another letter besides n upon the garment of Philosophy. She proceeds in the third book to show what was the meaning of that higher and more mysterious symbol. She is not content with showing that there is no satisfaction in those outward things which fortune presents. There is a meaning, and a very deep meaning, in the longing of men after them, in the variety of their longings, in the evidence which one could produce that that of the other is insufficient. There is a craving for Good, for the highest Good, in the heart, and will, and reason of men ; nay, all lower things, all the animals and forms of nature, are in their 'way, looking up to it and sighing after it. All men, all creatures, want happiness. They say happiness is the good they want. How many mists are scattered from their minds when they reverse the proposition, when they look upon the Good as itself their happiness, when they look upon that, as drawing up all other ends into itself, power, reverence, glory, joy ! when The search for good. GOOD AKD GOD. 21 they see that the' Good must be One, and that the One must be The good to God? That first confession of Boethius which he could not abandon Sme'with amidst all his scepticism about the ehances of man's life, that there Him wh ° was an order in Nature, and not an order only,. but an Orderer, an world, actual living Euler^— was not then in vain. That belief was a step towards the solution of his other and practical difficulty. This Kuler of nature, in whom is no disorder, no evil, is the Good of man, that which he is created to seek for and to participate in. And so this book is wound up with a song respecting Orpheus and Eurydice, which concludes with these remarkable words : — " ' We give thee back thy wife,' says the pitiful ruler of the shades, " ' we give thee her whom thou hast won by thy song. But let " ' this law control the gift. Till she has left Tartarus, turn not back Orpheus and "'thine eyes.' Who can lay down a law for lovers? Love is a ae^Sof " greater law of itself. Alas ! close to the very limits of night and the tale - " day, Orpheus looks upon his Eurydice ; he loses her ; she dies. To " you this fable refers, whosoever you are, who seek to draw your " minds towards the upper day. He who being overcome, shall turn "them towards the cave of Tartarus, loses the bright thing' that is "attracting him, while he gazes upon' that which is beneath.'' 29. All this is beautiful and divine,, our prisoner exclaims, and. New doubts. I was not altogether ignorant of it before. But the old doubt and misery recur." There is this good Ruler of the universe. But evil exists, exists, unpunished and rewarded. That this should be so, in the kingdom of a God who knows all things, can do all things, and who wills only good, one cannot wonder or lament enough. Philosophy at once grapples with the difficulty, admits that it would be a thing of infinite horror, beyond all conceivable monstrosities, if in the beautifully ordered house of such a parent and economist, vile vessels were honoured, and precious vessels were lying useless and dusty. Once admit that bad men are mighty and good men weak, and you must deny a righteous government altogether; But it is not so, says the celestial teacher.- I will undertake to show you that the good are always mighty, and the bad always feeble. Once lay hold on this truth and you will have wings which will lift you on high; you will return under my guidance, to your proper country and home. Boethius is astonished at the magnificence of the promise. Philosophy 'Evil essen- proceeds, by a Socratic or inductive process, to bring him to a "ally weak. perception of her principle. We will give the result. A man is weak who fails of obtaining that which .he iseeks after ; he is strong who reaches it. The appetite for Good has been proved to be in all men.. Every man wants Good, wishes to get it. The bad man is frustrated of this aim, by misunderstanding what it isj or by inclinations which draw him.aside from it. As we heard just now, > the Orpheus,. from, looking downwards. instead of upwards, loses 22 BLESSING OF JOTISHMENT. Evil always punished, good rewarded. Reward and punishment. The misery of the wickedness to continue wicked. his Eurydice. He who seeks Good, gains what he seeks. Can there be a greater test of his power ? For what does he seek but Good ? Wherein is he good, except as he seeks Good ? What reward can be so great as that of finding it? Here, then, is the solution of another difficulty. The evil man is unpunished, the good is unrewarded? No, verily. The evil man has the greatest punishment which it is possible for him to have ; he misses Good, he finds Evil. Or, does he find Good ? Then that draws him out of his Evil. He has got the thing which, as a man, he was to seek after ; but he has got the thing which, as an evil man, he was not seeking after. Any way the evil has been disappointed ; that has been punished. The old Platonic principle is true. Only the wise man is able to do that which he wills to do. The bad man does what he has a liking for ; but his desire is not accomplished ; he has not what he wills. Nothing is so mighty, we have agreed, as the highest Good. All that approaches that, and shares in its nature, has a portion of its might ; all that recedes from it, is imbecile. In the course of the argument, the great maxim is affirmed ; an evil man cannot be said, properly and truly, to be a man. That is, which retains its order and preserves its nature. We may call a carcase the remains of a man ; we cannot speak of it as if it were one. 30. In these words is implied a view of the nature of punishment as well as of blessedness, which the teacher proceeds to develop. It is in perfect accordance with the principle of Plato's Gorgias. For an evil man to escape punishment, is the most terrible of all punishments ; to be brought into punishment, that which he should most desire. The fixedness in evil, a permanent continuance in that, is the horror of all horrors. The threefold calamity of evil men, says the teacher, would be this : to have the will to do it, to have the power to do it, to accomplish it. " Granted, says Boethius. But oh that I could see them quickly deprived of this calamity, the possibility of perpetrating their crime !" "They will be deprived of that possibility, sooner than you, perhaps, may think, or than they themselves may think. There is nothing so distant within the short bounds of life, which an immortal spirit can count it long to wait for. Ofttimes the great hope and high machinery of wicked- ness is cast down by a sudden and unexpected overthrow, whereby the boundary of the misery (i.e. the misery of successful wickedness) is determined for them. For if iniquity makes miserable, the iniquitous man must be more miserable the longer he lasts. I should count him to be most wretched, if there were no ultimate death to terminate his wickedness. For if we have come to a true conclusion respecting the misfortune of depravity, it is clear that that which is an eternal wickedness, is an infinite misery." There is one passage in this inquiry which, though it is not much dwelt upon, THE PBIMABT AND SECONDABY OEDEB. 23 must be quoted by us, for its connection with thoughts which were to be more developed afterwards. " I pray thee, says Boethius, dost thou admit no punishment of souls after the death of the body ?" " Great ones indeed, answers Philosophy, some of which I judge to be exercised with the bitterness of retribution, some with purgatorial clemency." One sentence more we must quote from this part of the treatise. "Hence," says Philosophy, "it comes to pass " that among wise men, no place is left for hatred. For who, but " the most foolish, would hate the good ? To hate the evil is irra- Folly of " tional. For if, as languor is a disease of bodies, so all vice is a h8tred - " disease of minds : seeing that we do not consider the sick in body " worthy of hatred but rather of pity, much more are they to be " pitied, not pursued with hostility, whose minds that more terrible "disease is tormenting with every kind of feebleness." 31. The remainder of this 4th book is occupied with a discussion Fate and on Fate and Providence. The views of Boethius very closely resemble those of Proclus, of which we have given our readers some account. The generation of all things, says Philosophy, the whole progress of natures that are liable to change, derives its causes, its order, its forms, from the stability of the Divine Mind. This, fixed in the citadel of its own simplicity, hath devised a method in the conduct of things, which hath many varieties. When this method is contemplated in the purity of the Divine Intelligence, it is named Providence; but' when it is referred to those things which it moves and disposes, the Ancients called it Fate; which two will be easily recognized as diverse, by any one who has contemplated in his mind the force of both. For Providence is that divine Reason constituted in the highest Ruler, which disposeth all things. But Fate is that disposition inherent in things subject to movement, whereby Providence binds all things together in their own orders. Providence embraces all Fate always things equally, although diverse, although infinite ; but Fate directs JJ^idante. individual things, each to its own proper movement, distributing them in forms and times, " So that the unfolding of this temporal order becomes Providence, when it is harmonized in the perception of the Divine Mind ; and that same harmony, when it is distributed and unfolded in times, is called Fate. Which things, though they are diverse, nevertheless, one dependeth on the other." A little farther on she says: " That which departs farthest from the primary Mind, is involved in greater and closer bands of Fate ; conversely each thing is free from this Fate in proportion as it approaches nearer to the hinge and centre of things. Whatsoever clings to the firm- ness of the higher Mind, being freed from motion, rises also above How to rise the necessity of Fate. Therefore, what reasoning is to the intellect, aborefate - what that which is produced is to that which is, what Time is to Eternity, what the circle is to the centre, that is the moveable 24 BEEOBE AJSTD AETEB. The ends of the divine will may be known; its means we see but partially. Free-will and prescience. Eternity. Difference between eternity and innnity. series of Fate to the stable simplicity of Providence." Proceeding' from these great maxims, she maintains that however confused and disturbed things may appear to our eyes, nevertheless, there may be a Method which is directing all things to good. " For there is," she says, " a certain order which embraceth all things, so that what hath departed from the course that was marked for it, may, perchance, fall into another order, but still into an order, that nothing in the realm of Providence may be left to chance, or wil- fulness.'' But she adds reverently: " It is not right or possible for a man to comprehend in his mind, and explain in his discourse, all the mechanism of the Divine operations. Be it enough for us to have seen just this, that the same God who has called all natures into existence, disposes all, directing them to good; that He is eager to retain in the likeness of Himself, that which He hath produced ; that through that very course of fatal necessity, He is driving all evil out of the boundaries of His republic. " She draws' this practical inference from all that she has said. " All fortune must, be good to those who are possessing and pursuing virtue ; : all must be bad to those who are remaining in wickedness. It is in your hands to make fortune what you would have her be. For all which seems harsh, unless it either exercises or corrects, punishes." 32. The last book of the Consolations discusses at length the question of free-will and its relation to Prescience. Boethius declares his utter dissatisfaction with the ordinary attempts to reconcile' God's foresight with Man's freedom. Once attribute all will and all power to the Foreseer, and it seems to him utterly impossible to suppose that the knowledge of the future does not involve a decree respecting it We will give a portion of the answer which Philo- sophy makes, hoping that we may so tempt our readers to study the whole of it : — " That God is eternal, is the common judgment of all rational "beings Let us consider then what eternity is, for this may show us "both what is the divine nature and the divine knowledge. Eternity "then is the whole and perfect possession of interminable life; which > "we may apprehend, by. comparing temporal things with it. For - ^whatsoever lives in time, this being present, proceeds from past to "future ; and nothing is constituted in time, which can embrace at "once the whole space of its own life. It hath not yet apprehended "to-morrow, it hath lost yesterday ; in the life of to-day you live no . "longer than in the moveable and transitory moment. Whatever, . "therefore, suffers the condition of time, even though it neither ever "began to be, nor ever should cease to be, (as Aristotle supposed . "was the case with the world) and though its life should stretch into "an infinity of time, yet it is not such that it deserves to be called "eternal. For it does not comprehend and embrace the whole at THE STOMAET. 25 " once, even though it be that space of infinite life ; the future not " being yet accomplished, that it has not." He goes on to vindicate Plato from the charge of making the world eternal, pointing out the difference between the perpetuity which he supposed might belong to it, from the eternity which he vindicates only for God. And then he goes on : " Seeing then that every judgment takes in " the things that are subjected to it, according to the nature of him " who exercises it; seeing that there is always an eternal and present " state in God ; His knowledge also, transcending all motion of time, " dwells in the simplicity of its ever present ; He embracing all the " spaces of past and future, contemplates them as if they were now ',' carrying on in his own simple cognition. Therefore, if you will " weigh that present of His, wherein he knoweth all things, you will " not call it the pre -science of the future, but the science of that which Prescience " never ceases to be before Him. Therefore we do not call His dedicated of " government previdence but providence." The conclusion, therefore, SeinS"™ 1 is, that supposing we have good reason to speak of anything as necessary, or anything as free, we cannot be diverted from that belief by the notion of God's prescience. His knowledge deals with all things as they are, with those which He has constituted free, as free; and it is only by introducing a notion of time into His knowledge, which is inconsistent with his nature, that we fancy it to be otherwise. And this is the practical lesson from the whole matter, and the noble termination of a noble book. " Wherefore the liberty of will remains to mortals unviolated ; " nor are those laws unrighteous that hold forth rewards and punish - " ments to Wills that are tied by no necessity. There remains also " a Spectator from on high of all things, and the present eternity of " His vision, concurs with the future quality of our acts, dispensing « to the good, rewards, to the evil, punishments. Nor vainly are "hopes and prayers laid up in God, which, when they are right, ; "cannot be ineffectual. Wherefore, turn away from all vices, " cultivate virtues, raise your mind to right hopes, send up humble " prayers on high. Great, if you do not wish to deceive yourself, "is the need of a clear and honest heart, since you are acting under "the eyes of a Judge who discerneth all things;" 33. Our readers may ask, with some surprise, how it is that the Apparent man whom we have described, on what seems good evidence, as the StotreSa sturdiest, of Aristotelians, even more in the habit of his mind than from any sectarian bias, has begun, in his prison hours, to speak the language of a .Platonist, as if it were his native dialect. We have already opposed the hypothesis which divides the author of the Consolations from the author of the books on Arithmetic and on the Categories, and we are not ■ disposed to fall back upon it as the solution of this difficulty. We can trace, we think, the same style, the same intellectual peculiarities, the same conscientiousness, 26 THE SCHOIAE BECOME A LEAENEB. His humiliation. His own philosophy -will not profit him. in both classes of writings ; sides of the character of the Koman lawgiver and statesman appear in both. If Boethius had again' turned his thoughts to numbers or to names, he would have been as much an Aristotelian in his latter days, as he was in his earlier. But his practical and honest mind is brought into contact with questions, which predicaments and syllogisms do not help him to settle. He finds that, with all his dialectics, he is still a weak man. He had been more sagacious than his contemporaries. But it seems as if his sagacity had profited him little ; it not only had not preserved him from the malice of his enemies ; it could not teach him to bear that malice. He has done admirable things as a Minister of the Republic. When he recalls them to his mind, they deepen his despondency. He has been an excellent husband and father, therefore he has to suffer the loss of wife and children. We often fancy that the consolation of Philosophy, means the consoling thought that one is a philosopher and not like other people. That consolation which Boethius may have dwelt upon as much as any one in his sunny hours, utterly deserts him in his dark hours. His discontent and murmurings, his discovery how important external things have been, and are, to him, reduce him into one of the crowd ; before he can begin to ascend a step, he must sink lower than it seemed possible he could sink. And so he finds that he needs a hand to raise him out of himself, to set him above himself. He must be catechised, probed, exposed by one who knows him better than he knows himself. He must confess himself, apart from his guide and teacher, as helpless and worthless. He must trust and submit, in order to be exalted. Then, by degrees; he may be able to read the higher letter on the garment, as well as the lower. The teacher, who is with him and knows him, may guide him up to God. Theology cannot be a mere part of a scheme of sciences, something which is wanted for the sublime theoretic man, who has finished his circle of physical and human studies ; it is needed for the man himself, for the prisoner, for him who has found that he is not better than his fathers or his neighbours. This is the road by which Boethius arrives at his Platonism, a Eoman road cut out of the rock, because it was needed for actual use, for the soldier and the man to pass through. He demands a present Helper, he demands a divine Object, for his hope and trust. Such a One he has acknowledged as presiding over the world; such a One he finds must rule more directly over his own life, and be the end and good of it. .The righteousness a'guial 1 " 1 " 1 which the Senator has tried to practise imperfectly, he finds had its root and ground in One who practises it perfectly. The wisdom •which he thought belonged to himself, he finds must uphold him, guide him, correct him. He wants some better ideal than those of Genius, and Species, and Difference, and Property, and Accident. He needs COMTEESIOIT. 27 Art ideal he must have, and a substantial ideal. But the ideal must not be his own. It must come to him, and speak to him. He may escape from all Greek dsemonism as unworthy of his manlier race ; but he can only do so by confessing a Being whose substance and eternity are not deduced from time, or negations of time. He may not have consciously changed any old conviction on this subject ; but every one that he had before, has received a new character, has been translated into a higher meaning by the new knowledge which he has acquired of himself, of his weakness, of his necessities. 34. The conscience of men in the Middle Ages could not but why the perceive in this history of Boethius, that moral change, that turning doctors Age of the heart and will from fleeting and temporal things, to the thought this substantial, the living, and the true, of which the Scriptures spoke, book. and which all faithful preachers longed to be the instruments of producing in those who listened to them. Boethius described the. instrument who wrought this alteration in him, who brought him back from his wanderings to his proper country and home, as Philosophy. The expression was manifestly a wrong one, incon- sistent with his own previous belief, still more inconsistent with the processes of his own mind, as he records them. In a passage we have already quoted from his commentaries on Porphyry, he speaks of Philosophy as the love and pursuit of Wisdom, and assumes that there is a Wisdom implied in this pursuit, which is distinct from it. However dim that vision may have been to him whilst he was merely a schoolman, it acquired form and substance in his cell. Though he might represent his visitor and his judge in Philosophy language drawn from the imagination, the use of that language, but "resT"' and the tenor of his discourse, which is anything but fantastical, person. which is severely true, shows that he felt that he was not merely personifying, but that, in the strictest sense, his heart and mind were laid open to the scrutiny of an actual person. It was a timidity, an excusable honest timidity, which made him resort to an unscien- tific phrase, rather than profess more than he felt he had apprehended or could distinctly affirm. But those who were familiar with the language of the book of Proverbs, and of the Prophets, could not but feel that if he had spoken of Wisdom as actually coming to him and holding converse with him, he would have more expressed what he meant, he would better have explained what true Philo- sophy is, and what the reward of it is, than he could do by appearing to clothe a passion or habit of his own mind, with a substance which does not belong to it. Feeling, therefore, that the process which he described was such as He whom they confessed to be the Divine Wisdom and Word, effects in man, Christian teachers did not hesitate to speak of Boethius as a Christian sage, to sit at his feet and to learn from him as one who could explain 28 UOHYEBSION. to them divine, as well as human, mysteries. When they imputed to him a distinct recognition of Jesus Christ as the Incarnate Word and the Teacher of men, they distorted his phrases to their own wishes. When they confessed that He in whom they hoped and believed, had illuminated the spirit of Boethius, had led him by the path in which it was most accordant to his previous condition of mind that he should walk, into the apprehension of truths which all men need, and which are near to all ; they were rising above their own narrow and imperfect notions ; they were bearing one of the highest testimonies they could bear to the truth which they professed. And it is a subject for satisfaction, not for regret, that in collections of Doctors and Saints made in our own day, Boethius is still suffered to stand side by side with Popes, some of whom might not have been willing to stand side by side with him on earth, but who may, perhaps, rejoice if the Judge who discerneth all things permits them to stand with him in the world of light. Retnrn to 35. We hope our readers will not complain of us for violating Gregory. t j, e s t r i c t order of events, that we might introduce thein to a figure so remarkable in itself as that of Boethius, and occupying so remarkable a position between the eastern world and the western, between the old world and the new. We shall not detain them with any further notices of the time which elapsed between his death and the Popedom of Gregory the Great, but shall take up the history, where we left it at the conclusion of the last part, with the stirring annals of the 7th century. CHAPTER II. SEVENTH, EIGHTH, AND NINTH CENTURIES. 1. Pmr.osopriY pointed Boethius to -another letter on her vest, Philosophy different from that which denoted her own name. According to Theology! her method, the theologian must rise out of the ethical student ; his discoveries are the complement of those which had been made in the Academy or the Porch. The actual order of human train- ing, as the ages which followed Boethius set it forth to us, was the reverse of this. The n and the were to have the closest affinity The process with each other, to be woven on the same garment. But that which was hidden from the eyes of Boethius was to make itself apparent before the other; to manifest itself by its own light. 2. At the beginning of the 7th century, Constantinople, and its Constanti- monarch Heraclius, were occupied with a question in which the a°e ofHei'a- deepest mysteries of Metaphysics were involved with the deepest clius - mysteries of Divinity. The disputes concerning the two natures of Christ, which had agitated former centuries, had given way to the more awful dispute respecting the two wills which were in- dicated by His conflict and agony. If we looked at this controversy Th e jr ono _ from one side, we might pronounce it one of the most important jSJersv "" and serious in which men were ever engaged — the gathering up of all previous disputes respecting freedom and necessity, respect- ing the relation of the Divine Will to the human, respecting the struggle in the heart of humanity itself. All these arguments its ideal im- would seem to be raised to their highest power, to be tested by p 01 *""*- their relation to the highest Person, to have reached the point where profound speculation and daily practice meet and lose them- selves in each other. Contemplated from another side, this debate is worthy of all the contempt which indifferent onlookers bestow what makes upon it as upon every other great topic of divinity. For the per- s|^|g^,. in " sons who were engaged in it were utterly frivolous. For them the whole subject involved a theory, and nothing more — a theory in which the most violent passions might be engaged, but which demanded no faitb, which led to no moral act ; the controversy was the more detestable because such living interests seemed to be con- cerned in it, while it was in fact but an exercise for the subtlety of an exhausted, emasculated race which had talked and argued itself 30 THE TRANSITION PERIOD. Rule to be into inanition and death. The historian of human inquiries has ™t°clngde- no right to pause long upon this monothelite controversy, merely bates of this because he perceives how much was implied in it. He is to mea- sure debates not by their abstract importance, but by their effects on the world. He must wait therefore in faith, assured that what- ever truth is latent in the minds of mere inquirers will come forth with power, possibly in some very startling, tremendous form, to confound all who substitute intellectual conceits for living and personal realities. Greece ana 3. There were proofs in the reign of Heraclius, that the dormant Persia. energies of the Greek people might still be awakened ; but that the awakening must come from the battles of the world, not of the schools. Two old enemies were again brought face to face with each other. It was not the dualism of the Magians that struggled with the dualism of the Christians. The actual armies of Chosroes threatened Constantinople. For a while it seemed as if the em- pire of the East might pass into his hands ; in an incredible short time it seemed equally probable that his dominion would be" ex- tinguished by the new and miraculous energy which was infused Mahomet the mto tne representative of old Eoman greatness. Both expectations t? te Taib r t f were equally disappointed, by the appearance of a Conqueror whom ties of Ma- both despised. But his words and deeds carried out the moral of Christiana" 11 the previous history. Mahomet proclaimed an actual God to men who were disputing concerning His nature and attributes. Maho-> met affirmed that there was an actual will before which the will of men must bow down. 4. It was a tremendous proclamation. Philosophy shrinks and shrivels before it. All ethical speculations are concluded by the one maxim, that God's commands are to be obeyed ; all metaphy- sical speculations are silenced by the shout, first of a man, then of a host ; " He is ; and we are sent to establish His authority over the earth," Christian Divinity appears to be still more staggered by the message. All that was peculiar in it, all that was universal in de P stro e e?of a *'> an( * ^ a ff ecte d the life of the world, had been connected with the old faith the announcement of a Son of Man, who was also the Son of God. pnyofthe * The new teacher tramples upon that announcement, treats it as East p ar t of the old idolatry. If philosophy and Christian divinity have not hitherto been able to unite, have they not at least found a common enemy? Has not that enemy a commission to destroy them both ? restomnf* **" Mahomet, as we believe, had a commission to restore them the Greek both. Nothing could have raised the Byzantine Christianity out fiiltb- of the abyss into which it had fallen, but such a voice as that which came from the Arabian cave. That voice proclaimed the eternal truth which Greeks were disbelieving. It presented that truth in the only form in which it could have been practical, in which it BBSTBTTCMOH AND REVITAL. 31 could have told upon people who had talked about the divine and human nature, till they had lost all faith in God or man. What- Revival in ever Constantinople has done for the world — and it has done much J, D * e ^^ — since the days when Justinian collected the fragments of the after his old law together ; whatever thoughts Constantinople was able to *' me " express — and the forms of her architecture show that these were neither few nor insignificant — she owed to the impression which Mahometan life and zeal made upon her, to the positive instruction which they imparted to her, to the reaction in favour of her own convictions, which was provoked by their denials. The glorious defence of the city at the end of the 7th century is the first great sign of the revival of native strength. The Iconoclast battle of the ne contro- 8th century is a still more striking evidence of that twofold in- Ter "y c ™- /■ ' * corning fluence of the prophet s doctrine to which we have referred. The image wor- Isaurian monarchs who determined with so much of the resolution ship of their prototypes, that Christians should no longer have the stigma of breaking the second commandment, and who enforced the decree with so much of the same tyranny and recklessness ; the monks and the people, who rose with such passionate ardour to assert their right to their old symbols, and their belief that the strong feei- human form had been hallowed by its union with the person of *****& f*" h the Son of God, were separately and together testifying of the blessing which Mahometanism had conferred upon them. It was nothing like one of the miserable circus-fights of the 6th century. There was intolerance and passion; tyranny and rebellion; but there was faith and earnestness on each side. The conflict, though it bore witness of disease, bore witness also of a stronger health than the Greek empire had known for many centuries. 6. This collision of active principles was equally needed for the obligations life of Philosophy as of Theology. But the tendency of the Greek ? Mahomet to dissever speculation from practice, made it less likely that for Mm the fruits of the conflict in this direction would be very con- spicuous, or at least permanent. Constantinople did more for the Greere C n- rest of mankind than for its own subjects in communicating the "Med to help old lessons of Greek wisdom. The 'Arabian caught them, mixed than iievseh: them with his ancient lore, and started from a soldier into a scholar. Western Europe, which was much more affected in its political circumstances by the Iconoclastic controversy than the empire in which it arose, also received a decided impression from it and from Mahometanism in the character of its culture, although that culture was destined to be singularly Latin, Gothic, original. 7. Gregory the Great, of whom we have already spoken, may How far the have been said, in one sense, to have anticipated Mahomet in the g 0rv the proclamation of a Will to which nations must submit, and of which ^d J h *^" armed men must hold themselves the servants. It was as much Mahomet. the thought of his mind to subdue the rude tribes of the West, 32 LATIN GOVERNMENT. Temper of the race* which he sought to subdue. Goths and Cel:s. The Saxon Kings and the Roman Priests. The Saxon asks for spiritual domination. exulting in their strength and in their native traditions, under the divine order and government, which he believed was exhibited in the Son of Man, as it was the thought of Mahomet's mind to make all the established societies and worships of the East stoop to the one Lord, of whom he proclaimed himself the prophet. In carrying out that purpose, Gregory would have been willing to make Rome, in the one division of the earth, what Mecca became for the other ; he would have been glad that its decrees should be established as firmly as any which Mahomet said that he was appointed to deliver. Without any scheme of personal ambition, he would have believed that this was the best and safest con- dition for Europe and for the world. There was much in the condition of the West which favoured his purpose, much to thwart it. It is curious, and worthy of remark, that the helps to it lay in the character of the Gothic tribes which were afterwards to be the great antagonists of Latin supremacy. The Gothic spirit is essentially a kingly one; it rejoices in all exercises of will and authority ; it always prefers government to thought. It was equally observable, that the hindrances to Roman rule arose in a great measure from the tendencies which belonged to the Celtic race. There we might have expected sympathy with sacerdotal rule, for the mind of the Celt is cast in a sacerdotal mould ; he has far more reverence for the priest than for the king ; to priestly influences, in one form or another, he has owed both his civiliza- tion and his ignorance, both his freedom and his slavery. But the reflective, contemplative character which is seen in the Brahmin of the East, and the Druid of the West, has little sympathy with laws. Words of command do not speak directly to his conscience, but through his affections and his fears. The Celtic culture, though wanting the freedom and humanity of the Greek, had much of its speculative uplooking quality. It is always in search of an object which is hidden ; it does not readily submit to a power which has made itself manifest. 8. These observations receive one of their earliest and most striking illustrations in our own country. The strength of Gre- gory's Missionaries lay among our Saxon kings, and in the feelings of the people, which responded to their government. The influ- ence spread downwards from the royal household English Chris-, tianity, from the beginning, was eminently national. Considering how little there was of the national spirit in Augustine and his followers, considering how completely they were the representa- tives of a man and a Church that would have wished to crush nationality, the result is remarkable. But it must be observed, at the same time, that this very circumstance favoured the eccle- siastical assumptions of the Missionaries and of the Pope. The Saxon wanted such a dominion over the spirit, which he had just. KINGS AND PRIESTS. S3 learnt to consider the mightiest part of him, as he already con- fessed over his outward acts. He desired that his thoughts should be marshalled as his troops were marshalled. He longed for some one to tell the restless powers within him what the centurion told his servant, to go where they should go, to come where they should come. On the other hand, the Celts of Wales and of Ireland, who were already christianized, who, we might have fancied, would have been eager to fraternize with the new comers, who had so few national prejudices, so little of national order to keep them apart from foreigners, whose sympathies would have so much more inclined them to priestly ascendency than to any a sacerdotal other, were utterly unable to recognize the demand which was jjjjjjjj£ t ab _ made upon their obedience, could tolerate no Latin yoke, could posed tote not the least understand the arguments by which they were urged g0Te to part with old traditions for the sake of Christian unity. 9. It is a mistake to suppose that these facts concern only the ecclesiastical or the general historian. The historian of philosophy is especially obliged to take notice of them. There had been, it is evident, a Celtic culture of a curious and interesting kind in the monasteries of Ireland and Wales, long before any Saxon schools were established under the influence of the Roman teachers. Mo- dern French historians have spoken of Pelagius, the Welchman, as Pelagius. a great champion of spiritual freedom. We do not agree with them, if they mean to affirm that the doctrine which has been associated with his name has been favourable to manly strength, or brave resistance to oppression and wrong. With all its fierce- ness and severity, the Augustinian doctrine seems to us to have 6up p rter of been, on the whole, in closer alliance with moral energy, with.hopej joral free- even with liberty, than its milder opposite. But in so far as Pelagianism is the resistance to the assertion of a dominant will, in so far as it contemplates man as rather climbing up to God than as receiving his state and position from Him, so far it represents very accurately what we take to have been the predominant Celtic tendency, that to which the Saxon and the Latin were for different inefficiency reasons equally opposed, that which when they understood each teachers! other they would conspire in putting down. How far the mere doctrine of Pelagius was diffused among the Celts, how far Celtic influences have conspired to make it the element which it unques- tionably became in the after history of Christendom, we may not be able to ascertain. But we may assume that something of the habit of mind which it indicates was prevalent in the schools to whicli the pre-Gregorian Christianity gave birth. And if so, one can understand very well why that Christianity was not likely to pro- duce any great effect in shaking the old Saxon traditions, however much it might mingle in their faith and leaven their education, after they were converted. ■ . < D 34 THE SCHOOLS. The new 10. It was daring the time that the Mahometan armies were OEa&wL advancing with their resistless might over the kingdoms of the East and of Egypt, that our island was gradually rising out of its Paganism, and acquiring its second civilization from Soman hands. That second civilization resembled the first, in that it was carried on by a mighty organizing authority, which reduced the different Barbaric elements it encountered into something like coherency. How fay it j t resembled the first in that it would never allow native feelings resembled . . ... . . ° the earlier and habits to interfere with the subjection to the central govern- Son. clvU " ment, in that it dealt cautiously and humanely with all those habits when they accepted that primary condition. But the new civil- ization, which was conducted by teachers and not legions ; which had to subdue a manly and warlike people, possessing convictions and purposes of their own, not an effeminate and degraded people over-ridden by a learned caste ; a civilization above all which had the principle of a divine Humanity for its basis ; could not be of that external superficial character which the first had been. For the splendid dwellings, and baths and porticos, which had made the British colony one of the most remarkable evidences of what such governors as Agricola could effect among a people ignorant of all the arts and comforts of life, the new Roman cultivators of Monasteries: the Saxon soil substituted monasteries and schools in which men and boys were treated as spiritual beings connected with an in- visible economy ; in virtue of that high calling, able to till the earth out of which they had been taken. th le scif y ta f ^ ' ^ e S rounc l °f *his teaching was unquestionably theological. It was a kingdom of God, into which the scholar was invited to enter. God himself was calling him into that kingdom. The theology was of course essentially Christian ; the human studies received their tone and impress from the belief in a Son of Man. But Boethius, whose mind had so little of a theological basis, and was at least three-fourths pagan, supplied the material with which The course the Church Doctors worked. That scheme of studies which he of stadiesde- had wrought out with so much skill and elaboration from Aristotle Bocihiua 1 and Porphyry, and to which he had imparted his own Roman char- acter and force, reappeared in the schools of Britain. Arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, assumed the places, or very nearly the places, which he had assigned them. Other arts were con- templated in reference to these ; their worth and dependence on each other were ascertained by the same rules. It would be unwise to suppose that the monks of the 8th century had any theory about these studies, or that they understood upon what maxims the curriculum had been marked out by the Minister of Theodoric. tube adopted They adopted it no doubt as a Soman tradition; they carried it to ptopie!""" 1 ttle far West > ^ they carried other Roman traditions. They found little in the Saxon mind which it was necessary to propitiate, when Education. WOEDS AND ACTS. 35 this particular form of instruction was proposed to it. There was, we conceive, a suitableness in it to the time and to the previous condition of the people among whom it came. No other discipline would have reduced their minds into form as rapidly or as effec- tually. It may even be doubted whether any other would have done as much, for the freedom and the energy of their spirits. 12. This assertion may sound surprising after what was said in VaineofLo- the last chapter respecting the tyrannical ascendency which logic SeVdriui- assumed in the mind and in the plans of Boethius. But the 8tion - whole character of this tyranny is changed by the introduction of what, some will call, another and more tremendous tyranny. The assertion of a divine Will which orders all things, but which acts directly upon men, which addresses itself, first of all, to the springs of thought in them — this assertion, so long as it is earnestly be- lieved, makes it impossible for a man to feel himself subject to certain forms of the intellect ; he may not have the distinct con- sciousness of anything in himself which surmounts them, but he cannot bow down before them while he practically confesses a higher and living authority. What purpose, then, does the study of these intellectual terms and conditions serve ? It protects him from the suspicion, always ready to start up in his mind, that the divine Will which he confesses is a mere arbitrary power, recog- nizing no laws, bidding him perform certain services, execute cer- tain commands. The Will which the Mahometan warrior and How the be- the Christian warrior, so far as he only adopted the Mahometan S,^w5icon"- principle, felt that he must obey by smiting down the Lord's ene- gl^TS^ mies, became an educating Will, which might be obeyed as rev- teachingand erently and as punctually by the student, while he examined into teDden(! y- the modes which it had prescribed for his speech and his thought. 13. The frequenter of the monastic schools, it must not be for- The moral gotten, came to them as God's soldier, who was to learn to fight m ^ el - with words, as other soldiers fought with swords. Everything about him suggested the thought of a battle, and led him to re- gard his peculiar weapons with a reverence which might easily become excessive and dangerous. Whatever he studied had to do au studies with words ; not rhetoric only, but astronomy and geography must become *° be learned through them. No doubt there were counteractions vectai. not only in the sensuous worship, but even in these studies them- selves. The astronomer could never quite forget that there were actual stars over his head ; the still calm evening was felt in the cloister ; looked in through the windows of the church. Music spoke of a kind of intercourse for the human spirit to which words might minister, but to which they were not essential, and were always subordinate. Still it can scarcely be said that the lively talking Athenian, in the days when sophistry was most rife — or the grave Roman of the Republic, in the days when the oratory 36 ENGLISH mFLTTEIirCE. of the Forum was most effective — was more in danger of becoming the victim of words, than the Christian student who saw all around him the trophies which the speaker had won over the helmet and the spear. If he had not been reminded by his studies that words themselves are subject to laws ; if logic and grammar had not be- come the principal and most characteristic parts of his culture ; he would have been more liable than he was, to abuse them as mere instruments of his craft. The protection might be very inadequate, the science itself might help at last to foster the tendency which it was designed to check. Then, we may be sure, there would be a rebellion ; it would be, perhaps, hurled with dangerous precipi- tancy from its throne ; that which it had kept down would be exalted. But, in the meantime, let us understand what it did for the education of Christendom, and be thankful. Passage to 14. The remarks we have made refer especially to our own tur)-. Cen " country, for a reason which we have "given already. England par- ticipated much more obviously and immediately in what we have ventured to describe as the Christian side of the Mahometan revo- lution, than the other great countries of Europe. M. Guizot, in his History of French Civilization, has pointed out with admirable fairness how much the efforts of British missionaries in Germany prepared the way for the great political revolution iu France, and anticipated the victories over the Pagan Saxons by Charlemagne. With equal truth, he has made an assertion which is less agreeable to our national vanity, that the Anglo-Saxon Church was far more directly under the influence of Eome than the Gallican Church ; and that no men contributed to establish that influence over Europe Boniface and more than Boniface and the other great English Christianizers of missionaries the land from which their fathers sprung. Far from dissembling wa P iorC&ar- that fact, we would proclaim it, since without it the distinctive lemagne. character of our Anglo-Saxon cultivation, and its influence upon the cultivation, especially upon the philosophy, of other countries cannot, we think, be appreciated. We use the words Anglo-Saxon' strictly, because we shall have presently occasion to show that there was another cultivation, another philosophical influence, of a very different kind, which proceeded from one part of our country.' But it was this of which we must first speak, seeing that it is very remarkably connected with Christendom generally, and with France particularly, in that great crisis when the monarch of the Franks became the restorer of the Roman Empire in the West, influence of 15. M. Guizot has shown with great skill and power that the chariS™** dynasty of Charlemagne, which it has been the fashion to repre- ?f " "tilL sent M so transitory, did in fact produce the most permanent effects t..ire de la upon the condition of Christendom. At the same time he con- IjeYa France, siders there is a justification of the ordinary opinion in the fact y.ii.Leson20. that the most glaring and startling part of his policy, that which CHEISTENDOM IN ITS NEW SHAPE. 