No More Learning

But through the whole development which this line of thought had already taken in antiquity, we find that the worth-predicate of
perfection was inseparably iused with the conception of Being. ThB~3egrees ot ±5emg are those ot perfection ; the more anything the more perfect and, vice versa, the more perfect anything
the more it. 1 The conception of the highest Being there fore, also that of an absolute perfection that of a perfection such that cannot be thought higher and greater: ens perfect issimum.
In accordance with these presuppositions, Anselm perfectly correct in his conclusion that, from the mere conception of God as most perfect and most real Being, must be possible to infer his existence. But to do this he attempts various modes of proof. In his Monologium he follows the old cosmological argument that because there Being at all, highest and absolute Being must be assumed from which all else that exists has its Being, and which itself exists only from itself, according to its own essential nature
Whereas every individual existent entity can be also thought as non-existent, and therefore owes the realitjr of its essence not to itself, but to another (the Absolute), the most perfect Being can be thought only as being or existent, and exists accordingly only by virtue of the necessity of its own nature. God's essence
(and only God's) involves his existence. The nerve of this argu ment thus ultimately the Eleatic basal thought, tortv tlvai, Being
and cannot be thought otherwise than as being or existing. Anselm, however, involved this same thought in peculiar com plication, while he intended to simplify and render independent in itself. In the Proslogium he entered upon the ontological argu
ment, properly so called, which maintains that without any reference to the Being of other things, the mere conception of the most per-
A principle which lies at the basis of Augustine's theodicy, in so far as with both the existent held to be to ipso good, and the evil, on the contrary, as not truly existent.
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Chat. 1, J 23. ] Controversy over Universalis : Anselm. 293
feet Being involves its Reality. Inasmuch as this conception is thought, it possesses psychical reality : the most perfect being is as a content in consciousness (esse in intellectu). But if it existed only as a content in consciousness, and not also in metaphysical reality (esse etiam in re), a still more perfect being could evidently be thought, which should possess not only psychical, but also meta physical reality ; and thus the former would not be the most perfect being possible. It belongs, accordingly, to the conception of the most perfect being (quo majus cogitari non potest) that it possesses not only reality in thought, but also absolute reality.
It is obvious that Anselm in this formulation was not fortunate in his shift, and that what hovered before him attained in this proof but a very awkward expression. For it takes little acuteness to see that Anselm proved only that if God is thought (as most perfect being), he must be thought also necessarily as being or existent, and cannot be thought as non-existent. But the ontologi- cal argument of the Proslogium did not show even in the remotest degree that God, i. e. that a most perfect being, must be thought. The necessity for this stood fast for Anselm personally, not only because of the conviction of his faith, but also by the cosmological argumentation of the Monoiogium. When he believed that he could dispense with this presupposition and with the help of the mere conception of God arrive at the proof of his existence, he exemplified in typical manner the fundamental idea of Realism, which ascribed to conceptions without any regard to their genesis and basis in the human mind, the character of truth, i. e. of Reality. It was on this ground alone that he could attempt to reason from the psychical to the metaphysical reality of the concep tion of God.
The polemic of Qaunilo, therefore, in a certain respect hit the vulnerable point. He argued that according to the methods of Anselm, in quite the same manner the reality of any idea whatever, e. g. that of an island, if the mark of perfection were only included within might be proved. For the most perfect island, were not really in existence, would evidently be surpassed in perfection by the real island, which should possess the same other marks the former would be inferior to the latter in the attribute of Being. But instead of showing in his rejoinder, as might have been ex pected, that the conception of perfect island completely unnec essary arbitrary fiction, or that this conception contains an inner contradiction, while the conception of the most real being neces- «ary and not contradictory, Anselm expatiates further upon his argument, that the most perfect being in the intellect, must
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294 Mediaeval Philosophy : First Period. [Part III.
However slight the cogency of this attempted proof remains for him who does not, as Anselm does without acknowledging regard the conception of an absolute Being as a necessity of thought, the ontological argument yet valuable as the characteristic feature of
'mediaeval Kealism, of which forms the most consistent expression^ fior_tiie thought that the highest being owes its reality only to its'
own essential nature, and that thereforethis reality must be capable of being proved from its conception alone, the natural conclusion of a doctrine which traces the Being of things of perception back to
participation conceptions, and again within the conceptions themselves sets up graded scale of reality, employing the degree of universality as the standard.
