No More Learning

The unhappy monk was indicted,
condemned, imprisoned, and finally harried into his grave. But Gottschalk
1 MPL, CxxII, 422.


## p. 785 (#831) ############################################

John the Scot and Greek Philosophy
785
or his opinions, did not lack supporters. Assailed from many sides by
weighty rebukes, Hincmar judged it expedient to add reason to force, and
in a rash moment entrusted to John the Scot the task of demolishing
Gottschalk's position. The result was (in the year 851) the treatise on
Predestination, which defeated not only Gottschalk but Hincmar and all
parties concerned.
The knowledge of Greek, now a rare accomplishment, which John
brought with him from Ireland, stood for more than linguistic proficiency.
His philosophy is a genuine derivation from Greek sources, Pagan and
Christian, and must be interpreted rather by the ideas of the fifth century
than by later developments of medieval thought. In the De Praedestina
tione, it is true, he affects to rely solely on Latin authors; whence it has
been doubtfully inferred that he had not yet acknowledged the sway of
the Pseudo-Dionysius. A more likely explanation is found in the contro-
versial character of the work. John's business was to turn against Gott-
schalk the authorities, especially Augustine, to whom he had appealed.
With an ingenuity almost too subtle he carries out this programme, yet
only on the surface. The force and substance of his argument belong to
Neo-Platonism. Either, therefore, he was already familiar with the
Areopagite, or he must in some other way have mastered a body of
doctrine akin to the philosophy of Proclus. In any case, the refutation
of Gottschalk depends entirely on an account of the Divine Nature
developed by Plotinus and his school out of elements originally supplied
by Plato. The essence of God, His will, and His intellect, are one pure
and indivisible substance identical with goodness. From his eternal per-
fection no effects but what are good can proceed. If the will of the
Creator is the necessity of the creature, yet that will is the pure expression
of liberty, and man's necessity is but the appetite for goodness, in which
human liberty essentially consists. How, then, shall we distinguish the
good from the bad? And how leave room for the freedom of decision
upon which moral responsibility depends? John firmly maintains the
reality of liberum arbitrium, and denies that God compels any man to be
either good or bad; but the critical question evidently is whether the
existence of evil in any real sense can be allowed. Boldly and variously
as John wrestles with his problem, he never wavers in his belief that evil
is pure negation. Sin, death, and eternal punishment he sees as indivisible
links in a chain, but God neither knows nor wills them. What God
foreknows he predestinates; whence, if he is said to foreknow evils without
predestinating them, this can only be a modus locutionis, designed to
stimulate us to deeper understanding of the truth. Foreknowledge itself
is but a metaphor; for priority in time has no meaning in relation to
God, in whose life is neither past nor future, but only the eternal now.
To do justice to the argument in a few lines is impossible, but its
two-edged character and its threat to the orthodox view of sin and
punishment will easily be detected. The whole tone of the reasoning, too,
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. XXIII.
50