37 makes most impression upon the imagination, was the part which faded most rapidly away. His victories over German Pagans and over Saracens, his capitularies, his schools, were to affect for ever the civilization of the world ; the empire itself was soon dispersed into the elements out of which it was unnaturally compacted. It is not inconsistent with this observation — it is a natural deduction from the observations which M. Guizot has made The Empire on Charlemagne as the introducer of the monarchical principle into sary to the a society which was utterlyloose and disjointed from the want of it, — °J SK'S^ if we observe that the conception of the empire is almost insepar- able from those results which are so justly affirmed to have been a possession for all ages. The fragmentary world which we see in the West before the commencement of the 9th century, could present no front to that Eastern world to which the faith of Mahomet had given organization; no, not even after that world had divided itself into its various portions, after it had been proved that the elements of schism existed in the hearts and the breasts of those who proclaimed the one God and the one prophet. The Abbassides, the Ommyiades, the Fatamites, had each a cohesion, and therefore a strength, which was exhibited in no nation of the opposing faith. The question had to be resolved, whether there could be a bond in any nation, or in all the nations, which con- fessed the Son of God, as close as that which held the Islamites together. Upon the answer to this question, if we have stated the case rightly, depended not merely the political condition of Western Europe, but quite as much its internal growth and education : the belief of an all-ruling Will was as necessary for the formation of schools as for the subjugation of feudatories. The people would have been as little taught as they would have been governed, if the possibility of such a supremacy had not been asserted. The form which the assertion took, was derived, no doubt, from the self-will and ambition of a man, and therefore could not abide. Yet, as his self-will and ambition served to counteract another The Empire which was equally dangerous — as the experiment of an empire at pJJ^Sn. once explained, upheld and checked the experiment of a Popedom — it had its worth, and it survived in new and varying forms after it hact been proved to be artificial, and full of danger as well as weakness. While it lasted, it gave a tone to the mind and thought of the age, which remained and became stronger and more distinct in subsequent ages. 16. Charlemagne was in fact carrying out the idea which *]^ the Gregory had done so much in his day to substantiate — carry- ctiaries in ing it out in that new shape which the antagonism of Islam orgS*. suggested, carrying it out with the aid of that country which was *'»"• the great trophy of Gregory's zeal, and upon which he had im- pressed so much of his character. We should be suspicious ' 38 TRAINING OF A TEACHEE. of our own patriotic leanings in the emphasis which we put upon this last fact, if the eminent Frenchman, to whom we have just alluded, had not attached even more importance than we should be willing to attach to the influence of Alcuin of York upon the schools of Gaul ; and if we were not conscious of rather a disin- Character of donation to celebrate the praises of that worthy ecclesiastic. A man deficient in originality and depth of thought, who incurred little odium, who seems to have suffered little in his own mind, who knew all that was to be known in his time, who wrote graceful prose and tolerable poetry, who had abundance of civil offices and ecclesiastical patronage, who was the tutor of princes and the favour- ite of monarchs, who lived very comfortably and died very rich — such a man is not one whom we need go out of our way to eulogize, or whom we are eager to reckon in the roll of the heroes whom England has nourished and sent forth. When we speak of him it is not to claim any merit for him or for ourselves, but simply to His influence show why the education he had received prepared him to be the g?fts! uetoluS minister of a man immensely his superior in genius; why Charle- magne found in a school of Northumbria a teacher not as able as many in his proper dominions, but far fitter than any of them to give that form and character to the schools of the empire which Charlemagne would have desired that they should assume. Aicuin's idea 17. Charlemagne's work was to bring an anarchy into an order, more royal to show the warring races over which he ruled, that they were IsHcaT " under a law which could and would be enforced. The education of a devout monk, bent upon subjecting the minds of men or of children to the rule of his order, would not have conspired with this purpose ; that rule would have been altogether different in kind from the rule or law of the kingdom ; the respect for one -would. have clashed with the respect for the other. The education of a philosopher, making it his primary and definite object to awaken the energies and faculties of his pupils, might have raised up remarkable men, but would not have constructed a school that would have been the model of a state, and the preparation for it. a teacher of Alcuin had been trained in the schools of Britain ; under royal, Iaws ' quite as much as monastic influences ; in a Roman discipline. He had been taught first of all that moral laws were to be obeyed because they proceeded from the highest Lawgiver ; next he had been tutored in the laws of logic and grammar, as derived from the same authority. He was just enough of a questioner to be able to understand for him- self what others imparted 5 not enough of one to be embarrassed with a LaBnist, any serious mental perplexities. He was enough of an Englishman nnderTaxon to ^ ee * ^ e in nuence of English government and institutions, and discipline, to take an interest in the disputes of the English sovereigns ; he was not enough of one to be hindered from receiving a purely Latin culture, or from writing a Latin style, in which are few TSE MONARCH AT SCHOOL 39 rugged native idioms : he could dwell happily on a soil remote from that of his birth, and in an empire governed by maxims un- like those under which he had grown up. With nothing irregular or angular in his intellect or character, well-natured, well-nurtured, even and tame, he was the very ideal of a court tutor in the best sense of the word ; one who might perhaps have sunk into a mere machine, in usum Delphini, in the age of Louis XIV. ; but who was quite competent to receive an inspiration from the mind of a Charle- magne, and to fill up the blanks which his sagacity perceived, and his ignorance could not supply. 18. Amidst the mass of Alcuin's writings, in which there is Asaschooi- " carefuiij- for commencing our observations on that author, by a few criticisms both for tie upon this lecture, having a strong persuasion that most of our ^ f p ^ f readers will be already acquainted with it, and urging those who the time. 46 BEPBESENTATIYE MEN. are not to read it along with our observations. Though it must influence them, like all the words of so eminent a writer, we believe that the mistakes of a real student of history are more in- structive than the accurate statements of inferior observers. toCMUza 6 26. M. Guizot has selected Hincmar and Johannes Erigena as tion en embodying, one the theological, the other the philosophical, ten- a™ < M4 0L dencies of the time. In his previous Lecture he had, however, shown very clearly that Hincmar has no claim whatever to the position which he has here, for the convenience of finding a "re- ^tStau fond presentative man,'' assigned him. Hincmar is the acute ecclesiastical pentheoio- politician and ruler of his time ; almost any of his contemporaries, d^gouveme- Paschasius, Godeschalchus, Kabanus Mauras, we should imagine, litfpratique wou 'd have served better to illustrate that " element thiologique" dominaient which he is called in to show forth. We might therefore be less n"avaitpas surprised to find, notwithstanding M. Guizot's ordinary caution, ™iSi* res that the other " representative man" — he who is to exhibit the tine etude , t , , , . tresatten- opposite element to the tneologique — does not exactly sustain his 2l%}£j& i P art - Bit we will consider the reasons which have determined the able manager to select him for it. Arguments 27. 1st, There is strong evidence that Johannes Erigena was prove that a Greek scholar; was acquainted with the writings of Aristotle, and Johannes eV en Plato, and attached a very high value to them. We certainly wasaPhilo- ... ' , . , / ° . _, J sopher and are not disposed to gainsay this assertion. But we venture to re- giau aTheol °~ mark that, to all appearance, Alcuin, who was an orthodox and popular theologian, was better acquainted with Greek, and even with Greek philosophers, than Johannes. The latter was a man of genius, or almost a man of genius, and therefore any remarks he makes upon the ancients are more interesting and suggestive than those of an accomplished pedant ; but as far as mere acquaintance with Greek letters goes, there is no question about Alcuin's superiority. We will appeal, therefore, to M. Guizot himself, and the statements in his lectures, whether on this ground any suspicion would have attached to Erigena, whether he might not have quoted Greeks and supported himself by their au- thority, without being supposed by others, or imagining himself, to be less theological than his neighbours. 2d, The second argu- His Greek ment is drawn from an attack made upon Johannes by Floras, knowledge, pjjggj. f t ]j e church of Lyons, from a sentence upon him by the council of Valentia in 855, and another of the council of Langres Judgment of in 859. The passage from Florus, quoted by Guizot, does un- nents? 10 " questionably charge our author with opposing the doctrine of Godeschalchus, "by arguments purely human, or, as he boasts, philosophical." This accusation is mixed with others, describing him as a vain coxcomb, who supposed he was saying something new and magnificent, while he was really an object of contempt and ridicule to all faithful readers who were exercised in sacred MODEBN VIEWS OF TnE OLD WOKLD. 4.7 learning. What possible inference can be deduced from these commonplaces of controversy which are to be found repeated, with scarcely a variety of expression, by every religious scribe, from the 9th century to the 19th, who has been obliged to eke out a small capital of knowledge with vituperation, or who has found from experience the last to be more available for his purposes than the former ? The sentence of the Council which Guizot has pro- duced does not contain any accusation of philosophy, and affects to treat Johannes as really deficient in the secular literature for which his admirers gave him credit. 3dly, A passage is quoted from Johannes Scotus himself, upon which the lecturer grounds this decisive appeal to the judgment of his class. " N'est ce pas la His own evidemment le langage d' un homme, philosophe bien plus que theologien, qui prend dans la philosophie son point de depart et s'efforce de la confondre, de la concilier du moins, avec la Keligion, soit parcequ 'en effet il les considere comme une seule et meme science soit parcequ' il a besoin du bouclier de la religion contre les atta- ques dont il est 1'objet?" The class having only the extract which M. Guizot furnished them with, could make but one answer to this demand. We shall endeavour presently to give our readers an analysis of the largest and most elaborate work of Johannes, which will enable them to judge for themselves whether he was more a philosopher or a theologian, whether his starting-point was theo- logy or philosophy, whether he used his philosophy to explain away his theology, or to bring out what he conceived to be the fullest meaning of it. 28. M. Guizot is not sufficiently satisfied with the evidence on Another ar- this subject which is supplied by his decisive quotation, to dispense 8 nmellt with other proofs. The next is drawn from a passage of Johannes Mode of in- respecting the interpretation of Scripture. It is a very short one. {Jj§2?{* How it bears upon the context of the book, we shall have to ex- plain hereafter ; but it supplies an ample ground for another of those rapid conclusions to which the lecturer demands the assent of his pupils : — " Qui ne reconnSit la un effort, bien souvent tente, pour echapper a la rigueur des textes on des dogmes, et pour intro- duce dans l'&ude de la religion quelque liberte d'esprit sous le voile de l'explication et de l'allegorie?" Now, we happen to dis- approve very strongly both of the allegorical method of treating Scripture, into which Origen and others have fallen, and of that method which was adopted by Johannes Scotus, and is indicated in the sentence M. Guizot has quoted from him. But we do not admit, The Aiiego- lst, that the allegorical method, much as we dislike it, was devised " Mlmetl "' i by Origen or any other person, for the sake of escaping from the rig- our of texts and dogmas. It was chosen in hope of arriving at a deeper and more inward sense of texts; from the conviction that they meant more, not less, than the popular expounders had supposed 48 NEOPLATONISM EETITEB. The accom- modating method. Illstorical reason. Keoplatoni- cal Chris- tianity. L n ose state- ments re- specting the Alexandrian Tisachers. them to mean. Arid, 2d, we affirm that the method of Johannes Scotus is not this, but is one in all respects most unlike it. He de- fends with great ability, and for really profound reasons, what has become the most popular, most vulgar, of all schemes of treating the divine oracles, that which supposes the acts and feelings attributed to God in Scripture, to be accommodations to the notions and habits of men. How he. fell into an opinion which seems to us philologically,- morally, theologically unsound, our readers will discover presently. But we shall have to defend ourselves rather than him from the charge of abandoning a customary and recognized maxim. If we could not trace the existing practice by a clear and lineal de- scent to other ancestors than Johannes, we should be obliged to retract what we have said about the slight apparent influence which he has exercised upon the thought of the modern world. Half the pulpits in England, and probably in France also, would be liable to the imputation of philosophy if this were one of the signs of it ; we should affix that scandalous imputation upon men who are as clear of it, as Florus, the priest of Lyons, himself. 29. Our lecturer proceeds with a statement which will be some- what astonishing to those of our readers who have acquainted them- selves with the history of the Alexandrian school. To understand the position of Johannes Scotus, he declares that it is necessary to give a rapid view of the relations between Neoplatonism and Christianity. "Des le second siecle," he says, "il se fit, entre les deux doctrines, entre les deux ecoles rivales, quelques tentatives de conciliation on plutot d'amalgame. Saint Clement d'Alexandrie (mort en 220) Origene (de 185 a 254) sont des disciples de la philosophie Alexandrine, des n£oplatoniciens devenus chretiens, et qui essaient d'accommoder leurs doctrines philosophiques aux croyances chretiennes qui se developpent et prennent la consistance d'un systeme." We could scarcely wish for a more remarkable example of the way in which a learned and honest lecturer may mislead his disciples, and convey a totally false impression of facts, when he attempts to gather up into a few sentences the history of as many centuries. To say that Clemens and Origen were Neopla- tonists become Christians ; when Neoplatonism, as we know it, was only beginning to form itself in the secret teachings of Ammonius Saccas; when it had not yet expressed itself in any of the statements of its real founder Plotinus; when Clemens notoriously derived his direct instructions from PantEenus, who had been brought up a Stoic; when there had been for two centuries a school in Alexan- dria, deriving its origin from Philo the Jew, whose habits of thought had been adopted by at least one large body of Christians ever since the gospel was proclaimed ; is surely to twist dates, events,- and the faiths of living men, into the support of a baseless' theory. •: PIOTJS FBATTDS. 49 80i Starting from such a point of view, it was impossible that Alleged at- the history which follows could be very accurate. The statement cSarize that there was a great battle between Neoplatonism and Chris- P eo ? la !S"" tianity, that the latter remained master of the field, that many 5t™ century, philosophers of the falling school, who had become, or were about to become Christians, sought to mix their ancient opinions with their new faith, is of course, as to its bare outline, indisputable. But what an utterly false notion must the well-informed lecturer have conveyed to his less informed pupils, when he speaks of cer- tain writings in the 5th century, as — " Merits dont le dessein est evidemment de faire penfetrer dans la theologie de Saint Athanase, de Saint Jerome, de Saint Augustin, les idees et la forme de la philosophie expirante qui pouvaient s'y accommoder." Leaving Jerome out of the question, who, however, began by being a dis- ciple of Origen before he was converted into his bitterest opponent, we think we gave our readers proofs in the earlier portion of this treatise that the mind of Athanasius was already penetrated with Athanasius the thoughts which these writers of the 5th century so unneces- f? 1 *^ 118 ™" • ■,-,■< i .« . ,. t i -.. - J t * i tine more sanly laboured to infuse into him ; that they did not hang loosely professedly about him as an appendage to his theology, but entered into the thin ttauew very substance of it. We hope we have made them perceive also H^?™" that Augustine, more than any man, had his starting-point in . philosophy, and that it was his deep and personal interest in philo- sophical questions which drove him to Christian theology. These writers of the 5th century, whom we believe, with M. Guizot, to have been very numerous, were therefore undertaking a very superfluous task. They might mean to philosophize Christianity, or to Christianize philosophy. They were in fact doing neither ; they were mixing together a weak, miserable compound of their plagiarisms own, out of which all the life both of philosophy and Christianity ™* h ^^ had been extracted. When this was not absolutely the case, they gamators. were at best gathering together some of the higher thoughts and speculations of former days, which they were so conscious did not belong to themselves, and had received from them nothing but corrupt additions, that, with a strange mixture of fraud and honesty, they gave the credit of them to some man of former days, who had considerable celebrity, or had fortunately left no writings with which those ascribed to him could be compared. 31. The great sufferer by this treatment was Dionysius the ^"7™^. Areopagite, who is mentioned in one sentence of the Acts of the gite. Apostles. As his history is curiously connected with that of the 9th century, and of Johannes Erigena particularly, M. Guizot de- votes some space to the illustration of his life. He makes up for the paucity of his materials by quoting from the 17th chapter of the Acts, the whole narrative of St. Paul's visit to Athens, and of his discourse there, as if it were merely a prologue to the last verse, E 50 FAME OP THE ABEOPAGITE. The slight notices of itimin Scrip- ture, and in tiie Fathers. The Pseudo- Dionysius professedly much more theological than philo- sophical. Admiration of Johannes for Maximus, and for Gre- gory oi'Nazi- anzum. which announces the conversion of Dionysius. No ordinary stu- dent or commentator, we believe, has ever read it under that im- pression. An unknown woman, named Damaris, is mentioned in the same clause with the Areopagite. St. Luke does not appear to have attached more importance to one than to the other ; at all events he never alludes to Dionysius again. Lydia, the seller of purple, who was converted at Philippi, is a more conspicuous per- son in the Apostolic narrative. That Justin, who spent much of his time in Greece, and that Dionysius of Corinth, should refer to him is natural. But the hints respecting him which can be gathered from the Fathers are very lew, nor is there the least reason, except the mere fact of his being an Athenian, for supposing that he was looked upon as specially philosophical; whereas Justin himself, and Athenagoras, notoriously had that character. What is more important, the impostor who took his name in the 5th century, does not appear at all to have con- sidered him in that light. The books which he forged, as their very names indicate, have a certain importance for the theologian, though more on account of the influence which they exerted after- wards than for their own sakes. The historian of philosophy, un- less he had very great leisure and space at his command, could never find an excuse for dwelling upon them. They are connected, no doubt, at certain points, with Alexandrian or Neoplatonist philo- sophy, precisely because that in its later stages was so identified with theology and theurgy. The fact, then, that Johannes trans- lated these books and that his mind received a powerful direction from them, instead of being an evidence that he was a pupil of philosophers rather than of theologians, makes all the other way. Possessing the knowledge which he had of Aristotle and Boethius, and regarding them with the greatest admiration, he nevertheless resorted as his special teacher to a third-rate writer on the celes- tial hierarchy and on mystical theology. 32. The fancy that Dionysius was the Apostle of Gaul and the first Bishop of Paris, which was so much diffused in the 9th cen- tury, explains, as M. Guizot himself tells us, the importance which was attached to his name in the French church, apart from his merits either in one character or another. In translating him, Johannes was gratifying his patron, Charles the Bald, and the taste of his contemporaries, quite as much as he was following his own instincts. But there is another person accidentally mentioned in this lecture, (merely as an annotator on Dionysius,) to whom he was not attracted by any such motives. This was Maximus, a Greek divine, whose name occurs very frequently in his great work, and for whose opinions he expresses deference. Now, the work of Maximus which he translated, and which he praises, is a commen- tary on some difficult passages in the writings of Gregory of Nazi- THE BIVAL SYSTEMS. oi anzum. To him there are very frequent allusions in the books De Divisione Natures. But Gregory was X xt i%oxvji/, a theologian. No doubt he had a philosophical education at Athens ; but the use he made of his philosophy was to refute the Arians, and those who, like his fellow-pupil Julian, deserted Christianity for philosophy. Of this emperor, as the representative of the Neoplatonists, we have always considered that Gregory spoke with an asperity and un- fairness which are unworthy of his general character. 33. In spite of this fact, M. Guizot proceeds to prove, by two or Gnizot's three broad statements, that Johannes was really attached to this to-prov™" defunct party in those points wherein it was opposed to Christianity. J*"? 1 !? jL These statements, as they involve the characteristic signs of a rather than a philosophy wilh which we have been so much occupied in the Christian, previous part of this sketch, as well as the characteristics of the faith which all the teachers of the Middle Ages regarded as divine, must needs concern our subject more, even than the conclusion to which they lead. How important they are, and how entirely they contradict some of the facts which it has been our duty to lay before our readers, they will perceive when we quote the following sentences : — " Le Neoplatonisme est une philosophie, le Christianisme est une Religion. Le premier a pour point de depart la raison humaine ; c'est a elle qu'il s'adresse, c'est elle qu'il inter- Thesupposed roge ; c'est en elle qu'il se confie. Le point de depart du second est thf°terSig- au contraire un fait exterieur a la raison humaine ; il s'impose a elle points, au lieu de l'interroger. De la suit que le libre examen domine dans le Neoplatonisme, c'est sa methode fondamentale et sa pratique habituelle ; tandis que le Christianisme proclame l'autorite pour son principe et procede en effet par voie d'autorit^." Now, it appears from the examination which we made of thebooks in which the genius of Neoplatonism, in its different periods, is most faithfully represent- ed, 1st, That from the very beginning, its teachers appealed to the authority of Plato as oracular and decisive. 2d, That the experi- ment which was made by Porphyry to keep Neoplatonism a philo- sophy, by appealing to the reason anddiscarding superstition — an ex- periment which was most imperfectly carried out by him, which was not incompatible with the most absolute deference to the authority ^"shows at of Plotinus, which involved the recognition of miracles wrought by leastasmuch him, and of divine theophanies of which he was the receiver — failed authority altogether; and that the Jamblichan school which made theophanies ^.^ Uo * and the acknowledgment of miraculous powers, the characteristic tianity. features of their system, was, after a short struggle, completely trium- phant. 3d, That this school reposed on the traditions of the past, surrounding itself with all the forms and impressions of the old my- thology, and denouncing the Christians for their impiety in discard- ing them. 4th, That the glory, therefore, of being a philosophy and not a religion, was eagerly disclaimed and spurned by the professors 52 EEMGION AND EEVELATION. of this doctrine ; and that all the consequences which M. Guizot sup- poses to flow from it, were unknown to the philosophers of Julian's court, to Julian himself, as well as to Proclus, and the members of the Athenian Succession. 5th, That they felt they had to encounter Christianity as a power which made a more direct appeal to the conscience and the inner sense of mankind than they did, and which had obtained most hearing from this conscience and inner sense, when it came with the least apparent weight of prescriptive and external authority. For a parallel investigation into the kind of influence which this rival had exercised in different periods of its history, brought us to the conclusion, 1st, That though even a higher pretension was put forward on its behalf than that which is Christianity expressed in the vague word Beligion, viz., that it was a Revelation ; ^Reason 8 — *kk verv pretension was admitted by those who acknowledged and Con- the justice of it, only because the Gospel appeared to reveal to thanNeopia- them the God their consciences and reasons had been feeling after, tonism. on \y because it awakened their consciences and reason out of slum- ber into activity, or, if they had been at work, satisfied cravings which the existing religions and philosophies had been unable to satisfy. 2d, That so far from imposing itself upon the conscience and reason, instead of interrogating them, this Gospel was never listened to, till it had interrogated them, and had forced them to give an answer, and till by this process it had emancipated them from traditions which had imposed themselves for centuries upon mankind, and had kept the conscience and the reason in chains. 3d, That free examination into the deepest springs and sources of human thought and action was therefore excited by the Christian teachers, whether they desired it or no, whether they appealed to the reasons of men or appealed to prescription or authority, in a degree to which it could not be excited by the Neoplatonist, who confined himself to the schools, and who, even when he spoke most of the ideal of humanity, looked with scorn upon actual men. Argument 34. Passing from the starting-point of these rival doctrines, M. character of Guizot goes on to test them by entering " dans le fond des idees." the Doc- He affirms that the ruling doctrine in the Alexandrian Neopla- Pantheism tonism is Pantheism, the unity of substance and of being ; indi- viduality being reduced to the condition of a mere phenomenon, of Loss of indi- a transitory fact. " On the contrary," he continues, " individuality viduaiity. ; s jjjg fundamental article of faith in the Christian theology." . . "Among various other symptoms, the diversity of the two doctrines in this respect is clearly manifested in the idea which they respectively form of the future of man at the termination of his present existence. What does Neoplatonism with human beings at the moment of their death ? It absorbs them into the bosom of the great whole, it abolishes all individu- ality. What, on the other hand, does the. Christian doctrine with PBESONALITr AMD ABSORPTION. ■ 53 them ? It perpetuates individuality even into infinity. For the absorption of individual beings it substitutes an eternity of rewards and punishments." This passage kas a direct bearing upon the life and writings of Johannes. The contrast which it exhibits has also a far deeper and truer foundation than the one which we have just been considering. We shall find as we proceed, that this philosopher of the 9 th cen- tury did, iu some of his speculations, approach very nearly to the Pantheism which is attributed to the Neoplatonists. It is also true that the professors of that school were distinguished from the most serious and earnest of the Christian teachers, by their indif- ference to the personality of men, by their belief that absorption into the Divinity is the termination and reward of earthly virtue and philosophical meditation. The Fathers generally — Augustine The Fathers especially — were driven by a strong sense of an evil which could not manent er ~ be contemplated at a distance from the self of each man — which was individuality i- n i • i . ■ . f i. « i • notaaatenet realized only m that — into a sense or personality, of an enduring of cms- imperishable personality, which the Neoplatonist, though an acute JSfjStoived speculator about the nature of evil, never reached. But it was by mtheirexp&; these conflicts that they came to know what is the " fundamental" individuality of the Christian faith. They did not, could not, re- ceive that as an "article of faith" from any external teachings which did not provoke these internal exercises. And the more the Reve- lation — what the Fathers called the Catholic Faith as such — was received and asserted by them, the more they were led beyond Their Catho- this individuality, the more they showed that they demanded a rest {jfa'tiiem be- in God, a loss of themselves in Him, which was very different in- y ?° d J. nd ^ deed from the absorption of the Brahmin and the Neoplatonist, but sometimes which was as real as that, and might often be expressed in terms went! t0 that bordered very nearly upon theirs ; nay which, when the Chris- tian's fights within and without became fewer, were often, even by himself, confounded with them. Although, therefore, they did dwell much on the individual recompenses of a future life, they would have thought, we believe, that they were dropping back into the old heathenism if they separated the idea of reward or punishment from the fruition of God, and the separation from Him. It is, therefore, a bold inference from M. Guizot's data, that the belief of Johannes — if it verged ever so nearly upon Pantheism — was derived from the Neoplatonists ; and still bolder, that the char- acter and tendency of his doctrine proves him to have been a philosopher rather than a theologian. On this last point we must make one or two more remarks before we proceed to our proper business. 35. M. Guizot must be aware that his eminent cotemporary, M. Cousin, has refused the Orientals any place among philosophers, treating them as merely theologians. We are convinced that his 54 PAfmrEisai, Brahminism. ' The same as- sertion true of Neopla- tonism. Pantheism exclusion is not justifiable, tbat it involves the omission of a great the°Theoio- chapter in the history of human thought. But we are not pre- fnep'iSfosS pared to say that he had no plea for the severe rule which he phicai side of has laid down; we cannot maintain that he has adopted a maxim which is exactly the reverse of the true one. M. Guizot must maintain this position if he is consistent with himself. For Pan- theism, or the doctrine of absorption into the Divinity, is charac- teristically and originally oriental. It is worked into the very heart of Brahminism. If, then, Pantheism belongs to Neoplatonism because it is a philosophy, if this is the philosophical side of the system, we must not only admit philosophy to be mixed with Brahminism, but we must suppose Brahminism to contain the very essence and type of philosophy. This has certainly not been the common opinion. The very name of Pantheism has suggested the thought that theolo- gical notions and conceptions were at the root of the doctrine, that from them it derived its character. Everything in the history of Hin- doo faith and philosophy supports this a priori opinion. If Panthe- ism has passed as a theory into the philosophy of the Brahmin, it existed first in his practice and worship. The difficulty which the Hindoo felt in distinguishing between the priest and the god, and then between the god and the different forms of nature in which he supposed him to be manifested, gave birth, as the Bhagavad Gita so clearly shows us, to the formal assertion of an identity between them. The history of Neoplatonism, we say confidently, points exactly in the same direction. It was not the philosophy which he learnt from Socrates or Plato that contained the Pantheism of Plotinus. It was the theological system in which he sought for a complement to this philosophy ; it was in the desire to escape from the Christian idea of the Word made flesh, it was in the desire to escape from the limitations which the ordinary philosophy imposed upon his ideas of divinity, that his necessity for Pantheism arose. What, then, can be so illogical as to assume that, even if Johannes was altogether like the Neoplatonists on this point, he was flying from theology to philosophy? Would it not be a much more natural supposition (since he certainly held the belief of an Incar- nation, since it was worked into the very tissue of his theory) that, like them, he was seeking to rid himself of some fetters which philosophy imposed upon his theology ? 36. This we believe to be the true state of the case. Johannes was a Celt, born in Ireland, where, that Celtic cultivation to which we have alluded already had its centre, whence for a long time it diffused a refining, if not a powerful, influence over other lands. He had, if we may judge from the reports of him, many of the Hiscnaracter specially Irish qualities. The paternity of one very good joke, wid humour, which j s attr ib ute ^ t0 him at the table of Charles the Bald, may be disputed by the archaeologists who devote themselves to this Country of Johanuea THE IEISHMAK. 55 special subject of inquiry ; but he could not have had the reputa- tion of it, if he had not uttered many that were equally clever. We can hardly imagine that a man with so much subtlety of thought, such a quick perception of distinctions, and such a fond- ness for verbal analogies, as he discovers in his treatise on the Division of Nature, was not a humourist. We can easily imagine that he may have been a very pleasant and genial one, not a stern deliberate Gothic humourist, whose hearty delight in the harmonies of the world is quickened by a painful apprehension of its discords — who is always the Jupiter commanding and directing his own light- nings ; but rather a Celt to whom fantastical combinations, grotesque similarities and dissimilarities, are a mere pleasure — whose whole being is phosphoric, throwing off sparks without any intention, not very careful whether one now and then lights upon himself, and singes or even burns him. This feature of the national phy- siognomy comes out, we think, in all the speculations of Scotus. He is singularly at variance with the spirit of his time, in that the without any idea of an active energetic working Will is the one which he can o/a^wuT 88 least take in, which was most absent from all the habits of his in- tellect. To this we trace his defects as a moralist; to this his inability to impress his thoughts upon his time on which much less accomplished men could stamp their image. But he was born after the year 800, probably in the early years of the 9th century. Butessen- Mahomet had wrought his mighty revolution in both worlds, Char- Vina * lemagne had just effected his in the West. Neither could change the character of individuals or races ; that character was compelled, however reluctantly, to receive a direction from both. The age for such a man as Pelagius was past, in one country or another. God must be acknowledged as the root of all things and all thoughts, even by those who shrunk most from contemplating Him as the King and the Lawgiver. John, the Irishman, felt that necessity as strongly as any man could. He did not rise to the theological ground as the Neoplatonist had done, as Pelagius did ; that was, whatever any one may say to the contrary, most strikingly his point de depart. That ground and substance which has nothing beneath it, was the postulate and preliminary of his mind ; all its movements depended upon this. It seemed to him that the logic A lebA of his day, the logic which had been brought into all the school against the i . J i . i • i« i ■ ii i i i t ■ • i Logicofhia teaching, which was implied in all the school divinity, was neni- day. ming in this Substance with its accidents and conditions. To pro- claim its freedom from such conditions was the work of his life ; till he could do this, he had no hope of discovering any safe fomx dation for human or for physical science. w-ny jonim- 37. Hincmar invoked the assistance of Johannes in the battle engagSun with Godeschalchus ; he seems to have obeyed the call of Charles JlJf^JScott- the Bald when he opposed the dogma of Paschasius. We can easily troveray. 56 HnrCSIAE AND JOHAIWES. Hincmar's mistake. Johannes offends his contempo- raries more by his treat- ment of the Controversy than by op- posing Pas- chasius. The live Books De Divisione Naturae. Statement of the Design. admit, with M. Guizot, that Hincmar did not know what an ally he had chosen, and repented of his rashness when he discovered how much scandal the Irishman brought upon his cause. There could not have been one in which Johannes would more readily take up arms, or one in which he was more certain, both by the profundity of his thoughts, and, as we think, by his want of sympathy with the special truth of which Godeschalchus was spokesman, to offend the prejudices as well as the faith of his contemporaries. He would have explained, in terms which would have seemed to them utterly incomprehensible and monstrous, why he discarded their notions of before and after, when he was speaking of the eternal Mind ; he would have given them good excuse for saying, that this eternal Mind was not a power which determined them to right or to wrong, or which pronounced judgment upon their acts. Hincmar, with his worldly prudence, may most naturally have resolved that, little as he was of a theologian himself, he could fight the theolo- gical battle against the predestinarian with much greater popularity and success than a man who knew a thousand times more of the Fathers, as well as of the Bible, than he did. Apparently Johannes procured much more odium to himself with doctors and with popes, by the line which he took in this controversy, than by his notions on transubstantiation. Though we have not his treatise on that subject, we may form a tolerable guess as to its character. There will have been the same impatience of dialectical formula?, the same eagerness to show that the divine substance and the divine com- munion with man transcended the terms and expressions by which Paschasius was seeking to define it, probably the same indifference to modes of thinking which he found prevalent, the same resolu- tion to follow out his own line of thought without taking the pains to put himself into the position of other men. But it is safer to give our readers positive information respecting a book which we do possess, than to form conjectures respecting one which has perished. 38. The leading work of Johannes has a Greek as well as a Latin title, Ilsgi 0vaiu» Me^lafiov, id est De Divisione Natures. The subject is discussed in a dialogue between a Master and his Disciple. It is right that we should give the opening passage of the dialogue, though we are far from sure that it will make the purpose of the book intelligible to our readers. Master. After thinking and inquiring as diligently as my powers permit, I have come to the conclusion that the first and primary division of all things that can be either perceived by the mind, or which transcend its reach, is into those things which are, and into those things which are not. For all these the general word is in Greek ®iai S ; in Latin, Natura. Are you agreed ? Disciple. Yes. For as often as I aim at any method of reason- ing, I find it so to be. SCHEME OF NATUBE. 57 M. As, then, we are agreed about this word, that it is a general one, I wish you would tell . me the method of dividing it, by its differences, into species. Or, if you had rather, I will try to make the division, and you shall pass your judgment upon the parts ofit. D. Begin. For I am impatient to learn from you the true The method. method of proceeding. M. It seems to me that the division of Nature is into four species, by means of four differences. The first species is that which creates, and is not created. The second is that which is created and creates. The third is that which is created, and does not create. The fourth is that which is neither created nor creates. Of these the third is opposed to the first, the fourth to the second. But the fourth must be placed among impossibilities ; its differentia is that it can- not exist. Do you understand this division ? D. I understand it. Only that fourth species of yours causes me some trouble. About the others I should not dare to hesitate. The first I understand to be the cause of the things that are, and of the things that are not. The second has reference to the primr eval causes, or principles of things. The third I perceive must have reference to generations, and times and places, that is, to par- ticulars or individuals. M. You are right. But in what order we shall proceed, that is to say, what species shall be the subject of our first discussion, I leave you to decide. D. It seems evident to me that it behoves us to speak first, whatever is permitted us to speak, of the primary species. 39. Then follows a discussion of great importance to the full understanding of our author, and of the later scholastic philosophy, respecting the use and extent of the terms being and not being, Being ma where they can, and where they cannot, be applied. We do not "otieing. think that we should do justice to the book we are examining if we forced our readers to plunge at once into this metaphysical ocean. After a few coasting voyages we may possibly be more fit to venture upon it. "We will give the result so far as it concerns our immediate purpose. God, who creates and is not created, who is the only Being without beginning, who is the cause of all things that were made from Him and by Him, who is the end of all things, whom all things long after, who is beginning, middle, and The dm™ end — He must not be spoken of merely as Being. He is super- Jj^° en _ Being, super-Essence. He must not be called merely Good or dent Wise, seeing that good and wise admit of contraries, that they im- ply badness and folly. He must be the super- Wise, the super- Good. All being, all goodness, all wisdom, must be regarded only as arising from a participation and communication or manifestation of His being, and wisdom, and goodness. His nature must never 58 WAB WITH LOGICAL T0BM3. Affirmation and Negation included in this Nature. The Catego- ries not ap- plicable to the Divine Nature. Essence, Quality, Quantity. Gelation. Position. ,IIdWt. The Catego- ries imply each other. be deduced or judged of by any that is below it. This we appre- hend is the fundamental principle of Johannes which is worked out in reference to the first and highest nature in the first book. It is here that he comes into conflict with the habits, even more than with the formal maxims of his time. His object in the use of the words super, or transcendent being, goodness, wisdom, .is to take the idea of God out of the region of intellectual forms, to show that it includes the affirmation and negation which in earthly logic are opposed, and that the categories of Essence, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Position, Habit, Place, Time, Action, Suffering, fail altogether in the investigation of the divine nature. 40. Johannes puts forth no claim to originality in making this assertion. He adopts it directly from St. Augustine. Categories or predicaments he had distinctly said belong to the region of sen- sible and intelligible things ; when you ascend to the consideration of Him who transcends sense and intelligence, their virtue is extin- guished. They may, our author says, metaphorically, be applied to the Divine Being. Strictly they cannot be ; seeing that God is neither genus, nor species, nor accident. The application of the principle to the categories of Essence, which seems to involve great difficulty, has been made already. Quantitg is easily disposed of. The doctrine laid down respecting goodness and wisdom has settled the question of Quality. But the disciple pauses with anxiety and fear when he approaches Relation. The master admits that the difficulty demands the most reverent examination. But the law already affirmed is declared to admit of no exception. It would be blasphemous to impute our association with the names of father and son to the divine nature ; these names, therefore, denote that which transcends relation ; they cannot be brought under it. Johannes perceives that he is on the edge of a precipice ; he passes on some- what hastily to the six following predicaments. The propriety of a metaphorical use of Position in reference to God is at once as- serted; seeing that by Him all things hold their position. Its strict or direct application to Him is as strongly denied, seeing the Position involves the notion of Place. The predicament of Habit gives rise to a rather long discussion. The master remarks that it is involved in all the rest ; Quantity, Quality, Relation, Position, &c, each supposes some habit; how comes it, then, to be dis- tinguished from them ? The objection anticipates some of those which have been made in more recent times to the arrangement of Aristotle. It is not, however, introduced here for the purpose of disturbing that arrangement, but rather to show how inevitably any one of these conditions involves the other, and how, never- theless, each has a sphere and foundation of its own. The effect of the argument is to suggest the thought which Johannes after- wards distinctly enunciates, that the categories exist only in the FORMS OF SPEECH. 59 mind, and that there is that which underlies them all, and is not subject to any of them. 41. When our author approaches the predicaments of Place and Place ani Time, we find him asserting very vigorously some of the doctrines T " ne ' which we are wont to connect with more recent philosophies. The disciple raises all the, natural arguments in support of the notion, that Place has an existence of it3 own. What do we mean by a man living in such a place ? Do we not speak of water as the place for fishes, the ether of the celestial sphere of stars? The answer of the master is very decisive. There is nothing to be done with people who talk in this way, but to persuade them if they are open to instruction, and to wish them good morning if they are contentious. For true reason ridicules thpse who speak after this sort. If place is one thing and body another, it fol- lows that place is not body. The air is the fourth part of this corporal visible world ; it is, therefore, not place. We all admit that this visible world is composed of four elements, as it were, of four general parts. It is a kind of body compacted of its own parts, Physical ar- out of which general parts, the proper and special bodies of all against con- animals, trees, herbs, adherincr with a wonderful and ineffable mix- *° tmdin ?..,, ' ' n , _.