~3. When now the question arose as to the kind of reality which belongs to universals, and as to their relation to the individual things known to the senses, mediaeval Kealism found itself involved in difficulties quite similar to those which had faced the Platonic Realism. The thought of second, higher, immaterial world, which at that former period had to be born, was now indeed received as a complete and almost self-evident doctrine, and the religiously dis posed thinking could be only sympathetic in its attitude toward the Neo-Platonic conception of the Ideas as contents of the divine mind. Following the pattern of the Platonic Timeeus, whose mythical mode of presentation was favourable to this conception, Bernard Chartres sketched an imaginative cosmogonic work of fantastic grotesqueness, and we find with his brother Theodoric, attempts, sug gested by the same source, to construct symbolism of numbers, which undertook not only, as was done in other instances, to develop the dogma of the Trinity, but also to develop further fundamental metaphysical conceptions out of the elements of unity, likeness, and unlikeness. 1
In addition to this question concerning the archetypal reality of the Ideas in the mind of God, the question also, what significance
to be conceded to them in the created world. Extreme Realism, as had been maintained at the outset by William of Champeaux, taught the full substantiality of the class-concept in this world also the universal present in all its individuals as the undivided essence, everywhere identical with itself. The . class accordingly appears as the unitary gni-. gf/1T1^p| and t>)e gpppif«> marks of the indi- virlualsbelonging to appear as the accidents of this substancgr- Ifwas Abelard's objection that according to this theory mutually contradictory accidents would have to be ascribed to the same sub-
Cf. the extracts in Haureau, HUt. d. ph. sc. , 396 ff.
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Chap. 1, § 23. ] Controvert*/ over Universale : Realism. 295
stance, which first forced the defender of Realism to give up this extreme position and restrict himself to the defence of the proposi tion, that the class exists in the individuals, individualiter ;' i. e. that its universal, identical essence clothes itself in each particular example in a particular substantial Form. This view was in touch with the conception of the Neo-Platonists, which had been main tained by Boethius and Augustine and also occasionally mentioned in the literature of the intervening period, and its exposition moves readily in the Aristotelian terminology, according to which the universal appears as the more indeterminate possibility which realises itself in individuals by means of their peculiar Forms. The conception is then no longer substance in the proper sense, but the common substratum which takes on different forms in individ
ual instances.
Walter of Mortagne sought to remove the difficulty in another
war, by designating the individualising of the classes or genera to species, and of the species to individual things, as the entering of the substratum into different states {status), and yet regarding these states as realiter specialising determinations of the universal.
In both these lines of thought, however, Realism was only with difficulty held back from a final consequence which at the first lay in nowise within the purpose of its orthodox supporters. The re lation of the universal to the particular might be regarded as the self-realising of the substratum into individual Forms, or as its specialisation into individual states, — in either case one came ulti mately in the ascending line of abstract conceptions to the idea of the ens generalissimum, whose self-realisations, or whose modified states, formed in descending line the genera, species, and individuals, Le. to the doctrine that in all phenomena of the world only the one divine substance is to be seen. Pantheixm inhered in the hlnnd, of
Realism by reason of its Neo^l'latonic descent and was always "mating its appearance here and there; and opponents like Abelard
did not fail to cast this consequence in the face of Realism. Meanwhile realistic pantheism did not come to lie expressly maintained in this period; on the other hand. Realism in its theory
of universals found an instrument for establishing some of the fundamental dogmas, and therefore rejoiced in the approbation of the Church. The assumption of a substantial reality of the logi cal genera not only seemed to make possible a rational exposi tion of the doctrine of the Trinity, but also, as was shown by Anselm and Odo (Odardus) of Cambrey, proved to tie a fit phil
1 For the reading " liulirTerenUT. " cf. Lowe, op. cit. , 49 fl. , and CI. Baumkvr, Ank. J. Oesch. d. Ph. , X. 2u7.
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What are they, then ? It could be read in Marcianus Capella that a universal was the comprehension of many particularities by one name {nomen), by the same word {vox); but a word, Boethius had defined as a "motion of the air produced by the tongue. " With this all elements of the thesis nf extreme Nominalism were given : universals are nothing but collactua naaw, common ^""'cnatii""" for different things, sounds {flatus vocis), which serve as signs for a multipl'c'ty °f substances or their accidents.
In what degree the thus formulated Nominalism, which in this extreme form must have ignored even the real occasions for such collective names, was actually propounded and defended during that period * can no longer be determined. ' But the metaphysics of indi vidualism which corresponds to such a theory of knowledge meets us clearly and firmly with the claim that only individual things are to be"regarded as substances, as truly real. This was doubtless most sharply expressed by Jtiosceilinus, when he presented it in a two^ fold aspect : as the comprehension of many individuals under the same name is only a human designation, so, too, the distinguishing of parts in individual substances is only an analysis for human thought and communication ;4 the truly real is the individual thintr, and that alone.
1 Ct. t. S. Barach, Zur Geschichte des Nominalismus vor Boscellin (Vienna,
1866).
1 It is certain that this did not as yet occur in the beginnings of Nominalism
296 Mediaeval Philosophy : First Period. [Part IIL
osophical basis for the doctrines of inherited sin and vicarious satisfaction.
