CHAPTER IV.

OF THE DOGMATISM OF THE STATIONARY PERIOD.

IN speaking of the character of the age of commentators, we noticed principally the ingenious servility which it displays;-the acuteness with which it finds ground for speculation in the expression of other men's thoughts;-the want of all vigor and fertility in acquiring any real and new truths. Such was the character of the reasoners of the stationary period from the first; but, at a later day, this character, from various causes, was modified by new features. The servility which had yielded itself to the yoke, insisted upon forcing it on the necks of others: the subtlety which found all the truth it needed in certain accredited writings, resolved that no one should find there, or in any other region, any other truths; speculative men became tyrants without ceasing to be slaves; to their character of Commentators they added that of Dogmatists.

1. Origin of the Scholastic Philosophy.-The causes of this change have been very happily analyzed and described by several modern writers. The general nature of the process may be briefly stated to have been the following.

The tendencies of the later times of the Roman empire to a commenting literature, and a second-hand philosophy, have already been noticed. The loss of the dignity of political freedom, the want of the cheerfulness of advancing prosperity, and the substitution of the less philosophical structure of the Latin language for the delicate intellectual mechanism of the Greek, fixed and augmented the prevalent feebleness and barrenness of intellect. Men forgot, or feared, to consult nature, to seek for new truths, to do what the great discoverers of other times had done; they were content to consult libraries, to study and defend old opinions, to talk of what great geniuses had said. They sought their philosophy in accredited treatises, and dared not question such doctrines as they there found.

The character of the philosophy to which they were thus led, was determined by this want of courage and originality. There are various

1 Dr. Hampden, in the Life of Thomas Aquinas, in the Encyc. Metrop. Degerando, Hist. Comparée, vol. iv. Also Tennemann, Hist. of Phil, vol. viii. Introduction.

antagonist principles of opinion, which seem alike to have their root in the intellectual constitution of man, and which are maintained and developed by opposing sects, when the intellect is in vigorous action. Such principles are, for instance--the claims of Authority and of Reason to our assent;—the source of our knowledge in Experience or in Ideas; -the superiority of a Mystical or of a Skeptical turn of thought. Such oppositions of doctrine were found in writers of the greatest fame; and two of those, who most occupied the attention of students, Plato and Aristotle, were, on several points of this nature, very diverse from each other in their tendency. The attempt to reconcile these philosophers by Boëthius and others, we have already noticed; and the attempt was so far successful, that it left on men's minds the belief in the possibility of a great philosophical system which should be based on both these writers and have a claim to the assent of all sober speculators.

But, in the mean time, the Christian Religion had become the leading subject of men's thoughts; and divines had put forward its claims to be, not merely the guide of men's lives, and the means of reconciling them to their heavenly Master, but also to be a Philosophy in the widest sense in which the term had been used;-a consistent speculative view of man's condition and nature, and of the world in which he is placed.

These claims had been acknowledged; and, unfortunately, from the intellectual condition of the times, with no due apprehension of the necessary ministry of Observation, and Reason dealing with observation, by which alone such a system can be embodied. It was held without any regulating principle, that the philosophy which had been bequeathed to the world by the great geniuses of heathen antiquity, and the Philosophy which was deduced from, and implied by, the Revelations made by God to man, must be identical; and, therefore, that Theology is the only true philosophy. Indeed, the Neoplatonists had already arrived, by other roads, at the same conviction. John Scot Erigena, in the reign of Alfred, and consequently before the existence of the Scholastic Philosophy, properly so called, had reasserted this doctrine. Anselm, in the eleventh century, again brought it forward; and Bernard de Chartres, in the thirteenth."

This view was confirmed by the opinion which prevailed, concerning the nature of philosophical truth; a view supported by the theory

of Plato, the practice of Aristotle, and the general propensities of the human mind: I mean the opinion that all science may be obtained by the use of reasoning alone;-that by analyzing and combining the notions which common language brings before us, we may learn all that we can know. Thus Logic came to include the whole of Science; and accordingly this Abelard expressly maintained. I have already explained, in some measure, the fallacy of this belief, which consists, as has been well said, in mistaking the universality of the theory of language for the generalization of facts." But on all accounts this opinion is readily accepted; and it led at once to the conclusion, that the Theological Philosophy which we have described, is complete as well as true.

Thus a Universal Science was established, with the authority of a Religious Creed. Its universality rested on erroneous views of the relation of words and truths; its pretensions as a science were admitted by the servile temper of men's intellects; and its religious authority was assigned it, by making all truth part of religion. And as Religion claimed assent within her own jurisdiction under the most solemn and imperative sanctions, Philosophy shared in her imperial power, and dissent from their doctrines was no longer blameless or allowable. Error became wicked, dissent became heresy; to reject the received human doctrines, was nearly the same as to doubt the Divine declarations. The Scholastic Philosophy claimed the assent of all believers.