° 1 . . .. „ Place with ture, are composed, and into these they return again at the time of Body. their dissolution. We are bound to show our readers the rashness and imperfection of our author's physical assumptions, not that they may transfer the suspicion of a similar ignorance to his in- tellectual conclusions, but that they may see how much subtlety, what clear intuitions in one region, are compatible with the most hasty generalizations in the other. Johannes is in the very act of clearing away a very serious impediment to natural as well as to intellectual metaphysical inquiries, of removing a confusion which, as he says Jjjf ™£jj,_ himself, has been the cause of a multitude of other confusions, while patioie with he adopts as the basis of his argument one of those superstitions of ofPhyScL his age which partly, perhaps through his own assistance, we have been able to cast off. 42. The disciple is anxious to know how this mode of speech Explanation , * ,. . - . mi of common has come into ordinary use, if it is so contrary to reason, lne speech. answer leads to some interesting remarks on the tnetonomies with which we are all familiar. A family is spoken of as a house. The eye is confounded with the sight or vision of which it is the organ, the ear with the power of hearing, and so forth. But the discus- sion is subordinate to the main argument of the book. Space and Time are affirmed, each to imply the other. Without them no generated things can consist or be known. The essence of things must be conceived of under local and temporal forms. And God, when he is spoken of or presented to us, must be presented in such forms, under such conditions. But they must not for a moment p^ e "J^ °' be supposed to belong to His nature. He is not under them. Hence our mine* 60 CATEGOBIES. Action and Passion. Scripture, Language. Primary object of Johannesnot Pantheisti- cal, but the very oppo- site. Objections to his method. the need of the language, however strange and awkward, which was used before to denote Him as transcending even Essence and Being. 43. From these hints our readers may easily gather how Johannes could deal with the categories of Action and Passion, in reference to the awful subject which he is considering. It is at this point that the language of Scripture, of necessity, comes into question. How is that action and passion are so continually there attributed to the Divine Being? In strict consistency with the whole course of his reasoning — not the least with the intention of reducing the authority of Scripture, or of evading the force of its statements — bur author affirms that all such modes of speaking are justifiable, are inevitable, but that they are metaphorical ; that they are ap- plied to God because we cannot write or speak in intelligible lan- guage concerning Him without resorting to them ; but that they are the conditions of our speech and intelligence, not of His nature. This is, as we said before, the best and most scientific exposition that can be given of what has now become a commonplace, the easy refuge of the most careless interpreter, of the most thoughtless pulpit rhetorician . We could not venture to dissent from the popular practice, if we did not discover a flaw in the theory upon which it is unconsciously grounded. That flaw we think we can trace through all the statements of Johannes. It does not diminish our respect for the man, or our value for much that he has taught us ; yet it is, we believe, the secret of the Pantheism which many have charged him with, not altogether unfairly, but without know- ing how easily they might be convicted of the same offence, and from the same evidence. 44. We acknowledge the most perfect sympathy with our author in the object which he has at heart. So far from acknowledging that object to be pantheistical, we believe that what he desired was to distinguish the Divine Nature from other natures, to prevent that confusion between God and created or generated things in which Pantheism consists. But it appears to us that there is one way, and but one way, in which this end could be obtained with- out denying the fact that the Divine nature has been revealed to man, and without confining it within the limits of our created in- telligence. These forms of the intellect are inadequate to express that Nature assuredly, but are they adequate to express our human nature, our sympathies and joys and tears ? Is the cate- gory of relation adequate to express the actual human relations of father and child, of brother and sister ? Is the category of action or of passion adequate to express any single action or passion as it has been actually realized in life ? Is any one of these categories adequate to express a single living operation of nature, the light or movement of any star, the growth of the meanest flower ? Is it SCEIPTUEE METAPHOES. 61 impossible, then, because the nature of the Divine Being cannot be The human presented under conditions which fail equally with reference to the f^gutg 8 ™? lower natures, that it may be presented or revealed in them and ? 1 ? n t P d Ure ' through them ? Is it correct to speak of such a presentation or iterance revelation as metaphorical, or merely an accommodation or adap- granny of tation to the narrowness of our intellects ? Supposing man to be Logic which the image of God, supposing all nature to be an exhibition of His required, acts and operations, are we not bewildering ourselves when we speak of the mirror as merely presenting to us certain optical de- lusions ? Cannot we suppose it to be purified and prepared for the express purpose of delivering us from such delusions ? Cannot we suppose that the delusions which must follow, and which have followed, in such fearful and terrible succession, when men have taken the reflection in the glass for the form which was reflected, when they have constructed an archetype out of the image, may be counteracted if He, who has formed man and the world, shows us how he has used them for His own manifestation ? Must not a Bible, if it is to be one, do this for us ? Is not what we demand from it this, that it should have precisely that character, that human sensible character, of which Scotus, with the best motives in the world, would deprive it ? Have not those who have adopted his rules so slavishly, and without his temptations, shown very clearly that by this very course they make themselves, and make the Divine Nature, subject to that logical tyranny against which he revolted ? 45. We are not to blame Johannes, that in an age when the Difficulty of sacredness of human relationships was hidden and kept under, by ?hisaeiiver- many of the habits and dogmas of the Church which was to illus- ance in the •trate it — living in a scholastic atmosphere into which the breezes of cen ury- common human life might sometimes penetrate, but mixed with elements that would often lead him to suspect that they were only carrying disease and contagion — he did not enter into a principle which it has required many centuries to give us even that imper- fect apprehension of which we possess. We ought rather to be thankful for the glimpses of this truth which we catch in the midst of apparent contradictions of it, and for the courageous testimony which he was able to bear for (that which it is equally necessary we should acknowledge,) the Absolute and theEternal. If Johannes showed in his bold endeavour to rescue these from the dominion of logical for-mulas, how much those formulas had got possession of his own mind, so that he crouches to them while he seeks to break loose from them ; if it is equally clear that he could not effect the deliverance which he sought without presenting the ab- soluteness and perfection of the Divine Nature, sometimes as if it were aloof from all human cognizance and sympathy, sometimes as if it were an abyss in which our knowledge, our sympathy, our G2 THE SCRIPTURE. Worth of the speculations of Johannes. Summary of the doctrine of the 1st hook. His defence of his doc- trine as Ca- tholic and safe. personality, were at last to be buried; we may surely learn great lessons for our own guidance from these discoveries; we may gather from them comfort and satisfaction in considering the devious paths through which ages and men have been led towards wisdom and truth, without turning them into an excuse for pronouncing judg- ment upon a man who would have been most willing to learn from us and profit by our advantages, and can help us, if we will, how to recover much that we have lost. The following sentences, in which he gathers up the result of his first book, seem to us, in spite of all the strangeness which may appear in them, worthy of the most serious meditation. We may not adopt the terminology of Johannes, we may adhere to one which strikes us as much simpler and more practical ; but in the use of that we may derive hints and instruction from a man whose faith and charity certainly rose above all his conceptions or ours. " God, therefore, in Himself is Love, in Himself is Vision, in Himself Motion, and, nevertheless, He is neither Motion, nor Vision, nor Love; but more than Love, more than Vision, more than Mo- tion. And He is in Himself Loving, Seeing, Moving, yet He is not in Himself Loving, Seeing, Moving, because He is more than Loving, Seeing, Moving. Further, He is in Himself to be Loved, to be Seen, to be Moved ; and yet He is not in Himself to be Moved, or Seen, or Loved, because He is more than that. He can be Seen, or Loved, or Moved. He loves, therefore, Him- self, and is loved by Himself in us and in Himself, and yet He loves not Himself, nor is loved by Himself in us and in Him- self, but more than loves, and more than is loved in us and in Himself, &c." This method of speaking by affirmations and negations conjointly, of making each sustain, while it seems to subvert, the other he considers to be the cautious, and salutary, and catholic method. He establishes his proposition thus : — " What, then, God the Word made flesh, said to His disciples, ' It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you,' true reason compels us, in other similar things, similarly to believe, to speak, to understand. It is not you who love, who see, who move, but the Spirit of your Father, who speaketh in you truth concerning me and my Father, and Himself. He loves me, and sees me and my Father and Himself in you, and moves Himself in you, that you may love me and my Father. If, therefore, the Holy Trinity loves Itself in us and in Itself, and sees and moves Itself, assuredly by Itself it is loved, It is seen, It is moved, according to that most excellent method known to no creature, whereby It loves and sees and moves Itself, and by Itself, in Itself and in Its creatures, see- ing that It is above all things that are spoken concerning it, for who can speak of the Ineffable ? whereof no fitting name or word, ANCIENT RATIONALISM. 63 nor any fitting voice is discovered, nor is, nor can be, who only J5**J. hath immortality, and dwelleth in light inaccessible." marks re- 46. We could not omit this passage, since it will show our readers ?SaHo?uf that Johannes is no exception to the remark which we made in p^sof*) the last part of this treatise, that the doctrine of the Trinity was the foundation of all the metaphysical thought and speculation of the ages after Gregory the Great. We shall have an illustration of that fact in the next book of the Division of Nature, which con- tains what would be called his Anthropology. But we are anxious that our readers should notice it here in connection with a passage of the first book, which, according to M. Guizot, determines the character of our author's mind. " Thou art not ignorant," says the master, " that I think that which is first in nature is of greater Nature, dignity than that which is first in time." " This," says the disciple, Authority, "is known to almost all." "We have learnt, further," says the master, " that Season is first in nature, but Authority in time. For although nature was created together with time, Authority did not begin to exist from the beginning of time and nature. But Reason has arisen together with Nature and Time, from the beginning of things." Disciple. — "Keason itself teaches this. For Authority, Jtontoea^ no doubt, hath proceeded from true Reason, but Reason not by other. any means from Authority. And all Authority, which is not ap- proved by true Reason, turns out to be weak. But true Reason, seeing that it stands firm and immutable, protected by its own virtues, needs not to be strengthened by any confirmation of Au- thority. True Authority, indeed, as it seems to me, is nothing else but Truth united by the power of Reason, and transmitted in letters by the holy Fathers for the benefit of posterity. Perhaps, however, you do not agree with me." M. — " Entirely. Therefore, in the subject which is now before us, let us resort, first, to Reason, and then to Authority." Unquestionably we have here a statement which any modern what is im- Rationalist may, if he pleases, make use of in proof that Johannes statement! 1 " was one of his progenitors. But he will do well to weigh the words, and give them their full force, or he may find that he is committed unawares to opinions which he would most eagerly repudiate. The Ratio which was coeval with Nature, and to which all things in Time must be secondary, is that fixed Purpose, that Eternal Reason and Order which man's Reason is created to investigate and perceive. Authority must not be set before this Reason, precisely because it is the result, as Johannes affirms, of a Reason which is working under temporal conditions, though this Authority may be most helpful in assisting the reason of any individual man in its efforts to break loose from its time boundaries, and to enter into the truth of which it is in search. Whether this view is just or absurd, it is that which any careful reader of Scotus will be quite certain was 64 THE CREATED AND CREATING. Not Incon- sistent with the doctrine of the most Orthodox Middle Age Schoolmen. Meaning of the fourth division of Nature. The end of all things. his view. That eternal Name which he declares to be at the foun- dation of all things, and in the image of which he believes man to be created, will not allow him to glorify the opinions or discoveries of any man, or any succession of men. The Light which they perceive is always above that which is in them ; it is in God's light only- that they see light. Language, therefore, such as Johannes uses, however much it may often have offended Popes, and clashed with many of the Middle Age traditions, is not language which can have sounded strange to any, even the most popular and orthodox, doctors of those ages. They will perfectly have understood it. Nearly ail of them, at some'time or other, for some purpose or other, will have resorted to this, or to some equivalent form of expression. So far from being a rebellion against their ordinary theology — the effort of a free spirit to shake it off and substitute for it the conclusions of philosophy — it was just when they were most theological, just when they were contemplating the name of God, the Trinity in Unity, as beneath all their thoughts, and im- plied in all, that they resorted to it most, and that they could least bear the notion that antiquity, or that any cotemporary dogmatist was the measure and standard of truth. Again, and again, we shall see what a protest was borne — now by kings, now by popular teachers and preachers, now by the most systematic doctors, each maintaining their own position, each resisting some intrusion upon their own principle — against the slavery to which they all in turns submitted. 47. The second book opens with some remarks on the original quadripartite division of the subject. We are now enlightened about that last section, of things neither creating nor created, which caused the disciple so much trouble. It appears that the first and the fourth divisions both refer to the Divine Nature, the first to it as the beginning from which all things are derived, the last as the end at which ail things are aiming, and in which they are to ter- minate. " He is said to be the cause of all things," says our author, " seeing that from that Cause the whole circle of things which after it, are created from it, diffuses itself into genera and species, and numbers and differences, and whatever other distinctions there are in Nature, with a certain wonderful and divine multiplication. But seeing that to that same Cause all things which proceed from it, when they shall come to their end, will return, therefore it is called the end of all things, and is said neither to create nor to be created ; for after all things have returned into it, nothing further will proceed from it by generation in place and time, in kinds and forms, since all will be quiet in it, and will remain an unchanged and an undivided one." This, which is the most startling an- nouncement of the pantheistical tendency of our author's specula- tions which we have yet met with, we should not have introduced ANALYSIS. 65 till it could receive the elucidations and explanations which are reserved for the later books, if it did not seem to us very important DouMe«ei>«e in connection with his views of Man upon which we are about to ° naym enter. In fact, he felt the necessity for this introduction, since a work on the Division of Nature might have seemed not to require any allusion to this final state of things in which all divisions are to cease. But Johannes would have us consider that all division or analysis into parts, involves the idea of a return into the whole from which those parts have issued. And he would have us look upon man, as, in one point of view, the cause of all the partitions and distinctions of the universe ; in another, as the reconciliation and meeting-point of them all. 48. The principle of the Bible, that man is made in the image Man the of God, is the fundamental one of this book. With great force G™ g e of and ability, Johannes maintains what he believes to be the doc- trine of the Scriptures, and of all the great theologians, that the Divine humanity cannot be adequately contemplated in men ; that there must be a Universal Man ; that the divine Word could alone be that Universal Man. It is in the effort to connect this ideal Humanity with actual human beings and human history, that Johannes, as it seems to us, stumbles and falls. He quotes the The univer- New Testament in support of the principle that in the Universal sal MalL Man there is neither male nor female. To reconcile that principle with the distinctions of sex in the actual world, he affirms (in direct contradiction to the text of the Old Testament) this distinction to be the consequence of the Fall. Of course the abolition of it, and Distinction with it of all other distinctions of which it is the example and type, SuSa to the is looked forward to as involved in the final reward and consum- FaD - mation. Let it be well understood, that this doctrine is logically and consistently carried out in that blank and dreary Unity which Johannes dreamed of, and thought that he hoped for, and let each one ask himself how near he has often been — how near the most whither orthodox members of the Church have often been — to that heresy £,£„ which they so reasonably dread. Once admit the thought that leads. evil is productive and creative, not merely destructive ; that it establishes an order instead of disturbing all order ; that it is not equally the foe of distinction and of Unity, and the inference of Johannes is irresistible. Our only wonder is that with this opinion he could unite so very clear and exquisite a sense of perfection and harmony in the world, the parentage — at least the foster parentage • — of which he regarded as so anti-divine. 49. The doctrine that Humanity in its highest most ideal sense is the image of the Divinity, is carried out with great consistency in this book. Brahminical, Buddhist, Platonical, and Neoplato- The Human nical thinkers, had all spoken of a Trinity in Man. The Fathers Tnmty - had eagerly acknowledged the idea; only they had pointed out 66 FIBST PEINCIPLES. Christian application of it Revolutions about the Divine Centre. the danger of reasoning from that which we discover in ourselves as our human nature to that which is divine ; they had declared that a revelation of God enables us to see what there is corres- ponding to it in the Creature. Johannes follows out this principle to the utmost. He speaks of a threefold motion or rotation of man about the divine centre. The first or inmost circle is that described by the Nous, which he renders Intellectus, Animus, or Mens. This recognizes God as the Principle of its attraction, the source of its Light, but enters into no thought or conception respecting Him, confessing Him as the Absolute and the Incomprehensible. The second is that of the Reason or Virtue (his translation of xiyog and Jjvvuftis), which acknowledges God as the primary cause of the things which are, and which takes account of those primordial causes or ideas which are implied in His creatures and in all his operations. The third motion is that of the A<«i/o<« and hi^ytia, which takes notice of all distinct operations, and enters into them. In translating S;«ko/« by senses, he feels that he is open to criticism. He justifies himself by saying that he speaks not of the sense as existing in penetrative organs, but of an internal perception of the mind itself. These three elements of humanity form the Triad of our author, the human Trinity, each of them corresponding to one of the Ineffable Names. 50. Our readers will have perceived that this view of Man, or alien fronTaii Human Nature, is Platonical, not Aristotelian. Man is not a crea- the 9tn afn- ture who can be contemplated in himself. His habits, energies, perceptions, intellectual or sensible, cannot be looked upon inde- pendently from their centre. From God they have been derived. About Him they revolve. Into Him they return. Nothing can be so adverse as such a representation is to the school doctrines of the time, which were assigning, in true Stagyrite fashion, its own sphere to each science, and were doing their utmost that each, while it did homage to theology as the primary architechtonical science, yet should preserve its due and respectful distance. Johannes does not discuss theology, anthropology, physiology ; but he speaks of God, of man, of involuntary things, and their relations to each other. The difference between the two methods is amazing. Each new period, as it introduces new modifications and applications of one and the other, only makes the difference more conspicuous. Nowhere does it appear more remarkably than in the doctrine of primordial causes, as it is set forth by our author. The disciple is desirous to know whether these causes are the same with that dark and formless void of which the sacred historian speaks. Are not, he demands, the expressions convertible ? " For formless matter, nay, the very want of form, we may in some sort declare to be a cause of things, seeing that in that they have their beginning, though it be a formless, that is to say, an imperfect, beginning. The Platoni- cal method tury. The Primor- dial Causes and the Formless void. DIGNITY OF THOSE FIKST PEINCIPLES. 67 And although they are understood to be almost nothing, yet not absolutely nothing, but a kind of inchoation, aiming at form and perfection.'' The master bids him to fix his attention, that the mists which are clouding his intellect may be scattered. So far They are are these primordial causes from being identical with that formless idenH«u. not void which is the nearest conceivable approximation to nothing, that in them we discover the true essence of things, the grounds of all life. " Cause, indeed, if it is truly cause, encloses within itself most perfectly all things of which it is the cause, and perfects in itself its own effects before they appear in anything without. And when they break forth into kinds and visible forms by gen- eration, they lose not their perfection in it, but remain fully and immutably in it, and want no other perfection except the perfection of that one in which they together and for ever subsist." . . . " The void of things is nothing but a certain "ft* formless motion, an escape from not being, a longing and appetency for or capacity being. But primordial causes have been so established in the o£1)em s- beginning, that is, in the Word of God, that they have no move- ment or appetency after perfection in anything save in Plim in whom they are unchangeably, and in whom they have their per- fect form. For always turning towards that one form of all things The divine which all things desire, the Word of the Father, they rirst receive Word ' their form and never lose it. In them are the causes of places and of times. But those things which are beneath them in the in- ferior order of things, are in such wise created by them that they attract them to themselves, and aim at the one principle of all things ; but they themselves in no wise turn to those things which are beneath them, but ever contemplate that Form of theirs which is above them, so that they never cease to be formed by it. For by themselves they are without form, and in that universal form of theirs they know themselves as perfectly built up. But what Primordial reasonable man will dare to affirm concerning that which is with- ticaiwith'the out form, this which may be affirmed concerning the primordial i£^ mtial causes, especially when that formless matter cannot be believed to have proceeded from any other source but from these causes ? For if primordial causes are those ideas which are primarily created by the one creative Cause of all things, and create those things which are beneath them, what wonder if we believe, and have the most certain grounds for maintaining, that formless matter itself was created by the primordial causes ?" 51. In the final chapter of this book he recurs to the same sub- Prototypes. ject. "Primordial causes, then, being, as I said before, what the Greeks call Ideas, that is, species and forms, the eternal and unchangeable reasons, according to which, and in which, the visible and the invisible world are formed and governed; and, therefore, by the wise men of the Greeks, were rightly called prototypes, that is, 68 THE FOUETH FOEM OF PLATONISJT. Movements or energies of the Divine Will Derivation and growth of things. What these causes are. Difference hetween the Platonism of Johannes and that of Plato him- self, of Plo- tiuns and of the Fathers. the primary examples which the Father made in the Son, and by the Holy Spirit divides and multiplies into their own effects. They call them also fore-ordinations, for in them whatever things are coming into existence, or have come into existence, or shall come into existence, are, by the divine Providence, once and at once immutably predestinated. For nothing naturally arises, in the visible or invisible creature, besides that which in them is before all places and times predefined and preordained. Therefore they are further called by philosophers acts or motions of the divine will. Since all things the Lord willed to make, in them He made primordially and causally. The ages which were to be, were created in them before they were. Wherefore they are said to be the prin- ciples of all things, seeing that all things whatsoever perceived by sense or intelligence in the visible or invisible creation, subsist by participation in them. And they are themselves participations of the one highest cause of the universe and of the sacred Trinity, and therefore are they said to exist in themselves, because no crea- ture is interposed between them and the one Cause of all things. And while the primordial Causes subsist immutably in it, they become the causes of other causes that follow out to the very ex- tremes of all nature, and are infinitely multiplied ; infinitely I mean, not in respect of the Creator, but of the creature ; for the end of the multiplication of the creatures is known only to the Creator. The primordial causes, then, which wise men call the principles of all things, are Goodness in itself, Essence in itself, Life in itself, Wisdom in itself, Truth in itself, Intellect in itself, Reason in itself, Virtue in itself, Justice in itself, Health in itself, Magnitude in it- self, Omnipotence in itself, Eternity in itself, Peace in itself, and all virtues and reasons which the Father once and at once made in the Son, and according to which is established the order of all things, from the highest to the lowest, that is, from the intellectual creature that is next to God, to the farthest order of things in which bodies are contained." 52. Here is the Christian Platonism of the 9th century in its most complete form, exceedingly unlike the Alexandrian Platonism from which it has been supposed to be derived, equally unlike the pure Socratic Platonism of which that was the corruption, different in most important respects from the Augustinian Platonism, or from that of the Greek Fathers with which it stands in much closer affinity. It was impossible for a man with such an idea of the Godhead, and of the divine humanity of the Word, as Johannes had, to be in sympathy with Plotinus, and with those who derived their lore from him. It was as impossible for him, as it was for them, to place himself in the position and point of view of the elder inquirers. It was impossible for one who started with a theory which made man's actual condition dependent on the Fall, GOD AND NATURE. 09 even if that theory was in accordance with many of the statements in the writings of the Fathers, or followed legitimately from them, to have the same sense which they had of an evil in himself, which was disturbing all relations with his fellows and with this world. His Platonism, therefore, stands by itself, unintelligible without these previous passages in the history of human thought, but not to be confounded with any of them, interesting as a study for all times, valuable as a protest in his own time, indispensable as an illustration of some of the most perplexing problems in the after scholastical philosophy, but strangely unlike that philosophy in its foundation, even more than in its superstructure. 53. In the third book we enter upon that species which has The created been described as Created and not Creating. At the opening of creating it the disciple raises an important question : " How it is that the species. Being who has been so carefully denied to be included under any of the predicaments, should nevertheless be considered in a treatise on the division of Nature?" The master answers that he would by no means speak of God in any of the terms which belong to a created universe, and which therefore imply limitation ; but that How far Hie the universe itself, and nature, so far as it is identical with the cause'may universe, must include the Creator as well as the created, and that *e included without this admission it would be absolutely impossible to treat verse, of the created, which is only participant of the goodness, wisdom, essence, which dwell superlatively and transcendently in Him from whom they have come. Another question springs out of this. The different primordial causes were arranged in a certain order in the last book. Was this order adopted at hazard, or did the writer mean that Goodness is the first of them, Essence the second, Life the third ? The answer is, that there is a divine order which dwells only in the mind of God himself, which no creature can dare to look into. Nevertheless, there is an intuition which is given to The order of those who reverently and humbly contemplate the universe, not far'wecan"' following their own guesses, but seeking to be led by the higher ascertain it "Wisdom, which enables them to see a sequence in principles, and to trace not perfectly, but with an approximation to certainty, their evolution. On this ground Johannes ventures to affirm, not without the authority of Fathers, and especially of Dionysius the Areopagite, that goodness in itself is the most comprehensive of the divine donations, and in some sense precedes the others. " For the cause of all things, that creative goodness which is God, to this end first of all created that cause which is called goodness in itself, that by it He might bring all things which are from non-existence into being. Essence, therefore, must be considered as following Good- Goodness ness, not as the ground of it." " And this," he says, " the Scripture °eforeBeing. openly pronounces, saying, God saw all things, and not, lo they are, but lo they are very good. What," he adds, "would it. 70 BETKG AltD GOODNESS. The things which are and are not Extrava- gance of Johannes Metaphysics and Morals. Distinctions. Wisdom. avail only to be, if the well-being were taken away?'' "For in truth all things which are, are in so far forth as they are good ; but to whatever degree they are not good, or rather to whatever degree they are less good, to that degree they are not. Therefore if their goodness is altogether taken away, there remains no Being. For simply to be, or to be essentially, the well-being and the essen- tial well-being being taken away, is an abuse of language, as also it is to speak of being and eternal being under that condition." This bold position gives birth to a still bolder. Goodness, he affirms, may be without Being. " Not only the things which are, are good, but even those which are not are called good. Yea, those things are called far better which are not, than those which are. For in so far forth as through their excellence they trans- cend Essence, they approach to the super-essential Good, but in so far as they participate of Essence, they are separated from the super-essential Good." Here our subtle Celt enters into one of those extravagant and monstrous refinements which give us Goths a right to raise our rough voices against him, and to declare that into such an impalpable cloud world we, for our parts, have no wish to ascend. In fact we see here "the Nemesis of logic." Johannes, the great antagonist of formal distinctions, who has shown that we cannot be consistent with ourselves that we must use paradoxical language when we speak of that which is divine, is driven by the daemon of logic, by the wildest longing for con- sistency, into expressions that are almost insane. One must have great faith in his goodness, and some knowledge of our own tempta- tions, not to suspect him of having lost his earnestness when he wrote such sentences as these. We do not, however, entertain any such suspicion. We only read in his rash and wild utterances the attempt of a courageous and really devout mind to utter that which it knew to be unutterable, to clothe in the form of concep- tions those thoughts which become safe and practical and the be- ginning of good deeds, when they take the form of adoration. They show, further, how much the transcendent metaphysics of Johannes needed to be associated with a sound morality, that they might not be made the warrant for conclusions which no one would have ab- horred more than himself. 54. In the following paragraph, the dependence of Life upon Essence is in like manner established. A remark which occurs in the course of the investigation, throws some light upon a distinction which we have already met with in Aristotle, and which is here transferred and adapted to Christian ideas. "Wisdom," he says, " is properly called that virtue whereby the contemplative mind whether it be human or angelical, considers eternal and unchange- able things, whether it is occupied about the primary cause of all things, or about the primordial causes of things which the THINGS MADE — TN WHAT SENSE ETEKNAL. 71 Father hath formed in His own Word, which species of study is called by the wise Theology. But science is the virtue whereby the theoretical mind, whether human or angelical, treats of the nature of things proceeding out of the primordial causes by gen- eration, divided into genera and species by differences and proper- ties, whether it is subject to accidents or without them, whether it Physics, is joined to bodies or altogether free from them, whether distri- buted in places and times, or beyond places and times, united and inseparable in its own simplicity ; which kind of study is called physics. For physics is the science of all natures that are cog- nizable by the senses or the intellect." 55. This is in fact the proper subject of our present book. Hitherto we have been occupied with the causes or first principles of things ; now we are to consider their effects, how they come forth into forms. We might, therefore, claim a release from our Forms, task, on the plea that Johannes was passing beyond our meta- physical and moral region, into one with which we have no direct concern. But we are afraid that this excuse will hardly be admitted by any student of this third book. Our author is never more metaphysical than when he approaches physics. The question which occupied all ancient philosophers so much, how the prin- ciples of which the world consists can be said to have come into existence at a certain time, is here discussed at great length, and with courage as well as humility, by Johannes. He admits, in the fullest sense, that all visible effects are connected with time, and have come into existence with time. He does not for a moment suppose anything to exist independently of God. But since he The Creation can attribute no accident to God, he believes that creation itself is involved and implied in His Being, or hi that which he has told us is higher than being, His transcendent Goodness ; that whatever is made has in it a divine principle, apart from which it would not be, and that this principle existed eternally in the Divine Word. So that it is not incorrect to say that all things are made, and that all things are eternal, seeing that that which is the very ground and principle of their being was in Him with whom is no variableness or shadow of turning, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. He quotes the words of St. John, using that punctuation which is adopted by some of our most modern commentators, — " What was made in Him was Life,'' or, as he says Augustine explains it, — " What was made locally and temporarily, in Him was life." "For," he goes on, "the same Augustine manifestly teaches that both places and times, with all things that are made in them, were made eternally in the Word of God. He understood the apostle to speak strictly concerning the Word, in. whom are ated all things which are in heaven and which are in earth, visible or invisible. Under the word visible we must include places SEAECH FOE THE TBTJTH. The Student's Prayer. The Fourth Book. and times, and all things which are in them." The conclusion is, that we must not hesitate to say, that all the causes of all things, and all the effects of all causes, are both eternal, and made in the Word. 56. The book concludes with an examination of the 1st chapter of Genesis, which the writer, carefully considering the opposing opinions of different Fathers, and bringing all the philological as well as physical knowledge he had to bear upon the subject, in- terprets as exhibiting not the production of visible things, but the gradual unfolding of their different orders and species in the divine mind. However much boldness he may show in his treatment of these and other topics which are handled in this book, however un- fortunate some of his phrases may seem to us to be, however widely we may dissent from many of his conclusions, we are bound to acknowledge that the habitual temper of his mind is faithfully exhibited in the inference and the petitions which he puts into the mouth of his disciple. " Assuredly the divine clemency suffereth not those who piously and humbly seek the truth to wander in the darkness of ignorance, to fall into the pits of false opinions, and to perish in them. For there is no worse death than the ignorance of truth, no deeper whirlpool than that in which false things are chosen in place of the true, which is the very property of error. For out of these, foul and abominable monsters are wont to shape themselves in human thoughts, while loving and following which, as if they were true, wishing to embrace flying shadows and not able to do it, the carnal soul falls ofttimes into an abyss of misery. Wherefore we ought continually to pray and to say, ' God, our salvation and redemption, who hast given us nature, grant to us also grace. Manifest thy light to us, feeling after Thee, and seek- ing Thee, in the shades of ignorance. Eecall us from our errors. Stretch out thy right hand to us weak ones who cannot, without Thee, come to Thee. Show Thyself to those who seek nothing besides Thee ! Break the clouds of vain phantasies which suffer not the eye of the mind to behold Thee in that way in which Thou permittest those that long to behold that face of thine, though it is invisible, which is their rest, the end beyond which they crave for nothing, seeing that there cannot be any good beyond it that is higher than itself!'" 57. The fourth book brings us a great step forward in the in- quiry. The master enters upon it with unwonted trembling ; all the storms and quicksands they have encountered already are nothing, he says, to those which they must look for in the remainder of their voyage. They start from the words of Genesis in the record of the fifth day's creation, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving crea'ure that hath life ; let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind. He develops this idea, of which he had MAN AND THE WOULD. 73 given a hint in the former book, that what is here spoken of is not The Genesis the birth of actual things, but the formation of kinds and orders of thi " 8S - which had an existence in the Divine Word before they came forth into visible and material shapes ; then he proceeds to the great ques- tion of all, how man stands related to the rest of the universe. There is no flinching or hesitation here. It is laid down as a principle recognized among the wise, that the whole creation is found in Man the man. For he understands and reasons as an angel ; he has senses, Micr0C03m - and administers a body as an animal. The division of the whole creation is fivefold. Either it is Corporeal, or Vital, or Sensitive, or Kational, or Intellectual. And all these are contained in every man. The extreme of his nature is his body ; then comes the The different Seminal Life governing his body, over which life his sense presides ; taston* L ' fe then the Eeason which contemplates the order and arrangement of things; then the Intellect, which is occupied with God. This division, however, is not to be understood as if the Intellect, the Eeason, the Sense, the Seminal Life, were separate entities, to which a different region is assigned. The word ' parts,' in reference to man, is ambiguous, though indispensable. Johannes would speak rather of a variety of movements or administrations. " For when the reason carefully contemplates the human soul, it finds that soul to be most simple — a whole in itself — and in no part to be unlike itself) or to have a higher and lower within itself; in any of those things, at least, which constitute its essence. The whole administers the body, nourishes it, causes it to grow. The whole perceives in the senses ; the whole receives the appearances of sen- sible things; the whole remembers, &c Whereby it is understood how the whole human soul is formed in the image of God, because the whole intellect is intelligent, the whole reason discursive, the whole sense sentient, the whole life vivifying." 58. The body, though administered by these powers, is care- The Body. fully excluded from the idea of man so made in the image of God ; and the fall of man is again affirmed to be the sole cause of the division of sexes, and of the multiplication of the species by genera- The sexes. tion. But the question inevitably suggests itself, Was the body, then, produced by evil ? Was it not contemplated in the original creation " Let us make man in our image ? " The question is re- solved as one might anticipate. The original body is affirmed to The Body have been spiritual and immortal ; its corruption to be a super- aftertueFdii. venient accident, the consequence of transgression. This opinion, which, as far as the bare statement of it goes, does not disagree with the one commonly adopted by divines, is especially necessary to Johannes, since he could not consistently tolerate the notion of the created body being subsequent, in time, to the spiritual or in- tellectual. The form of the body, its primary spiritual constitu- 74 TIIE STATE OP MAN. The Greek and Lat'n Fathers. Paradise. tion, is declared to remain amidst all the changes which it has un- dergone from its connection with matter, and from subjection to the accidents of matter. Its outward material vesture will fall off, and be mixed with the elements out of which it is formed. But the true native form, the proper body, will be preserved, and recover its relation to the soul which inhabits it. 59. On this subject, as always, Johannes is careful to sup- port himself with the authority of the Fathers. Gregory of Nyssa is his main prop ; but he is honest enough to perceive and ac- knowledge that there are passages in Augustine which seem to affirm that an animal, earthly, body belonged to man before his fall, and that the plain letter of the Bible is in favour of that opinion. In the effort to reconcile these statements, he encounters the question of all questions, whether the existence of the evil to come was present to the mind of the Creator ; the phrase whether He was prcescient of it, he rejects, as introducing a notion of time into the idea of the Godhead. He disputes the existence of any period of innocence, urging that the Scripture rather compels us to suppose that the Paradisiacal state was lost and the animal condi- tion of man contracted immediately. 60. The discussion on the nature of Paradise which follows, and which is continued to the end of the fourth book, belongs strictly to the province of the interpreter of Scripture. We should gladly pass it over altogether on this plea, were it not necessary for the purpose of our history and for the justification of our objections to M. Guizot that we should show how inseparably the philosophy of Johannes is intertwined with his theology, and how all his conside- rations respecting man and nature have God for their basis. We are quite aware that we are giving an apparent advantage to the theory respecting our author which we have rejected, when we say that he evidently inclines to the opinion that Paradise is wholly intel- lectual, and not local ; that though he does not positively contra- dict the opposite doctrine, and admits that there are passages in some of the Fathers in favour of it, he quotes with evident delight and sympathy the numerous sentences from the two Gregories, from Ambrose, and from Augustine, which contain what we call the allegorical sense, and that he looks upon them as governing the interpretation of those which are apparently at variance with them. Considered from our point of view, this evidence would be decisive that he was merely philosophizing away Holy Writ. But TheBiMe he seemed to himself to be vindicating the eternal and invisible, c"rna h iPwio- w hich Holy Writ is making known to us, from a carnal philosophy Bothers. that explains away whatever it cannot reduce under the forms of sense. He protests vehemently against the letter which killeth, and the Jews who rejected Christ because they could not look beyond that letter, at the same time that he takes great, pains by THE RECOVERY OF ALL THINGS. 75 all the aids which he possesses, to arrive at the signification of the letter. Our own opinion has been sufficiently indicated already. We feel not the least disposed to resolve actual men and women into Reason and Sense, actual trees into spiritual principles, actual animals into the lower portions of our own nature. All such ^m'mnitil reductions and translations savour of the close school-room and spiritualists. cell ; they do not belong to the open air, to health and freedom. But just as little do we expect to find health and freedom when men and women and trees and animals are reduced into dry skeletons, from which life and motion and mystery have been exhausted. This is our temptation. This is what the interpreters and doctors do, who wrap themselves in their insolent and conceited affectation of being the only sensible men that the world has seen, alike despisers of the past and out of sympathy with the future, incap- able of understanding their fathers, heartless and indifferent to all the thoughts that are working in their children. They have ceased even to care for the letter of the books which they esteem divine. They worship nothing but themselves and their own wis- dom. We are no disciples of Johannes ; but we venture to say that any one page, almost any one sentence, of his book, would suggest more subjects for thought, would awaken more reflection, and, above all, would promote more reverence for the Bible, than folios of the'r flat and dreary repetitions. 