## p. 786 (#832) ############################################

786
John's view of Reason and Authority
must have been foreign to John's contemporaries, who can hardly have
failed to see how little he trusted to familiar authorities, and how much
to arguments derived from none knew where. It is a mistake, however,
to lay as much emphasis as some modern writers have done on John's
identification (in the first chapter) of vera philosophia with vera religio.
In itself this was no startling novelty, nor was it a mere ruse of debate
for John to quote the precedent of Augustine. Verus philosophus est
amator Deil was Augustine's summary of the aim of philosophy: the test
by which he had tried Socrates and Plato, and found them not far from
the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus far, in fact, John was expressing a sound
historical judgment on the meaning of philosophy in the past. It is
further to be observed that the word is religio, not theologia. A simple
identification of philosophy with theology is far from his intention.
Broadly speaking, theologia always signifies for him some measure of the
divine illumination not vouchsafed outside the Catholic Church. Johannes
theologus is his title for the author of the Fourth Gospel, and all theologi
belong to a privileged class, from which many philosophi would be excluded.
Thus philosophi saeculares is a name for the Pagan sages, and inanis
philosophia serves to describe the practice of Jews and heretics, who cling
to the letter of the scriptures and pay no heed to the spirit. On the other
hand, philosophia in its widest sense can cover the entire search for wisdom,
of which theology is the highest but not the only part. No greater libel,
certainly, can be fastened on John the Scot than to represent him as
dressing up in the garb of Christianity some Pagan philosophy in which
alone he believed. No vestige of such an intention can be traced in his
pages. He is ardently, alınost passionately, Christian. What his feelings
would have been had he learned that “Dionysius” was an author never
heard of before the sixth century, and, possibly, a pupil of Proclus (ob. 485),
it is vain to conjecture. As it is, he had probably never heard of Proclus,
nor ever read a word of Plotinus. Plato he counts the chief of philosophers
-the merest commonplace in Christian writers down to the end of the
twelfth century—but from the Platonic secta he more than once dissociates
himself, and never would he have dreamed of making Plato the equal, in his
theological knowledge, of the Greek Fathers, or Dionysius, or Augustine.
Some caution is needed, again, in describing his view of reason and
authority. For while it is common to quote from him such sayings as
auctoritas ex vera ratione processit, ratio vero nequaquam ex auctoritate",
it is no less common to ignore the qualifications of the context, and to
omit altogether many other passages of a very different colour. Ratio
itself is a difficult and ambiguous term. Sometimes it comprehends all the
operations of the mind; sometimes it means only the discursive, dialec-
tical reason, which stands on a permanently lower level than intellectus sive
animus sive mens. The last thing John would suggest is that reason, in this
narrower sense, can find out and interpret the ways of God. His point is
1 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, viii, 1.
* MPL, cxXII, 613.


## p. 787 (#833) ############################################

The charge of Pantheism
787
rather that auctoritas is valuable only in so far as it represents what the
intellect of saintly theologi has revealed. Reason itself demands our
reverence for what is above reason; it does not, however, demand blind
subservience to patristic utterances, or to the bare letter of the Scriptures,
any more than it encourages us to put our trust in petty dialectic. Vera
auctoritas, says John the Scot, rectae rationi non obsistit, neque recta ratio
verae auctoritati'. To force him into a rigid dilemma of reason and
authority is likely to be an anachronism only less regrettable than the
proposal to enlist him on the side of the Nominalists or the Realists. A
mind like his refuses to be imprisoned in any such antithesis. What he
believes in is the illumination of the mind with a heavenly radiance, as,
easily dimmed by ratio in one way as by auctoritas in another.
The traditional accusation against the De Divisione Naturae—surely
one of the most remarkable books in the world—is that of Pantheism.
The charge would be more convincing if its authors would sometimes go
so far as to tell us what Pantheism means. Presumably, it implies at least
some kind of identification or confusion of God with His creatures, some
materialisation of the Divine Nature, with loss of transcendence and the
Creator's prerogative. Now in the De Divisione Naturae there is a rich
abundance of statements that seem to point in that direction. Nothing
could be plainer, for example, than the words, proinde non duo a seipsis
distantia debemus intelligere Deum et creaturam, sed unum et id ipsumº;
and this is but one out of many such passages. Yet no one, it is reasonable
to suggest, who has striven to master the book as a whole, with due
appre-
ciation of its earlier sources, will judge “Pantheism” to be other than an
idle and empty description of the doctrines set forth by John the Scot.
The universe, as he conceived of it, is one stupendous yet graded theophania.
God is in omnibus and supra omnia, revealed in all His creatures, yet
eternally transcending them all. They who declare that God is thus
degraded below Himself must be prepared to deny that Jesus was God
as well as man. For man is the officina omnis creaturae, the perfect
microcosm; whence the Incarnation reveals, in a single flash, the whole
relation of God to the universe, even as the resurrection of Christ displays
in a moment the reditus or reversio of all things to God. John himself
was well aware of the danger to which he exposed himself. Anticipating
the charge of Pantheism, he strove by many illustrations and analogies to
accommodate his high and difficult thoughts to men of ruder understand-
ing. In this he did not succeed. When not wholly neglected, his book
was usually suspect. After lying comparatively dormant for more than
three centuries, it was brought into fresh notoriety by the heretical
Amalric of Bene. A preliminary condemnation at Paris in 1210 was
followed in 1225 by the sentence of Honorius III, who ordered all discover-
able copies to be committed to the flames. Upon this, perhaps, the fairest
comment is that, if Amalric and his friends had read John as carelessly
1 MPL, cXXII, 511.
2 Ib. CXXII, 678.
CH. XXIII.
50-2