The external form, the details, and the text of this philosophy, were taken, in a great measure, from Aristotle; though, in the spirit, the general notions, and the style of interpretation, Plato and the Platonists had no inconsiderable share. Various causes contributed to the elevation of Aristotle to this distinction. His Logic had early been adopted as an instrument of theological disputation; and his spirit of systematization, of subtle distinction, and of analysis of words, as well as his disposition to argumentation, afforded the most natural and grateful employment to the commentating propensities. Those principles which we before noted as the leading points of his physical philosophy, were selected and adopted; and these, presented in a most technical form, and applied in a systematic manner, constitute a large portion of the philosophy of which we now speak, so far as it pretends to deal with physics. 2. Scholastic Dogmas.-But before the complete ascendency of Aristotle was thus established, when something of an intellectual waking

took place after the darkness and sleep of the ninth and tenth centuries, the Platonic doctrines seem to have had, at first, a strong attraction for men's minds, as better falling in with the mystical speculations and contemplative piety which belonged to the times. John Scot Erigena' may be looked upon as the reviver of the New Platonism in the tenth century. Towards the end of the eleventh, Peter Damien, in Italy, reproduced, involved in a theological discussion, some Neoplatonic ideas. Godefroy' also, censor of St. Victor, has left a treatise, entitled Microcosmus; this is founded on a mystical analogy, often afterwards again brought forward, between Man and the Universe. "Philosophers and theologians," says the writer, "agree in considering man as a little world; and as the world is composed of four elements, man is endowed with four faculties, the senses, the imagination, reason, and understanding." Bernard of Chartres," in his Megascosmus and Microcosmus, took up the same notions. Hugo, abbot of St. Victor, made a contemplative life the main point and crown of his philosophy; and is said to have been the first of the scholastic writers who made psychology his special study." He says the faculties of the mind are "the senses, the imagination, the reason, the memory, the understanding, and the intelligence."

Physics does not originally and properly form any prominent part of the Scholastic Philosophy, which consists mainly of a series of questions and determinations upon the various points of a certain technical divinity. Of this kind is the Book of Sentences of Peter the Lombard (bishop of Paris), who is, on that account, usually called "Magister Sententiarum;" a work which was published in the twelfth century, and was long the text and standard of such discussions. The questions are decided by the authority of Scripture and of the Fathers of the Church, and are divided into four Books, of which the first contains questions concerning God and the doctrine of the Trinity in particular; the second is concerning the Creation; the third, concerning Christ and the Christian Religion; and the fourth treats of Religious and Moral Duties. In the second book, as in many of the writers of this time, the nature of Angels is considered in detail, and the Orders of their Hierarchy, of which there were held to be nine. The physical discussions enter only as bearing upon the scriptural history of the creation, and cannot be taken as a specimen of the work; but I may observe, that in speaking of the division of the waters above the fir

7 Deg. iv. 35. • Ib. iv. 867.

Ib. iv. 413. 10 Ib. iv. 419. 11 Ib. iv. 415.

mament, from the waters under the firmament, he gives one opinion, that of Bede, that the former waters are the solid crystalline heavens in which the stars are fixed," "for crystal, which is so hard and transparent, is made of water." But he mentions also the opinion of St. Augustine, that the waters above the heavens are in a state of vapor, (vaporaliter) and in minute drops; "if, then, water can, as we see in clouds, be so minutely divided that it may be thus supported as vapor on air, which is naturally lighter than water; why may we not believe that it floats above that lighter celestial element in still minuter drops and still lighter vapors? But in whatever manner the waters are there, we do not doubt that they are there."

The celebrated Summa Theologiæ of Thomas Aquinas is a work of the same kind; and any thing which has a physical bearing forms an equally small part of it. Thus, of the 512 Questions of the Summa, there is only one (Part. I., Quest. 115), "on Corporeal Action," or on any part of the material world; though there are several concerning the celestial Hierarchies, as "on the Act of Angels," "on the Speaking of Angels," "on the Subordination of Angels," "on Guardian Angels,” and the like. This, of course, would not be remarkable in a treatise on Theology, except this Theology were intended to constitute the whole of Philosophy.

We may observe, that in this work, though Plato, Avecibron, and many other heathen as well as Christian philosophers, are adduced as authority, Aristotle is referred to in a peculiar manner as "the philosopher." This is noticed by John of Salisbury, as attracting attention in his time (he died A.D. 1182). "The various Masters of Dialectic," says he," "shine each with his peculiar merit; but all are proud to worship the footsteps of Aristotle; so much so, indeed, that the name of philosopher, which belongs to them all, has been pre-eminently appropriated to him. He is called the philosopher autonomatice, that is, by excellence."

The Question concerning Corporeal Action, in Aquinas, is divided into six Articles; and the conclusion delivered upon the first is," that "Body being compounded of power and act, is active as well as passive." Against this it is urged, that quantity is an attribute of body, and that quantity prevents action; that this appears in fact, since a larger body is more difficult to move. The author replies, that "quan

12 Lib. ii. Distinct. xiv. De opere secundæ diei. 13 Metalogicus, lib. ii. cap. 16.

14 Summa, P. i. Q. 115. Art. 1.