61. The last book of the treatise, "On the Division of Nature," The Fifth is, in many respects, the most striking of the five. There are pas- B ° ok - sages in it of very high philosophical eloquence. The tone of it is freer and more exalted. There are fewer refinements — a more evident consciousness of the grandeur and awfulness of the subject. Yet, as might be expected, there is more in it to shock the ordi- nary reader than in the earlier books, seeing that the principles which are latent in them are here expanded and developed. We The are come to the full exposition of the doctrine that all things are M ra on- to return unto God, that He is to be all in all. We are come, therefore, to the point in which we may expect to find the panthe- istical seeds which we have detected in our author coming forth into their full flower. There are passages certainly which justify- that expectation ; there are many more which will seem to justify it to a person who has already passed judgment on Johannes, and is seeking for evidence in support of his foregone conclusion. The sentences in the book which we would especially recommend The ^Absolute to such persons are those wherein Johannes speaks, as Buddhists g ' of old and some modern Germans have spoken, of an absolute Nothing, in the contemplation of which, if we interpreted him strictly, the pure and perfected soul at last loses itself. Let no one suppose that we are not aware that he has used such language, or that we are not sensible of its exceeding danger, when we say that on the whole this book mitigates instead of increasing the appre- 7G CHAEACTER OP THIS BOOK. Unfair in- ference from the use of this lau- t,ujge. The Individual and the Universal. Difference in the practical result between him and the Flotlnian Pantheists. hensions we had formed of our author's tendencies, and enables us to feel what a deep fountain of inward devotion and spiritual life there was in him to counteract them. If we pronounce con- demnation upon him for that word about Nothing, Mde. Guion and Fenelon, and many Protestants whose faith no one would dream of suspecting, must be likewise excommunicated. And when Johannes, who is a much more consistent thinker and rea- soner than any of them, develops his idea of the return of all things to their original, he carefully guards against the inference for which some of his phrases in the earlier books gave consider- able excuse, that any thing or person must lose his or its distinct substance or personality in order that it may re-ascend to that Fount of Being from which, by transgression, or the effects of transgression, there had been a separation. Whatever the ap- parent necessities of his theory might demand, his moral instincts and his theological instincts also rebel against the decree that the greatest fulness and perfection of life in any creature can involve the loss and absorption of any of the faculties, energies, affections which had dwelt in it, and therefore of that which has been its characteristic energy and strength and affection. However hard it may be to reconcile the preservation of every type, and of every individual creature with that fulness of the divine perfection, that indwelling of all in God, which the Scriptures taught him to hope for, and to which he found the most illustrious of the Fathers of the Church continually referring, he still felt that there must be somehow such a reconciliation. His firm and undoubting belief in the Divine Word as Him in whom all things were created, and by whom all things consisted — his equally strong conviction that this Word had been made flesh and dwelt among men, and had redeemed not a part of creation, but the whole of it — offered, as he thought, the solution of the theoretical difficulty, certainly kept him from the practical confusions which it might have engendered. Any one who compares his idea of a return into the divine nature with that of any philosophers or theologians who have never entered into these Christian principles, or have let them go, will feel himself in one case to be ascending through verdant meadows and by sunny slopes, on which cattle are grazing and in which are the habitations of human beings, to the summit of a mountain which may perhaps be covered with snow, which may at times be lost in mist, but from which there is ever and anon, in spite of its own seeming desolation, a glorious prospect of hill, and vale, and river, and from which there is always a descent into the richer and softer re- gions where breathing is free ; that in the other case he is carried at once into a polar region, with scarcely a hope of ever breaking loose from the thick ribbed ice to see once more the face of men, to hear the music of human voices. 62. It must, however, be confessed that Johannes asserts a doc- THE EXTINCTION OF EVIL. 77 trine in this book which we suspect will give far more offence to The many of his readers in our day than any of the expressions that oX!"* 1 ' " savour of Pantheism, and might tempt some readers into that of which the author was himself free. He asserts vehemently that the extinction of moral evil is implied in the order and in the re- demption of the universe, as these are set forth to us in holy Scrip- ture. The Master says, " Dost thou then consider that evil and its consequences, death and misery, and the punishments of divers faults were created by God, and are participant of the divine vir- tue ? For when it is written,- ' death and life are from the Lord,' The Death I do not think he speaks of that death which humanity dies by Goethe™" 1 sinning, but of that death to which the Psalmist refers when he 1'eathofSeit says, ' Blessed in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints,' that is, precious is the passage of purified souls into the intimate contemplation of truth, which is the true blessedness and eternity. 'i iiis is the death which those who live religiously and in chas- tity of heart seek their God die even while they dwell in this mor- tal life, seeing what they see in a glass darkly, hereafter to return to the ancient and original glory of the divine image, the seeing God face to face. . . . Where, by face, we are to understand such an apparition of that divine virtue, which in itself is per- ceived by no creature, as may be comprehensible to the human intellect. Wherefore, if evil, and death, and misery, is repugnant to the nature that has been so formed, neither is constituted in Him who is the cause of all things, I wonder on what principle TheExtentof you deliberate and hesitate, thinking that evil and the death of e eml>Uon - eternal torments can remain for ever in that humanity the whole of which the Word of God took into Himself and redeemed ; whereas true reason teacheth that nothing contrary to the divine goodness, and life, and blessedness, can be co-eternal with them. For the divine goodness will consume evil, eternal life will absorb death and misery. For it is written, ' I will be thy plague, O death, thy torment, O hell.' " 63. Although Johannes appears in this last passage to reason, it Reason, will be observed that he appeals to Scripture as the true interpre- ^Fathers. ter of the divine reason to men. Nor does he omit continued re- ference to Ambrose and Augustine (for his partiality for the Greek Fathers does not make him the least indifferent to the Latin) in support of the principle which he is defending. He was aware, of course, that a number of passages might be produced from them in direct opposition to the sentiments which he was propounding, yet he sincerely believed that if they were allowed to explain themselves, and if their deepest and most deliberate expositions were taken to control those which furnished the readiest ma- terials for quotations, they would be found to accord with him in spirit, if not in letter, and to be at hopeless variance with thepopu- 78 END OF THE BOOK. lar teachers who relied upon them. It is not likely that these ar- guments would have much weight with the modern English reader. He would assume that Johannes was perverting his authorities to his own use, even when their words seemed to favour him most. Possibly a sentence or two of his own, which express his most in- ward thoughts and convictions, may leave a pleasanter impression on the minds of our readers, and may lead them to part with him, His practical as we do, not without some respect and tenderness. " Hence," he TraUL says, " it most clearly follows that nothing else is to be desired ex- cept the joy which comes from truth, which is direct, and nothing else is to be shunned except His absence, which is the one and sole cause of all eternal sorrow. Take from me Christ, no good will remain to me, and no torment affrights me. The loss and ab- sence of Christ is the torment of the whole rational creation ; nor do I think there is any other." What else is necessary to be said, on his behalf, he shall say for himself, in the words with L'Envoi. which he takes leave of his pupil. " If in this work which I have now completed, any one shall discover that I have written what was ignorant and superfluous, let him impute it to my hastiness and carelessness, and let him, as a humble beholder of man's poverty, weighed down by his fleshly tabernacle, look upon it with a pious and pitiful heart. For I deem that there is nothing per- fect yet in human studies, nothing without error in this dark life. Wherefore the Righteous, while they still live in the flesh, are not called so because they actually are so, but because they wish to be so, craving for a perfect righteousness which is to be ; the affec- tion of their mind wins them their name. . . . But if any one finds anything in this book that is useful and tends to the building up of the Catholic faith, let him ascribe it to God alone, who only brings to light the hidden things of darkness, and brings those who seek Him to Himself, purged from their errors ; and let his Spirit, joined with us in love, render thanks with us to the universal Cause of all good things, without whom we can do nothing ; not tempted by the lust of condemning, not kindled by the torch of envy, which more than all other vices, seeks to break the bond of charity and brotherhood. And so, in peace with all, whether they kindly receive that which we have put together, and behold it with the pure eye of their mind, or whether they unkindly re- ject it, and judge it before they know what and of what kind it is, I commit my work first to God, who says ' Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find,' and next to you, dearest brother in Christ, my fellow-worker in the pursuit of wisdom, to be examined and corrected. . . . Hereafter, when these words shall come into the hands of those who seek wisdom truly, seeing they will conspire with their previous questionings, they will not only receive them with a glad mind, but will kiss them as if they THE FRIENDLY AND UNFRIENDLY. 79 were their own kinsmen eome back to them. But if they should fall among those who are quicker in blaming than in sympathizing, I would not contend much with them. Let every one use the sense which he has till that light comes which will make darkness out of the light of those who are philosophizing falsely and un- worthily, and will turn the darkness of those who welcome it into light." Concerning the opinions of the man who could speak thus we may form very different judgments ; some of them we shall, most of us, probably, agree in condemning. To the man himself, an earnest and charitable student will be inclined to apply the prayer which was spoken of one in the next century, who honoured Johannes and shared his evil fame : Post obitrnn vivam tecum, tecum requiescam, Nee fiat melior sors mea sorte tua. CHAPTER III. TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES. Review of 1. The ninth century has detained us longer, than its importance CeLtury 1 ' * Q tne e y es °^ general readers would appear to justify. But we cannot apologise for the time we have devoted to it, or to the eminent, comparatively unknown, man, whom we have taken as representing some of its deepest thoughts though certainly not its popular opinions. The controversies of this century are the proper induction to the school history of the Middle Ages. In considering how those controversies were involved with the prac- tical life of the period, with its ecclesiastical organization, with the fears, struggles, hopes of its most remarkable men, we learn not to treat that School history as the record of barren and by- gone speculations ; it is full of enduring, full of present and per- sonal, significance, if we will be at the pains of breaking the rough and hard shell that we may find what is within. There were deep fires burning in the hearts, and not seldom breaking forth in the words of those who, if we judge them from mere reports of their theories, we should suppose were entirely removed from sympathy with us their ordinary fellow-creatures. Barrenness 2. The tenth century will afford us no occasion for such ex- oi the Tentii. planations. In outward bustle, in the rcere number of events, hard to methodize, but stirring enough, so far as secret and open crimes can make them so, this age is far more conspicuous than its predecessor. Nevertheless, the epithet "dark," which has been bestowed upon it, with very little dissension, by historians, is justified, especially by those qualities in which it stands distin- guished from the time before it and after it. They are often stigma- tized as " dark " because there was so much thought in them of a kind which belongs to the cloister rather than the crowd, which is carried on under ground, and does not, for a long time at least, make itself felt upon the surface of society. The tenth century is dark from its broad and manifest abominations, from the utter absence of principle among Nobles and Churchmen, from the want of any thinking that can be called earnest by its admirers, or mys- tical and unpractical by its despisers, from all those indications which most betray the worldly character and purposes of the COEDOVA. 81 men who, under one mask or another, were playing their different parts. 3. If England presented itself as a kind of intellectual centre in itaiyana the eighth century, France in the ninth, we may hesitate to what Germany, country we should assign that position in the tenth. Italy is, un- questionably, the scene of the most exciting political intrigues of the time ; the capital of Western Christendom is the place in which its blackest enormities are gathered up, and from which they diffuse themselves abroad. Italy is the battle-field whereon all the selfish interests of families who claim lands and people for their hereditary possession are engaged. The Popedom becomes the prize for the counts, dukes, and harlots who, by one foul means or another, are enabled to make good their supremacy. But the crimes of Italy call forth an avenger. The tenth century brings the German empire to light. In Germany is the centre of a much more vigorous, and; on the whole, healthy power. The princes and ecclesiastics of Italy are obliged to bow before it, because some of the morality of the north is found in it, and gives it dominion. The world had reason to rejoice when the descendants of Arminius claimed to be the successors of the Caesars, and to establish or un- seat the spiritual fathers at their pleasure. Considering the cir- cumstances of the tenth century, this was a divine boon to the nations. Yet it showed that all but naked despotism was the only possible resource for that wicked time ; that the idea of moral and spiritual power was nearly extinct. To call either Italy or Germany, therefore, an intellectual centre of Europe at this time, is an abuse of terms. Possibly we shall be more right if we concede that name to Spain. Humiliating as the confession Spain. may be, the sense of a power that was not merely physical or merely artificial, upheld by the strength of the arm or created by man's ingenuity, dwelt with the Saracen. The study of laws of nature, of laws which men could not regulate, but must confess, was pursued more diligently and successfully at Cor- dova than in any city of Christendom. Thither Christian scholars must resort, if they were not ready to confess that God revealed the secrets of His universe exclusively to the Mussulman, and that those who believed in the Incarnation of His Son were to know nothing but the arts of the basest politicians, or the lies by which the basest churchmen saved them from detection. 4. It was a perilous alternative doubtless. Those who took christians what seems to us, on the whole, the more honourable course, who tK£f m thought that it was safer to seek for truth, whatever guides might {j°£,^ n show them the way to it, than to remain ignorant of it, exposed themselves to great risks, not only in the opinion of their cotem- poraries, but even, we should apprehend, in their own inmost con- victions. They were suspected of being magicians by those who G 82 MAGIC AND MATHEMATICS. heard of their exploits in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Were they quite sure that the accusation was a false one ? Had they not some feeling as if their knowledge might have come to them from an unlawful source ? In using it, in exercising it as a power over their fellow-creatures, was there not some temptation to keep up an opinion, even to justify it by acts which in- creased the dread of their influence, and in that way the influence itself? Gertert 5. Modern writers have questioned whether Gerbert, the cele- B ee 9 E c itt f r k'atecl Frenchman who became the adviser of the Capets, the ally andGerbert's of the Othos, and finally the spiritual father of Christendom, ever Letters. studied at Cordova. They say there is no evidence of his going farther into Spain than Barcelona, or of his mixing with the Saracens. Unquestionably his letters do not convict him of any attachment to the Infidels : on the contrary, the first passionate ap- peal on behalf of the Sepulchre, and of those who visited it, is to His be found in them. He may be looked upon as the ancestor, character, though not the father, of the crusading movement. There is no- thing inconsistent in this enthusiasm with the belief that he may have spoiled the Egyptians of some of their treasures in his youth. Nor would it follow that he had the same dislike for the cultivated Moslems of Spain, as for those who were possessing Jerusalem. At all events, his cotemporaries believed him to have been in com- merce with those who could teach him the black arts, and enable him to sway for a time the spirits who would ultimately claim Suspicions of him as their prize. His success in political negotiations may have given quite as reasonable a colour to the charge, as his acquain- tance with the secrets of nature. A person engaged in many important transactions at such a period, and connected more or less closely with two great revolutions, may not have kept his hands as clean as one might wish a Churchman's to be. But that they were cleaner than those of most men of his order in that period, seems to admit of little doubt. His intrigues, if he was engaged in them, were not for sordid, beggarly purposes ; they concerned the change His Politics, of dynasties and the consolidation of empires. His more private transactions, as we gather from his letters, related to the re- moval of disorders and of oppressions which the greater nobles or ecclesiastics were perpetrating in their dioceses, or over the monas- teries. It may, therefore, be conjectured that he was aiming at the restoration of the Church to something of the moral and in- tellectual standing which it had lost, and that he was willing, for this end, to avail himself of the aid of German or French Monarchs, who were probably the honestest and the most purpose-like men he could meet with. And it seems not at all unlikely that, for the His Algebra, same end, he should have studied not only the algebraic symbols of the Spanish doctors, but others which were supposed to have a THE PAPAL CONJUROR. 83 more occult signification and virtue. To keep the two apart at such a time was exceedingly difficult. It is clear that they were not absolutely confounded by Christians. William of Malmesbury wmiam of at least — who, though he belongs to a different period, when the ctamici nry Norman culture had been diffused, must have taken his statements Bookiuaia from those who were close to Gerbert's time, and were most pre- judiced against him — recognizes very distinctly the' value of the lawful sciences in which the Pope was an adept. But to perceive To what such mysteries of pature as were discovered in lines and numbers, enfeana '" as were guessed at in the relations of the heavenly bodies, and not Magic were to dream of other deeper mysteries which might be dived into; to SenaS* forget altogether that the persons who had the last kind of learn- af ' erwM Emperors, is apologizing for the course which he takes in attaching himself to the latter, especially, no doubt, to the German emperors, and he lays down the maxim that though Divinity takes precedence of Hu- manity in speculation, Humanity must first be considered in action. No doubt this was the principle upon which many eminent men in his own and in subsequent times acted. It would have been Dante's justification for deserting the Guelphic party in the four- teenth century. These Emperors, Gerbert may have said, keep up the respect for human laws ; the ecclesiastics transgress human and divine equally, and lead the people to despise both. Very little stress can be laid on the other member of the sentence (even if its mean- ing were quite apparent), which declares how Divinity was to make its power felt in speculation. Ritter contends that Gerbert anticipated Bis Logic the movement of the next century in favour of logic, and that this is ofanoveity. his characteristic in a history of philosophy. It will be evident to our readers that we cannot adopt this statement. Logic, it seems to us, had already established its ascendency in the ninth century. There is no meaning in the work of Johannes Scotus, unless we assume it to be a struggle on behalf of the elder Platonical theology against, a usurping and triumphant rival ; no explanation of some 84 THE DYING WORLD. The Eleventh Century. Objections to of its most remarkable peculiarities, unless we allow him, in spite that opinion. £ jjjj^g]^ ^ h ave Deen overcome by the logical tendencies of his time. If we supposed Johannes to be a legitimate successor of the old Proclus school, and no great Latin movements to have taken place before he flourished, we might say fairly enough that the old philosophy died with him, and that Gerbert, being the only emi- nent thinker between him and the eleventh century, was the founder, or at least the prophet, of the new. But as Johannes was merely an interloper, and as the theological controversies of the ninth century clearly ascertained its character, we may assume that the papal magician, in his dogmatical treatises, merely travelled in a line which had been already marked out for him, and that any pretensions which he had to originality rested, as the cotemporary authorities would lead us to suppose, upon his physical and demo- niacal lore. 7. Gerbert stood on the threshold of the eleventh century. Possibly the horror of his supposed communications both with visible infidels and the invisible powers of darkness, had an effect upon it, in determining what studies should be avoided; still more in promoting the establishment or consolidation of Christian schools, which should be a substitute for the Saracenic, and a counteraction of them. There were other influences working more powerfully to the same result. The first Millennium of Christendom was concluded. "Was it not to terminate," men asked themselves, " in the destruction of the visible world ?" The crimes of all classes made such an expectation reasonable ; they were greatest and most abominable in the class which existed to testify of righteousness. This belief gave a solemnity to the minds of the better men. It left its impression upon the age. It became an age of movement, of energy, even of reformation ; contrasted in all respects with the base and petty one which had preceded it. The intrigues in dukedoms between ambitious proprietors, made way for the conflict between popes and emperors. Great principles are engaged on each side. The common Christendom life is awakening in the West. The life in the schools will, we may be sure, take its form and colour from that which is passing in the world, and will re-act upon it. 8. The doubt which we expressed in reference to the former century has no application to this. We can define exactly the centre of the European movements. For a moment, indeed, the great fame of Hildebrand, and the position which he asserted for the Roman See, might incline us to think of Italy. Unquestion- ably the relation of the Pope to the rest of Europe is the great subject of this century. Apart from the fact that this relation assumed a character it had never assumed before, all the re- cords of the time are unintelligible. But the vicissitudes in the The Thousandth Year. The Central Country. THE NEW AGE. 85 reign of Hildebrand himself, his unpopularity in Rome, his final Huaecrand. banishment from it, may show us clearly that it was not to his own country that he owed the greatness which he vindicated for those, who preceded, and for those who came after him, as much as for himself. Both of these had to endure the ignominy from which his own magnanimity scarcely protected him. If Leo IX. was saved from it, he owed his deliverance to the Normans. The The Normans were the real supporters of Gregory's own pretensions. Normar ' s - The Normans enabled Urban to become the head of a crusade, and so to unite Christendom under his own authority, when the Ger- mans were making its existence doubtful even in his capital. To Normandy, therefore, we are obliged to turn if we would study the progress of events. To Normandy we are bound quite as much to turn if we would understand the movements in philosophy. 9. When we speak of Normandy asan intellectual centre to Europe Normandy in the eleventh century, and when we deny that honour to Italy, iSect of we are guilty of an apparent injustice. The most eminent thinkers ^" p ^° of this time were Italians. The Frenchmen who were distinguished does 'not in the schools did not come from the north. But this is the very Siectuai point on which we desire to fix our readers' attention. Italians, men - with the gifts that fitted them to be scholars and philosophers, could not find the kind of culture which they required, the disci- pline which was fitted to make them great, till they came under the influence of the Normans. This remarkable people, as they dif- fused their own energy and arms into all countries of the east anc". west, so also attracted into their own land the foreigners whose qualities and circumstances were the least like their own. They had no national exclusiveness. The indifference to soil and local me want of attachments which had characterized their first emigration never among^ne" deserted them. Their position in the north of France was only a Normans. standing point from which to commence assaults upon the world at large. They belonged to Christendom, not to that place in which they happened to have obtained a settlement. When they invaded England, they were quite willing to have Flemings, or men of any country in Europe, mingling in their hosts. That same temper fitted them to be the prime movers in the Crusades. And so they were also able to organize monasteries, in which young men from all quarters found they could learn the maxims and practice of obedience and government. There they could wel- come Latin with as much affection as the language of their adopted country — with more, indeed, as being more cosmopolitan. 10. The monastery of Bee is the great illustration of these The remarks. " In the year from the incarnation of our Lord, 1034," ^|f ery writes the chronicler of this society, "in the fourth year of Henry the King of the Franks, Robert, the son of the second Richard, and brother of the third Richard holding the reins of Normandy, 86 THE SOLDIER ABBOT. Chron. Beccense appended to Lanfranc's works. Lanfranc and Anselm. Lanfranc an Italian. Vita St. Lanfranc Cornea to Neustria. Herluinus, at the inspiration of our Lord Jesus Christ, the author of all good things, casting aside the nobility of the earth for which he had been not a little conspicuous, having thrown off the girdle of military service, betook himself with entire devotion to the poverty of Christ, and that he might be free for the service of God alone, through the mere love of God, put upon him with great joy the habit of a monk. This man, who had been a passionate warrior, and who had gotten himself a great name and favour with Eobert, and with the lords of different foreign countries, first built a church on a farm of his which was called Burnevilla. But because this place was on a plain, and lacked water, being admo- nished in a dream by the blessed Mother of God, he retired to a valley close to a river which is called Bee, and there began to build a noble monastery to the honour of the same Saint Mary, which God brought to perfection for the gloryof His name, and to be the comfort and salvation of many men. To which Herluinus, God, according to the desire of his heart, gave for his helpers and coun- sellors Lanfranc, a man every way accomplished in liberal acts ; then Anselm, a man approved in all things, a man affable in counsel, pitiful, chaste, sober, in every clerical duty wonderfully instructed — which two men, through God's grace, were afterwarda consecrated Archbishops of Canterbury. And to this same Bee, which began in the greatest poverty, so many and such great men, clerical as well as laymen, resorted, that it might fitly be said to the holy abbot — 'With the riches of thy name hast thou made thy house drunk, and with the torrent of the wisdom of thy sons hast thou filled the world.' " 11. The first of the two men with whom our chronicler has brought us acquainted, was born in Pavia. His parents, says his biographer, were great and honourable citizens of that city. His father is said to be of the order of those who watched over the rights and laws of the state. Lanfranc losing his father in early life, left the lands and dignities which might have fallen to him, and devoted himself to the study of letters. He stayed for some time in Italy, till he became thoroughly imbued with all secular knowledge. Then leaving his country, and passing the Alps, he came to Gaul in the time of William, the glorious Duke of Nor- mandy, who subdued England with his arms. Passing through France, having a number of scholars with him, he came to the city of Avranches, and became a teacher there. Afterwards this learned man, perceiving that to catch the breath of mortals is vanity, and that all things tend to nothing, except Him who made all things and those who follow His will, turned his whole mind to obtaining His love. And because he felt it was needful to be humble that he might be great, he would not go to any place where there were literary men who would hold him in honour and THE SCHOLAR MONK. 87 reverence. Late in the evening, as he was going through a wood His PerUa towards Rouen, he fell among thieves, who took away all he had, conversion. bound his hands behind him, bandaged his eyes, and left him in a dark part of the forest. For a while he bewailed his misfortune ; then he tried to pay his accustomed praises to God, but could not. Then turning to the Lord, he said, " Lord God, so much time have I spent in learning, and my body and soul have I worn out in the study of letters, and yet have I not learned how I ought to pray to Thee, and to pay to Thee the duties of praise. Deliver me from this tribulation, and with thy help I will so study to correct and establish my life, that I may be able to serve Thee and to know Thee.'' In the twilight of the morning he heard travellers going their way, and cried to them for help. When they had loosened his bonds, he begged them that they would point out to him the poorest monastery which they knew in that country. They said they knew of none more vile and abject than that which a certain man of God had built hard by. They pointed him to Bee, and de- parted. 12. Lanfranc found the abbot kindling a fire, and working with Lanfranc at his hands. He asked to be made a monk, was shown the rule, e& promised, with God's help, to observe it, and became a brother of the convent. " Whereupon," continues our author, " the vene- rable father Herluinus was filled with exceeding joy, because he be- lieved that God had heard his prayers^ For, as the necessity of The Norman procuring provisions forced him to be often without the cloister, 1^^ and as there was no one to preside within, and to watch the reli- gion of the household, he had often prayed God for such a one, and now He had granted him the very help which he wanted. You might see, therefore, between them a pious contest. The abbot, lately promoted from an illustrious layman to a clerk, re- verenced the dignity of so great a doctor who had become his sub- ject. But he, exhibiting no conceit on the strength of his emi- nent knowledge, obeyed him humbly in all things, and was wont to say, ' When I wait upon that layman, I know not what to think, except that the Spirit bloweth where it listetb.' The abbot showed to him the veneration which was his due ; he paid the abbot the profoundest submission. Each presented to the flock a specimen of a different kind of life, the one active, the other contemplative." 13. For a while Lanfranc devoted himself in the strictest sense to the contemplative and solitary life. " But soon his fame," says Fame i of the the chronicler, " spread throughout the world, and brought dukes, sons of dukes, the most conspicuous masters of the Latin schools, and noblemen in multitudes to the convent." The doctor was not exalted. His biographer relates with much satisfaction how he took care of some land which had been left to the church of Bee, and how he brought a cat under his gown to repress the fury of 88 THE MONK AMONG ETHERS. .Docere, or Docere? Obedience. His life in the Monastery. His intro- duction to William. Doing William's work at Rome. some rats and mice that had invaded it. He tells another story of his humility, which is considerably more to the purpose, and illus- trates the man and the time. While he was reading aloud one day at the table, the presiding monk, who was probably a Norman, and like Herlwin, knew more of swords than of the quantities of words, corrected him for saying docere. The learned Italian in- stantly shortened the middle syllable, " knowing,'' his biographer says, " that he owed more obedience to Christ than to Donatus ; that it was not a capital crime to violate prosody, but that not to obey one who commanded him in the name of God, was a serious error." 14. After a while, Lanfranc grew thoroughly tired of the indo- lence, irregularity, and immorality of his brethren, and feigned a disorder of the stomach, that he might eat only radishes, and so fit himself to escape from the monastery, and live in the desert, which design was defeated by a vision to the abbot, who brought Lanfranc to confession and submission, constituted him prior, and enabled him to effect a reform in the monastery. Except in this instance, the mispronunciation of docere may be taken as a key to our scholar's life. Not but that he was capable of an inconvenient as well as of a successful joke when the temptation offered. When a chaplain of Duke William came to Bee in great pomp to attend the dialectical exercises, which had become famous, Lanfranc having discovered that he was profoundly ignorant, and somewhat presumptuous, requested him, with Italian politeness, to clear up a passage in a logical treatise. The Norman resented the affront, and brought Lanfranc into disgrace with Duke William. He was ordered hastily to quit Normandy, but meeting William on his road, he respectfully requested the Duke, as he had ap- pointed him to take so long a journey, to furnish him with a better horse. He evidently understood the man. He very soon rose into high favour. William revoked a command for laying waste certain lands belonging to Bee, and bestowed fresh lands upon it. Lanfranc was soon able to return the service. Neustria had been laid under an interdict, because the Duke had married the daugh- ter of the Count of Flanders, who was within the prohibited de- grees of relationship. Lanfranc went to Rome, and succeeded in persuading Nicholas the Second that it would be much wiser to grant William a dispensation, seeing that he was not the least likely to part with his wife, and that he might easily be induced to build two monasteries if he were permitted to retain her. Caen received the benefit of this arrangement, and Lanfranc proved that Bee was as good a school for diplomacy as for logic and theology. 15. Lanfranc's mission to the pope had not only reference to his patron's marriage, he had himself been accused of a heavy offence. He was the friend and correspondent of Berengarius of BERENGAEIUS. 89 Tours. This is a name with which most of our readers are fami- Eerenger of liar. They associate with it certain notions of independence of Tour8 ' thought not to be looked for in the 11th century, and of a feeble- ness of purpose which may be condemned in all centuries. They Common t. T-i t> • i i . . t. i -i notionsubout probably suppose Berengarius to have been something of a philo- him. sopher, who had not courage to stand against the theologians of his time ; they suppose those theologians to have been merely defend- ing a coarse and carnal hypothesis by the force of traditions and papal decrees. None of these opinions are exactly in accordance with the facts, though all of them touch so nearly upon the truth as to satisfy the careless students of various parties and commun- ions. The subject is most important to the history of Philosophy, otherwise we should not have meddled with it. The disputes of The the next century, which had a formally philosophical character, contvoveisy. grew out of the great theological dispute of this. We cannot understand the minds of any of the remarkable thinkers of the age without considering it. All that we have said of the Norman and Italian temper, as they came together in the Monastery of Bee, is illustrated by it. But we should commit a great mistake Berengaritis if we assumed Berengarins to be a philosopher, or those who con- ap^io™" 17 tended with him to have any horror of philosophy. He was, so pher. far as we can make out from the testimonies of his cotemporaries, and from what is preserved of his own writings, a hard-working, earnest, simple-minded priest, who, instead of cultivating subtleties, had a horror of them. It may seem at variance with this state- ment that he professed a respect for so subtle a philosopher as Johannes Scotus, and was scandalized at being told that he was a heretic. But he evidently clung to the conclusion of Johannes Hismindana Scotus without caring very much for his arguments. That con- comitr y- clusion, he said, he found expressed as clearly in the writings of Augustine and Ambrose as of the Irishman. He was probably bewildered by the distinctions and formulas of the Italians, as much as by their diplomacy. A Frenchman, but no Norman, he shrunk from submitting to mere decrees when his conscience went the other way. Yet he had so little confidence in his own judg- ment, there was in him so little of the desire to be singular, that he accepted again and again formulas which he did not understand or approve. That he was a coward in doing so, no one acknow- His alleged ledged so readily as himself. He did not even avail himself of C0w8rdic& the half-justification which we have put forward for him ; he sim- ply accuses himself of recanting through fear of death. When that terror was removed, and he had time for reflection, he was convinced that it was a solemn duty to retract the retractation, however much opening such a course would give to the ridicule as well as to the grave revilings of his adversaries. Lessihg has contended with admirable clearness and force that the charge of 90 THE POPE AND THE PRIOR. T^essing's Werke, vol. 18, (pp. 19- 22.) Gregory VIL and Beren- garius. Why Lan- franc was so much less tolerant Lanfranci Opera (Dacherius), Be 231 " Eucharisti Sacramento contra Berengarium Liber. See Berengarius Turonensis- Lessing's Werke, vol 18, pp. 1-189. intentionally concealing his opinion, which Mosheim brought against him, is absolutely untenable. He might not have courage always to maintain his conviction ; he certainly never wished to disguise it. 16. Such a man as this Pope Hildebrand could appreciate. He did not in his heart dislike any one for fighting against autho- rity ; great part of his own life was spent in doing so. He vindi- cated his right to set his feet on the necks of kings. The ambition of setting his feet upon the necks of poor parish priests, because they objected to certain forms of expression, was altogether too mean a one for him. It is evident that .he would have sheltered Berengarius if he could ; that when he opposed him it was done reluctantly ; in spite of the condemnation of former popes, and of the contumacy of BereDgarius, he loved him to the last. With Lanfranc it was otherwise. He and the heretic had been friends in youth ; he had suffered in reputation at Eome from the intimacy. Not, we believe, from meanness, not because he shrunk from an im- putation which he really deserved, but because he never could have had much inward sympathy with a man of a character so unlike his own, because his conscience was of an altogether different qua- lity from that of Berengarius, because it was a conscience which looked upon disobedience as the great sin, and would have parted with the strongest perception and conviction of its own rather than be guilty of it, he at once disproved the calumny against himself by becoming the most vehement champion of the Paschasian dogma against its impugner. 17. His book against Berengarius was for a long time, with the exception of a few letters, the only document from which a know- ledge of the doctrines of the offender could be obtained. Lanfranc quotes passages from him at the head of each of his chapters ; to which he replies. The supporters of transubstantiation referred to his treatise as triumphant ; they even ventured to conjecture that it silenced, humbled, converted Berengarius. An unfortunate discovery made by the keen eye of Lessing in the library of Wolfenbuttel, dispelled these dreams. Berengarius was found to have answered Lanfranc in an elaborate discourse. By the care of Lessing, and of subsequent editors, we now possess it almost entire. A comparison of the two documents does not, however, entitle us to set the intellectual qualities of Berengarius above those of the Prior of Bee. Lanfranc's book is haughty and scorn- ful ; that of Berengarius is earnest and vehement. The one writes with all the consciousness of maintaining the maxim which a Council and a Pope had pronounced in favour of; the other writes with a strong assurance that majorities and the existing authorities of the Church may be utterly wrong, that it is impos- sible to read the Old and New Testament with open eyes and not THE POLEMICS. 91 think so. But if it is a great privilege that we may retain an d. Martin affection for the oppressed and earnest man, — not shaken in that kcntaissvom sympathy by the fact that Luther denounced him as much as any £hristt maU1 Romanist, and looked. upon the denunciation of Pope Nicholas as an. imb. one of the decrees of the papal synod which might be justified and werke, '" admired, — it is also a duty to confess the ability of Lanfranc, the S ch ' p- skill and neatness with which he arranges his points and constructs " wiiite his arguments, the advantage which he has often over his fervid i>a D ste lle antagonist, his avoidance of all that is most coarse and material in JS tl f n 1 . s( n the view of Paschasius, the facility and gracefulness of his style, alien and the comparative moderation with which he asserts the claims |Sandeit of the Roman See, when Berengarius could call it nothing less than S 8 ^^* 8 ^ antichristian. Those who like to see a true man trampled upon, aem Beren- may enjoy the satisfaction as well in Lanfranc's treatise as in any (f^cier that we know of. He is very imperious, but far less vulgar and Be } [en ? ,, j5 3 brutal than the majority of polemics. And one feels that he was hat" not merely holding a brief for the papal court, that his heart sym- character of pathized with what he was doing, and that having given up the book, right quantity of a Latin infinitive to preserve his own obedience, having cultivated to the utmost all moral submission and humilia- tion, he felt he had a right to demand the same of all other divines. He was maintaining not only what seemed to him, but what really How „ e was, the great secret of the power which the Norman scholar, as asserts the well as the Norman warrior, was exercising in that day. All his principle, victories were owing to his caring more for the commands of the superior than for any judgment of his own. If there had been use of the none to assert that a man has a conscience to which God speaks ^^hem directly, and which must hear His voice, however other voices may clash with it, the after condition of the world would have been very sad ; but one may surely acknowledge that there were to be men who had the opposite habit of mind ; that with all their faults the world could not have spared them ; that each class had its own humility as well as its own pride ; and that even success and co- temporary approbation, though they may diminish our interest in those who possessed them, by making us think of the words, " they have their reward,'' ought not to blind us to their positive worth. 18. We must not suppose that more of dialectical science, either in How far the larger or the narrower sense; found its way into this controversy ratfredinto in the 11th century than in the 9th. The opposite assertion would the question. be far nearer the truth. The schools were in the first fervour of their qualities and quantities in the age of Charlemagne. This they imported into their theological discussions. With these, old Platonists like Johannes had to do battle, endeavouring as far as they could to supplant the Aristotelian dialectic with a more spiritual one. The first stage of that struggle was over. Beren- 92 LOGIC AND STATESMANSHIP. Lanfranc far less a Logi- cian than a Statesman. Lanfranc finding his true position. Consistency of bis character. Anselm. Difference from Lan- franc in character. garius introduced some logical formulas into his first treatise; Lanfranc ridicules him for his pedantry, and insinuates that he was showing off his learning for the sake of throwing dust in the eyes of simple people. The charge was an unfair one. Beren- garius assuredly desired to present the things which he had heard and seen more directly to the consciences of his people than he thought the Paschasian dogma suffered him to do. If he ever resorted to logic unnecessarily, it was through the weakness into which practical men often fall in trying to fight their opponents with their own weapons. Lanfranc takes the school logic for granted. But subjection to that was not what he cared to estab- lish. Political order, subjection to the rule of the monastery, the kingdom, the whole church, was the end to be attained. Though he had many of the qualities to fit him for a schoolman, at least for a theological doctor, these were by no means his most conspi- cuous or characteristic qualities. His genius was that of a states- man, as it was clearly shown to be when he became attached to William of Normandy and accompanied him to England. There all the skill which had been ripened in Bee displayed itself in a larger sphere. His idea of the position of an Archbishop of Can- terbury was not at all that he should be setting up the church against the crown, or pushing the maxims of Hildebrand. Obe- dience, the watchword of his life, was to be manifested in that relation as in every other, — to the near authority first, then, so far as they might be reconciled, to the more distant one. Partly the wisdom and the circumstances of William, partly the sagacity and peculiar temperament of his prime bishop and prime minister, partly the judicious confidence of the pope in the one, and his judicious fear of the other, made this reconciliation in the days of our first Norman sovereign, however difficult, not impossible. Lanfranc could pervert a quantity, or defend a formula, or swallow a mere ecclesiastical scruple, with the same facility, and for the same end. Certainly a very sagacious man ! with a wonderful faculty for managing the things of earth, but with little, if any, of the finer sensibility, or of the stern love of truth, which we are taught to look for in one who seeks the Kingdom of Heaven. 