4. On the same grounds, we find at first the reverse lot befalling Nominalism, which during this period remained more repressed and stifled. Its beginnings l were harmless enough. It grew out of the fragments of Aristotelian logic, in particular out of the treatise De
In this the individual things of experience were desig- nated as the true "first" substances, and here the logico-grammatical rnle Was propounded that " substance " could not be predicate in a judgment : res non predicatur. Since now the logical significance of universals is essentially that of affording the predicates in the judgment, (and in the syllogism), it seemed to follow — this the commentary Super Porphyrium had already taught — that univer sals could not be substances.
Categories.
(with Eric of Auxerre, with the author of the commentary Super Porphyrium, etc. ), for with these writers we find at the same time the expression of Boethius that genus is substantiate similitudo ex diversis speciebus in cogitatione collecta.
* John of Salisbury says (Policr. VII. 12 ; cf. Metal. II. 17) that this opinion vanished again with its author Roscellinus.
1 The example of the house and its wall, which, according to Abelard (Otirr. lurd. 471). he employed in this connection, was certainly the most unfortunate that could be thought of. How inferior such considerations are to the begin nings of Greek thought I
Chak 1, § 23. ] Controversy over Universale : Nominalism. 297
The individual, however, is that which is given in the world of sensible reality ; hence for this metaphysics, knowledge consists only in the experience of the senses. That this sensualism appeared in the train of Nominalism, that there were men who allowed their thinking to go on entirely in corporeal images, we are assured, not only by Anselm, but also by Abelard : but who these men were and how they carried out tin ir theory we do not learn.
This doctrine became momentous through its application to theo logical questions by Berengar of Tours and Roscellinus. The one contested, in the doctrine of the Sacrament, the possibility of the transmutation of the substance while the former accidents were retained ; the second reached the consequence that the three persons of the divine Trinity were to be looked upon as three different substances, agreeing only in certain qualities and workings (tri-
theism).
5. In the literary development of these antitheses Realism passed
eurrentas riatonic, Nominalism as Aristotelian. The latter desig nation was evidently much more distorted than the former, but when we consider the defective nature of the transmitted material, we can understand that the mediating tendencies which thrust themselves in between Realism and Nominalism introduced them selves with the endeavour to harmonise the two great thinkers of antiquity. Of such attempts, two are chiefly worthy of mention : from the party of Realism the so-called Indifferentism, from that of Nominalism the doctrine of Abelard.
As soon as Realism abandoned the doctrine of the separate existence of the concepts (the Platonic xuptoyuk) and supported only the " universalia in re,'' the tendency asserted itself to con ceive of the different stages of universality as the real states of one and the same" substratum. One and the same absolute reality is, in its different status," animate being, man, Greek, Socrates. As the substratum of these states the moderate Realists regarded the uni
versal, and ultimately the ens reulissimum; it was therefore a significant concession to Nominalism when others made the indi vidual the supporter of these states. The truly existent, these latter thinkers conceded, is the individual thing, but the individual thing supports within itself as essential determinations of its own nature certain qualities and groups of qualities which it has in common with others. This real similarity (consimilitutlo) is the indifferent ("not different") element in all these individuals, and thus the genus is present in its species, the species in its indi
vidual examples, indifferenter. Adelard of Bath appears as the chief supporter of this line of thought, yet it must have had a
ja
298 Mediceval Philosophy : First Period. [Part IIL
wider extension, perhaps with a somewhat stronger nominalistic accent. 1
6. But it was Abelard ! with his all-sided activity who formed the vigorous centre in the controversy over universals. The pupil and at the same time the opponent both of Roscellinus and of William of Champeaux, he fought Nominalism and Realism each by means of the other, and since he takes the weapons of his polemic now from the one side now from the other, it could not fail to result that his position should be interpreted and judged oppo sitely. " And yet the outlines of this position are clear and dis tinct before us. In his polemic against all kinds of Realism, the thought that the logical consequence of Realism is pantheism returns so frequently and energetically that we must see in not merely convenient weapon for use in the ecclesiastical
then prevailing, but rather the expression of^njndividualistic con- viction easy to understand in tWcase^ojLa^firsQoality sn pmp/rgiSF. in, self-conscious, and proudly self-reliant. But this individuality had at the same time its inmost essence in clear, sharp, intellectual activity, in genuine French rationality. Hence its no less powerful opposition against the sensualistic tendencies of Nominalism.
Universals, Abelard teaches, cannot be things, but just as little can they be mere words. The word (vox) as complex of sounds, indeed something singular can acquire universal meaning only
mediately, by becoming predicate (sermo) . Such an employment of word for predicate possible only through conceptional thought (concepttis) which, by comparing the contents of percep tion, gains that which by its nature adapted to become a predicate
(quod de pluribus ncUum est prcedicari) The universal then the conceptual predicate (Sermonism), or the concept itself (VonceptHaP~
But if the universal as such gains its existence first in thought and judgment, and in the predicate which possible only by this means, and exists only there, not therefore entirely without relations to absolute reality. Universals could not be the indispensable forms of all knowledge, as they in fact actually are,
there were not something in the nature of things which we
According to the statements in the treatise De Generibus et Speciebus and the communications of Abelard in his gloss on Isagoge. It seems, too, that Wil liam of Champeaux inclined toward Indifferentism at the last.