## p. 788 (#834) ############################################

788
Character of Christendom
as some of his modern critics, the action of Honorius may easily be
excused.
The false dawn of the Carolingian renaissance faded all too soon into
a second spell of darkness. Knowledge of Greek and the power of com-
paring eastern with western traditions John the Scot did not bequeath
to the following generations. His translations of Dionysius and Maximus
Confessor-sad examples of the verbum de verbo method—may well have
been unintelligible, while his commentaries or glosses on Martianus Capella
and Boethius would distinguish him less clearly from other men. Dis-
ordered and confused by the trend of political events, the Latin world
relapsed into the confinement of a narrow circle of authors conned over
and over again, yet often imperfectly known and understood. It is possible,
however, to draw too wide an inference from the poverty of a philosophical
library. Paucity of materials alone will not account for mental stagnation.
To interpret the intellectual condition of the Middle Ages we must look
rather to the vast transformation of the world, as the notion of a civitas
Dei gradually supplanted the ideals of Pagan society. In the eyes of Au-
gustine the secular power, no less than the heathen religion, still belongs
to the civitas impiorum; to possess and wield it can never be the ambition of
the Church. Philosophy again, the property of the Greeks, though far
superior to an idolatrous religion, is only an imperfect alternative to the
Christian life. But the course of history was too strong for these older
partitions and antagonisms. Before the end of the fifth century Pope
Gelasius I was making his memorable pronouncement: duo quippe sunt
quibus principaliter mundus hic regitur, auctoritas sacrata pontificum et
regalis potestas. This royal or imperial power was henceforward to be no
Babylonish relic, but a necessary element in the life of a single, all-
embracing society. However delegated or dispersed among princes, the
temporal sovereignty must remain the sword of the spiritual, the instru-
ment for extending and protecting the Kingdom of God upon earth.
Authority of all kinds was gradually concentrated, until the thought of
a philosophy unrelated to dogmatic propositions became as intolerable as
the pretence of any secular power to stand outside the Church. The
Creed and the Scriptures became the official source alike of law and of
wisdom. The vis coactiva was now the appurtenance of knowledge, the
knowledge divinely imparted to the Christian society. In such a society
(no matter how much the papal theory was disputed) the weight of
tradition could not fail to be overwhelming. From heresy to schism was
now the briefest of steps, and novelty had always to justify itself. “Many
men," says John the Scot, “are roused from slumber by heretics, that they
may see the day of the Lord and rejoice. "? No shrewder judgment could
be passed on the history of medieval philosophy. For most of the greater
changes were due less to original speculation, or even to the acquisition
of new materials, than to the suspicion of heresy. Opinions denounced at
IMPL, cxxii, 359.