1 9. In these respects, as well as in all the circumstances of their English lives, he stands out in curious contrast to the other orna- ment of the Monastery of Bee, to the other Archbishop of Canter- bury — his friend Anselm. Of him we have a much better right to speak in this treatise than of Lanfranc. For he was a philo- sopher, the philosopher of the 11th century. To understand what position he occupies in philosophical history, we must, however, view him in connection with one whose mind was cast in an alto- gether different mould from his. Their relation to each other explains the relation in which each stood to his time. We begin THE CONTRAST. 93 to apprehend how Anselm, who is represented in our ordinary The opposite English histories as the arrogant and rebellious churchman, is E rts ° f connected with the Anselm, who, to judge from the statements of the man who knew him best, and from the evidence of his own writings, must have been one of the meekest, least assuming, least worldly of men. We discover what were the characteristics of the thinking man of that age, wherein he was strong, wherein he was feeble, how far he was an asserter of liberty for his own times and for the times to come, how far he was bringing in a new bondage upon either. 20. Anselm was born in Aoste. His father and mother both vita belonged to Lombardy. The former was generous to prodigality ; fi^Jr| lmi greatly devoted to the world during the best part of his life ; a Eadmeio monk at the close of it. The latter was a prudent housekeeper, of Monacho" SI a thoughtful and earnest character. The boy was bred among the li^SJ^'t mountains ; he fancied that the palace of God must be on the comite summit of one of them. At fifteen he longed to be a monk. The ™ '" n ,°' abbot to whom he applied refused him ; his health grew weak, Anselm, c 1, which increased his desire for the convent. When he recovered S0R 2 " e ' he plunged for awhile into the pleasures of the world, and lost even his taste for letters to which he had been much devoted. His mother's influence restrained him for awhile. On her death he fell under the displeasure of his father. His home became in- tolerable ; he fled from it, went into Gaul, spent three years in France and Burgundy, finally came to Normandy. The fame of Lanfranc drew him to Bee. In a short time his character and work filled him with admiration. He became a student again ; he His ambition aspired once more to be a monk. For awhile he was haunted by j;™?. 64, c ' *" the ambitious feeling that he should be entirely eclipsed at Bee by Lanfranc, and that it would be better to go elsewhere. That temptation being overcome, and his patrimony having fallen in by the death of his father, he laid the question before his spiritual counsellor, whether he should be a monk of Bee, a hermit in the c. 1, sec 7. woods, or a landlord distributing his goods to the poor. If Lanfranc, says his biographer, had bid him go info a wood and never come out of it again, he would have done it at once. But it was decided that his early passion marked his vocation, and at the age of 27 he entered the convent of which Lanfranc was prior. Lanfranc was removed to Caen ; Anselm became prior of Bee. Prior at Bee, His loving friend, Eadmer, describes his life in this office as severe ^ 2 - to himself, gentle to all around him, as acting with particular force and success upon children, as overcoming those who hated him by laborious kindness. Government, however, was oppressive to him ; he was with difficulty prevented from throwing off his authority and reducing himself again to a simple monk. But he did resist this evil thought also, and was able to find time for correcting 94 ANSELM IN THE MONASTERY. manuscripts and writing books in the midst of his incessant tasks Sec 25; his as a counsellor and administrator. It was at this time that he worka wrote "On Truth," on "The Liberty of the Will," on "The Grammarian," and a book entitled " Monologium," to which he added afterwards "The Proslogium.'' As we propose to give some account of most of these books hereafter, we would only re- mark here that they were all suggested by the circumstances of the monastery, and that their form as well as their substance were determined by the questions and doubts of the brethren at Bee. Eadmer, lib. 2 1 . Of Anselm's visions and miracles, of the far more interesting i, c. i and s. stories which are related respecting his management of the chil- dren in the convent, of his reluctant appointment to be abbot on the death of HerluiD, of his hospitality in that character, we shall Lanfrancand say nothing. But we must make room for a conversation which Engiamt 11 to °k place between him and Lanfranc when he went to visit his nostra et" 1 " 1 °^ superior at Canterbury — the business of the convent, which muitorum had many possessions in England, having called him thither. Once non erat'ilio upon a time, says Eadmer, Lanfranc said to him, " These Angles aui 1 irat e,lUus amon g whom we are living have fixed upon certain persons whom Lanfranco in they shall reverence as saints. I have been considering their vefmSapiici claims to sanctity, and I am in great perplexity. For instance, scfenu there is one who rests in that sacred place over which we preside, ant Anseimo Alphege by name, a good man assuredly, and an archbishop in sMictitate m n * s time. Him they reckon not only among saints, but even tci Dei among martyrs ; and this though they do not deny that he did not c. 5, sec. 42. die for the confession of the Name of Christ, but because he would claims to not redeem himself with money. For when, to use the words of sam p ' these Angles, the Pagans, the enemies of God, had taken him prisoner, they were willing, through reverence for his character, to Alphege the set him free on the payment of a large ransom. That ransom patriot would have robbed his own citizens of their money, would perhaps have reduced some to beggary ; therefore he chose rather to lose his life than to keep it on such terms. What say you, my brother, to this claim of sanctity ? " Anselm suggested first, with great deference to Lanfranc, that one who would give up his life to save his brethren from ruin, would certainly have given it up Anselm's rather than have denied Christ ; and then he went on, " There decision. must have been a wonderful righteousness in the heart of that man, seeing that he preferred giving up his life to scandalizing his neighbours by want of charity towards them. Surely he, who for such righteousness willingly sustains death, is truly reckoned among martyrs. The blessed John the Baptist is venerated as a martyr by the whole church, not because he was put to death for refusing to deny Christ, but for refusing to conceal the truth. And what is the difference between dying for righteousness and dying for truth ? Christ, says the Scripture, is righteousness and ANSELM IN ENGLAND. 95 truth. He who dies for righteousness and truth dies for Christ ; The true therefore he is a martyr.'' Lanfranc was convinced. " Taught by mar yr- thy wisdom,'' he said, "I will henceforth, God's grace assisting me, reverence Alphege as a great and glorious martyr of Christ." 22. Eadmer had a right to consider this dialogue as a proof Erat that, with all his political sagacity, Lanfranc was still young in his Lantvancus knowledge of his adopted country, and that Anselm, through his JJjJg^SKL moral instinct, had arrived at a clearer apprehension of our habits sec. 42. and institutions, and of the way in which the church could most effectually act upon them. On the other hand, there can be no question, that when Anselm actually took the place which Lan- franc's death left vacant, he was far less adapted to it, far less able to reconcile the obligations of a servant of the King of kings with those of the subject of an earthly sovereign. The difference did not arise wholly from the characters of the two ecclesiastics. William the Conqueror was dead, as well as his minister. All the cleverness of the latter might not have enabled him to keep terms with William Eufus. In him we see the worst elements of the Nor- w ™f m man character, with only here and there a trace of that which gave it its mighty influence over Europe. He thought of the subject His theory of race as of little more than a race of slaves, whom he might now and then turn to account in the quarrels into which he was con- tinually liable to fall with his own barons. The strong hand of law which belonged to his father was changed for the mere strong hand of power. Letters, of which the Conqueror saw the worth, were mere hieroglyphical tricks to his successor, the miserable amusements of those who had not sense and courage enough for the chase. He had met with prelates as unscrupulous as himself; Eadmer, lib. it was an easy inference that every priest was a hypocrite, bent ' c ' ' upon advancing his own interests or those of his order, a danger- ous though a contemptible rival of the military-^for Eufus had no notion of the civil — -ruler. Anselm had a reasonable dread of corning into contact with such a monarch. He had also a cordial affection for Bee, and an honest dislike of the grandeur and secu- larly of the archieplscopal office. But William had suffered it to be long vacant, and had appropriated the revenues of it. When a temporary sickness had made him penitent, and the accident of a visit of Anselm to the Count of Chester had led him to think that the most eminent man of the day might be the fittest for Can- terbury, there was a general call that Anselm, for the sake of the Aeciamatnr whole church, should not suffer a moment to pass which might «»™tam is never return, and timidly shrink from a work which was divinely «gj£ , ™ tat imposed upon him. Most reluctantly he suffered the crosier to be popu i U8 thrust into his hand, foreseeing too well, not only that he was™m&c.2. parting with a life which had been as dear to him as it had pro- ma gi S quem bably been unsuitable to Lanfranc, but that he was entering upon < 1 " ci t" r . ">• 9G THE PBELATE. His political life. Reason for alluding to it. Hume, vol 1, Svo. p. 303, says that the "noted histo- rian of Anselm, who was also his companion aud secre- tary, cele- brates highly the effect of his zeal and piety in decrying long hair and curled locks." He refers to Eadmer, p. 23, not mentioning whether he quotes from the Life or from the Historia Novorum. The king and priest one in which he should have only the use of his left hand, and would perhaps often have to doubt whether he was using that rightly. * 23. The remainder of the story belongs partly to ordinary Eng- lish history, partly to the private biography of Anselm. We have no right here to enter upon the questions which arose between him and Rufus, upon their connection with the general dispute concerning investiture which agitated Europe, upon Anselm's journey to Rome and his adventures by the way, upon his experi- ences of popes and councils, upon the tears which he shed when he received the news of the death of his great enemy, upon his return to England, and his misunderstandings with the wiser mo- narch who had at first sought his friendship, or upon the peaceful death which wound up a life of struggles. It would scarcely have become us even to take notice of these facts, if it was not necessary to remove a certain prepossession on the subject of this eminent man, which is likely to interfere with any fair judgment of his philosophical writings. If he had been the turbulent asserter of ecclesiastical rights which Hume and others have supposed him to be, still more if his main crusade had been, as our Scotch historian would have us believe, against long shoes, the portion of his work in the world with which we have to do, would stand strangely apart from the rest of it ; since in that, at all events, he is very little occupied with controversies about the respective authority of the ecclesiastic and the civilian, since it is hard to detect in them any lurking signs of prelatical ambition, since he is always earnestly occupied with the serious and moral aspects of the very serious questions which he discusses. The truth is, that Anselm was not too much, but too little of a politician. He could not neglect any of the pastoral duties of his see, any more than he neglected the brethren and children of the convent for the sake of indulging his meditative tastes. But the diplomacy which was attached to it he knew nothing of. He could meet the greatest offender as a brother, and help him in any troubles of conscience. But William had no such troubles. He simply opposed what must have seemed to Anselm a dead weight of ignorance and brutality against everything that was spiritual and humanizing. Under these circumstances the asserter of spiritual rights and powers, even if he did at times in- fringe upon rights which it behoved the national monarch, if he had been a national monarch, to assert, was, to a very great extent, the vindicator of science, of liberty, of the crushed serf. The form which the conflict took was determined by the events and controversies of the time. It happened, unfortunately for Anselm, that he could not maintain his cause except by connecting it with that general cause of the papacy, which was mixed with so much that all kings and all nations, the best as well as the worst THE DOCTOR. 97 had a right to complain of as essentially oppressive, essentially secular. But there were few men pledged to that cause, fewer Anseim's still perhaps who were pledged to the opposite cause, that had nobleness, less of these evil dispositions in their own hearts, or more earnestly desired the extirpation of them, than Anselm. 24. It is an agreeable characteristic of Anseim's works that m * writings. a very small portion of them indeed belong to controversy. There is one treatise, written at the instigation of the pope on the Greek doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost, and one against Eoscellinus on the Incarnation. With these exceptions, meditations, prayers, letters and books written for the solution of difficulties which had actually occurred to some person who had consulted him, generally to some brother at Bee, form his contribution to Middle Age literature. Not more for the honour of Anselm himself than for the comprehension of his books, this last characteristic should be recollected. They were not hard dogmatical treatises written in cold blood, to build up a system or to vanquish opponents. They were actual guides to the doubter; attempts, often made with much reluctant modesty, to untie knots which worthy men found to be interfering with their peace and with their practice. 25. The characteristic of Anselm as a man was, we think, a love of Anseim's righteousness for its own sake. That noble habit of mind is illus- prem, * e8, trated in his conversation respecting Alphege, scarcely less in a sen- tence of his, reported by Eadmer, which has given rise to some very uncharitable Protestant commentaries, that " he would rather be in Hell if he were pure of sin, than possess the Kingdom of Heaven under the pollution of sin." This too is the spirit of his writings. It is from this that they derive their substantial and permanent worth. Right there must be — that is the postulate of his mind. Then, partly for the sake of entering more deeply into the appre- His hension and possession of that which he inwardly acknowledged, "KB™*"* partly for the sake of removing confusions from the minds of his brethren, he undertakes to establish his assumption by proof. Oftentimes we are compelled to doubt the success of these demon- strations. We have an uncomfortable feeling, that the principle which we are to arrive at by an elaborate process of reasoning has been taken for granted at the commencement of it ; some of the arguments seem scarcely worthy of their object, some of them seem to interfere with it, by tempting us to accept one mode of contemplating it instead of the object itself. Theology has cause seethe to complain of Anselm for having suggested theories and argu- Bom> ™ s mentations in connection with Articles of the Creed, which through their plausibility and through the excellency of the writer have gained currency in the Church, till they have been adopted as essential parts of that of which they were at best only defences and explanations. But viewing him, as we are privileged to do, H 98 THE SOIILOQUT. Emphatically a moralist His differ- ence from Johannes Scotns. His Mono- logue. Object of it Process from the finite to the Infinite. simply as philosophical students, — caring less about the results to which his treatises have led dogmatists, than about his principles and about his method of thought, — he offers us a very interesting subject of examination. In Johannes Scotus the metaphysical ele- ment was evidently predominant over the ethical ; in Anselm the moral absorbs everything into itself. Moral ends are first in his mind ; scientific truth he learns to love, because he is too honest a man not to feel that Goodness is a contradiction if it has not Truth for its support. But the difference in the starting-point of these two writers affects all their intellectual habits. Anselm is much more of a formal reasoner than Johannes ; amongst ordinary school-readers he would pass for a much more accurate reasoner. He supplies many more producible arguments ; he meets the per- plexities which the use of words occasions more promptly ; though far enough from a superficial thinker, he keeps much more the high road of the intellect, and is not tempted to explore caverns. For such a person, Logic becomes an invaluable auxiliary ; he has not the dread of its limiting the infinite which the other had ; he secures his moral truth from all verbal invasions ; then he can let verbal refinements have their full swing in the discussing of objec- tions and in the effort to remove them. 26. Anselm's " Monologue on the Essence of the Divinity " was undertaken, he tells us, at the instance of many of his bre- thren of the Monastery, he himself shrinking from the task at first, oftentimes feeling disgust at what he had written, but after careful examination finding nothing in it at variance with Scrip- ture or the Fathers, though the nature of his task required that he should not refer to them as authorities, b,ut should consider the question as one who was reasoning it out in his own mind. A passage from the first chapter will show us the course which the Monologue will take. " A person may speak thus with himself in silence. Seeing that there are innumerable good things, the great diversity of which we experience with the senses of our body and discern with the reasoning of our mind, are we to believe that there is some one thing, in virtue of which one all good things are good, or are they good, some for this cause, some for that ?" To answer this question is the business of the book. We may speak of a good horse, meaning that it is a strong horse or a swift horse ; but we may also speak of a strong thief or a swift thief, though we admit the thief to be bad. How is this ? For a moment, Anselm would appear to rest in the utilitarian solution of this difi'erence. The strength and swiftness of the horse are beneficial, the strength and swiftness of the thief are mischievous. But he speedily dis- covers that there is an ultimate end implied in utility, a Good which is presumed in all particular Good. That Good is identical with the Divine. TOE GULF OF NOTHINGNESS. 99 27. A mind which has been led into this acknowledgment will, Conse- of necessity, proceed to confess that this Good must be, that it quencei must be perfect, that it must be one. The steps by which these thoughts unfold themselves in the thinker, are full of solemn in- terest. We should be most thankful for a guide so conscientious as Anselm, in tracing them, if ever and anon, instead of faithfully exhibiting the workings of his spirit, he did not withdraw us into an outer circle where we hear such a disputation as might have obtained laurels for an opponent and respondent in the dialectical exercises of Bee, not such a one as is carried on in the soul's secret chambers. Thus, for example, in the sixth chapter, where the sub- Logical ject is the self-subsistence of the Supreme Nature, we are instructed ™" m that " whatever exists by something else, exists either in virtue of an Efficient (cause), or of Matter, or of some Instrument." No doubt these are convenient distinctions for certain purposes. They are legitimate helps in arranging our thoughts ; they may be forms of our understanding itself; but if there is a Nature which passes our understanding, which is implied in its operations, but which is not subject to them, surely we cannot hope to climb by any of these ladders to the apprehension of it. What they can bring us to, They end is but a Negative ; that which is without matter, without instru- Negation. ment, without cause. And accordingly Anselm does find himself at once encountered, as so many had been encountered before him, by this frightful spectre of Nothing. Like a brave man, as he is, he faces it ; he is sure he has no business with it. He treats the possibility of such a difficulty occurring as one of those which, for the comfort of weak brethren, he must not pass over, since he Et si forte is bound to remove every obstacle, however slight, which may specSor hinder the contemplation of the object that is so habitually present £„™^ ere to himself, and that he would lead his readers to behold. Dear omni, vei devout Teacher and Friend 1 Is that a very small obstacle ? For remoto' a man who is sure that Good is, whose soul rests on that rock, a Sb™ 10 very pebble doubtless — a little snow-drift, which the eye hardly tardus discerns, which one may sweep away or pass by. But for the mere Si audita logician ? — for him who has been working night and day among ^"|^f s " Efficients, and Instruments, and Materials ? — for him who has c. 6. conceived all the Universe under these heads? Is the abyss of nothingness which lies beyond their clear definite circles not an appalling void to him ? Can he find any footing in it ? Will you Anseim's tempt him to try ? Had you not better say to him, " After all, KJJ ™ ts brethren ! are we not men ; must not we have something to stand theirpurpose. upon, that we may live and not die, even though our efficients and coefficients, and all this matter — yes, all that we have thought, and conceived, and imagined, should break to pieces under us!" That Anselm meant this, none can believe more firmly than we do ; but we should be violating the fidelity of our narrative and 100 PLA.TONISM IN THE ELEVENTH CENTCEY. The Trinity the ground of Anselm 's mind. Dogmas and Foundations. Anselm in heart a Platonist, in understand- ing an Aristotelian. Anselm's Transcen- dental doctrines. confusing the course of it, if we pretended that he always said this ; that he did not say much which may have led disciples — may have helped to lead a whole generation — along a wilderness in which there was often no water, and sometimes no manna. Yet believ- ing, as we do, that the way to a better land lay through that wilderness, and that freedom could not have been attained without its hunger and drouth, we can never think except with reverence of one of those who was a temporary guide in it, though perhaps not into it, certainly not through it. 28. Upon the technically theological part of this Monologue {strictly theological, of course, it is throughout) we shall not enter further than to remark, that it abundantly confirms the observa- tions which we made in reference to the Middle Age period gene- rally, that the Name into which Christians are baptized is the underground of the whole thought and speculation of its eminent men, in fact, of the whole scholastic philosophy. Dogmatism had, no doubt, especially since the 9th century, encroached upon that which, according to Plato's nomenclature, is the direct opposite to it, the acknowledgment of substance, of that which is. Men were beginning to think of the Divine Name as a doctrine which they held, not as a reality which upheld them. There were some ten- dencies in the 11th century which favoured this habit of mind ; there were some which counteracted it. Anselm as an arguer and a prover conspired with it. But Anselm as a deep student of himself, and as a practical worker, was resisting it. In this trea- tise, one discovers both aspects of his character ; the higher and more beautiful part comes out more strongly towards the conclu- sion of it. We will give our readers the titles of a few of the chapters, from which they may gather how much of what would be called in our days (and not wrongly called) the Platonical temper, mixed with the drier Aristotefianism of our Author's mind. The 66th chapter teaches us, that by the rational mind we ascend to the knowledge of the highest Essence. The 67th, that the mind is its mirror and its image. The 68th, that the rational creature is created to love this Essence. The 69th, that the soul which loves it will some time or other be truly and perfectly blessed. The 70th, that this Essence gives itself back to that which loves it that it may be eternally blessed. The 74th, that despising it the soul is eternally miserable. The 76th, that every human soul is immortal, and that it must be either always miser- able or some time or other truly blessed. And this is the con- clusion. " Very difficult, yea, nearly impossible, it seems for any mortal by reasoning to be able to ascertain what souls may be at once judged to have so loved that which they have been made to love, that they may some time or other enjoy it ; which have so despised it that they may deserve for ever to be without it ; or THE ALLOQUY. 101 according to what measure, or by what rule, those who seem as if Anseim's they might be said neither to love it nor to despise it, may be H? * 1 assigned to eternal blessedness or misery. But this are we to hold most certainly, that by a supremely just and supremely good Creator nothing will be unjustly deprived of that good for which The reward it was made, and that for this good every man should strive with of LoTe ' his whole heart, and whole soul, and whole mind, by loving it and longing for it. The human soul, however, can in no wise exercise The duty itself in this effort and intention, if it despairs of being able to come of Hope - at that at which it aims. Wherefore, just so far as the practice of this effort is useful to the soul, just so far is the hope of arriving at the end necessary to the soul. But it is not possible to love and hope for that which one does not believe. It is fitting, therefore, menecessity for the same human soul to believe this supreme Essence and those of Faith, things without which it cannot be loved, that by believing it may stretch towards it." 29. The Proslogion differs considerably from the Monologue, The and differs, we think, advantageously : though its merits make it Pmsiogion. less suitable for our work. Anselm describes the one as a Soli- loquy, the other as an Alloquy, the one as the man's discourse with himself concerning God, the other as a supplication to God to be his teacher concerning Himself. It resembles, therefore, the peti- tions which constitute so substantial a part of St. Augustine's Confessions. In the old time it would have been most truly con- i? ft dew- sidered a philosophical work, the man seeking for wisdom, crying phiiosophi- for it as for a hid treasure ; in our days it would be described as eai? a devotional treatise, and therefore as having no place in a Philo- sophical History. But if we may not deal with it directly, certain consequences followed from it, of which it behoves us to speak, as they throw a curious light upon processes of mind that charac- terized the 11th century, especially its monasteries. Anselm, in his 2d chapter, had used these words, — " O Lord, we believe Thee The answer to be something than which no greater thing can be conceived of. Atheist Is there then not a Nature of this kind, as the fool affirms, when he says in his heart ' There is no God ' ? But assuredly this same fool when he hears this very thing which I say, hears of something than which nothing greater can be conceived of. He understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his intellect, even though he does not understand that it is. For it is not the same that a thing should be in the intellect, and that we should under- stand the thing to be. For when a painter thinks beforehand of that which he is about to make, he has it indeed in his intellect, but he doth not yet understand what he hath not yet made. But Argument when he hath painted it, he both has it in the intellect and under- mXa'to stands what he has now made. Therefore the fool also is convinced that which that there is even in his intellect something than which nothing ' 102 THE FOOL COITPOTED. not to be resorted to in this day. greater can be conceived of, because when he hears this he under- stands it, and whatever is understood is in the intellect. But assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived of, cannot be in the intellect alone; for if it is in the intellect alone, it may be conceived of as being also in reality. If therefore that, than which nothing greater can be conceived of, is in the intellect alone, that very thing than which nothing greater can be conceived of, is where something greater can be conceived of. But this is impossible. There exists, therefore, beyond doubt, something than which nothing greater can be conceived of, both in the intellect and in the reality." He goes on in the next chapter to argue that God cannot be thought not to be, and that the very saying in the heart is thinking, and that the thinking presupposes Him. why such In the present day, when the arguments for the Divine existence "t^S™™ 4, fr° m *^ e constitution of the visible world have displaced all others soond, ought in the minds of theological advocates, and when these are in their turn exposed to the severest criticism from philosophers, such a subtlety as this of Anselm's would be dismissed by both parties with indifference or scorn. Without participating in either feeling, or prejudging the question whether the argument is ten - able in itself, we may express our opinion, that in a time of clubs and newspapers it would be a serious moral offence to introduce into a discussion, upon a subject of the greatest interest to all men, that which must appear to nine out of ten a play upon words, or con- juror's trick. That objection does not apply in the least to the writer of a MS. in a learned language, to be read only by stu- dents, whose own minds were habitually turned inwards, and who felt the force of appeals to their consciousness, far more than of any to the scheme of the world and the marks of design in it. We must not, however, suppose that because this was the case, an argument endorsed by the high authority of Anselra, and used to maintain the most sacred conclusions, would pass in the 11th cen- tury without examination, or might not find stout and able oppo- nents. Gaunilon, a monk, boldly wrote " a book on behalf of the FooL" He admitted the Proslogion to be full of unction and in general to be soundly reasoned. But he demurred to the state- ments we have quoted, as detracting from its general truth. Anselra, in an elaborate answer, treats his opponent with courtesy, denies his right to the name which he had claimed, and pro- nounces him a good Catholic, in spite of his unwillingness to use a particular weapon against Atheism. He maintains, however, that the weapon is a good one ; he is not the least prepared to abandon his method of thought ; it is evidently very dear and sacred in his eyes. Not from a wish to entertain our readers with a passage of arms between two accomplished doctors of this age, but because we do think that principles, the importance of which Gaunilon's objection. THE FOOL DEPENDED. 103 •would be better appreciated by their successors, were asserted on each side, we shall give a short account of this discussion. 30. Gaunilon's first objection will suggest itself to most readers. 1st objection "Do I then never hear false words, false statements? Do I not ofunder- hty understand them ? If you draw a distinction in kind between ^g"* -"^ ot ' understand them ' and ' having them in my intellect,' so that you true. should say, ' I understand what you mean, but as there is nothing answering to it in fact, I cannot entertain it in my mind ' — how does the analogy of the picture apply ?" For there the having in the intellect, and the understanding, were the same process at dif- ferent stages or points of time ; one before the picture had actually existed, the other when it was produced. 31. He has another and still stronger complaint against this Theaoaiogy analogy. The very life of the picture is in the art, that is to say, in picture the intellect of the painter ; the work is the mere expression or em- toult> '" bodying of this life. How does this relation resemble that which exists between the word that is heard, or the thought that is understood by my mind, and the reality to which that word or thought corresponds ? In one case the mental operation is clearly the first ; in the other it presumes a foregone conclusion. 32. The third objection has reference to the nature of that ®° "jPgjj* 1 which the fool is accused of not acknowledging. There is an h nameofGoa fortiori reason against the application of Anselm's argument to the referred, existence of God. If I am told of a certain man, quite unknown to me, I have the general notion of a man in my understanding ; so that if my informant has lied and there is not such a man as the one he spoke of, still the thought suggested by his words has something corresponding to it. But, by the hypothesis, this word is spoken to me concerning God, or concerning that which is greater than all things; concerning a Being, that is to say, who can be referred to no species previously known to me j who is not like anything else. Supposing then, and no other supposition will serve to meet the case, the man has not derived his knowledge in some other way previously, what will the announcement that there is such a Nature be to him but a succession of sounds, true no doubt as' such, true as making certain vibrations on the ear, but not awakening any thought within to which the reality without can answer ? 33. The inference follows, that the method of reasoning from ^i r ™? the intellectual apprehension to that which is apprehended, is a an Atlantis? false one ; that I must take the reverse method ; establishing the existence of my apprehension by its correspondence with that which is previously ascertained ; otherwise, Gaunilon asks, why, if I am told of the lost island, which surpasses in its treasures and beauty all that I have ever seen and dreamed of, is not the possibility of understanding the announcement, which no one will dispute, to 104 A SCHOLASTIC TOUBNAMENT, If the argu- ment is good, -why limit it to the Supreme Mature? Anselm's answer. The incon- ceivable cannot have a beginning therefore, cannot be only in the mind. The argu- ment from the lost island. be taken as conclusive evidence that such an island exists? Surely, continues the critic, the man who endeavours to persuade me to believe him on such a ground, must either be joking with me, or must be very simple himself, or must give me credit for being simpler than he is. 34. With one more argument — a very suggestive one, he concludes. Possibly when you say that the non-existence of this supreme nature cannot be even thought of, you mean that it cannot be understood, because, strictly speaking, that which is false is not, as such, capable of being understood. But if that is your meaning, how is the argument specially applicable to the supreme Nature ? I cannot understand that I myself do not exist, though I can understand the possibility of any one's non-existence, and though I can think of my own non-existence. Is it otherwise in the case of the Being ? 35. The commencement of Anselm's reply to this skilful rea- soner will appear to most readers to involve an awkward petitio principii. His opponent and he being agreed in their conclusion, he can ask him triumphantly, whether the denial that the thought in the mind of a supreme nature does not involve a reality corres- ponding to it, is not at variance with his convictions and con- science, and whether, therefore, he must not suspect a flaw in the process by which he has arrived at it ? We have explained already that, in our judgment, this is an apparent rather than a real unfairness. If it is fatal to the probative force of Ansekn's arguments upon an impartial judge, that is to say, upon a person who tries to divest himself of his humanity that he may be a logician merely, it is extremely interesting and illustrative of Anselm's character, that he is obviously unable to do this, even when he endeavours it most, and when the logical fever is most strong upon him. And, to do him justice, though he takes this ground at starting, he does not consciously allow it to interfere with his subsequent reasonings. Of these, when they do not bear directly on Gaunilon's, we will give only one specimen. " That, than which nothing greater can be thought or conceived of, must be thought of as without a beginning. But whatever can "\kt thought or conceived of, and is not, can be thought of as having a beginning " {the thought is the beginning.) " Therefore such a nature cannot be thought of and not be : therefore if it be thought of, it must be." 36. Anselm insists that every one of Gaunilon's objections turns upon a forgetfulness of the terms of the original proposition. What is the use of talking about a lost island ? Is that something, than which nothing greater can be conceived ? If it is, unquestionably such an island must be. It exists, and can never be lost again. Is it not ? How does it affect the point in dispute ? Here, of WHAT MUST BE. 105 coarse, the defiiiieness which is presumed in the very name and nature of an . island gives the respondent an obvious advan- tage. Pressing this advantage, he proceeds to dispose of Gau- nilon's assertion, that there is nothing in the argument which applies to the denial of the supreme nature more than to the denial of anything else which exists, e.g. ourselves. If for the ^" y ^ t words, "thought or conceived of," Gaunilon was at liberty to Slots the substitute " understood," as he proposes, doubtless it might be !Xr? e said that nothing false, strictly speaking, could be understood, differently But it is, he contends, the peculiarity of this higher nature, that other" ' y it could not be " thought or conceived of," if it did not exist. subjeot " For all those things, and those alone, can be thought not to be, which have beginning, or end, or conjunction of parts, and generally, whatsoever at some time or in some place is not a whole ; and that alone cannot be thought or conceived not to be, in which the thought finds neither end, nor beginning, nor con- junction of parts, and which always and everywhere it finds only as a whole," — a great and pregnant assertion, upon which every earnest man will meditate deeply, but which he must not hope to be made much clearer or more satisfactory to him by the syllogisms of Anselm or any one else. 37. Anselm complains of Gaunilon for substituting the phrase, Anseim's " that which is greater than all things," for his, " that than which Sistmder- nothing greater can be conceived of or thought of," and of drawing opponent!" 8 inferences from the one which are quite inapplicable to the other. The distinction is undoubtedly of great importance, and one which throws a valuable light on the subject. The way to the abso- lutely greatest is through the thought. To spring by a leap to it, is to overlook that very relationship for which our doctor is con- tending. Another distinction is also asserted. Gaunilon says that we can understand the words which express a false proposi- tion ; — undoubtedly ; but is that the same thing as understanding or taking into the intellect the assertion that a thing actually exists? Anselm says that the fool does this, even when he says wiiythefooi, there is no God. He understands or receives into his intellect, of SfJaS; necessity, the assertion that there is that which is greater than he } n J ya *"™" can think of. This is not merely to understand the words of the conceivable proposition. It is to confess that which is implied in them, the natule - very sense of them. Not indeed — for this is a point carefully to be noticed — that the argument assumes God, as such, to be known by the fool ; but only this, that there is such a highest nature, as he seeks to deny, such a highest nature as he should wish, in whatever way that is possible, to be acquainted with. 38. By far the most satisfactory, and as it seems to us, the most practically useful, part of Anseim's answer is that in which he dis- poses of the objection which is drawn from the absence of any i06 THE IMPERFECT IMPLIES A PERFECT. Ascent from the imperfect to the perfect. Final inference. Dialogue De Veritate. The Question. Truth in Enunciation. Truth in Opinion. Truth of Will. Truth in Acta. species to which the Divine Being can be referred, of any likeness with which he can be compared. Every lower good, implies a higher one. There is a continual ascent in the thought, from the which it feels to be partial and to have flaws, to that which is full and immaculate. All reasonable people acknowledge it to be so ; the Scriptures clearly affirm that the invisible things from the creation of the world are seen through those which we understand ; to wit, the eternal power and Godhead. Hence he proceeds to the remark, that to assume that which is greater than our thought as being the subject of our thought, is no greater contradiction than to speak of the ineffable. It is a contradiction implied in the very nature of speech and thought ; they lose them- selves in that which is deeper than themselves. In concluding the argument, he declares that he looks upon man's thought as necessarily predicating of the Divine essence whatever quality it confesses to be better than the negation of that quality. Eternity is better than non-eternity ; goodness than non-goodness ; good- ness in its very self than that which is not goodness in itself. 39. There are two dialogues of Anselm's — one concerning Truth, one concerning Free-will — of which it behoves us to give our readers some account. The person who represents the scholar in the first dialogue opens with this question, " Seeing that we believe God to be Truth, and seeing that we affirm Truth to be in many other things, I should be glad to know whether, when- ever Truth is spoken of, we ought to confess it to be God." A passage in the Monologue, in which Truth is said to be without beginning or end, raises this doubt. The master does not remem- ber to have met with any definition of Truth, but he thinks that by examining the different subjects of which it is predicated, there may be a hope of discovering what it is. He begins with Truth in Enunciation. When do we say that Enunciation is true? The inquiry is pursued with minute, and what we should most of us call unnecessary, elaboration. It results in the conclusion, that Truth in, enunciation or speech is identical with rectitude. The speech does what it ought to do, imperfectly when it is merely self- consistent, perfectly when besides being self-consistent, it answers to the fact. Next they consider the truth of Opinion. The decision here is the same as in the former case. Truth of opinion is iden- tical with rectitude of opinion. The thought corresponds to the fact, as the word in the other case did. Thence we ascend to the truth of Will. The devil stood not in the truth, he did not will what he ought. Rectitude is the truth of Will. Fourthly, how stands it with Actions ? These are twofold : the actions of voluntary and those of involuntary, creatures. Can we say that the fire acts truth when it warms ? It is determined that we can. It does what it ought. But when it is said, "He that truth; eight; ought. 107 doeth the Truth cometh to the light," is the principle different? The Only in this, that the action of coming to the light is not necessary, and voiuh- It is an act of will, but it is an act of will doing what it ought, taiy act- fulfilling its proper function just as the fire does. In this way we may explain a paradox which was spoken of under the first head, that speech may be true even though the proposition which it speech may enunciates is false. The speech fulfils its own natural function, Mutters a lie. it says what the speaker means to say, but the meaning is falsified by the will. A fifth question follows about the truth of Truth in the the Senses. Do they not deceive us ? The answer is " No," the deception is not in the sense but in opinion. The boy fears the picture of a dragon with an open mouth. It is not that his out- The outer ward sense makes a different report of the picture from that which tense!" 1 " the outward sense of an old man makes ; it is that his inner boyish sense has not yet been able to distinguish a picture from a reality, as that of the other does. All supposed cases, it is con- tended, of optical deception, or of deception through any sense, may be resolved in the same manner. 40. We now approach the point which has given rise to these Relation of separate investigations. Nothing is true which does not derive its God. truth from the highest Truth. Essentially, everything is true because it derives its essence from that in which there is no false- hood. Truth and rectitude are identical in the highest subject, as they have been shown to be in every subordinate subject. But Whatever is, the grand affirmation, that everything is what it ought to be, of then comes"' course at once suggests the question, " Are there not then many mm s> evil works which it is certain ought not to be?" " Is that won- derful," asks the Master, " if the same thing ought to be and ought not to be?" " How is that possible?" asks the disciple. To the proof of this paradox his companion addresses himself. The gene- The general ral inclusive proposition is, that God permits some to do evil because they will to do evil ; that the permission is good and ought to be ; that the evil, by the very force of the term, ought not to be. But there are various particular illustrations to show that the principle cannot be gainsayed even by those who refuse to recognize that which is the deepest ground of it. An act may be right in itself; it ought to be ; and yet the doer of it ought not to Ought,- be the doer. There cannot be a blow given which is not received ; thaffisTn yet the " ought ' ' may be altogether different in relation to the the W0Id - receiver and the giver. The nail may do its own appointed work upon human flesh ; the flesh may do its appointed work in receiv- ing the impression from it ; each of these instruments does what it ought to do ; but he who drives the nail may be doing that which ought not to be done. Nay, there is a use of "ought" which sug- gests the very opposite of what it actually means. " I ought to be loved by you," would seem to imply that I owe something to you, 108 TEDTH IS THINGS ; TRUTH IN ITSELF. A similar ambiguity in "might." Acts and words. Rectitude in God, how it differs from Recti- tude in the creature. The Eternal presumed in the Tem- poral. Rectitude, how predi- cted of Things ? Rectitude always judged by the mind, not by the eye. Rectitude and Justice. The conclu- sion. whereas it does imply, that you owe something to me. The Master remarks by the way, that there is a similar ambiguity in the use of the words, " might," " could," " was able." Hector was able to be conquered by Achilles, Achilles could not be conquered by Hector. You would suppose the power was in Hector, whereas in truth the weakness was in him. 41. The Master proceeds in the next chapter to show, that Truth is at least as reasonably affirmed to reside in acts as in words ; and that a true act is nearer to the nature and essence of truth, than even a true word. All this, of course, bears upon the great ob- ject of the Dialogue, the identification of Truth with Rectitude. This identification is traced at last to the Highest Truth; there you have a Rectitude not involving obligation but the ground of obligation ; the primary Eternal Eectitude which is the cause of all Rectitudes. And so the doctrine of the Monologue, that a truth without a beginning or an end is involved in speech, though it may predicate of this thing that it has been, or of that thing that it is to be, is justified. These very pasts and futures, and the language which denotes them, presume that Supreme Truth which comprehends them in its own eternity. 