Cf. S. M. Deutsch, Peter Abaelard, ein kritischer Theolog. ties zirolften Jahrhunderts (Leips. 1883).
Thus Hitter makes him a Realist Haureau, Nominalist.
Cf. Arist. De Interpr. 17 39.
It seems that Abelard at different imcs emphasised sometimes the one
alternative, sometimes the other, and perhaps his school also developed differ ently in accordance with these two lines of thought.
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Chai\ 1, § 23. ] Controversy over Universals . • Abelard. 299
apprehend and predicate in these universals. This something is the likeness or similarity (conformitas) of the essential characteristics
of individual substances. 1 Not as numerical or substantial
but as a multiplicity with like qualities, does the
exist in Nature, and it becomes a unitary concept which makes predication possible, only when it has been apprehended and con ceived by human thought. Even Abelard, however, explains this likeness of character in a multiplicity of individuals upon the hypothesis that God created the world according to archetypes which he carried in his mind (noys). Thus, according to his view, the universals exist firstly, before the things, as conceptus mentis in God ; secondly, in the things, as likeness of the essential characteristics of individuals; thirdly, after things, in the human understandings: its concepts and predicates acquired by comparative thought.
Thus, in Abelard r. lm difWont linw nf Hiniipht of the t/jme, beconje_uiiii£il. But he had developed the individual elements of this theory incidentally, partly in connection with his polemic, and perhaps, also, at different times with varying emphasis on this or that element : a systematic solution of the whole problem he never gave. As regards the real question at issue he had advanced so far that it was essentially his theory that became the ruling doctrine in the formula accepted by the Arabian philosophers (Avicenna), "mi- versalia ante multiplicitatem, in midtiplieitate et post muUiplicitatem ; " to universals belongs equally a significance ante rem as regards the divine mind, fa re as regards Nature, and post rem as regards human knowjeilge! And since Thomas and Duns Scotus in the main agreed in this view, the problem of universals, which, to be sure, has not yet been solved,' came to a preliminary rest, to come again into the foreground when Nominalism was revived (cf. § 27).
1 Others, who in the main had the same thought, e. g. Gilbert de la Porree, aided themselves with the Aristotelian distinction between first and second rebalances, or between substance and subsistence ; yet Gilbert uses the latter terms in a changed meaning as compared with their use by Abelard.
* Even if the problem as to the universals be restricted, according to the mode of Scholasticism, to the reality of the class-concepts, the problem has gone through essentially new phases in its further development, and cannot be regarded as finally solved by the position taken by science to-day. Behind this, however, rises the more general and more difficult question, what metaphysical significance belongs to those universal determinations, in a knowledge of which all explanatory science practically consists. Cf. H. Lotze, Logik (1-eips. 1874), «f . 111-321. [Eng. tr. ed. by B. Bosanquet, Oxford and X. Y. 1888. ]
To the investigators of to-day, therefore, who would throw the controversy orrr universals to the lumber pile of past theories, or treat it as a long-outgrown children's disease, so long as they do not know how to state with complete certainty and clearness in what consists the metaphysical " reality and efficiency of that which we call a lam nf Snture, we must still cry, mutato nomine de te
'•i'. u/. t narrata. " Of. , also, O. I^ibraann, Zur Analyii* der Wirklithkeit (2d ed. . Strassburg, 1880), 813 ff. , 471 ff. , and Qedanken und Thafachen (1 Heft, Mraasburg, 1882;, 89 ff.
identity, universal
300 Mediaeval Philosophy : First Period. [Part ILL
7. But Abelard has a still greater significance than that due to this central position in the controversy over universals, for he mani
fested in his own person, and expressed in typical form, the attitude which the dialectic, unfolding in connection with that controversy, occupied in the mental and spiritual life of that time. He is, so far as it was possible within the limits of the ideas of his time, the spokesman of free science, the prophet of the newly awakened im pulse toward real and independent knowledge. Abelard (and with him Gilbert) is first of all a rationalist ; thought is for him the norm of truth. Dialectic has the task of distinguishing between true and false. He may, indeed, subject himself to revelation preserved in tradition, but, he says, we believe divine revelation only because it is reasonable. Hence dialectic has, in his case, no longer really the task which Anselm, following Augustine, prescribed ot making" the content of faith comprehensible for Jhjs jnteUect^ he demands
for it also the critical right of deciding in doubtful cases according to its own rules. Thus, in the treatise "Sic et Non," he set the views of the Church Fathers over against each other to their recip rocal disintegration dialectically, in order to find at last what worthy of belief only in what capable of proof. So, too, in his Dialogus, the cognising reason appears as judge over the various religions, and while Abelard regards Christianity as the ideal con summation of the history of religions, there are expressions in his works in which he reduces the content of Christianity to the origi nal moral law, which was re-established by Jesus in its purity. From this standpoint, too, Abelard was the first to win once more a free, unbiassed view for the interpretation of antiquity. Little as he knew of them, he was an admirer of the Greeks he sees in their philosophers Christs before Christianity, and regarding men like Socrates and Plato as inspired, he asks (reversing the thought of the Church Fathers, cf. p. 223, note whether religious tradi tion may not perhaps have been partly created by these philoso phers. Christianity regarded by him as the philosophy of the Greeks made democratic. " "
Abelard, like almost all the Enlighteners of the Middle Ages,5 was an obedient son of the Church. But this fact were to put us in error as to the significance of his personality in the line just mentioned, — a significance rather for the history of religion and civilisation than as producing something philosophically new, — would be sufficient to take into account the attacks which he met.