## p. 789 (#835) ############################################

Medieval knowledge of Plato and Aristotle
789
first were often enough accepted on second thoughts. The power of
adapting and absorbing fresh ideas never wholly ceased to operate, but
all was governed by the general assumption that unchanging truth was
already revealed. Meanwhile, the habit of deference to tradition was
extended, almost unwittingly, to such records of Pagan knowledge as
fortune had preserved. None would have ranked a Greek philosopher with
the Scriptures, but when reverence for the past was combined with lack
of critical power, the result was to establish certain books or authors in a
position not easy to shake.
Some of the medieval limitations we may briefly illustrate by glancing
at the sources of their acquaintance with Aristotle and Plato. The first
name to be honoured is Boethius. To his translations of the Categories
(with the Isagoge of Porphyry) and the De Interpretatione, together with
his own commentaries and logical treatises, was due virtually the whole
knowledge of Aristotle accessible to medieval students from the sixth
century to the middle of the twelfth. Boethius had intended to introduce
the whole of Aristotle to the Latins, and some confusion has been caused
by the more than doubtful ascription to him of translations of the rest of
the Organon, the De Anima, and the Metaphysics. It is fairly certain,
however, that before the age of John of Salisbury Aristotle was directly
represented only by two of his minor logical works, supplemented by a
few fragments of information gathered from various sources. An impor-
tant consequence, too often overlooked, was the restriction of his authority
to a very narrow sphere. In dialectic he was admittedly the master, but
in philosophy as a whole the evidence is incontestable that Plato occupied
the highest place in general esteem. And yet, when we turn to the
medieval knowledge of Plato, we may well be surprised at his lofty
position. For nothing of his actual writings could be studied in Latin but
a fragment of a single dialogue, the Timaeus.
Between the cases of Plato and Aristotle there was, however, a very
wide difference. When Aristotle arrived in translations he was almost a
stranger; and even when the work of Boethius had raised him to unchal-
lenged sovereignty in the province of logic, he still was enthroned in a
certain isolation, with little historical background and with no evident
affinity to the Christian way of life. Platonism, on the other hand, was
almost inhaled with the air. Boethius himself was a Platonist, and so was
Porphyry. Augustine, too, never forgot his debt to the philosophy which
had delivered him from Manichaeism and carried him a lony stage on the
road to Christ. To indicate all the sources of Platonism would be almost
impossible. It must suffice here to notice two from outside the Christian
circle, the commentary of Chalcidius that accompanied his version of the
Timaeus, and the dissertation of Macrobius on the Somnium Scipionis.
To class Chalcidius as non-Christian is perhaps questionable, for he was
more probably a Christian than a Pagan or a Jew. His work, however,
embodies very little Christian material except an extract from Origen.
CH. XXIII.


## p. 790 (#836) ############################################

790
The Influence of Macrobius
Dating, perhaps, from the early fourth century, it is neither independent
nor critical. The substance of it, if we accept the result of Switalski's
investigation, is derived from an earlier commentary, very possibly by the
hand of the eminent Stoic, Posidonius. The outcome is an eclectic medley
or muddle of divers authorities, gathered under the sway of the infallible
Plato. The later Platonism, we must remember, was even more than
eclectic. Its aim was to absorb and to reconcile, to appear as a summary
of all previous Greek speculation. Much of the uncritical confusion of
ideas that meets us everywhere in the Middle Ages was simply a legacy
from Chalcidius and the less intelligent followers of Plotinus in the decline
of the ancient world.
Roughly similar qualities appear in the work of Macrobius, a writer
who, late in the fifth century, had contrived to remain untouched by the
Christian influence. His detachment from the Church makes it all the
more interesting to discover in him that medievalism of mind so often
rated as a purely Christian product. In him we have already the medieval
Virgil, and along with that strange invention all the baffling mixture of
science and nonsense that was to float about Europe for more than a
thousand
years. How medieval, too, is the deference of Macrobius to the
great names of the past. Neque vero tam immemor mei, he writes, aut ita
male animatus sum, ut ex ingenio meo vel Aristoteli resistam vel adsim
Platoni'. Yet Macrobius is far from contemptible, and the debt of the
Middle Ages to him was immense. To him was due what little was known
of Plotinus (inter philosophiae professores cum Platone princeps)? , the four-
fold classification of the virtues, the threefold gradation of Deus, mens,
and anima, the illumination of all creatures as in an orderly series of
mirrors by the unus fulgor, the descent of the soul to its material habita-
tion, and its yearning for restoration to its eternal home. When Christians
read in Macrobius of the soul's imprisonment in a vesture of clay (indu-
mentum testeum), of its wandering on earth as a pilgrim, of heaven as the
true patria, of philosophy as meditatio mortis, they caught the genuine
accent of religion and welcomed Platonism as a natural ally. Actual
knowledge of the original Plato Macrobius did not greatly increase. Be-
hind the Somnium Scipionis, according to Schedler's recent enquiry, lies
once more the T'imaeus, as interpreted first by Porphyry and handed on
by intermediate writers to Macrobius. If that be so, it helps to account
for the frequent difficulty of deciding, when no names are mentioned,
whether a medieval writer is using Chalcidius, or Macrobius, or sometimes
the De Consolatione of Boethius. The same brand of Platonism, with the
same tincture of new Pythagoreanism, is recognisable in all.
The lines of thought broadly indicated by Plato and Aristotle run
through the Middle Ages. From Plato came the wider inspiration and
the higher call; from Aristotle the perception of difficulties and contra-
dictions, with the demand for dialectical skill. Nowhere, as it happens,
1 Comm. in Somnium Scipionis, 11, 15.
2 Ib. 1, 8.