42. The way is now open for the definition we sought for. Truth and Eectitude have appeared to be one in all cases. A single difficulty remains. When we speak of a straight twig or stick, do we not ascribe rectitude to it ? Must we not, therefore, distinguish between the truth that is cognizable by the eye and by the mind ? Or shall we not rather say, that even this rectitude is cognizable by the mind, seeing that we should have no reason for calling a particular twig or stick, straight, if we had not in our mind a standard of straightness to which we referred it ? May we not then affirm truth to be rectitude perceptible only by the mind ? In this sense is Eectitude identical with Justice f Not surely if we attribute rectitude (as we have done) to natural things, as fire, when they fulfil their functions. Justice must be voluntary recti- tude. — Is that an adequate definition ? May not a man do right acts willingly, without being a just man ? Yes ! The Will must have a Reason with which it is in accordance. That only is justice, the Master concludes, which is " Rectitude of Will sustained for its own sake." May this definition be applied to the Highest Being, to the Essential Righteousness? There can be no subject to which it is equally applicable. Rectitude of will in the created, though preserved for the sake of rectitude, yet looks up to a higher Will which is the Right, which stands in itself and upholds all others. Thus we are drawn on to the final inference that the truth of each subject is distinct, in so far as it is limited by the nature of that subject, but that the very distinctions imply that that Truth is one and the same in all things, and ■Will AND CHOICE. 109 that there is a self-subsisting Truth which is not included in any thing. 43. We need scarcely point out to our readers how remarkably Treatise, this treatise illustrates what we have described as the characteristic vohmtate. feature of Anselm's mind. The resolute predominance of the moral over the intellectual in his apprehension of truth, gives all the in- terest and variety to this investigation. The short book on the Will (Voluntas), which is less theological than the Dialogue (De Libero Arbitrio),. brings us by a different road to the same point. He begins by giving a double explanation of the Will. " It is an The win an ■ . i. Ti ■ »i • * ^ c ■ •.. ■ ib ^ Instrument, instrument, as the eye is the instrument or seeing ; it is an affection and an of that same instrument, e.g. the mother's love to her child, which thlSm- is always latent in the will, whether it comes forth into thought or ment. not. The will, then, is the natural instrument of the soul ; when the soul thinks, the instrument works. Its affections are two, the affection of willing advantage, and of willing justice. The one is inseparable from the instrument. The other may be entirely absent, or may be present at times and absent at other times. It is only when the will to advantage is absorbed into the will to justice that the man attains his appointed end, and therefore is blessed." This is the substance of his doctrine. But he touches in passing upon the question of the permission of evil, and of God's hardening a man's heart, which belongs more properly to the Dialogue. 44. The principle asserted in this dialogue cannot be new to Dialogue any thoughtful student of the subject ; it is worked out with the Arwtrio™ logical minuteness which belongs to the time and to the writer. Starting from the maxim that free choice is the same in all beings Free choice to whom it appertains, in God and holy angels as in men ; he goes Being. e ec on to argue that this freedom is not identical with the power of sinning. Assuredly that power could not have been exercised by why the any being in whom free choice did not reside ; but inasmuch as Egevii Sin is the recognition of a foreign, unnatural dominion, inasmuch f ann t < 2 b ? as it involves slavery, it is a contradiction in terms to speak of it with freedom as the proof and token of Freedom. On the contrary, the deliver- of chmce - ance from such a power, and from all desire to use it, is the very condition of freedom. The difficulty, that the man retains free- inwhatsense dom of choice after he has sinned, is met by a reference to the remains after doctrine of the former treatise. The Will (Voluntas), in the sense slavery has of an instrument created to desire Justice and Eight, has the free- epm ' dom of choice (liberum arbitrium) conferred on it that it may pursue this end. Forsaking this end, the freedom of choice, the power of embracing and also of recovering the Eight, deserts it. But the instrument remains under its original law and definition, just as the power of seeing remains, though the object to be seen may be hidden, or though there may be some obstruction inter- 110 GEA.MMAB. inferences posed between it and the eye. From these premises, the conclu- premises. sions are deduced in the subsequent chapters, that no temptation forces any one to sin against his will ; that our will, though it seems impotent, has a power against temptations ; that the will is stronger than the temptation, even when overcome by it ; that God himself cannot take away the rectitude of the will, (since if He did, His will would not be a will to right) : that nothing is freer than a right will ; that it is a greater miracle when God restores rectitude to a will that has abandoned it, than when He restores life to the dead ; that the power of pursuing rectitude for its own sake is the complete definition of free choice. Esfccmcoidia 45. The Discussion on the reconciliation of Prescience and Pnescientice Predestination with Free will, follows naturally upon these two. Ubero™ 1 We shall not enter into it, as we have already given our readers aroitrio. specimens enough to guide them in appreciating the purpose and the method of Anselm. The idea which is so ably worked out by Boethius, that a Being who sees all natures truly, and as they are, must recognize in all his acts of seeing and foreseeing that distinc- tion between voluntary and necessary existences which He has established, and that to speak of his jpraescience as superseding and abolishing that distinction is a contradiction in terms — this idea is adopted and enforced in his own way by the doctor of the 11th Time ana century. He dwells too, as strongly as Boethius, on the difference tern y. between the same things considered under the law of Time and under the law of Eternity, " in which there is no past or future, but only present;" "in which all things are contained." Dialogue 46. It may seem like a farce after a very solemn tragedy, to Grammatico. pass from debates such as these to the Dialogue on the Gram- marian, the genuineness of which has never, we believe, been questioned. But our reader must be content to look at times and is a Gram- at men from all sides if he would understand them. The discus- Substance? s ^ on opens with the appalling doubt whether a Grammarian is a Substance or a Quality. "We are in hopes for a moment that this perplexity, in which so many venerable persons are interested, may be set at rest by the timid suggestion of the disciple, that the is the Grammarian is a man. and that therefore he may share the privi- Grammarlan . „ . / . it* ^ 1/ t» r a Man? lege ot a man in not being reduced into a Quality. But we were too hasty. He discovers that this proposition, " A Grammarian is a man," so far from being irrefragable, is scarcely defensible. For a grammarian without grammar is inconceivable, but surely a man may go comfortably through the world without any such addition. How are we to untie this knot ? By no means let it be cut ; we must proceed very gradually. By perceiving that rationality is predicated of man as man, though man is an animal, and though rationality is not predicated of the animal as an animal, we begin to perceive that the grammarian may require grammar to make him THE ELEVENTH AND THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY. Ill a grammarian, and yet may be a man, though grammar is not in- volved in the existence of a man. Hence we can go on to the other argument. It is not necessary to rob our unhappy grammarian of substance, because a certain quality is necessary to make him that which he is ; because, apart from that quality, he could not be a grammarian. 47. All this will, no doubt, appear to the critic of the 19th Conclusion. century purely ridiculous. But it is not ridiculous; not even irrelevant as a treatise on Grammar. In a particular instance, the teacher brings to light a set of verbal confusions into which the men of that time often fell from an excess of subtilty, we perhaps scarcely less often from indolence and contempt of distinctions. The relation between Gran\mar and Logic is illustrated. The syllogism is vindicated, for its use in detecting confusions of thought as well as of expression. Let it be frankly admitted, that c ? a . r ?? t ? f through the meshes of this dialectic, the paltriest trivialities, the against the most mischievous sophisms may break in ; but we must maintain sohootaen - as firmly, that it was the purpose of all righteous men, such as Anselm was, to keep them out, and that if they spent their time in such dialogues as these, it was because they did not see any other way so effectual of accomplishing that purpose. Wis- wisdom ana dom is justified of all her children, with whatever weapons they ° y ' fight ; whether the scene of their battle is laid among the cleverest and busiest of all people in the open haunts of Athens during the Peloponnesian war, or among students in the cloisters of Bee in the age of William of Normandy. And Folly is justified of her children, by the contempt she casts upon one as much as the other ; these children in each age being incapable of looking beyond its modes and conventions, or of seeing that which time and circumstance cannot alter. CHAPTER IV. century. TWELFTH CENTURY. Sneand'end *• *^ HE centur y> which opened with gloomy visions of coming of the nth destruction to Christendom and to the world, closed grandly with the conquest of Jerusalem, and the establishment of European chivalry in the East. From these incidents the 12th century takes its commencement ; in a certain sense, they give it its character. The crusading impulse was not felt more by the warriors who went forth with Godfrey, than by the inmates of the most solitary con- vent. It penetrated the heart of society, it bound together him who wore the helmet with him who wore the cowL Their char- orderT acters, their very functions, were scarcely distinguishable. The member of the military order had surely a calling as sacred as that of the priest ; they were blended together in the minds of the people. The templar is the brother of a society bound by solemn vows, dedicated to Christ. The cloistered man must be a soldier. Do not talk of his occupations as peaceful. He is sent into the world with a sword; his whole life is to be a fight. enc^fromUie ^ - ^his ^ act must t> e always kept in mind when we are con- spread of templating this period under any of its aspects. From the amazing Monasteries, iro r t>< / ..... . ^ power which the monastic life and discipline exercised over the hearts of men, and over the affairs of the world, at all events during the first half of the 12th century, we might easily draw the infer- ence, that we had fallen upon a torpid age, which succumbed easily to those who had spiritual terrors at command, because all other energies were suspended. But read any of the books which ex- hibit this monkish influence and enable us to judge of the ways in which it exerted itself, and you are struck at once with the various kinds of forces, physical and intellectual, which were acting and reacting upon each other throughout the whole of western Europe. thecS° f ^ e acknowledgment of the spiritual ascendency certainly does upon the not come from men who are too weak to resist it, or who do not actually resist it, even while they pay it homage. Counts, kings, bishops, in the fulness of their wealth and barbaric splendour, may be bowing before a monk, who writes them letters from a cell in which he is living upon vegetables and water ; it is not that they set no value upon their possessions, or that they are merely in- ESTIMATE OE THE ELKVENTH CENTURY. 113 fluenced by the dread of exchanging them for sufferings hereafter; it is that there is a power in a man who speaks as if there were a righteous order in the world, and as if they were bound by it, which they cannot gainsay, which rises above all their turbulence and selfishness. If the name and pretensions of the pope, with all the J^f ° p t e s the outward grandeur which supported them, had been the sole or the Monks. main object of reverence at this time, one might have explained it by superstition, or by an ecclesiastical theory. But that power was often mocked and set at nought, not only by the emperore of Germany, but by the citizens of Eome. Popes themselves were forced to ask the aid of those who had no splendour, no material appliances, no claims to traditional homage. Bernard of Clairvaux Bernard of had an influence over the councils of Europe which they could not clairvaux - exercise. He could awaken the hearts of men to a crusade, could heal differences, could regulate the transactions of the world, in which he took no personal interest, while bishops of Kome had to beg that he would decide which of two claimants to their dignity ought to be esteemed the vicar of Christ, and the father of the faithful. 3. But if an influence such as this was compatible with the kind intellectual of might which dwelt in swords and spears, was it equally com- Pterin tins patible with the kind of energy which the thinking man puts forth? Was not the spiritual assumption of the monk certain to keep down this energy — certain, at all events, to trample it out, if it should anywhere give signs of its existence ? These questions must be answered carefully. A hasty resolution of them is sure to be a false one. In truth, they are most different questions, to which history gives most different answers. The facts show clearly enough, that how related neither the material forces of this time,' nor the spiritual, could inj^nc* 6 ^ restrain the exercises of thought in the minds of those who devoted work in it themselves to study, nor could prevent the infection of these thoughts from spreading where one would have supposed there was the least susceptibility of them. The evidence which we shall have presently to produce upon this point is irresistible. If the 12th century was an age of martial prowess, of monastical domin- ation, it was quite as much, quite as characteristically, an age of intellectual vigour and restlessness — an age when intellectual pur- suits established themselves as part of the* business of the world, and became, in some directions, more strictly popular than they have ever been since. But to determine how these intellectual studies were related to the spiritual thoughts and affections of the religious monk on the one side, and to the impulses and purposes of the statesman and warrior on the other, whether on the whole they were coincident or hostile forces, — how they became one or the other, — what alliances, temporary or permanent, there may have been between either of the two against the third, this is far 114 WHEREIN UNLIKE THE LAST. Cousin's view of this age. Inconsistent ■with facts already stated. Reference to Anselm. Character- istics of the two periods. Bernard no enemy of worldly business; but a great enemy of school Logic more difficult. To do this effectually would be to write — what has never yet been written — a complete theological, philosophical, and political history of the period. 4. Of course we do not aspire to supply this want, but merely to offer a few hints, which may assist the moral and metaphysical student in finding a clue to a labyrinth in which he is very likely indeed to lose his way. If he takes up M. Cousin's preface to the works of Abelard, and surrenders himself to the guidance of a teacher whom he cannot fail to admire for his eloquence, for his learning, and for his sympathy with the subject on which he is writing, he will certainly arrive at the conclusion, that Abelard was the first man, or nearly the first, in modern Europe, who had the courage to think, who believed the intellect was to be exercised upon moral or theological questions, who did not merely shape himself upon the decisions of popes or councils. We have given, in this sketch, some specimens of the writings of the most eminent and the most orthodox Doctor of the 11th century; and we ven- ture to ask, whether these extracts, which we have at all events endeavoured to make faithfully, and which may be compared with the books whence they are taken, bear out M. Cousin's state- ment? Anselm may have applied his intellect rightly or wrongly to the discovery and enforcement of truth, or to the defence of Sophisms, — that is not the point. Clearly he did employ it, and that with a very deliberate purpose,— aforegoing all advantages which ecclesiastical decrees or the authority of Scripture might give him, appealing to principles of the human mind for his premises, and addressing himself to the conscience and the intellect in his in- ferences. The intellect, in the ordinary sense of the word, was as much called into play in the discussions of Gaunilon with Anselm, as in any to which the 12th century gave birth. Theology, in its strictest sense, furnished the motive and occasion for this intellectual gladiatorship. Nor can it be said that the gravest objections to a theological statement were not put forth on one side, and tolerated on the other. 5. But though this is not the distinction between the two periods, there is a very marked distinction between them, — a distinction suffi- cient to explain M. Cousin's opinion, though not sufficient to justify it. One can with difficulty conceive of Bernard, forced, as Anselm was, into an archbishopric. He would have felt the humiliation even more keenly than his predecessor. Probably he might have been involved in fewer conflicts, or in more successful conflicts, with princes ; his skill in the management of worldly affairs might have been greater. But one cannot conceive of Bernard as writing a logical treatise, even to remove the greatest perplexities from a brother's mind. Such a book as that on Truth, or that on the Will, to say nothing of the Grammarian, would have been abhorrent THE MONASTEET. 115 from the mind which found nothing inconsistent with its habits or tendencies in preaching a religious war. On the other hand, the temper of Anselm's mind, which is expressed in his Proslogium, the temper which found its most suitable utterance in meditations and prayers, has evidently very little which corresponds to it in the writings of Abelard. These men furnish accurate tests and^|j el ™ and illustrations of their period. The spiritual and intellectual tendency which had been combined in different measures and degrees during the former time — which had not been formally separated in Beren- garius any more than in Lanfranc or Anselm — which had been com- prehended in the impartial hatred of William Eufus — were now breaking loose from each other. The Monastery was beginning to be regarded more as exclusively the place for cultivating the divine affections, for seeking inward converse with God, for humbling the flesh. Thoughts, learning, study, though not banished from it, were absorbed, in the stricter societies — in those which gave most the tone to the age — into devotion. The warrior or statesman, ex- -n^ jjonas- hausted with the outward world, did not want this kind of occu- tery more pation. The enthusiastic youth who found in the Monastery an place of* employment for his energies, not altogether unlike that which his Deyotion - parent or his brother sought in the field with the Saracen, did not care to mix his direct faith with questions about predicaments and middle terms. Even where the rule was less stringent, where the copying and illuminating of manuscripts, and the studying of classical authors, preserved their reputation, letters rather took the place of logic — the religious man became more of a scholar, in the modern sense of the word, than of a student. 6. What, then, were those to do in whom the student impulse, The student which had been awakened in the Monasteries of the last century, ofthi8 time - was still vigorously at work ? It was impossible that there should not be a number of such. Anselm, and many very inferior to him, but still men of note and reputation, had helped to call such a class into existence. Long before their time, theology and logic had been regarded as sisters, if not twins. A priori, we might Dialectical fancy that the rage for dialectics would be extinguished by the rage pS™ with" for Eastern conquest. But experience does not justify such anti- military cipations. When there is fervour in one direction, there is com- monly fervour in all. The distinctions of talents and vocations are not lost, but whatever a man sets before him, his pursuit of it be- comes a passion. If the religious man disowned the logician, and fraternized with the man of action rather than with him, he would assuredly have his revenge. His mistress might be called by those who did not know her, cold, phlegmatic, repulsive ; he would prove that she possessed life, grace, every possible charm. There might be as much of fighting, and earnest fighting, in these lists as in any. What is more, spectators might be as glad to witness such contests, 116 TI1E -UNIVERSITY. and might take as lively an interest in the falls and prizes of the tighter"" 1 " combatants. For what if they are called word-fights ? Are they less human for that ? Is not every man in possession of words, even if other possessions are not very abundant with him ? May he not be glad to know the use of them, and the feats that may be done with them ? If Monks fancy themselves above such know- ledge, may not the people be glad of any teacher who will bring it within their reach? These are the movements in the world and in men's minds, which help to explain how divinity and dialectics acquired that new position in respect to each other which M. Cousin speaks of; to explain why the 12th century became the age in which the Universities of Europe started into life. And all these movements are gathered up and illustrated in the striking and tragical history of Peter Abelard. Ab fe i 0f d' eter ^" There are ver y f ew histories of which we possess so much accurate information as this. That it has been disguised by French and English sentimentalists — scarcely less, perhaps, by Churchmen, who have denounced Abelard as a heretic, — by philosophers, who have exalted him into a hero, — by critics, incapable of looking be- yond the habits of their own age, who have questioned the traditions respecting the power of his intellect — is quite true. But it is our own fault if we are misled by any of these partial guides, when we have the autobiography of the person whose position we are study- ing, — the letters between him and his wife, written with the most perfect freedom, and in the maturity of the character, intellect, The materials misfortunes of both, — the writings, both theological and dialectical, of l iira gtns °^ Abelard, of which quite enough are preserved to guide our judgments about his opinions and his powers, — finally, the letters of his most eminent opponents, with the records and decrees of the councils who were called to pass sentence upon him. Those who suspect all lives which men write of themselves, — that is to say, those who always fancy that they must be cheated by the ■. vanity and partial representations of a fellow-creature, even though' they begin with arming themselves at all points against the danger, by divesting themselves of any sympathy with him, — these cautious and sagacious persons may take it for granted that Abelard's Book The Liber of Calamities, even with all the aids which we have to qualify its a trustworthy statements, must mislead them. To us it seems a book of trans- book - parent fidelity, exposing, both consciously and unconsciously, all that was weakest and worst in the writer ; imputing not more injustice to his adversaries than evidence internal and external would lead us to suppose they may have committed, without being worse people than we ourselves are ; justifying itself to our judgments and consciences by the very terrible revelations which it makes of dangers to which we are all prone, however the circumstances of different periods may alter their form. ABELABD COMSIENCITJG WORKi 117 8. Abelard was born in the year 1079, at Palais, near Nantes, "I sprung from a country," he says, "of which the soil is light, The Breton and the temper of the inhabitants is light ; and I had a wonderful JrXSan! 1 * facility for acquiring knowledge. My father had some taste for letters before he became a soldier. He wished all his boys to be Scholars before they gave themselves to arms. Me, his eldest-born, he was especially careful to educate. But I soon abandoned the privileges of my primogeniture to my brothers, leaving them to follow Mars, and casting myself into the lap of Minerva. And J^KJ 18 . since I preferred dialectical reasoning to all the other documents of philosophy, I changed other weapons for these, and abandoned the trophies of wars for the conflicts of arguments. So, travelling through different provinces, wherever I heard that the study of this art of disputation was flourishing, exercising it also myself as I went, I became a rival of the Peripatetics." 9. With this ambition our young recruit comes to Paris. He Paris in the has heard of the fame of William of Champeaux, who is established llth centur J r ' there, and at once becomes his pupil in dialectics. William dis- covers that he has received a most dangerous member into his class. Instead of meekly listening to his lessons, Abelard begins at once to practise them by answering his Master. The elder students are scandalized at the impertinence of the new comer. " Hence," says Abelard, " my calamities began. Presuming on my talents I The scholar aspired, youth as I was, to the government of schools. I fixed Master 1 ! upon Melun, the seat of a royal palace, as the place in which I would exhibit my powers." William of Champeaux, and the rival students, threw all difficulties in the way. But the Doctor also had his enemies among the powerful of the earth ; these became Abelard's patrons. It was only necessary that they should find him Preparations a field ; he could work it for himself. Soon his dialectical fame tov: war " began to spread everywhere. The name of William himself quailed before that of Abelard. Bodily sickness, brought on by intense application, drove him back to Brittany. All who were smitten with the; dialectical passion, craved for his return. After a few years he was again confronting his old preceptor, now become Archdeacon of Paris, and aspiring to a Bishopric. Though it might have been more seemly for the venerable disputant, now that he had such objects before him, to have abandoned his old pursuits, he could not resist the temptation of descending into the field, even at the manifest risk of being defeated by a disciple, who now added something of experience to his youthful valour. 10. It must have been a terrible engagement. William of Doctrine of Champeaux had been used to maintain in his school, that the champeaux. same whole thing dwells essentially in every one of the individual things which are comprehended under it. We shall hereafter 118 UNTVEKSALS AND PARTICULARS. Victory of Abelard. Conse- quences of it Vengeance of defeated Logicians. Stratagems of rival Logicians. The battles of William and Peter. endeavour to make our readers understand what we suppose he meant ; now we will only observe, that we enter into the heart of that controversy respecting universals, which was to affect the thought of many centuries consciously, and of many more unconsciously ; the controversy which was foretold in the commentary of old Boethius upon his Greek teacher Porphyry. " By most patent arguments," boasts Abelard, " I compelled William of Champeaux to change his opinion ; yea, to abandon it." The routed Archdeacon thought to save his reputation by substituting the word indifferently for essentially, in his original proposition. The change, we shall find, was not an " indifferent" but an " essential" one; nevertheless, such a concession could never save a man who had an opponent so active as Peter at his heels. He affirmed, and Paris seems to have assented, that this is the great question of all in dialectics — in the judgment of Porphyry, the very crux upon which the whole science turns. The lectures, which had been once sr popular, were utterly neglected; William was scarcely admittei to read upon dialectics at all. " Those who had most adhered to our Master, and most denounced my doctrine," says our author, "fled to my school. Even his successor offered me his place, and handed himself over with the rest to my teaching where before his master and ours had flourished." Unutter- able seems to have been the grief and envy of the discomfited William. Abelard could not be directly attacked, but cruel slan- ders were raised against the colleague who had been his opponent, and a rival put in his place. Then follows a series of manoeuvres, which Abelard describes in the military language, that seemed to him most suitable to the subject. He retreats for a while to Melun, where his influence increases with the enmity of William. The latter hearing that suspicions are circulated about the sin- cerity of his religious vows and clerical professions, withdraws to a convent of brothers not far from the city. Straightway Abelard descends from Melun to Paris, ".thinking that I should now have peace with him." "But," he says, "as my younger rival still held the school at Paris, I placed my camp on the Mount of St. Genoveva, outside the city, with the purpose of besieging him who had taken possession of my place. On hearing which, our Master imprudently returns to the city, bringing his school and his convent of brothers into the old Monastery, designing to relieve his soldier, whom he had deserted, from our blockade." The succour is most unfortunate. William's patronage destroys the school of his friend. "He had had some pupils," Abelard says, " for he was supposed to be a good teacher of Priscian ; but now he lost them all, till, despairing of earthly glory, he also betook himself to the monastic life." Then the strife was renewed between the old combatants. " What conflicts," says Abelard, " our scholars CHANGE OF STUDIES. 119 had after the return of the Master to the city, as well with him as with his disciples, and what results fortune granted to our party in these wars, yea, to me myself in them, facts have sufficiently in- formed thee. I might boldly, and yet with moderation, use the words of Ajax, ' If you inquire the fortune of this fight, I was not vanquished by him.'" 11. Abelard was recalled from these trials to Brittany by his mother, who was about to enter upon a religious life, as his father had done before her. When he returned into France, it was not At>eiara to resume his battles with William of Ohampeaux, who had now trinity! attained the object of his life by becoming a Bishop, but to study Divinity. The popular teacher of the day in theology was Anselm of Laon, a very different person in all respects from the Anselm of Bee, who occupied us so much in the last century. We must make sketch of a room for Abelard 's characteristic description of him. " If any one ^"tos"" 1 - came to him," he says, " in uncertainty of mind to urge him upon any question, he returned more uncertain. He was a wonderful man in the eyes of those who listened to him, but he was nought in the sight of those who asked him questions. He had a wonder- ful practice of words, but it was a practice that was contemptible in sense and empty of reason. When he kindled a fire, he filled his house with smoke. That great tree of his attracted you by its leaves when you saw it afar off; when you came near and looked carefully at it, you found it bore no fruit. I perceived, when I sought fruit upon it, that it was the fig-tree which our Lord had cursed, or that old oak to which Lucan compares Pompey. Having made this discovery, I did not lie for many days idle under its shadow. " Our readers will easily anticipate that the old story is Abeiara coming over again, but with a more dangerous subject for a con- Theological test of wits. It is seen that Peter has no respect for his Master. Teacher - His brother scholars set them at war. But they do Abelard a greater injury. One day while they are joking together, he ex- presses his wonder at the barrenness of theologians, who were always merely repeating each other, and following in the track of old commentators ; who could never venture to grapple with the text of Scripture, or of the Fathers themselves. He is asked The Expn B i- whether he would dare to become an expositor of some book tmre° cnp " which was "not much read, and in which he had not much pre- pared himself. He undertakes the task. The prophecy of Ezekiel, as being particularly obscure, is chosen for the trial. He is ad- vised that he ought to devote himself to some preparatory studies. He answers with contempt, that it is not his custom to trust to experience, but to intuition ; and insists that they shall not evade the trial upon which he is willing to enter. Few came to the first lecture. Those who were present extolled it so highly that numbers appeared at the second and third. He is solicited to 120 PRIDE AND HUMILIATION. transcribe his commentary. Anselm, at the instigation of two of his fellow-students, interferes to prevent it, pretending that his own Abeiard's character might be compromised. In proportion to the opposition which he encounters is his fame. He returns to Paris to the schools from which he had been formerly expelled, finishes the commentary which he had begun at Laon, becomes more popular as a theolo- gian even than he had been as a dialectician. Money, as well as fame, he says, poured in upon him. Bwjimiogof 12. " But seeing," says Abelard, " that prosperity always pufls up fools, and that the world's tranquillity enervates the vigour of the mind, and loosens it by the temptations of the flesh, as I fancied I was now the one philosopher that was left in the world, and dreaded no longer molestations from any one, I that had hitherto lived as it behoves a philosopher and divine to live, now began to give the reins to my appetite." Not that it was possible for him to sink into the utter grossness into which so many ecclesiastics and monks of the time were plunged. It was through his in- tellect that his degradation came. It was through the worship of the intellect that shame and sorrow were prepared for his victim. Heloisa. " There was," he says, " in the city of Paris, a young maiden named Heloisa, the niece of a certain canon, named Fulbert, who, as he loved her very dearly, took great pains that she might have all facili- ties in the study of letters. In face she was not insignificant ; in her abundance of learning she was unparalleled. And because this gift is rare in women, so much the more did it make this girl illus- trious through the whole kingdom." The clergyman and philo- sopher tells his story plainly. He attempts to make out no good Her fete. case for himself. He singled out this girl from the number whom his fame and beauty attracted. He profited by her passion for knowledge, as well as by the covetousness and ambition of Fulbert. He established himself in his house, was intrusted with the entire guardianship of Heloisa, wondered at the simplicity of a man who could trust a lamb to a wolf, and accomplished the ruin which he had purposed. There was no surprise on his part, no sudden gust Deliberate of passion. He describes it as a deliberate plot ; he knew perfectly rSaS." 330 * what he w as doing. The story is very frightful, and it has the clearest tokens of veracity. The self-glorifying intellect, the man who had exhausted all dialectical reasonings, and understood all the maxims of theology, could sin in no way but this. The dia- bolical contrivance must have predominated over passion and appe- tite, and converted them both into its instruments. It is a proof of the sincerity of Abeiard's repentance, that he puts no gloss upon the story, covers it with no veil of sentiment. The effect upon his studies was what might be imagined, " It was horribly tedious to me to go into the schools, and to stay in them." Just what he had scorned his contemporaries for being, he became THEOLOGICAL FAME, 121 himself. There was no more wit and invention ; he was a mere repeater of other men's discoveries and doctrines. He could pro- duce songs now and then, as he had done of old ; but they were amatory, not philosophical. They obtained currency, however, and were often sung by those whose practice and discipline had been in the court of love. 13. The scholars mourned the degeneracy of the sage. All knew The catas- the cause of it before it was suspected by Fulbert. Heloisa escaped tlophe - from his house. A child was born, which was called Astrolabius. The uncle dissembled his fury for a while that he might enforce a marriage. Abelard consented. Heloisa alone, with the most vehe- iieioisa ment arguments, besought him to leave her in her disgrace, and °pp 0! ™r' » • e i . ?. it*,. -n i ■ marriage. not to sacrifice his position and his future influence by entering into bonds which must be fatal to him. It is wonderful to read these arguments, to see how entirely absorbed she was in affection lor him, how perfectly indifferent to her own character and repu- tation, — still more wonderful to see how little she had lost her faith in him as a philosopher or a divine, how impossible it was for her to impute the evil to him from which she had suffered so intolerably. In spite of her remonstrances the marriage took place. Fulbert proclaimed it ; the bride denied it, betook herself to a convent near Paris, where she had been educated, and clothed herself in the gar- ments of a novice. A frightful vengeance followed. Heloisa, at the command of her husband, took the veil, declaring that she did it merely in obedience to him and from no other motive, lamenting his misery and not her own. Abelard himself in shame, as he declares, and not in devotion, entered the Abbey of St. Dionysius. 14. The broken and crushed man had not nearly sounded the Abelard after depths of the suffering into which he was to fall, though, in a moral sense, every step of his history from this time is upwards. He had not been long in the Abbey, before a number of clerks implored both him and the Abbot of his convent that he would not hide the great talents that had been committed to him in a napkin, but would do now for the honour of God what hitherto he had done for the sake of money or of fame, would consider himself set apart by the most tremendous discipline to be the philosopher not of the world, but of God. These arguments had all the more effect upon Abelard, because the convent to which he had come was one of the vilest of the time, — the Abbot an example of all corruption to his house. The brothers were rejoiced to be freed from Abelard's presence. He was not less pleased to escape from His popuiar- them, by becoming the lecturer to the multitudes who flocked from ' r lelmmu z all quarters to a cell where he established himself. The crowds there, he tells us, that flowed to hear him, could find neither food sufficient to nourish them, nor places to dwell in. To them he lectured mainly on divine topics, using his human knowledge " only 122 THE SECOND PUNISHMENT. as a hook," he says, " whereby they might be drawn to the study of the true philosophy." 15. A remark which we have already repeated to weariness, re- specting the relation in which the belief in the Trinity stands to all the Middle Age philosophy, must be recollected in the 11th cen- tury, or Abelard's life and its connection with his time will be nisbook on unintelligible. It was during his residence in the Monastery of St. °"" 1 ' Dionysius, that he composed a book on the Trinity in Unity, which had a most serious influence upon his after fortunes. His account of the matter is this. The scholars begged him to write a treatise on this subject, in which human and philosophical reasons might Arguments be adduced, "because," they said, "it seemed to them an idle is induced to thing to bring forth a multitude of words which the intelligence undertake it j;^ not g a i on g with, au( j t hat nothing could be believed unless it was understood, and that it was ridiculous for any one to preach to others what neither he nor they whom he taught could receive with their intellects; the Lord himself saying, that such were blind leaders of the blind." There was a general delight, he says, at the treatise when it came forth, those who had been exercised with questions on the subject finding the solution which they wanted. Thereupon two of his old enemies, pupils respectively of William and Anselm, both of whom were now dead, accused him to their Archbishop, and by his means induced the Bishop, who was then acting as the papal Legate in Gaul, to summon a Council Abeiard a t Soissons. When he came there he found the people much in- counciL censed against him, almost ready to stone him, because they heard he believed in three Gods. He presented himself and his book to the Legate, declared that if he had written anything which departed from the Catholic faith, he was ready to retract it and to make satis- faction, then defended his principles so successfully, that the popular feeling and the feeling of the council were inclining in his favour. One of his opponents accused him of denying that God had be- gotten Himself which he must hold if he supposed that the Only- begotten Son was God, bidding him at the same time support himself, if he could, not by arguments but by authority. He in- stantly produced a passage from Augustine which expressly re- jected that phrase as unorthodox and monstrous. The opponent replied, that this passage was to be understood in a certain sense. " By all means," said Abeiard. " I thought you wanted the words. If you wish me to consider the sense, I shall be prepared to discuss the question at any moment." The double answer, he says, in- censed his rival so much, that he swore neither his reasons nor his authority should be of any avail to him. The threat was fulfilled. The Bishop of Chartres in vain counselled moderation and fairness. The book The Legate wavered, but was at last overcome. Finally, the book was burnt before his eyes. All his previous disgraces and suffer- THE ORATORY. 123 ings, he frankly confesses, seemed to him less than this one. For a time he appears to have been utterly crushed by it; though afterwards he could acknowledge the mercy of God in humbling his intellectual pride, as He had before punished his animal self- indulgence. 16. In his own monastery, Abelard had to sustain persecutions Hisoffen™ for a very different reason. The question, so sacred in the minds ^fench of Frenchmen, whether their Dionysius was really Dionysius the tradition*. Areopagite, was rashly mooted by him while he was lecturing on the Acts of the Apostles. No moral crime or theological heresy could have been so atrocious as this doubt. A solemn meeting of the Brethren was called. It was resolved to deliver up the philo- sopher to the king of France as a traitor against his crown and dignity. Abelard, almost desperate, fled to the protection of Count Theobald. In his dominions one of the curious vicissitudes of his life occurred. He dwelt like one of the old hermits in a desert. But crowds from all the cities around came to hear him. " We have gained nothing," said his opponents, as he reports, "by persecuting him. His fame is only spreading the wider." His scholars brought him the means of livelihood in return for his spiritual food. He felt that there was CQnsolation in the midst of his troubles. He built an Oratory, and dedicated it to the Paraclete. This act was His Oratory. turned against him. It was not usual, they said, to dedicate temples to the Holy Spirit ; it indicated heresy, if it was not heretical. 17. It is scarcely possible that such an act as this could have His relation seemed very shocking to the great teacher of the age, Bernard of na ri el " Clairvaux. It is doubtful whether, of his own accord, he would have meddled with Abelard for any of his offences. He had listened, it would seem, to some of the lectures of the great dia- lectician when he was in the height of his popularity at Paris, and had not discovered the danger which was lurking in them. Yet the danger could scarcely have been less at that period, when Abelard was revelling in pride and self-exaltation, when he was on the edge of the greatest moral debasement. Possibly Bernard • regarded him at that time merely as the most astute of logicians. He may have felt that his own province was entirely different, that he was looking on all subjects from an opposite point of view, that ^JS? d ^. it would not be wise to attempt an estimate of disagreements with- poseatoieava out discovering first what they had in common. Many have wished ^one? 4 for Bernard's sake, as well as Abelard's, that he had maintained the same neutrality to the end ; that, content with his own high position and mighty influence, he had left it to a better Wisdom to decide what there was of wheat, what of tares, in the doctrine which his contemporary was sowing. It could not be so, however, at that time, nor perhaps in any time. A man occupying the place which Bernard occupied, is seldom allowed to judge for him- 124 LEADING THOUGHT IN BEBKAED. self whom he shall interfere with or let alone. Some admiring friend, some zealous pupil, is sure to suggest flattering thoughts of his power and the responsibility which it involves, and to rebuke him bitterly for his indolence in suffering dangerous opinions to spread, which a few words from his lips might silence. William, Abbot of Thierry, fulfilled this office on the present occasion. He strances of was one of those who caught so much of the style and expression Thierry! ' ° f °f ^ e great divine, that certain treatises of his have been mistaken for Bernard's, and included in editions of his works. His letter to the Abbot of Clairvaux, and to Godfrey, Bishop of Chartres, is exactly what one might have expected from so sedulous an imi- tator, he being also a zealous, somewhat officious, man. It is a No. 326, in fac-simile of hundreds which have been sent forth in different SL e Bemard Cf periods. He has lately become acquainted with some of Abelard's views on the Trinity ; he collects a series of heretical propositions which he has deduced from his books ; he has heard of two others, one called " Sic et non ;" he has not read them, but the titles are enough, and he has no doubt the contents correspond to them. He is utterly shocked that the great leaders of the Church, the lights of the age, should allow such heresies to spread and take no notice of them. He alludes to his own insignificance, &c. It is evident from Bernard's answer that he is not much obliged to his Epistoia, 327, correspondent for imposing a new task upon him ; he has more than enough on his hands. Still he must not be silent. He has glanced at the offensive book, and thinks that it deserves the cen- sure of the Abbot of Thierry. He will look more at it after Easter. 