Cf. the evidence for what follows in Reuter, Oesch. der Aufklarung ira tt. -A. , 183 ft. ,,.
A. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, III. 322.
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Chap. 1, f 24. ] Dualism of Body and Soul. 301
In fact, his controversy with Bernard of Glairvaux is the conflict of knowledge with faith, of reason with authority, of science with the Church. And if Abelard lacked ultimately the weight and staying power of personality to prevail in such a contest,1 it will be remem bered, on the other hand, that a science such as the twelfth century i-ould offer — even aside from the external power to which the Church at that time had attained — must have been inferior to the mighty inward strength of faith, even if it had not been supported by so great and high a personality. For that bold postulate, so full of the future, that only unprejudiced scientific insight should deter mine faith, — what means did it then possess for its fulfilment ? Its only means were the hollow rules of dialectic ; and the content which this science had to exhibit, it owed just to that tradition against which it rebelled with its intellectualistic criticism. This science lacked the material strength to carry out the part to which
she felt herself called ; but she set herself a problem which, while she herself was not able to solve has never again vanished from the memory of European peoples.
We hear, indeed, of the disturbing practices of those who would have everything treated only "scientifically ";* complaints multiply after the time of Anselm over the growing rationalism of the Zeitgeist, over the evil men who will believe only what they can comprehend and prove, over the Sophists who, with impudent dexterity, know how to dispute pro el contra, over the " deniers," who from ration alists are said to have become materialists and nihilists — but not even the names of the men who answer to this description have been preserved, to say nothing of their doctrines. And just this lack in proper material of its own was the reason that the dialectic
movement, whose prince was Abelard, in spite of all its zeal and all its acuteness, ran out and became exhausted without direct and immediate results.
24. The Dualism of Body and Soul.
On these grounds explicable that in the twelfth and, in part. even in the eleventh century, we find the feeling of the unfruitful- ness of dialectic as widely extended as the feverish impulse to attain through to true knowledge. tendency that indicates disillusion manifested in this period by the side of the ardent desire for knowledge. Discontented with the subtilties of dialectic,
which, even in men like Anselm. had laid itself under obligation to
Ct Th. Zlegler, AbatlanTi Ethica, In Strat$hurg. Ahh. *. Philot. (Freiburg, lt*4),p. Ml.
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302 Mediaeval Philosophy : Firtt Period. [Part III.
place the ultimate mysteries of faith upon a rational basis, some plunged from unfruitful theory into practical life, " in das Rauschen der Zeit, ins Rollen der Begebenheit," — into the rush of time, the rolling of events, — others plunged into a revelry in supra-rational Mysticism ; others, finally, into diligent work in empirical research. All the opposites, into which an intellectual activity that is predom inantly logical can pass over, develop by the side of dialectic^ and take their position against it in a more or less firmly concluded league, ■— Practice, Mysticism, and Empiricism.
There resulted from this at first a peculiarly distorted relation to scientific tradition. Aristotle was known only as the father of formal logic and master of dialectic, and in consequence of this igno rance was regarded as the hero of the purely intellectual mode of considering the world. Plato, on ihe contrary, was known partly as the creator of the doctrine of Ideas (unwittingly falsified in accordance with Neo-Platonic processes), partly, by virtue of the preservation of the Timasus, as the founder of a philosophy of Nature whose fundamental teleological character found the live-
, liest assent in religious thought. Hence when Gerbert, as a counter- poise against the pride of dialectic in which he himself had at first sjr made some not very successful attempts, commended the study of Nature, to which he had been stimulated by the example of the Arabians, and which corresponded to his own vigorous practical
bent toward active life, he could count on approval for this en deavour onto among men who, like him, were working toward an extension of raaterial information, and who, in aid of this, were appropriating tire results of ancient researches. Thus the return to antiquity makes hare its first appearance as the source of material knowledge in opposition to the Aristotelian dialectic, — a first weak
V*became the seat of the Platonism that was intimately associated with the study of Nature. Here worked the brothers Theodoric and Bernard of Chartres ; from this school William of Conches received his tendency. In their writings the powerful stimulus of classical antiquity unites with the interest of an active and vigorous
1 The cloister Monte Cassino in Italy formed one of the main seats of this movement. Here (about 1060) the monk Constantinus Africanus worked, who, as is known to have been the case also with the I'latonist Adelard of Bath, gathered his learning on his journeys in the Orient, and was especially active in the translation of medical treatises by Hippocrates and Galen. The effects of the activity in this cloister are shown not only in literature, but also in the
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^ Renaissance whichjiatlf humanistic, halt naturalistic, aims to gain ~y J^ ahving content of knowledge. ' Gerbert's disciple, Fulbert (died
\ ^ ^^ 1029), opened the school of Chartres, which, in the following period,
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founding of the famous school of Salerno in the middle of the twelfth century.