## p. 791 (#837) ############################################

Importance of dialectic. The tenth century
791
were the defects of medieval knowledge of history more conspicuous than
in this very matter of dialectic. The most learned doctors were unaware
that dialectic had held in Plato's estimation a far higher place than Aris-
totle would allow. They did not know why Aristotle himself had some-
times preferred and sometimes rejected it, nor how far removed was his
trivial use of it as an exercise for students from the profundity of his
dialectical analysis of moral experience. They knew just enough to warrant
the dispute whether dialectic was properly concerned with words or with
things; and enough, unfortunately, to encourage a confusion of the ars
disserendi with the total activity of reason. During the two dark centuries
after the appearance of John the Scot dialectic was, however, the beacon.
We can dimly trace the rise of factions, the growth of the contest between
dialecticians and anti-dialecticians, which was to reach its climax in the
age of Abelard. For the rest, the condition of Europe was unfriendly to
speculation, and the flagrance of moral disorders left no leisure for adven-
tures of the intellect.
The tenth century is singularly barren. Scarcely a name of distinction
is recorded in the annals of philosophy, save that of Gerbert of Aurillac
(ob. 1003), who was raised to the Papacy as Sylvester II. Even Gerbert was
more remarkable for his skill in mathematics, and for his services to humane
education, than for any direct contribution to philosophy. To his pupil
and patron, Otto III, he dedicated a logical text-book with the title
Libellus de rationali et ratione uti, and he may be the author (though the
point is disputed) of a work De Corpore et Sanguine Domini. If so, we
can credit him with a perception of the value of dialectic in harmonising
discrepant utterances of the Fathers. Some have failed, however, to note
that his most striking observation is taken directly from John the Scot.
The art which divides genera into species, and resolves species into genera,
is not (he says) the product of human machinations, but was discovered
by the wise in the very nature of things, where the Author of all the arts
had placed it. This is taken verbatim from the De Divisione Naturae',
where it stands as a comment on the work of the Creator. Gerbert's in-
Auence, however, did not depend exclusively on his books. His distinction
as a teacher is indisputable, and while his personal association was with
the cathedral-school of Rheims, he became, through his pupil Fulbert
(ob. 1028), the indirect founder of the more famous school of Chartres.
(The attribution to Gerbert of a work on the Eucharist is, in any case,
an indication of the subject which did more, perhaps, than any other in
this unproductive period to stimulate curiosity and to awaken controversy
about the use and abuse of dialectic. Already in the ninth century
Paschasius Radbert and Ratramnus had earned some notoriety by their
discussion of the Blessed Sacrament; and now a larger disturbance was
created, some while after Gerbert, by the De Caena Domini of Berengar
of Tours. Devout minds not unnaturally felt a strong distaste for the
1 MPL, cxxII, 749.
CH. XXIII.