18. There could be no doubt as to the result. The last in- obevs!" 1 firmity of Bernard's very noble mind was, that he must meddle in all kinds of business, whether it was such as suited his character and his peculiar powers or not. He was evidently very much at the mercy of such men as William of Thierry. Strokes by their rods called forth some of the better springs in his mind, and some of those also which were less pure. He would, we think, have shown more faith in God if he had not believed that he was obliged to write letters to Pope Innocent, or to the Council of Sens, or to different bishops, against Peter Abelard. But it was quite inevitable that if he did once come into contact with the books or with the man, he should be revolted by them. When we assign the reason, we shall surprise some of our readers, — perhaps we shall seem to be utterino- Why Bernard a very impertinent paradox. Bernard did not dislike Abelard Abelard. e mainly as a rebel against authority, but as outraging what he con- ceived to be the divine Charity or Love. Righteousness was not as much the foundation of his mind as it was of Anselm's. He was not nearly so just a man. But no writer of any age has dwelt more upon Love as constituting the very being and nature of God • and as the perfection of man, because he is made in the image of ftlGSHT AND WRONG IN BEENARD. 125 God. This is the charaoteristical feature of his mind ; in it, we J^U 4 '* believe, lay the secret of his power. The idea of the Trinity was Charity. in him the idea of the absolute, all-embracing Love. Any other cimerfof ws" basis of Divinity he abhorred. The intellectual conceptions of ^'a° t | r alld Abelard were indifferent to him when they were applied to any the nth other subject, were utterly offensive when they were applied to pls e ' Theology. The explanations which were welcomed with so much enthusiasm by Abelard's youthful hearers, were to him the dry hard substitutes for a living truth. That which appeared to quicken His charity and inspire them, smelt in his nostrils of the grave and the charnel- Stoierantof house. Was he right or wrong ? If we ventured to pronounce Abelard's , .. i-T i ° .1 -• i • i formal dis- on such a subject, which we have -no right to do, it must be in the tractions, words which gave such offence to poor William of Thierry, Sic et non. That Abelard was in the state of mind to enter upon the deepest of all subjects, we do not believe. There never had been, there was not then, the, moral basis in his character, apart from which all thoughts and speculations about the Godhead must be unreal and unsatisfactory. And this consideration applies directly to the charge of Tritheism, which was brought against him. Ber- nard might have a good right' to say, that without a foundation of Love there could be no unity, Logic could give only separation. But, on the other hand, we are not prepared to affirm that Abelard was not doing a positive good to all ages in showing how far logic But leads him could go and could not go. We are not prepared to say, that he somewho was not meeting a necessity of that age when he led the youths, ^ h "? 0l ™ r iy who hung upon his lips, to believe that Divinity was not a mere formalists. collection of terms, that God opens a more inward eye in the mind of those who desire to behold Him, but does not put out the eye which He has given them already. Under Bernard's faith and Bernard's love, a set of dry dogmatists who believed nothing and loved nothing, were hiding their own dislike of all thought, their own dread lest God and the universe should prove to be nothing. Could he be right in affording countenance and protection to these? 1&. Whatever we or others may think of Bernard's conduct to Heioise and Abelard, there was one whose judgment upon it was very decisive. herNllnB - The Theologian had not quite forgotten the woman whom he had so greatly wronged. The mode in which their intercourse was re- newed was, perhaps, the best possible, Heloisa and her Nuns were driven from their convent ; the husband had left the valley in which he had built the offensive chapel ; he gave it up with the buildings adjoining it to their use. But they did not begin a cor- respondence till the book of calamities had fallen into the hands of Heioise. When she had read it, she could forbear no longer. She ^l 8 of her poured forth her feelings of indignation against her husband's ene- ' mies, of reverence for his gifts, of inextinguishable love for himself, of complaint that he had never written to her, though besides her 12G THE LETTEBS OF HELOISE. Abelard's answer. own claims upon him, he was bound to act as spiritual adviser to the sisters for whom he had provided a home. With severe but most affectionate faithfulness she expresses her fears that what others have said of him may be true, that his love for her may have been wholly sensual and earthly, and may have perished when the outward indulgence of it was no longer possible. The letter is written with marvellous frankness and carelessness of con- ventual proprieties, like a person who was by no means sure that she did not love a man better than God, and yet wished Him to read her whole heart. She is entirely free from the affectation which Pope attributes to her. There is no nonsense about writing the name by accident and blotting it out with her tears. She writes it boldly and deliberately, joins with it all the tenderest epi- thets which any wife could use in addressing her husband, and de- clares at the same time she had never sought that title, and that he knows she would not have exchanged her former relation to him to be Empress of Germany. The answer of Abelard to this epistle has often been censured as cold, formal, and heartless. Compared with what called it forth, it may merit such epithets. But it does not strike us as on the whole dishonourable to his char- acter. He writes with the constraint of a man who knew inwardly that the heavy charge which Heloise brought against him was true, who under the weight of that consciousness found himself treated as a Confessor and a Divine, who was the author of all that was wrong in the feelings that were laid bare before him, who was obliged to look up with reverence and shame to the revelation of a higher and better mind in her who, nevertheless, accepted him strangeness with unfeigned humility as her guide in the right way. A position so strange and anomalous may surely excuse much that may seem to the reader dry and cold. It is evident, we think, that he had more real affection, because more real reverence, for Heloise than he had ever had before. These feelings were in fact just beginning to awaken in his mind. The absence of reverence both towards his fellow-creatures and towards God had been the defect in a soul which possessed many rare gifts. If there is an awkwardness and timidity in the expression of this newly-formed habit, we certainly see no cause for wonder, but rather for thankfulness that by any instrument or through any discipline such a treasure should be granted to a man who had reached Abelard's age and fallen into his transgressions. 20. But we must not dwell longer upon these letters, much as they illustrate the tendencies of the period and the relations of the schoolman and the man. What remains of Abelard's present his- tory shall be told in the words of a divine who, in a history of the Church or of Literature, would deserve much more than the tran- sient notice we can bestow upon him. Peter of Clugni, always of his position. Abelard's latest friend. Peter of Clugni. ABELAED AT CI/CGIJT. 127 the friend and admirer of Bernard, was not seldom his antagonist, because their views of the cloister life were so widely different. The Abbot of Clugni would have wished the Monk to be rather an example to men of the world of what they might become, than the type of a kind of life which was in opposition to theirs. He feared that a grievously stringent rule would lead ultimately to a terrible laxity. He wished Letters always to be the handmaids of devotion. Though such an idea was not one which naturally belonged to this age of sharp and definite contrasts — though it could not effect what was effected either by the champion of Devo- tion or of Dialectics, Peter of Clugni did not live in vain. His kindly and Christian spirit could do something to reconcile their opposing claims— at all events to make the grave a bond of peace between those who in life had been bitterly opposed. 21. Our first extract is from a letter' "to the Supreme Pontiff ^™ from and our especial Father Pope Innocent." "Master Peter," he says, " well known as I think to your Wisdom, lately coming from France, passed* through Clugny. I asked him whither he was going. He said that being weighed down by the vexations of cer- tain who laid on him the name of Heretic, which was very hateful to him, he was approaching to the Apostolical Majesty, and wished to take refuge with it. I praised his intention, and advised him to flee to that common refuge, and assured him that the apostolical justice, which was never wanting to any stranger, would not be wanting to him. I promised him that its compassion, if there was at tS™ need of it, would be open to him. Meantime came the Abbot of Citeaux to treat about peace between Peter and the Abbot of Clair- vaux. I did what I could for that reconciliation, and urged him to go to Bernard. I added this to my admonition, that if he had written or spoken anything that offended Catholic ears, he should at the solicitation of him (Bernard) and of other good and wise men, remove it from his words and erase it from his books. So it came to pass. He went, he returned, and announced to us that through AMara's the mediation of the Abbot of Citeaux he had had a peaceful meet- res t, ing with the Abbot of Clairvaux, all past grudges being set at rest. Meantime, admonished by us, but rather, as I think, inspired by God, he has dismissed the tumults of schools and studies, and chosen for himself a dwelling in your Clugny. Which desire of his, thinking that it accorded with his age, his weakness, his reli- gion, and believing that his knowledge, which is not unknown to you, might be of the greatest benefit to a multitude of our brethren, I have readily assented to ; and if it shall be pleasing to your good- ness it will be a delight to all of us, who are, as you know, your care, that he should stay with us. Be pleased then to grant that he may spend the rest of his days, which perchance are not many, in your Clugny, and that he may not be driven by the eagerness 128 AEELABD GOIITa HOME. of any from that roof to which as a sparrow he has fled, from that nest which as a dove he rejoices to have found." nndthe °Ab 22- ^ muca longer epistle is addressed to Heloise. It opens Less. with expressions of the admiration and affection with which the did Monk recollects the lady of whom he had heard in his youth as devoting herself to letters, ''• wherein she surpassed not only all women, but nearly all men ; and who in her later years had given herself to still nobler pursuits, who being now a wholly sacrificed and truly philosophical woman, had chosen the Gospel in preference to Logic, the Apostle to Physics, Christ to Plato, the Cloister to the Academy." Then follows a good deal about Penthesilea and Deborah, which belongs to the time, and which we may pass over; then a wish expressed with much chivalry and brotherly love, that she and her sisters could have taken up their abode in his Clugny. Abe'lavd™ ° f "But,'' he adds, coming to the business of his letter, " this is denied us by that providence of God which disposes of all things, as far as you are concerned ; albeit, one great favour has been granted to us. That same divine disposition has sent to us in the last years of his life him who was thine, that ever-to-be honoured servant and true philosopher of Christ, Master Peter. I consider that in him God enriched our Clugny with a treasure above gold or pre- cious stones. How humble, holy, and devoted his conversation among us was, a short letter could not declare. I do not recollect ever to have seen one that equalled him in every indication of hu- mility Oftentimes I have wondered, His final I have been almost confounded, that a man of so great and so widely spread fame should so despise himself and make light of himself. He was constant in reading, frequent in prayer, given to silence By his mind, by his tongue, by his work, he was ever teaching, mani- festing, confessing that which was divine, that which was philoso- phical, that which tended to edification. As this simple, honest, God-fearing, evil-shunning man was much oppressed by pains of body, I looked out for him a place which excels every other in our part of Burgundy for the amenity of its soil and climate. There, as far as his sickness permitted, recalling his old studies, he was ever devoted to books, so that what was said of the great Gregory may be said of him, that he allowed no moment to pass by him in which he was not either praying or reading or writing, or dictating, In such exercjses the coming of the divine Visitor found him, not sleeping but waking, and called him not as a foolish but as a wise virgin to the eternal nuptials, for he had with him a lamp full of oil, that is to say, a conscience which testified of a holy life. How holily, how devotedly, in what a Catholic spirit he first made con- ^^51^™=; fession of his faith, then of his sins; with what an affection of heart clan dgcodjcs t fin i ■ • i it a little child, he received the food for his journey, the pledge of eternal life, the abelaed's dialectics. 129 Body of the Redeemer ; how faithfully he commended his body and soul to Him ; our brothers are witness, and the whole society of that Monastery. Thus Master Peter finished his days, and he who was known throughout the world for an unparalleled master of science, persevering in the learning of Him who said ' learn of Me for I am meek and lowly of heart,' passed, as we have a right to believe, into His presence." 23. The Book of Calamities and the correspondence with Heloise ^TJ 1 , 811 ^ ..... r , orAbelard's were for a long time without any commentary except what was position and furnished by certain theological writings of Abelard. These were mteUeot manifestly insufficient to explain the passages in the biography which have reference to his dialectical exploits. They were not even sufficient to illustrate those passages which directly refer to him as a theologian, the other character being, as we have seen, that which was evidently predominant in him. The world is there- See theln- fore under very great obligations to M. Cousin for the discovery rame'sin-' which, either in his own person or through some of his fellow- Mites a 1 Abe- labourers, he made in the King's library at Paris, of a whole trea- sBrvfillr tise on logic, of various commentaries on Boethius and Porphyry, phiSphie 1 and above all, of an Essay on Genera and Species, which are seoiastique probably genuine works of Abelard. The learned exposition and Pubises par historical sketch with which the Editor has accompanied them, cousin!™ add immensely to their value, and may well secure our forgiveness Paris, 1836. for any extravagant language in which he has indulged respecting Abelard as the first champion of free inquiry ; that praise itself being considerably modified by the remarks which M. Cousin has Great value made respecting Roscellinus and William of Champeaux, when he S™oScai ins has descended from the panegyrist into the philosophical historian. Elucidations. No student of Middle Age philosophy ought to overlook this intro- duction, though no one, we think, should hastily take its statements or its method for granted. The former will sometimes suggest important corrections of the latter. We are not quite sure whe- ther M. Cousin's ingenious and plausible arguments establish the fact that Abelard was the pupil of Roscellinus at a very early age in Brittany, and overthrow the strong negative argument which has been drawn from the omission of his name in the Book of Calamities. But, supposing that point to be proved, it will lead us to conclusions respecting the history of this period which appear to us very sound, but which are not the same with those of M. Cousin. Our first knowledge of Roscellinus is derived from a treatise of Boscellinus: Anselm, to which we merely alluded in our sketch of that philo- J] 1 ^ ^ " sopher, his treatise on the Trinity, and the Incarnation of the Anselm of Word. It is this treatise, as M. Cousin well points out, which ex- Bec ' hibits in an earlier form the conflict respecting Universals, to which Abelard introduces us in his remarks on William of Champeaux. Strict history therefore requires us to consider the controversy as K 130: TBITHEISM AWD LOGIC. In what the heresy of Roscellinas was alleged to consist starting from this point. Abelard may have first separated the dialectics from the theological principles with which they were in- volved, then in his later days have recombined them ; but they had an earlier association, the subject of Universals first became important through its connection with the doctrine about which Anselm and Roscellinus dissented. 24. It was not any form of Arianism, far less of Sabellianism, which Anselm imputed to his opponent. It was that opinion which is the direct opposite of Sabellianism, which Sabellianism is a contrivance to avoid. Roscellinus could conceive of three dis- tinct persons ; their unity he could not conceive of. Was there anything inconsistent with orthodoxy in his saying so ? In one sense he was asserting the very maxim of the creed to which Anselm yielded the most hearty assent. The teacher of Bee un- doubtedly believed this unity to be inconceivable, quite as much as the Breton did. But we have seen how much Anselm built upon the argument, that our power of acknowledging that which is thfs'argu- beyond our conception proves it to exist. We have already ex- ment to that p resse d our opinion that in his discussions upon this point he was contained in * r .. . - . .*; -ii-i the Pros- on the edge ot a precipice, balancing himself no doubt with great oglon- skill, walking steadily because his eyes were upwards and not towards his feet, but still marking out a track in which many would try and scarcely any would be able to follow him, without great stumbling. He was appealing to the mind against itself; he was bringing into the strangest juxtaposition the conceiving power with that which is beyond it, and sustaining the last upon the first. The consequence was inevitable. He had no wish to do Roscel- linus injustice. But he saw on the one hand that all theology was subverted — he believed that all unity among men would be sub- verted — if Tritheism came in under the protection of Logic. On the other hand he could not admit the impossibility which Roscellinus proclaimed, though it might be so well justified by principles which he confessed, without injuring the validity of that mode of reason- ing which had become almost a part of himself and was blended with his most sacred convictions. He therefore refutes the implicit Tritheism, by a course of reasoning which, as M. Cousin has well remarked, combines the most inconsistent propositions. He treats the question as if it was only between the senses and the spiritual perception. Of course, we only see things in their separate indi- vidualities. But are we not obliged to conceive of something beyond that — of humanity, for instance, and not merely of a man : the reality of of colours, for instance, and not merely of that which is coloured ? ™ n Plato (in his Republic) had with infinite pains vindicated the doc- trine of a substantial political unity underlying the acts and thoughts of individual men. But he had as carefully endeavoured in his Theatethus to prove that colour has no such reality, that it is simply The conse quence to Ansclm's reasoning. The reality of colonrs asserted as strongly as NECESSITY FOE THE CONNECTION'. 131 a product of the eye and the object. Here we have Platonism and anti-Platonism in the strangest fellowship ; and inevitably. For there is a conception of colour as well as a conception of humanity ; if the reality depends upon the conception, the first is as substan- tial as the second ; nay, it appears to be more substantial, because sense lends its aid to the very mental act that is set in opposition to it ; the colour is seen, though it is never seen in that separate condition under which the mind takes account of it. 25. M. Cousin has justified by his high authority the remark ? £ th j?^j' h f which we have so often made in this sketch, that Boethius first dropped that seed in the Latin mind which germinated in the con- troversies between the Realists and Nominalists. He has vindi- cated also by his theory respecting the spiritual pedigree of Abelard, what we said respecting the inadequacy of the logic of Boethius to produce such grave consequences, if it had not been combined with more transcendent ideas, of which, in his formal treatises at all events, the Roman statesman appeared to take little account. But M. Cousin has not, we think, perceived how much the after tr n ; n of history of this great struggle depends upon the blending of these ^°s'° and . apparently incongruous elements; how little we can understand this strife, what was at issue between the two parties in the schools if we violently separate their controversy from the practical one with which it was mingled and reduce it to the terms in which Porphyry and Boethius would have stated it. Abelard, perhaps warned by the dangers to which Roscellinus had been exposed — perhaps merely influenced by a just opinion that his own genius fitted him far better for dialectical than theological exercises — un- doubtedly made the experiment. But we have seen from his own illustrations statement that he did not, that he could not, persevere in it. An ^"stm; 6 " impulse which he could not resist drew him into the vortex, from which he appeared to have escaped ; whatever might be the wis- dom of severing his doctrine of Universals from questions directly concerning the faith of the Church, he could not do it justice, or satisfy his own peculiar impulses, without putting forth the state- ments which exposed him to the indignation of Bernard and the decrees of the Council of Soissons. 26. In truth, the twofold name which this controversy bears is The h ™ only intelligible when we are content to trace its origin historically. theContro- Modern philosophers dwell too exclusively on the words Realism Teray be:lrs- and Nominalism, as if they were adequate to describe its subject and its issues. Abelard has told us how much more, in his judgment, it deserved to be called a battle concerning Universals. Before he became the pupil of Anselm of Laon, — while he was still the rest- less hearer or the bold defier of William of Champeaux — the ques- tion that was uppermost in his mind concerned the presence of the whole in each individual thing. How did this question arise? 132 NAMES ATTD THINGS. Why it be- came so solemn. Use of the words Real- ism and No- minalism. Why perplex- ing. Greatness of the Name in divinity. Comparative Insignifi- cance of the Thing. What gave it, even when it exhibited itself in its driest and most technical form, such a personal and human interest ? Allow any- thing you please for the passions of disputants which any big-or- little endian theory may arouse to madness — still the zeal of the bystanders — their conviction that heaven and earth were earnest spectators of the combat — demands explanation. If there was a thought — ever so imperfectly realized — that the very nature of the Being whom men worshipped, into whose name they were baptized, was involved in this logical argumentation — if the reasoners, however they might shrink from the reflection or hide it under terms of the understanding, yet ever and anon were tormented with the doubt whether what they were contending for might not contain the assertion or the denial that there was a whole, a unity, at the basis of their idea of God — that he was the All in All — does it require much experience to know that what was strongest in their minds would claim the benefit of the imput- ation, or would repel it ; that what was pettiest would be justified and, in a certain sense, glorified ? 27. Is the Universal — that whole, that Unity, which we must attribute to a family, a nation, a race, merely attributed t is it not there ? thus did the controversy respecting Universals become the controversy respecting the Eeal and the Nominal. But the word Eeal, though inevitable, was decidedly unfortunate. The argu- ment takes gradually this shape. Is the Universal, the whole, the one, res a thing, or is it nomen a name? How often must the combatants, when this was the issue, have exchanged their rapiers and each have been wounded by his own! In divinity you must speak of a Name as that with which we are sealed ; that which is to be hallowed and which is to make all else holy. This is the language of the Baptismal formula and of the Lord's Prayer. On the other hand, thing (from ' think,' as 'res' from 'reor') — (the subject of thought) is opposed in all the highest morality to the Person, the Thinker, the Speaker, the Actor. Yet the necessity of the argument drove him who was vindicating the divine Essence as the foundation of all things to treat it as if it possessed the nature of those things. A consideration of this enormous practical difficulty — for such it was, however much it was a verbal difficulty — may well make us tolerant and kindly to both parties. But it cannot make us think lightly — far less, contemptuously — of that which occupied their whole souls. They were often lost in the smoke which they raised ; in the darkness they often struck right and left at friend and foe. But it was absolutely needful that the fight should be fought out ; if the dread of killing each other for trifles had led them to conclude a hasty and unsatisfactory peace, ell generations would have been the worse for it. 28. The fragment of Abelard on Genera and Species, the most PRINCIPALS AND SECONDARIES. 133 valuable of all the documents which the diligence of M. Cousin has Frapnajtum i n • 1 ■ -i • 1 i ii aangerma- rescued for us, was written apparently in his later days, when he nensede had leisure to review the whole subject, and when he had learned s™c1eSS et to do justice to some of the opponents of whom in his Book SfYm' pp ' of Calamities he had spoken hastily. Theology, which he had avoided through preference for Dialectics in early days, into which he had plunged from logical necessity and from ambition in his middle age, might now be regarded more in its moral aspects. He had probably made his peace with the Doctors and the Pope ; subdued and humbled he could have had no wish to awaken ques- tions which had caused him so much sorrow. The treatise there- fore is purely what it professes to be. But it asserts the doctrines which Abelard had always maintained on the subject of Univer- sals. The habit of his intellect was not changed, however much his temper might be. 29. We may speak of a house, he says, either as a disintegrated Disgregatnm whole or as a continuous whole. Supposing we speak of it as a <£ntinuam. continuous whole, some reason thus : — If there is a house there is a wall, and if there is a wall there is a half wall, and if there is the half wall there is the half of the half, and so on to the last stone. Therefore if there is the house, there is this last little stone, and if Necessity of there is not that little stone, there is no house. State this conclu- JjJe whole! sion in general terms and there is nothing startling in it. Apply ."ILSjL' 4 it to a particular house and you become sensible of a contradiction. How then are we to get rid of a conclusion that seems inevitable ? William of Champeaux, according to Abelard, escaped from it by referring to the definition of a point that has no parts. Sup- William's posing, then, you take a line consisting of two points, you may say SoluUon - that the part follows its whole in the first case. But when you have got so far you can proceed no farther. Therefore, generally, you cannot assume that, because a part follows its own whole, the same may be affirmed of a part of that part ; in other words, there must be a limit. Without objecting to this solution, Abelard suggests another. The part of every continuous whole is either principal or secondary. The principal part is either principal in quantity or principal in essence. I may destroy more than half of The Essential Socrates and he will remain ; I destroy his heart or brain, and he ^*y^ on ' is destroyed. Apply this to the case of the house, considered as a continuous whole, and you may go on with your divisions of quan- tity as much as you please : so long as that which is essential to the house or the wall or the half wall remains, so long the house or the wall or the half wall remains. Contemplate the house « ™ tegra " again as a disintegrated whole, and then every tile or separate particle being destroyed, destroys the house. Thus, supposing I assume a flock to consist of a hundred sheep, the absence of one of these sheep destroys that flock so contemplated. But here 134 FOBHS OF KOMINALISSI AM) EEAIISM. DeSocratis destrnctioue. Need of a living exam pie. The three opinions. Finpnnt Essen tias quasdam uni- versales in singulis indi- viduis tntus esscntialiter esse, p 613. Universal form, super- venient form. again the former law will apply in the case of any particular sheep ; to ascertain whether he is wanting to the flock, I must ascertain what is essential to him, what makes him that sheep. 30. Our readers might have wished that we should have passed over this beginning as well as a subsequent chapter, which is headed " Concerning the Destruction of Socrates," the questions raised in which may seem to them rather fantastic and the solutions unne- cessary, and have proceeded at once to the remarks of Abelard on Genera and Species. But we apprehend that the preface is neces- sary to the right apprehension of the book. The satisfaction of this doubt about the relation of the whole to the part was not so easy in that age, is not so easy in ours, as we may conjecture when it is presented to us in the old formulae and with the old illustra- tions. And it is not an insignificant fact in illustration of Abelard's character or of his philosophy, that he mixes so much of the actual house and wall with the terms which represent it, or that he car- ries us from a wall to a man in order to get some probable and reasonable way of solving the difficulty or even of stating it. It is not a little matter that the accomplished logician is driven so near the outset of his undertaking to talk of that which forms the essence of a building, and thence to proceed to the heart and brain as the essence of the human creature. Let us be thankful for such witnesses that words when they seem most trying to de- nude themselves of all associations, " do still savour of the realty." That recollection may help us better to understand some of the difficulties of the Middle Ages, when the question at issue was how much or how little of that savour they must retain. 31. This treatise of Abelard explains the point of his differences with his old Master, to which he had alluded in his Book of Cala- mities as well as the general aspect of the Nominal and Real con- troversy in the 11th century. He discusses three opinions, against each of which he produces arguments of more or less ingenuity and weight ; then he announces his own. The first opinion is, that there are some universal essences which exist in their totality in each individual. He states this opinion, which was the original one of William of Champeaux, thus : " There is a certain species, Man, one thing essentially. To this are superadded certain forms which make the man Socrates. Other supervenient forms, infer- encing that same thing essentially in the same manner, produce Plato and other individuals. Nor is there anything in Socrates besides those forms which inform that matter which makes Socrates, which does not at the same time dwell in Plato informed with the forms of Plato." Abelard's objections are of the most plausible and obvious kind. If it is so, why may not Socrates be at the same time in Eome and at Athens? for where Socrates is THEORY OE INDIEEEBENCE. 135 there the universal man is informed to the extent of his whole Humanity. quantity with Socraticity. For whatsoever the universal thing city. receives, it receives in its whole quantity. Wheresoever the Socraticity is in a man, there is Socrates, for Socrates is nothing but the Socratic man. The next argument is, that since health and sickness belong to the animal, if the whole animal existing in Socrates is sick, it must also be sick in Plato. He disposes trium- phantly of the evasion that the universal animal may be sick, but not in so far forth as it is universal, for the singular and the uni- ^™™,?,y"f v _ versal according to this scheme become identical. The third "d in the objection is, that as the difference added to the genus makes up ' y ' the species, to the genus animal you may add the difference ra- tionality and the difference irrationality, and these will coexist in the same universal. The fourth argument takes us to a more Nam sequent awful ground, and shows with what tremendous questions these ettovmaum- logical subtleties became blended and how easy it was for the dis- J^Seo co- e ' putants on either side to involve their, opponents in the charges of sterna; quod iii /» i • » i i 1 t ■ i ■ it. Quantum a blasphemy or or atheism. Abelard distinctly maintains that this vera aeviet theory of Universals involves the co-eternity of form as well as palam e8t ' matter with God ; nay, that it makes the individual man consist of two co-eternal Gods. 32. The second opinion which he controverts is that which ™ m s e ™ nd William of Champeaux adopted after Abelard had driven him from p. oi's. his earlier faith respecting the presence of the universal essence in mam qu2 U de each individual thing. The new doctrine is that which is described {jjj! 1 *^,' 1 ' 1 in the Book of Calamities as the presence of the Universal not tiam perqui- essentially but indifferently in each thing. Abelard represents it ramus thus : " There is nothing at all except the individual ; but this drawn out or expanded in different degrees becomes species and genus and that which is most general. Socrates in that nature in How the which he is subject to sensible observation is individual, because l^^^spe- there is that belonging to him the whole of which is never found ?j es and in another. But the intellect may forget that which is denoted by the word Socrates, and think only of that which is denoted by the word Man, that is a rational mortal animal ; in this sense he is spe- cies. If again the intellect overlooks the rationality and mortality and only contemplates what the word animal denotes ; in this state it is genus. But if, leaving all forms, we consider only Socrates in that which denotes substance ; here is the highest generality ; Socrates, therefore, as an individual, has nothing which is not pro- per to himself; but as species, he has that which belongs to him Arguments indifferently with all men — as genus, he has that which belongs SocSineof to him indifferently with all animals. Abelard says that this posi- indifference, tion is alike inconsistent with authority and with reason. His authorities are Porphyry and Boethius. Porphyry says the species is the collection of many into one nature, a,nd genus of still more. 136 ABELABD V. NOMINALISM. But how can it be said that Socrates is the gathering up of many into one nature? Neither the man Socrates nor the animal Socrates is in anything out of Socrates. They affirm that Socrates, as man, collects Plato and all men into himself; hence, since the essence exists indifferently in the man, Socrates is Plato and he himself and Plato and a multitude of others go to form himself the species and himself the genus." The argument from reason is stated thus : " Every individual man, in so far as he is man, is affirmed by this doctrine to be a species ; whence, it may be truly affirmed of" Socrates. This man Socrates is species. If Socrates is species, Socrates is universal ; if he is universal he is not singular, vide*' quants whence it follows he is not Socrates." This consequence, he says, '™P" dentiiE they deny, for they affirm that every universal is singular and every singular is universal. In the ashes of Abelard there still lived the wonted fires. This attempt to confound all sacred dis- tinctions awakens the temper which had been so much softened by his residence at Clugny. " What impudence," he exclaims, when he finds that his opponents are escaping from a precept which Boethius had declared to concern all logical divisions by the lying assertion that he only meant it in certain cases. He appears to be still more provoked when he finds them trusting in their formula "in so far forth," as if that could change facts and laws. And though we cannot work ourselves into his passionate feelings against this doctrine of Indifference, we do confess to some sympathy with him in his indignation against this very helpful resource for eluding an opponent and concealing the absence of a meaning. Abelard— is 33. Abelard proceeds to his third doctrine, which would be aUst? Nomm " commonly represented as the doctrine of pure Nominalism. It is so usual to describe him as the very representative of Nominalism Nunc iiiam that we must hear what he has to say against the opinion which quawcs 1 affirms that Genera and Species are mere universal and particular solas genera na mes and not things. He quotes the passages from Boethius to Gil &DCC16S universaies which we referred at the beginning of this sketch, and then de- fes P pv£eci"ctas clares that seeing the Nominalists are not able rationally to resist etsubjectas these authorities which make so manifestly against them, they res,perquiia- either say that the authorities are false, or labouring to explain them mui put a skin upon them because they cannot find any way of stripping them of their proper skin. But Abelard, though he may appeal to authorities, seldom rests in them ; he must have his own refut- The argu- a tion. It is this: " Just as a statue consists of brass, which is its ment against „ ..,..„ . ' reducing matter, of figure which is its form, so species consists of genus namcs. mt ° which is its matter, of differentia which is its form." But to reduce these into words is impossible. Animal is the genus of man. But how can the word animal be the matter of the word man, seeing that it neither comes from it nor is in it ? They answer, he says, abelaeb's bocteine. 137 that this whole mode of speech is figurative ; genus is the material of species, that is to say, that which is signified by genus is the matter of that which is signified by species. But how, he asks, will this work? They admit nothing besides individuals, and these are denoted as well by universal as by singular words. You might just as well therefore say, that which is signified by the species is the matter of that which is signified by the genus. But if this is admitted, the whole principle of logical division, as it is laid down by all eminent authors, is sub- verted. 34. Having disposed of these theories, he goes on to declare his own. "Every individual is composed of matter and of forms. Socrates is in matter a man, in form Socrates. And as the Socra- ticity which formally constitutes Socrates is nowhere out of Socrates, so the human essence which sustains the Socraticity in Socrates is v. 52*. nowhere except in Socrates. I say then that species is not that p"ttns°tenen- essence of man only which is in Socrates or which is in any other dum videatur individual, but is the whole united collection of all the distinct annueme elements of this nature. This whole collection, although it is es- ™ e °mn& sten " sentially plural, is nevertheless called by the authorities one species, one universal, one nature; as a people, although it is formed of Matter and many persons, is called one. So also the essence of this collection, which is called humanity, consists of matter and form — to wit, of the animal as its matter, but of form which is not one but plural, of rationality and mortality and bipedality, and if there are any other substantial qualities requisite thereto. And what is said of man — to wit, that that in man which sustains Socraticity does not essentially sustain Platonioity ; this also is true of the animal. For that animal which sustains the form of that humanity which is in me, this is essentially not elsewhere, but dwells indifferently in the particular matter of each individual animal. This multitude then of essences of the animal, which sustains the forms of each species of animal, I would call genus, which herein is diverse from that multitude which forms species ; for that is gathered from those essences alone which receive the substantial dhTerences of diverse species. Furthermore, if we ascend upwards to the very first Essentia! principle, we may assume that every essence of that multitude Forms - which is called the genus, animal, consists of some matter that is essential to body and of substantial forms, animation and sensibility, which, as has been said concerning the animal, are nowhere else essentially present ; but indifferently sustain the forms of all species of body. These primary essences constitute the matter, which is the The most genus, as the form corporeity, when added thereto, constitutes the dpie r ofau! n " species. These indifferent essences also are the sustaining matter which, united with the form incorporeity, constitute the incorpo- real species. And the multitude of such essences is that substance 138 THE EATHEBS AGAINST THE EATHEES; Sic et Non. (Euvres, pp. •2-170. Preface. Keasons of the Treatise. Doubt and Search. Snbjects of Sic et Nod. which is the most general thing of all, which is not, however, simple, but consists of mere essence as its matter and of the susceptibility of contraries as its form." He promises to explain afterwards -why this substance is not to be called genus. 35. As our readers are probably well tired of these quiddities, we shall not trouble them with the authorities or reasons by which Abelard supports his own propositions ; but shall endeavour pre- sently to gather up as well as we can the thread of these thoughts, and to show how they bear on the philosophy as well as the life of the period. But we shall be better able to estimate the position of this remarkable man if we give a very brief account of one of his theological treatises, the title of which has already occurred in the course of our sketch. That title, Sic et Non, Yes and No, in fact contains the meaning of the book. It contains little of the author himself, and yet, perhaps, it throws more light upon his mind than any of his most elaborate and original works could have done. He states in the prologue that many words of holy men seem not only diverse but contradictory ; that, nevertheless, we are not to judge them, seeing that the world is to be judged by them ; that we are not to accuse them of being false or despise them as erroneous, seeing that the Lord hath said, " he who heareth you, heareth me, and he that despiseth you, despiseth me." They have the Spirit, he says, we have not. Their words are often unfamiliar to us and puzzling ; they were often taught to vary them, that the repetition might not produce satiety. He proceeds to state many other causes of perplexity, which are well worth the reader's consideration, but which do not directly concern us, and then concludes. " These things premised, we have thought it good to collect the divers sayings of the Holy Fathers, as they have occurred to our memory, containing some question which they appear to raise by their dis- sonance, so that the reader may be excited to the greater energy in inquiring for truth, and may be made more acute in the pur- suit of it. For this is the first key to wisdom, assiduous and frequent interrogation." He supports himself by the authority of Aristotle, then proceeds. "By doubting we come to inquiry ; by ■ inquiry we perceive the truth, as He who is the Truth said, ' seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.' Which lesson he also confirmed by his own example, at twelve years old sitting in the midst of the doctors asking them questions, rather assuming the form of a disciple by questioning than of a Master by preaching, albeit there was in Him the full and perfect wisdom of God." 36. We shall simply enumerate the heads of some of the chap- ters of this book, which are not only curious in themselves, but which will prepare us for the form into which some of the most orthodox writings of the following century were cast. The first use of the :book. 139 chapter contains a series of testimonies from the Fathers and Doc- tors of the Church, apparently favouring the position that Faith is to be sustained by human reason and apparently contradicting it. The second contains a similar balance of opinions on the question whether faith is wholly conversant with things that do not appear. The third proposes statements pro and contra the maxim that our faith is to be in God only. The fourth is on the point whether knowledge as well as faith, or only faith, has reference to things that do not appear. The articles from the fifth to the twenty- fifth contain different, apparently adverse, propositions concerning the Trinity, the points which drew so much obloquy on Abelard being dwelt upon, but not with any seemingly controversial design. The twenty-sixth gives conflicting judgments on the question whether the old philosophers believed in a Trinity and a Divine Word. Propositions concerning prescience and predestination occupy the chapters from the twenty-sixth to the thirtieth ; the origin and nature of sin and its relation to God, the two following ; the possibility or impossibility of resisting God's will, the relation of His will to His power and His acts and His knowledge, several more. 37. If Bernard's friend and counsellor had possessed even the object of slight knowledge of this book which our readers may obtain from this Tieatlsa. these specimens of its topics and its design, his judgment would probably have been at least as severe as the one which he arrived at from merely hearing its name. Nevertheless we, must not conceal our opinion that the intentions of the writer were strictly honest ; that he had no secret purpose of undermining the reputation of the Church teachers by making a display of their seeming contradictions ; that he did believe they were not at variance with themselves, and that the truth which they desired to enforce would be more tho- roughly and practically embraced, if a student would give himself the trouble of considering how two clashing assertions can have dwelt together in the mind of the same man, than if he hastily re- jected either and took the one which was most convenient for some temporary service. That there was a characteristic rashness in Boldness of this course we do not deny ; if Abelard had pretended that he himself had found out the receipt for solving all puzzles, we must have used a harsher word and spoken of a self-conceit which also may be called, at least in one stage of his life, characteristic. But we are not sure that his rashness did not on the whole conduce to safety and prevent, instead of foster, the tendency to incredulity which the disputatious temper of the times was encouraging. And we are not sure that such a collection may not serve much better to keep an earnest seeker humble, self- distrustful, eager for divine help, than a collection of phrases from high authorities, adduced to sustain some conclusion which 140 abelabd's chief defect. the student boasts of as his, and in which he may trust much more than in God Himself. Abeiard'a 38. The greatest blot in this treatise is, it seems to us, to be of spiritual found in that passage of it which the Author regarded, and many iuumiDation. f jjj s rea( j ers probably will regard, as the most modest which he ever wrote. When he declares that the Fathers of old had the Spirit of God, and that he and his contemporaries were bound to pay them reverence because they had not, we believe he made a disclaimer which no Christian man has a right to make — one which involves at the same time an abject slavery to the past, and an incapacity of appreciating the treasures of the past. If the Fathers wrote whatever was good and universal in their works, whatever was not the result of the crudities of their minds or of their age, under the guidance of a higher Spirit than their own, Abelard could only divine their meaning, could only enter into sympathy with them, in so far as he was illuminated by that same Spirit. Without this aid, he could only listen to the sounds which came from their lips, read the letters which were shaped by their pens, not understand the men who uttered the sounds, and wielded the pens. False Mo- In this fatal mock humility lay, we conceive, the secret of much of cauSof 6 his arrogance. He was conscious of a discernment which was far Arrogance, beyond that of the majority of the men around him, a discernment of the sense that was in books, of the laws of the intellect by which books are composed, and to which they address themselves. It would have been a lie to pretend that he had not this discernment. He had not the courage to attribute it to a higher Wisdom than his own ; he, therefore, gave himself credit for it. And so, as we have seen, he came, sometimes deservedly, sometimes undeservedly, under the censure of men like Bernard, who, whatever their theory on the subject might be, whatever their deference to the Doctors of other times, acted on the conviction that they had a Divine Spirit with them, and attributed all the true operations of their minds to His agency. Because they had that faith, there was a unity in their deeds and lives which Abelard was seeking for, but can scarcely be said to have found. He had a subtlety in distinction which did not belong to them ; but he did not find how distinc- tions are reconciled, what truth lies beneath them and justifies them. Abeiard's 39. Abelard's skill in distinguishing, great as it was, suffered Aristotle^ ° seriously from this want. We have allowed him to explain for himself the doctrine by which he hoped to escape from the errors of several classes of Realists as well as from those of the Nominal- ists. If our readers should be able jto recall the passages which we quoted from the Metaphysics of Aristotle respecting Matter and Form, they may fancy that they have detected the teacher from whom the Breton derived his solution. But they must beware ■WHERE HE DEPAETS EEOM AEISTOTLE. 