Chap. 1, § 24. ] Body and Soul : School of Chartret. 303
knowledge of Nature. We see here one of the most peculiar shift-
ings that have occurred in the history of literature. Plato and \ ■v>- r> 5.
Aristotle have exchanged their r61es : the latter appears asjhejdeal - /■ ' v
at an abstract science of conceptions, the former as the starting- *
point for a concrete knowledge of Nature. The knowledge of ex- (r^\ Cernal reality that meets us in this period of mediaeval science is attached to the name of Plato. So far as there is a natural science
in this age, it is that of the Platonists, — of a Bernard of Chart res.
of a William of Conches, and their associates. 1
Middle Ages directed its activity to the investigation of the mental
life, and unfolded the full energy of real observation and acute/^ Ait^* analysis in the domain of inner experience — in psychology. This is^ ^*\
the field of scientific work in which the Middle Ages attained the
most valuable results. ' In this, the experience of practical life as
well as that of the sublimest piety was filled with a substantial con
tent, and as such set itself in opposition to the dialectical play of
conceptions.
1. The natural leader in this field was Augustine, whose psychologi cal views exercised a mastery that was the stronger in proportion as his views were interwoven with the current religious conviction, and in proportion, also, to the slight extent to which the Aristotelian psychology was known. But Augustine had maintained in his system the complete dualism which regarded the soul as an imma terial substance, and man as a union of two substances, body and soul. Just for this reason he could not expect to gain a knowledge of the soul from its relations to the body, and took with full con sciousness of his procedure the standpoint of inner experience.
The new principle of method which had thus arisen from meta physical presuppositions could unfold itself undisturbed so long as the monistic metaphysical psychology of the Peripatetic school re-
1 This humanistic natural science of the early Middle Ages was not at all discriminating in its adoption of ancient tradition ; so, for example, if we may trast the account of Walter of St. Victor (in the extracts made by Bulvus,
Mtgtit, Vol. 180, p. 1170), William of Conches regarded an atomistic conception of Nature as capable of union with his Platonism. (Migne, Vol. 90, pp. 1132 li . 1 Cf. for this and for what follows (as also for § 27, later) the article* by II. Siebeck in Vols. 1. —III. of the Arrhiv fur (ir*chirhlr dtr 1'hiloiophir, and
also in Vol*. 93, 84, Ztitschrift fur Philot. v. philot. Krit. (1888-90).
But this disposition toward concrete reality, which makes the
Piatonists of the Middle Ages conspicuous as contrasted with the high-soaring metaphysics of the dialecticians, assumed still another
form, which was much more valuable. Incapable as yet of gaining
from outer experience better results than those already at its hand As
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304 Mediaeval Philosophy : First Period. [Part III
mained unknown. And this unfolding was furthered emphatically by those needs which brought the Middle Ages to psychology. Faith sought knowledge of the soul for the purpose of the soul's salvation, and this salvation was fouud just in those transcendent activities through which the soul, estranged from the body, strives toward a higher world. It was, therefore, principally the Mystics who sought to spy out the secrets of the inner life, and thus became psychologists.
Weightier and philosophically more significant than the individual doctrines propounded in this line, which were often very fantastic and hazy, is the fact that by means of these and connected theories, the dualism of the sensuous and super-sensuous worlds was maintained in its full strength, and thus formed a strong counterpoise to the Neo-Platonic monism. But it was not destined to exercise this metaphysical influence till later : at first, in the more limited form of the anthropological dualism of body and soul, it became the starting-point for psychology as the science of inner experience. 1
It therefore, very noteworthy phenomenon that the sup porters of this psychology as " natural science of the inner sense," as was later called, are precisely the same men who are faithfully exerting themselves to gain a knowledge of the outer world from all available material. Having turned away from dialectic, they seek knowledge of what real in experience, philosophy of Nature but they divide this into two completely separated fields, physica corporis and physica animce. Among the Platonists the preference for the study of external Nature predominant, among the Mystics that for the study of the internal Nature. 5
But we must regard as the characteristic, the essentially new and beneficial mark of this empirical psychology, the endeavour, not only to classify the psychical activities and states, but to appre hend them in the living stream of mental life, and to comprehend their development. These men in their pious feelings, in their struggles for the enjoyment of divine grace, were conscious of an inner experience, of history of the soul, and were impelled to write this history and while in so doing they used Platonic, Augustinian,
Cf. also K. Werner, Knsmologie und Naturlehre des scholastischen Mit- telalters, unit specieller Beziehung auf Wilhelm von Conches; and Der Enticick- lungsgang der mittelalterlichen Psychologit von Alcuin bis Albtrtus Magnus (off-prints from the Sitzungsberichten (Vol. 76), and Denkschrijlen (Vol. 26) respectively of the Vienna Acad. , 1870).