## p. 792 (#838) ############################################

792
Lanfranc and Peter Damian
analysis of a mystery, but Berengar was less sensitive. He magnified the
function of dialectic, quia confugere ad eam ad rationem est confugere,
and thus proved himself an imperfect scholar of John the Scot, by whom
he is said to have been inspired. For if John had championed the liberty
of reason, he had also taught that even the angelic intelligences ab in-
troitu mysteriorum suos theologicos pedes, hoc est, intellectuales ingressus
retractant'. The most eminent critic of Berengar's “theological feet" was
Archbishop Lanfranc (1005-1089), himself well reputed in dialectic but
disposed to restrict the art to a subordinate position. Augustine, he allows,
had thought well of it; and, lest he should seem to be afraid of Berengar's
weapons, he will waive his own preference for trusting to the traditions
of the Church where mysteries of the faith are concerned. He accuses
Berengar of parading his skill in disputation, and suggests that a confes-
sion of ignorance is sometimes better than arrogant obstinacy. The tone
of his remonstrance is dignified and sensible. He does not look on dia-
lectic as necessarily hostile to the faith, but thinks it a perilous exercise
for shallow and contentious minds.
Another contemporary name, Peter Damian (ob. 1072), deserves to be
mentioned.
Justly famed for his saintly life, Petrus peccator, as he styled
himself, stands in the main for the monastic tendency to think more
highly of practical religion than of intellectual attempts to explain and
justify the faith. He wrote, however, several works of theology, in one of
which, the De Divina Omnipotentia, he discusses the use of philosophy in
“sacred disputations. ” It is here that he introduces the celebrated phrase,
ancilla dominae, to denote the proper relation of dialectic to theology. Less
energy, perhaps, would have been spent in remonstrance against this ap-
parent degradation of reason, if more attention had been paid to the
current usage of terms. Philosophia often means no more than dialectic,
and dialectic no more than a display of captious arguments. That the
Christian position as a whole (the Christian philosophy, in fact) was ir-
rational, Peter Damian and his contemporaries would never have admitted.
The antithesis of ratio and auctoritas was then far less comprehensive
than the final problem, scarcely realised before the age of Aquinas, whether
the independence of philosophy could be reconciled with the Catholic
position. To assign to dialectic a merely ancillary office is not necessarily
obscurantism. It often meant no more than the logical commonplace,
that ratiocinatio presupposes the concession of premises. In a deeper sense,
it meant that experience must precede the attempt to explain it, and that
the testimony of many generations cannot easily be overthrown by a talent
for repartee.
With the illustrious name of Anselm a new chapter begins. As a
pupil of Lanfranc he belongs chronologically (1033–1109) to the eleventh
century, but in mind and spirit must rank as the herald of the sustained
intellectual effort which culminated two centuries later in the systems of
1 MPL, XXII, G68.


## p. 793 (#839) ############################################

The work of Anselm
793
Albertus Magnus and Aquinas. For this reason he has often been saluted
as the true founder of Scholasticism, a title we should bestow with greater
confidence, did any definition of Scholasticism command universal assent.
Unfortunately it is not so. After much pedantic and even acrimonious
discussion we are left uncertain whether "scholastic” and “medieval"
philosophy should be identified or clearly distinguished, whether “scholas-
ticism” is the name of a method or of a result, whether there was one
pre-eminently scholastic problem, and whether one particular solution has
a right to be called scholastic. Thus is medieval philosophy, so fertile in
distinctions, pursued by the shadow of itself. The wisest course, perhaps,
is to stand aside from the controversy. It is agreed that the term scholas-
ticus (applicable either to master or to pupil) meant uncommonly little;
it is agreed also that the great doctors of the thirteenth century may
rightly be called schoolmen. For the rest, it is enough to interpret, as
best one can, the course of events.
To call Anselm an original thinker is not to deny his obligations to
others. In the preface to the Monologium he protests that nothing in his
doctrine is out of harmony with the Catholic Fathers, especially the Blessed
Augustine. The product of his mind is, however, original inasmuch as it
is the outcome of personal experience, the fruit of profound meditation
upon the nature of his faith. “Enter into the cubicle of thy mind; shut
out all things but God and whatsoever may help thee to seek for Him;
then close the door and seek. ” Thus he writes in the first chapter of the
Proslogion, before expounding his proof of God's existence; and none,
perhaps, who are deaf to the exhortation will feel any force in the proof.
Fides quaerens intellectum and nisi credideritis, non intelligetis are the
formulas that meet us everywhere on his pages. Still more clearly does
he express his position in the words of the De Fide Trinitatis: qui non
crediderit, non experietur, et qui non expertus fuerit, non intelliget. The
Church, he means, had not invented new intellectual instruments, but
rather had proclaimed the advent of a new spiritual experience, itself the
condition of understanding the meaning of life. Mere rationalism, on the
other hand, could originate nothing; for reason, as discursive and critical,
depends for its materials on a higher mode of experience. On this point
at least Christianity was at one with Platonism, and Anselm himself is, on
the whole, a kind of Platonist. His Platonism, however, is derived from
Augustine, not, as some have alleged, from John the Scot; for Anselm is
by no means committed to the negative theology of Neo-Platonism, which
is the very essence of the Irish philosopher's teaching. Well as he knows
that the names we apply to the Divine Nature are but shadows and symbols,
he is never possessed by that ecstasy of intellectual asceticism which glories
in the denial of attributes, and pays its last tribute to omniscience by
declaring that God Himself cannot know what He is.
Anselm's argument for the necessary existence of id quo maius cogitari
nequit is no plea for a negative abstraction. Read in connexion with the
CH. XXIII.