141 how they hasten to that conclusion. It is exceedingly doubtful whether Abelard possessed even an indifferent translation of the Metaphysics, whether he knew the great master at all, except through Boethius and Porphyry. Perhaps a more careful com- parison of their opinions on this subject may greatly strengthen that doubt. At all events, if Abelard read Aristotle, he must either have misunderstood him or have deliberately departed from his instructions. For it cannot escape any thoughtful reader, that the Greek and the Latin are directly opposed to each other as to the relation between the two constituents which they assume in every subject which we contemplate. Form is with Aristotle the Abelard ground of the house, the tree, the man — that which makes it Aristotle's what it is ; Matter is that which is necessary to make it actual, to do s ctri S° bring it into the circle of other existences. With Abelard Matter Matter and is the essential, Form is superinduced upon it. A more striking Form- illustration can hardly be found of the contrast between the greatest logician of the Greek and the greatest we have yet met with in the Latin world. The one, though the opposer of ideas in the Platonical sense, yet must have the invisible incorporeal Eidos at the root of all his conceptions ; the other when > he is most aiming at intellec- tual subtlety must still base his thoughts upon that which he can see and handle. A priori, one would have expected that the Chris- why aijc- tian divine, in whatever other respects he was inferior to the Pagan 'anity di'™'' philosopher, would have more easily and immediately acknowledged not assist him a spiritual substance, a spiritual foundation. It is not so. And standing" we think Abelard's confession in the preface to the Sic et non, has jogma! 6 ' 8 shown us why it is not so. The Greek could see that there was im- plied in the very existence of everything visible, an invisible ; without which it would appear only and not be. The Christian, not ac- knowledging a spiritual bond between the Divine Creator and himself, is driven by his very belief in a Maker of the world to regard Him first of all as the Maker of what is visible and tangible ; so this becomes unawares the first in his own conception. Though he feels that his own thoughts are higher than the things that they deal with, he cannot persuade himself that these things have not an older and a more substantial being than those thoughts or than whatever is homogeneous with them. 40. In these remarks we have said all that it is needful to say here J^J^ respecting Abelard's mode of cutting the knot which his different solution of contemporaries had not been able to untie. The experiment was j^dNominal- of real worth; The man who made it, showed that he had a far ist difficulty. keener intellect than had been granted to his opponents or to any of his fellow-workers. His solution was one which affected all the after history of scholastical philosophy, which was adopted con- sciously or unconsciously by many who regarded him as a heretic, which is recognized in the speculations and in the practice of >s . \ ** ' 142 EITTEE AND COUSIN. many in later times who despise him as a mere word-fighter. But it entirely failed to terminate the controversy ; it could not satisfy the minds of those who accepted it. There were truths and prin- ciples involved in the strife upon which all the skill of a series of dialecticians would be exercised, and which dialecticians would at last be found utterly unable to vindicate or to overthrow. Ritter Ges- Note. — [It ought not to be concealed from the reader that Ritter attributes the chichte der treatise, " De Generibus et Speciebus," which Cousin claims for Abelard, to Joscelin, ^'"J°p°^2 e Bishop of Soissons, or to one of his disciples. The grounds for this positive con- note i " elusion appear to us very weak. They rest upon a passage in John of Salisbury to this effect : — " There are some, moreover, who, with Gauslenus, the Bishop of Soissons, attribute universality to things collected into one, and take it away from individual things." This Ritter maintains to be the doctrine of the treatise, and thereupon refers it to a person or a school, otherwise very little known to us. His arguments against M. Cousin's conclusions have more weight, though he has not stated his opponent's case fairly. It is admitted that there is no name of an author on the manuscript. The assignment of it must therefore depend upon little points of evidence chiefly internal. Cousin rests too much perhaps upon the allusions which are made in it to William of Champeaux, and takes too much for granted a very ingenious emendation of his own of Indifferenter for iTidividuaUter, in the passage in the Book of Calamities which describes the controversy between Abelard and his old master. But that correction, to say the least, is exceedingly plausible, and if it is admitted, the statement of William of Champeaux's views in the treatise on Genera and Species, throws wonderful light upon what was before an obscure and scarcely intelligible statement. To say, as Ritter does, that Cousin has no better plea for his opinion than the notion that there are but three possible doctrines — Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism — and that since Abelard did not embrace either of the two former, he must have embraced the last, which is the one defended in this treatise, is to caricature the love of system, which is no doubt the infirmity of all clever Frenchmen, but which does not display itself with any peculiar extravagance in this instance. For Cousin distinctly affirms, on the plain evidence of the treatise itself, that there were several different modes under which Realism could be contemplated, and merely maintains, what Ritter himself is obliged to confess, that Abelard was not, as is vulgarly supposed, a Nominalist. The evidence which the German critic deduces from a comparison of the style in which Abelard ordinarily wrote with that of the treatise, will have little effect upon an English reader who has been sated with that kind of argu- ment in the case of Junius and a hundred other authors. When scales are nearly balanced, a feather may make one of them sink ; but suggestions about style are lighter than feathers. An author changes his style with the changes of his sub- ject, of his temper, of his digestion. Each reader changes his opinion about the resemblances of the style in one book and another, as he is inclined to establish the identity or the diversity of the authors. In fact, style must have reference to some accidents without or some principles within. And in this and in all cases, we shall judge about it correctly or incorrectly as we judge correctly or incorrectly of the spirit of the person who uses it. We do not hesitate to say, that we think Cousin has entered more into the spirit of Abelard than Ritter has done, — that he knows the man better, partly because he loves him better. Though we have presumed to differ from him in several points, and though we accept his authority with some hesitation on this, we are inclined to think and hope that he may have divined rightly the source from which the book on Genera and Species pro- ceeded. If not, we trust our readers will judge us tolerantly for having fallen into this error, rather than into the more wilful one of ascribing the book to the Bishop of Soissons] . HASTT GENEEALIZATIONS. 143 41. Abelard has been always supposed to present one phase of why Ber- this period, Bernard the opposite phase. This is, on the whole, "tdotfy i™' a true statement. Yet Bernard, if we take in his relations with c ™jP A ? d Dukes, Kings, Popes, Crusaders, is too busy a man to be exactly lani. compared with a student, however much that student may have influenced his time, and however much his personal life may be mixed with his philosophical. The most direct opposite of Abelard huro de st is perhaps Hugo de St. Victore. It is common to speak of him as lclore ' a mystic, and the head of a mystical school. These words will not perhaps convey any very distinct impression to our readers, as they do not to us. They are the cold formal generalizations of a later period, commenting on men with whom it has no sympathy. They scarcely help us more than the distinctions which are some- Mystics. times drawn by philosophical historians between the Platonists and Aristotelians of this and the contiguous centuries. Our readers will have seen that the same man was oftentimes by turns an Aris- J^ s pjato™ totelian and a Platonist, that it was inevitable that he should be lets. so, because his logical impulses were drawing him in one direc- tion, his Christian theology in another. To which side any- inclined most, depended much upon the conditions ot their prac- tical life ; Boethius was one man in his study, another in his prison. And even when they were very strongly determined either way, the habits of the Latin mind were so unlike those of the Greek, that we are liable to continual blunders in our efforts to bring them together. These very habits, as we have endeavoured to show, unconsciously influenced the middle-ages doctor to fall into the harder, more formal line of thought in which the Stagyrite had been, and always will be, the great guide ; but, at the same time, as the book on Genera and Species has taught us, they led to the obscuration and even the reversal of some of Aristotle's most pre- cious and vital maxims. If, therefore, we are compelled to use these modes of defining particular teachers, they should be applied with the greatest caution ; the historian and biographer should be mu °t break" 1 less afraid of appearing to contradict himself than of consistently 'i"™? 11 cus- adheiing to a formula which at some point or other is sure to break down. With even more caution, if it is possible, he should resort to the words mystic and anti-mystic. They do point to cer- tain undoubted tendencies in the minds of thoughtful men, ten- dencies which have never been wanting in any age, which are not more characteristic of the eleventh century than of the nineteenth. But we are in continual danger of confounding the manifestations of those tendencies in one state of society with those in another, and of making our own experiences the rule for the periods that are gone by. We are in equal danger of not perceiving what was in a man because we have begun by putting a label upon him, which, if there was anything in him worthy to be remembered, must be 144 SACBAMENTS. utterly inadequate to describe him. The student, therefore, who wishes to apply Bacon's maxims respecting Nature to the history of man and his thoughts, will do well to distrust these convenient modes of arranging phenomena before they have been investigated, just as vigorously and conscientiously as he does parallel modes of anticipating and circumscribing the discoveries and laws of the external world. Hugo's conn- 42. The opposition between Hugo and Peter Abelard is, how- U 'Y- ever, remarkable and worthy to be considered, though we shall not arrive at the true nature of it by calling one a master among logicians, and the other a master among mystics. Their countries were different, a circumstance which we have already discovered to be of great importance. Abelard has described to us the tenden- cies of his Breton race, which he exhibited in such perfection. Hugo was a German, apparently connected with some of the noble families of Germany. Nevertheless, he, as much as the French- man, came to that which was then, as since, the chief intellectual At raris. mart of Europe ; not, indeed, to hold disputations with William of Champeaux, or to establish a reputation in the University of Paris, but to dwell in a cloister of St. Victor, whose name he assumed. Little is known of him further as a man, but his influence in that and subsequent ages appears to have been deep and extensive. The book which unquestionably produced this effect, and which we may fairly take to be the most characteristic of himself, is that on Sacraments, though there is another, the Didascalon, which H'sbookDe perhaps more strictly belongs to our subject. Perhaps we shall Sacramentis. put our readers in the best position for understanding Hugo's place in a history of philosophy, and the relation in which his thoughts stood to those of questions respecting things and names with which we have recently been conversant, if we extract a passage from the eleventh part of his first book on Sacraments, a chapter which bears the title, " Concerning the Sacrament and virtue of Faith." If it should seem at first that we have merely chosen a striking theological statement — for striking most will allow it to be — we think we shall be able to show hereafter that it touches upon the very heart of all the moral and metaphysical speculations of that time, if not of later times. images in a 43- " First let us consider in what wise, Faith itself is called a Mirror. Sacrament, and of what thing it is understood to be a Sacrament. The Apostle says, ' We see now through a glass in an enigma, then face to face.' That is to say, now while we are seeing by faith, we see through a glass in an enigma ; but then when we shall see by contemplation, we shall see face to face. To see in a glass is to see an image ; to see face to face is to see the thing. Suppose some one to be behind you or above you, you are turned from him, you do not see him face to face. And if he looks at you it does not PAITH AND VISION. 145 ■therefore follow that you can look at him. Bring out the glass, place it before you, straightway you will see the image of him who is at your back or is over your head ; you will say, ' I see thee.' What is it you see? You see something doubtless, but an image only, The image you see him but in his image. Not yet in his own face. You do Schetype. not yet know as you are known, you do not see as you are seen, you are seen in yourself, you see in an image. He looks at you, you are turned from him. Turn yourself to him, oppose face to face, now you will see not an image, but the very thing. You saw him before, but you saw him in his image only, now in his face. . . . That which is seen in an image is a sacrament, that which is seen Application in the thing (in reality) is the thing (the reality) of the sacrament, tration. What therefore we now see through a glass in an enigma, is the sacrament to that which we shall see face to face in open contem- plation. But what is the enigma in which the image is seen until the thing itself may be seen? The enigma is the Sacred Scripture. Why ? Because it has an obscure signification. And the glass is your heart, if so be it be pure, and cleansed, and clarified. The image in the glass is the faith in your heart, for faith itself is an image and a sacrament ; but the contemplation that is to be, is the thing, and the virtue of the sacrament. Those who have not faith That w . hicl1 see nothing ; those who have faith are beginning to see something, b e . but the image only. For if the faithful saw nothing, there would be no illumination for faith, nor would the faithful be said to be illuminated. But if they saw the very thing, and did not expect anything more that is to be seen, they would not see through a glass in an enigma, but face to face. If then the highest good for a man is the contemplation of his Creator, that faith by which he begins in some way to see Him who is absent, is rightly spoken of as the initial good, the beginning of his restoration. This restora- tion grows as faith itself grows, he is more and more illuminated by knowledge that he may know more fully, and is influenced by love that he may love more ardently. If then the righteous man, Therenova- as long as he is in this body, is away from his Lord, here he has Sy Faith™ the life of faith. But so soon as he is brought out of this prison- house and brought into the joy of his Lord, he will have the life of contemplation In the Sacraments, as has been said, arms are supplied to this man whereby he may protect him- self in good works, as well as weapons wherewith he may over- throw his enemy, so that charity and hope being joined to faith, he may have an ever renewed and renewing strength, and life." 44. It will be obvious to the reader of this passage that in it Things Things and are not opposed to Names but to Signs. He will perceive too that lgns ' things here stand for invisible substances, the objects of spiritual apprehension, and that the visible universe is regarded chiefly as furnishing instruments whereby the man is educated for this con- h 146 THE DIDASCAIiOH. The Educa- tion of Man by His Creator. Characteris- tic difference between Abelard and Hugo. Hugo's idea of human learning. Didascalon, lib. i.c.2&3. Division of the Soul, c. 4. Definition of Philosophy, c. 6, temptation. Nothing can be further from Hugo's disposition than that kind of Mysticism which glorifies sudden apprehensions or intuitions of individual men respecting the invisible world. His book is an orderly exhibition of the different Sacraments which the Creator has used in different stages and dispensations of his- tory ; it assumes the knowledge of the invisible to be the proper and legitimate condition of the human creature, the one from which it is his fall and evil to have departed, and to which the grace of the Creator would restore him. Assuredly there is nothing novel in these opinions. They were the commonplaces of the old theology ; no divines in any age have wholly lost sight of them. But it makes all the difference whether they are the governing thoughts in a man's mind or only the subordinate ; whether they determine his view of life and studies or only qualify it. In the case of Abelard and the Logicians, they were clearly not the governing thoughts. Even in their theology the idea of sacra- ments was not a cardinal but an accessory one ; their dialectics and even their ethics were quite independent of it. The Didas- calon of Hugo shows that with him the case was altogether other- wise. His conception of all other subjects is moulded by his theology, and that theology is throughout sacramental. 45. Our readers will have put a very wrong construction upon our last words, if they suppose that Hugo was either indifferent to human learning, or that he supposed Theology was to contract its sphere and fix limits to its progress. He lays it down in the com- mencement of his first book, that " of all things to be desired, Wisdom is the first, wherein the form of the perfect Good consists. "Wisdom illuminates the man, that he may know himself." He is full of admiration of Pythagoras for calling the searchers for truth not wise men but lovers of wisdom. He would have the mind burn with the love of it, exercise itself to the search of it, and feel how difficult it is to embrace it in its own very nature. He recog- nizes the threefold division of the soul into the crescent or vege- tative, the sentient and the rational. The last belongs specially and characteristically to man. It occupies itself with inquiring concerning any subject, whether it is, what it is, of what kind or class it is, finally, why it is. He affirms that it is not inconsistent with the etymology of philosophy, to which he has already attached so much value, to define it as the discipline which investigates fully the reasons or principles of all things human and divine. He vin- dicates this definition from the charge to which its comprehensive- ness would naturally expose it, by saying that certain acts belong to philosophy in respect of their principle, and must be excluded from it in respect of their administration. Agriculture, in so far as it is occupied with laws of nature, falls within the province of philosophy — so far as concerns its operation, within the province specimens or IT. 147 of the labourer. He explains how the necessity for pathology as Curative well as for physiology arises. "There are two things in man," he i |l ' oceBseB > c - says, " good and evil, nature and vice. Our business is to repair nature and to banish, as far as in us lies, that which has corrupted it. The integrity of human life," he says, "requires for its fulfil- ment science and virtue, wherein consists our only resemblance to the superior and divine substances. For," he goes on, " man, —seeing he is not a simple nature, — in one aspect of his being, which is the better, and that I may speak more openly what I ought to speak, his very self, is immortal ; but on the other side, which is weak and fallen, and which alone is known to those who have no faith except in sensible things, he is obnoxious to mortality and mutability." He divides all things into those that have neither The Tempo- beginning nor end, and which are called eternal, those which have plt'uaifana* beginning but no end, which are called perpetual, those which the Eternal, have both beginning and end, which are called temporal. " Two things there are," he says, " which repair the divine likeness in man, the beholding of truth and the exercise of virtue. God being the Just and the Wise immutably, Man being just and wise mut- ably." He distinguishes three kinds of works, the work of God, The work of the work of Nature, the work of the artificer imitating nature, the Artificer, The work of God is indicated in the words, " In the beginning He ^ a of ^a- created heaven and earth;" the work of Nature in the words, "Let the earth bring forth the green herb ;" "the business of the artificer," he says, " is to unite things which are separate and to distinguish things that are joined." He then discusses the faculties of man as exercised in different acts of production and imitation. The statue, he says, comes from the contemplation of a man, the house from the contemplation of a mountain which is a protec- tion against the tempest, the invention of clothes from the obser- vation of the bark of trees and the feathers of birds and the scales of fishes. He inquires into the true definition of Nature, acknow- jWhatNature ledges the difficulty of the question, and proceeds to show the different senses that have been given to it, that they' may not be confounded. First, it has been taken for the archetypal example of all things in the divine mind ; then it is defined as that which assigns to each thing its own ; secondly, Nature has been called the property of each thing or that which informs each thing with its proper differentia ; in this sense we speak of all things by nature tending to the earth, of its being the nature of fire to burn, &c. A third definition is that Nature is the internal fire which penetrates all sensible things and causes them to bring forth. The last sub- Logic, c. 12. jeot in his first book is the origin and purpose of Logic. He places this study last, he says, because it was discovered last ; other things had been found out, then it was necessary that logic also should be found out, because no one could properly speak of things unless 118 POLITICO-PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENTS. Philoso- phical His- tory. he first recognized the method of speaking rightly. In treating this subject he does little more than quote certain passages from Boethius, which we have already brought under the notice of our readers. Hugo is chiefly useful for the pains which he takes in pointing out the truth, obvious enough but likely to be forgotten in that age, that the practice of all arts, of speaking and reasoning especially, must have preceded the discovery of the maxims and principles which regulate them. Hugo's place 46. We think our readers will agree with us that we have here an interesting specimen of a 12th century student and religious philosopher. If Hugo was, as is alleged, a Mystic, it can hardly be denied that a Mystic is capable of exhibiting practical sense and considerable erudition. Indeed, after all that has been said about Abelard's spirit of investigation — and we certainly have shown no wish to disparage Abelard — it might fairly be contended that there is more of the spirit of progress in Hugo than in his contemporary, that though he might dispute less ably, he would also be less likely to limit knowledge by the rules and terms of dialectics. The theology of Hugo compels him to be a continual searcher, the ever expanding knowledge of the infinite and eternal God is the only ultimate end he can think of, as it is the only reward after which he aspires. A man with such aims and with so much diligence and courage in carrying them out, must have given a powerful impetus to the minds of his cotemporaries. His name has been less remembered in later times than it deserves, because it has been overshadowed by those of other men who met some of the tastes of the age more successfully, though their actual power was not greater than his, perhaps not equal to his. 47. Peter Abelard had an eminent pupil, of whose projects, whose failure, and whose death it is the business of the political not of the philosophical historian to speak. But we have so often broken through the limits which it becomes us, according to pre- cedent, to observe, that we shall make no excuse for at least men- tioning the name of Arnold of Brescia. How the speculations on dialectics, or even on theology, in which Abelard indulged, can have borne fruit in a scheme for restoring a Senate and Tribunes to Konie, for making the ecclesiastical world give place to the clas- tafluetcld rd sical > i1; k not easv at once t0 conceive. And any theories about ooriooa ' ^ e ^ n ^ s between ^ e tw0 sets °f thoughts are nearly sure to be hasty and unsatisfactory in proportion to their ingenuity. Much might be said of the way in which a spirit of inquiry when it has commenced in one direction, spreads into another. But though Abelard was a vigorous and even a restless inquirer, one does not perceive how his investigations should have led any one to disturb the peace of cities, far less to organize a society by re- storing older forms than those which were displaced. It is only in Arnold of Brescia. THE DOOTOn'S FUNCTION. 149 connection with the general movements of the time that one can understand how Abelard drew such audiences to his lectures on Universal at Paris, and it is only by attention to the same move- ments that one can understand how the acts of an enthusiast like Arnold should have become serious in the eyes of Popes and Emperors, and should have reacted on the philosophy of the schools. 48. Arnold sought the assistance of Frederick Barbarossa in V ,e ^ e < support of his popular movement against the Pope, or rather ana the™ 01 ' offered to fraternize with him. Though his proposals were re- c ' tle8, ceived with little respect, they proved that there was a new element at work in the world, and that henceforth the conflict would not be merely between the civil and ecclesiastical heads of the Roman empire. The memorable struggles between the Italian cities which brought the Popedom into the new and curious position of a champion of freedom against the German despotism, revealed still more clearly the existence of this third power, and showed that it would have an increasing influence on the destinies of Europe. It $J|S?ta the is evident that the question of Unity, what it means, how it was to Schools ana be preserved under its present conditions, or under what new con- m e or ditions it was possible, had been debated elsewhere than in the University of Paris, between other combatants than William of Champeaux and Abelard or even Bernard. The failure of the second crusade, which had been so powerfully advocated by the Abbot of Clairvaux, showed that the unity of Christendom, even when it was represented by powerful kings, was still an imperfect one, scarcely able to match itself against the unity of Islamism. Evidently its spiritual centre was not firm. Italy felt its weakness even more than the rest of Europe. But all felt it, Churchmen as well as Statesmen, Becket as much as Henry II. How was Unity Thewarwith to be maintained ? Who were to discover the secret of it ? Might not the Doctors do what the Popes were failing to do ? Might not they lay bare the very principle which could keep the minds of men as well as societies together ? They believed that they could. The secret of all strifes and discoveries lay, as it seemed to them, within. Heresies and evil opinions were the radical causes of them. To extirpate these was the great work of which the world was in need. 49. Such became the leading characteristical thought of the The saint latter part of the 12th century. Was it not also the thought of DodoT? that earlier half which Bernard represented? Not precisely in the same sense. Bernard had a horror of heresies as foes to prac- tical life, as disturbers of the devotion of Monasteries, as hinderers of the common action of the Christian nations against the Infidels. But he was, as we have seen, a Saint and not a Doctor ; with little skill in tracing the rise and growth of an opinion, however he might Oracles. 150 THE MASTEB OE SENTENCES. wish to drive it away ; much more capable of pouring forth earnest exhortations than of" giving learned solutions of difficulties. An- other kind of man was needed when dialectical skill had established itself in the Universities as part of the profession of those who taught in them, and when political rebellion had gone so far in shaking the prestige of Papal dominion. Peter the 50. Peter the Lombard, though of Italian birth, got his learning where almost every one else got it at this time, in Paris. He had profited by the teaching both of St. Bernard and of Hugo de St. Victore. In 1159 he became Bishop of Paris. He died, according to some authorities, in 1160, according to others, in 1164. Per- haps it was fitting that the Master of Sentences should have a scanty personal biography, that he should be known to us almost entirely through a book. That book has an oracular form and character which does not belong to any earlier composition of the Cry for Middle Ages. Oracles were what people who had been wearied of Abelard's continual questioning were longing for. But such oracles would have been less satisfactory to the spirit of this age, perhaps would have been rejected by it, if they had proceeded from an authoritative tribunal hie that of Rome. A Bishop had less chance of being listened to than a simple Doctor. The Master of Sentences did not create his fame or increase it by his mitre. His decrees came forth in the shape of ' Distinctions ; ' he paid rever- ence to the intellect even while he was uttering decrees to which it bowed. Charaetsrof 51. This remark must be remembered by every reader of the tencc™" Sentences. Though they were the foundation of a number of anathemas against Heretics which issued from Paris and are com- monly appended to Peter's four books, they themselves were not received at first without suspicion. They contain a careful ex- amination of opinions and a statement, generally an honest state- ment, of the perplexities of the student's mind out of which they have arisen. The teacher does not forbid but encourages the diligent weighing of words, the following out acts and thoughts to their principle. He complains of those whom he calls Heretics rather for precipitation in their decisions than for too much hesi- tation. He believes that there is certainty at the root of all things ; but he allows for the thorns and thistles which oppose themselves to him who is digging down to it. TWncsajid 52. The first distinction of Peter the Lombard is between iibfi^aist. i. things and signs. His inclination to make this contrast the ground of his whole treatise may be traced probably to the influence of Hugo. Things, are with him, as with the writer on Sacra- r.ikeness to ments, eternal realities : Signs, the tokens by which they make Huso. themselves known in the outward world. But the mind of Peter is far less historical than that of Hugo. He does not trace the use ATTTHOBITY. 151 of these signs in different periods, but he advances at once to the heart of the mystery which was occupying the whole thought of the Middle Ages from whatever point that thought might start, in whatever direction it might seem to be moving. The first book of the Sen- tences is professedly on the mystery of the Trinity. The other three books are derived from this ; implicitly their subject is the same. 53. He begins with Things. Of these some are to be enjoyed, Use ana En- some are to be used ; there are some which both enjoy and use. ub.i, dist.i, Those things which are to be enjoyed make us blessed. By ° - ®— 1 ") those which are to be used, we are .assisted in tending to blessed- ness, so that we may come to .the truly good things and dwell in them. We are the things that both enjoy and use ; placed between the two, as the saints and angels are also. To enjoy is to dwell in the love of anything for its own sake ; to use is to turn to account that which is presented to us for this end. All other use is named abuse. The things, then, which we are to enjoy are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is that supreme thing, common to all who enjoy it, if, indeed, it may be called a thing, and not rather the cause of all things, nay, if the word cause itself is not too mean. The things we are to use are the world and the creatures in it. The invisible things of God are to be understood through the things that are made, the use of the world is, that out of temporal things eternal things may be taken in. 54. The last of these sentences is taken from Augustine, who is The Fathers; the great authority for both the distinctions which we have touched p e ter Lom- upon ; indeed, for the whole treatise. Peter Lombard avowedly **£* maae of builds his book upon the Fathers. He wishes rather to be con- sidered a collector of their judgments than an utterer of his own. Still he is not a copyist or a plagiarist. The Fathers have culti- vated in him the power of original thinking and of methodizing his thoughts. When he quotes them, it is not as a slavish repeater of their words, but as a student and interpreter of their sense. It is otherwise^ we think, when he appeals to the Scriptures. There he often does catch at mere sounds ; the historical spirit of the Scriptures puzzles him ; he cannot deduce formulas and maxims from them so quickly as from Augustine, therefore they are intro- duced rather to sustain a conclusion he has already formed than to suggest one. When they are troublesome, and do not bear out his conclusion, he treats them much as other commentators do. For Se Bible! instance, St. Paul's sentence, " God will have all men to believe ^"f^ 1 and come to the knowledge of the truth, " strikes him as perilously treats the comprehensive; he therefore proposes the very simple expedient jotafc" of inverting it ; it means only that " all come to the knowledge of ^™.f the truth whom God wills to do so." cipie.) 55. It is not for the pleasure of pointing out a weakness in our , C. ]. V. ithe 152 AtTGUSTrNlATTISlI. Inconsis- tency in his view of the divine Nature. Omnipotence and Charity. His great merits. Influence of Augustine. Prescience and Science. eminent schoolman that we have alluded to this monstrous inter- pretation. It illustrates a contradiction which was not confined to him, which he inherited in part from his master, Augustine, and which has descended upon some who have known little either of the master or the pupil. Contemplated as an object of trust and delight to the purified spirit, the Divine nature always presents itself to him as essential Charity. Each Person exhibits some as- pect of that love, which he regards as only another name for the holy and undivided Trinity. But when the Being whom he has spoken of in this rapturous language, presents himself as an origi- nating Will, another thought intrudes itself — Omnipotence takes the place of Charity. If the two seem to come into collision, the second must be sacrificed to the first. It is supposed to be an act of reverence to confess absolute power ; merely an act of self-indul- gence to believe in an absolute love. And this, through the very condition of a heavenly spirit, is declared to be that it should enter into this absolute love, and should refer all powers to it. Or else our finite faculties are called in to justify our attempting to grasp the one kind of infinity instead of acknowledging the other. The philosophy, as much as the theology of Peter Lombard is affected by this inconsistency ; we could not, therefore, pass it over. But we must do justice to the strength of his philosophy as well as of his theology. No student of divinity can read his first book, we should conceive, without acquiring a deeper and clearer concep- tion of principles in which he has implicitly believed, without cul- tivating the precious habit of distinction. And we doubt whether any student of philosophy can read large portions of that book and of the three following, without acquiring a new sense of the dignity and responsibility of the name which he has taken upon him; without confessing that the dogmatist has taught him to be more of an inquirer than he was before. 56. It will be evident from the hints which we have given already that Augustine not only influenced very powerfully the mind of Peter Lombard, as he did the whole mind of the Middle Ages, but that he imparted to his pupil that habit of thought re- specting the will of God and His determinations, as to the well- doing and well-being of His creatures, which we ordinarily asso- ciate with the Bishop of Hippo. Perhaps the 38th Distinction of the first book, which relates to this subject, may be as helpful as any we could select, in enabling the reader to understand the ten- dencies and the method of our author. " It has been said above that the prescience of God is only of future things, but of all future things as well good as evil. Know- ledge or wisdom, on the other hand, has respect not only to future things, but also to present ; not only to temporal things, but also to eternal, seeing that God knows himself. Hence arises a ques- SOLUTIONS. 153 tion which cannot be evaded — whether divine knowledge or pre- science is the cause of the things, or the things are the causes of the knowledge or prescience. For it would seem as if the prescience of God were the cause of those things which fall under it, seeing that they would not have come to pass unless whethrr the God had foreseen them, and it was impossible for them not to aS'in-^ happen, seeing that God did foresee them vpiyedin the The same also must be affirmed of knowledge, to wit, that en™nr P know- because God hath known certain things, therefore they are. lea t' eofthem Which sentiment Augustine seems to support, saying, God knew not these things from a certain time, but all temporal things that were to be, and among these what and when we should beg from Him, and when and concerning what things He would hear or not hear ; this he foresaw without beginning. For He did not know all creatures because they are, but they are be- cause He knew them." .... And again, in the 6th book of his Ecclesiastes — " When times depart and succeed, nothing departs or succeeds in the knowledge of God wherein He knew all things which He made by it." Peter Lombard then goes on to point out the inconveniences which would follow if this doctrine were admitted. " If the knowledge or the prescience of God is The conse- the cause of all things, it is the cause of all evils ; therefore God Sub dtenut- would be the author of evils, which is altogether false. But again, tive - there is equal inconvenience in assuming that the things which are to be, are the cause of the knowledge or prescience of God. Were this so, then something would exist as the cause of that which is eternal, something alien and diverse from it ; the knowledge of the Creator would depend upon the creatures ; the created would be the cause of the uncreated. How is this contradiction to be solution. cleared up ? Identify knowledge with acquaintance (Scientia sciential with Notitia), and we may say boldly, the Science or Prescience of God is not the cause of things that come to pass in any other sense than that without it they do not come to pass. But if under the name of knowledge, you include good pleasure and disposition, Benepiad- then it may be rightly called the cause of those things which God sStio. e 1SP °" creates. In this way perhaps we may understand Augustine, ' they are because He knew them ;' that is, because knowing, He was satisfied, and because He disposed them according to His knowledge. This sense is the more probable, because Augustine is there speaking only of things that are good, of the creatures which God makes, all which He knows, not simply, but with a knowledge which includes satisfaction and disposition. But evil things God knows and foresees before they come to pass, by simple acquaint- ance or external understanding. God foresees and predicts that which He will not produce, as He foresaw and predicted the infi- delity of the Jews, but did not produce it. He did not force them 1 54 SUBTLETIES Or THE MASTER. into the sin of infidelity because He foresaw it, nor would He have foreseen or predicted their evils unless those evils were to be ac- tually in them. Augustine says, He did not therefore force any one to sin because He foreknew what would be the sins of men, for He foresaw their sins, not His own. Therefore, if those things which He foresaw were not theirs, He foresaw what was not true. But seeing His prescience cannot be deceived, beyond a doubt it was not another sinned, but they sinned — this God foreknew. And therefore, if they had wished not to do evil but good, it would have been foreseen that they would not do evil by Him who knew what ims. 58 c. eac h one wou i,j ,j " There is still a difficulty which our author ma. thinks it his duty to state, ' Jiither, it is said, things happen otherwise than God foresaw them, or not otherwise. If not other- wise, then all things happen by necessity ; if otherwise, the pre- science of God may be deceived or may be changed. But they may happen otherwise, because they may happen otherwise. than they do happen; but they do happen as has been foreseen, there- fore they may happen otherwise than was foreseen. The answer is : All such phrases as these, it is impossible that that should not be The Solution, which God has foreseen, it is impossible that all things should not be foreseen that come to pass, may be taken conjunctively or dis- junctively. For if you understand it thus, ' It cannot be otherwise than God hath foreseen,' that is to say, it cannot be that God has foreseen it one way and it comes to pass in another way, you under- stand what is true. But if you say ' This cannot happen otherwise than it does happen, and in another way than that in which God foresaw it would happen,' that is false. It might have happened otherwise than it did, and God saw it would happen as it did. The same distinction applies to the other saying, that it is impos- sible that that should not happen which God has foreseen, or when God has foreseen it. To say that it is impossible that all which comes to pass should not be foreseen, that is to say, that it should come to pass and not be foreseen, is true. To say that it was im- possible for God not to foresee everything which comes to pass, is false. For He might cause that it should not come to pass, and so that it should not be foreseen." thelSn? '" 57, Ever y reader will perceive how easily the habit of word- tences. splitting, in its worst form, might be cultivated by such teaching as this. And when word-splitting went along with stringent dog- matism, when men were condemned for not apprehending the accurate terms which the doctor had used to guard against errors on the right or the left, there would be great danger lest the student, having first become the slave of words, should afterwards make them the excuse for establishing a tyranny over his brethren. We have some sense of the greatness of these perils, and we are sure that they were greater in reality than they can be in our ESTIMATE OF THEIE DATTGEE. 155 apprehension. Yet we must maintain that such writers as Peter The Compcn- Lombard were doing something to counteract this danger, if by sati0IL accident they may have promoted it. The cure for the extreme lust of distinction certainly is not found in overlooking distinctions or denying their importance. It is not found by shrinking from the severe examination of words and of their shades of meaning. The more carefully that examination is pursued, the more we are led to feel the significance and sacredness of words, the less are we likely to play dishonest tricks with them. That words are things, mighty and terrible things, was the special lesson which the middle ages had to learn, and which they had to impart. Many supersti- tions they indulged unquestionably concerning these words, many magical arts were practised by means of them. But when they descended into the subterranean world and discovered in what vulcanian fires their weapons were fashioned, they were more on their guard against those above ground who gave them an unna- tural sharpness or used earthly herbs and medicaments to make them poisonous. If there was mischief in connecting them with the deepest principles of theology, there was also the benefit of making the use of them more cautious and earnest. He who speculated or traded with them might win unusual profits by his venture ; but the risks were also terrific 58. Those who have gone with us so far, will not need to be words ana told what we suppose these schoolmen needed, to make their dis- tinctions effectual for their own age and for other ages, even when they worked them out most honestly and most diligently. The old Socratic commerce with facts and nature, was required by the craftsmen in the University of Paris, as it had been by those in the School of Alexandria, to prevent refined investigations into the force of words from becoming embarrassing to the intellects which they might have helped to make clearer. This evil was greater in the twelfth century than it had been in the eleventh. When scholar- The univor- ship belonged to the monasteries, there was a homely life of dig- commerce"' ging, draining, building, managing accounts, punishing the refrac- Jhe^i