Nevertheless must be mentioned that Hugo of St. Victor not only shows an encyclnpsedic knowledge in his Eruditio Didascalica, but also shows that he
acquainted, even to the most exact detail, with the teachings of ancient medi cine, particularly with the theories of physiological psychology (explanation of
perceptions, temperaments,
etc. ).
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Chap. 1, $ 24. ] Body and Soul: Victorines. 305
and Neo-Platonic conceptions in motley mixture to designate in dividual facts, the essential and decisive point is that they under took to exhibit the development of the inner life.
These Mystics, who were not seeking a metaphysics but already possessed one in their faith, were not much troubled by the ques tion which later became so important, of how this duality of body and soul should be understood. Hugo of St. Victor is indeed con scious that though the soul is lowest in the immaterial world, and the human body highest in the material world, the two are yet so opposite in constitution that their union (unto) remains an incom prehensible enigma ; but he thinks that in this very fact God has shown, and desired to show, that for him nothing is impossible. Instead of racking their brains dialetically upon this point, the Mystics rather assume this dualism as a presupposition, in order to isolate the soul for their scientific consideration, and to observe its inner life.
This life, however, for Mysticism, development of the soul to God, and so this first form of the psychology of the inner sense the his tory of salvation itt the individual soul. The Mystics regarded the soul essentially as Oemiith heart," the seat of sentiment and feeling, rather than intellect]. They show the development of its vital pro cess out of the feelings, and prove their literary virtuosoship in their depicting of the states and movements of feeling. They are also the genuine successors of Augustine in examining, in their analysis of this process, the motive forces of the will, in investigating the decisions of the will, by virtue of which faith conditions the course of knowledge, and finally in the fact that they ultimately regard as the highest stage in the soul's development the mystical contempla tion of God, which, to be sure, here held to be the same with love. Such, at least, was the activity of the two Victorines. Hugo and
Richard, who were completely sustained by the spirit of science, while in the case of Bernard of Clairvaux, the practical factor of the will much more strongly emphasised. Bernard unwearied in denouncing as heathenish that pure impulse after knowledge for its own sake which comports with all the virtues and vices, and yet, even for him, the last of the twelve stages of humility that ecstasy of deification with which the individual disappears in the eternal essence, " as the drop of water in a cask of wine. "
The psychology of knowledge, also, built up with the Victorines upon Augustinian lines. Three eyes are given to man, — the eye of flesh to know the cor|>oreal world, the eye of reason to know himself in his inner nature, the eye of contemplation to know the spiritual world and the deity. While, then, according to Hugo, cogitatio,
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306 Mediaeval Philotophy : First Period. [Part III
meditatio, and contemplatio are the three stages of intellectual activ ity, the degree to which he emphasises the co-operation of the imag ination (imaginatio) in all kinds of knowledge is interesting and characteristic of his personality. Even contemplation is a visio intellectualis, a mental beholding which alone grasps the highest truth undistorted, while thought is not capable of this.
Old and new are thus variously mingled in the writings of the Victorines. Fantasies of mystic rapture force their way amid the most acute observations and the most delicate portrayals of the psy chical functions. The method of self-observation doubtless falls here, too, into the danger of leading to Schw&rmerei,1 or ecstatic enthusi asm ; but, on the other hand, it wins much fruit of its own, it breaks up the soil for the research of the future, and, above all, it marks off the field on which modern psychology is to grow.
3. This new science received support and enrichment likewise from quite another direction : a side-result of the controversy over universals — and that, too, not the worst result — came to its aid- When Nominalism and Conceptualism combated the doctrine that universals exist in themselves, and declared the species and genera to be subjective creations in the knowing mind, the duty fell on them of making intelligible the process by which these universal ideas arise in the human mind. They found themselves thus sent directly to the empirical study of the development of ideas, and sup plemented the sublime poesy of the Mystics with results which were indeed sober and dry, but all the more valuable on that account. For, just because the matter in hand required an exhibition of the origin of purely subjective contents of thought, which were to be explained as the products of man's development in time, this inves tigation could become only a contribution to the psychology of inner experience.
The very thesis of extreme Nominalism afforded its opponents occasion to treat the relation of word to thought, and in the case of Abelard led to a searching investigation of the co-operating activity that belongs to language in connection with the development of thought. The question as to the meaning of signs and designations in the movement of ideas was by this means raised anew. A still deeper entrance into the heart of theoretical psychology was made by the investigation which is conducted as to the necessary connec tion between intellect and perception in the treatise De Intellectibus. It is here shown how sensation, as confused idea (confusa conceptio), enters into the perception (imaginatio) which grasps and holds it
1 Cf. Kant, Anthropologie, <j 4.
Chap. 1, § 24. ] Body and Soul : John of Salisbury. 307
together with others, and remains preserved reproducible in this imagination; how, then, the understanding by successively running through this manifold material (discursive activity) elaborates it to concepts and judgments; and how, after all these conditions have been fulfilled, opinion, faith, and knowledge arise, in which ulti mately the intellect knows its object in a single collective perception or intuition (intuitive activity).
In a similar way John of Salisbury set forth the process of psychical development : but in his case the tendency peculiar to the Augustinian conception of the soul asserts itself most strongly, — the tendency to regard the different forms of activity not as strata lying above one another or beside one another, but as ways of functioning in which the same living unity manifests itself. He sees already in the sensation, and in a higher degree in perception or imagination, an act of judgment; and as union of the newly entering sensations with those which are reproduced, imagination contains at the same time the emotional states (passiones) of fear and hope. Thus out of imagination as fundamental psychical state develops a twofold series of states of consciousness; in the theoretical series appear first, opinion, and by comparison of opinions, knowledge and rational conviction (ratio), both in con nection with prudence (prudentia), which is an operation of the will; finally, by virtue of the striving after calm wisdom (sapientia), we have the contemplative knowledge of the intellect ; — in the practical series are given the feelings of pleasure and pain with all their diversifications in the changing states of life.
Thus with John we have indicated the whole programme of the later associational psychology in which his countrymen were to become leaders. And he may be regarded as their prototype not only in his problems, but also in the mode of their treatment. He keeps at a distance from the speculations of dialectic that were so alien to the active world ; he has the practical ends of knowledge
in his mind, he desires to find his way in the world in which man is to live, and above all in man's actual inner life, and brings with him into philosophy a fineness and freedom of mind character istic of the man of the world, such as aside from him we do not find at that time. He owes this in no small degree to the education of the taste and of sound cosmopolitan thought which classical studies afford ; and in this, too, his countrymen have followed him, not to their injury. He is the precursor of the English Enlightenment as Abelard is of the French. 1
1 Reuter, op. tit. , II. 80, aeU thus Roger Bacon and Abelard over against each other ; yet precisely the decisive tendency of empirical psychology is present store strongly in the case of John.
308 Mediaeval Philosophy : First Period. [Part IIL
4. We notice finally Abelard's ethics as a peculiar side-phenomenon in this process of making more rigid the contrast of outer and inner, and of transferring the scientific first principle to the inner nature. 1 Its very title, Scito Te Ipsum, announces it as a science based on inner experience, and its importance consists just in the fact that here for the first time ethics is again treated as a proper philo sophical discipline, and freed from dogmatic metaphysical efforts. * This is true of this ethics although too, proceeds from the Christian consciousness of sin as its fundamental fact. But here
strives to go at once to the heart of the matter. Good and evil, says, consist not in the outward act, but in the action's inner
cause. Nor yet do they consist in the thoughts (suggestio), feelings, and desires (delectatio) which precede the decision of the will, but solely in this resolve or consent to the deed (consensus). For the inclination {voluntas), founded in the whole natural disposition and in part in the bodily constitution, which may lead toward good or evil, not itself in the proper sense good or evil. Fault or error
(vitium) — to this Abelard reduces inherited sin — becomes sin (jpeccatum) only through the consensus. But this present, the sin fully and completely there with and the bodily executed
action with its external consequences adds nothing ethically.
The essence of the moral thus placed by Abelard solely in the resolve of the will (animi intentio). But what now the norm according to which this resolve of the will to be characterised as good or evil Here, too, Abelard rejects with contempt all external
and objective determination by law he finds the norm of judg ment solely within the deciding individual, and consists in the agreement or non-agreement with the conscience (conscientia) That action good which in accord with the agent's own conviction that only bad which contradicts this.
And what conscience Where Abelard teaches as philoso pher, as the rationalistic dialectician that he was, there conscience for him (in accordance with ancient example, Cicero) the natural
moral law, which, though known in varying degree, common to all men, and which, as Abelard was convinced, was wakened to new clearness in the Christian religion, after had become ob scured through human sin and weakness (cf. above, 23, 7). But
Cf. on this Th. Ziegler in the Strassburger Ahhdl. z. Phil. (Freiburg,
1884).
- It throws surprising light upon the clearness of Abelard's thought when
he incidentally separates the metaphysical conception of the good (perfection = reality) carefully from the moral conception of the good, with which alone ethics has to do. He shows in this that he had penetrated this complication of prob lems, one of the most intricate in history.
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