## p. 794 (#840) ############################################

794
The ontological argument
Monologium it is seen as an attempt to clothe the One, which alone par-
ticipates in nothing, but is what it is, with the attributes of an individual
spirit, unbounded by space and time, yet present everywhere and always,
without parts and qualities, yet containing in very essence life, salvation,
beatitude, and all possible perfections. Nearest to God, and best able to
serve as a mirror of His image, is mens (another link with Neo-Platonism);
and since mens is the innermost nature of man, to “enter into the cubicle
of the mind,” shutting out all lower manifestations of being, is the true
way of access. The formal weakness of the argument was at once detected
by the monk Gaunilo; whose objection, however, that the transition from
what exists only in intellectu to what exists also in re cannot thus be
effected, leaves Anselm quite unperturbed. The pretence that the same
argument might prove the existence of the most perfect island he declares
to be a misapprehension of the point. If his argument can be applied to
anything but the Supreme Being, he is ready to make Gaunilo a present
of the island, and to promise that it shall never vanish away.
The "ontological" argument, however, was always viewed with suspi-
cion. In this, as in some other respects, Anselm did not precisely anticipate
the position of later scholastics. Even his fides quaerens intellectum does
not accurately express the method of those who afterwards made a more
exact distinction between truths demonstrable by reason and truths
revealed only to faith. Tentative steps in that direction were taken by
Anselm, but he went farther than his successors in attempting, for example,
to arrive by reasoning at the doctrine of the Trinity; an image of which,
following an Augustinian tradition, he discovers in the human soul.
Anselm, in fact, was not directly interested in the question whether it
was possible to concede to philosophy a province where certain problems
could be solved by reason alone. He perceived the distinction (as he shews
in the Cur Deus homo) between seeking reasons because you do not believe,
and seeking them because you do; but it was the latter case that chiefly
inspired his arguments, and so made him, in a certain sense, more ration-
alistic than those who afterwards defined their concessions to reason.
A fuller account of Anselm would refer to his theories of sense-percep-
tion, judgment, the freedom of the will, and other psychological matters.
But these are of less importance in the history of his own time than his
controversy with Roscelin, about whose doctrines, as it happens, Anselm is
our best source of information. To call the controversy important is not
for a moment to allow that the single theme of Nominalism and Realism
is the clue to medieval philosophy. On the contrary, Roscelin is important
because he succeeded, perhaps for the first and last time, in disturbing
the ecclesiastical arena by manufacturing a heresy out of this topic of the
schools. In his famous Isagoge, or Introduction to the Organon of
Aristotle, Porphyry prepared the medieval battleground by a brief and
cautious statement which it may be worth while to quote in the Latin of
Boethius. Mox de generibus et speciebus illud quidem, sive subsistant sive


## p. 795 (#841) ############################################

Realism and Nominalism
795
in solis nudis intellectibus posita sint, sive subsistentia corporalia sint an
incorporalia, et utrum separuta a sensibilibus posita et circa haec consistentia,
dicere recusabo. The original difference between Aristotle and Plato was
not properly a controversy about genera and species, but in the Middle
Ages the extreme “realistic” doctrine of universals was identified with
the teaching of Plato. It is, in fact, one of the bewildering accidents of
history that the Platonic “idea" became the basis of medieval “realism,"
whereas the “idealism” of Berkeley and later philosophers has nothing to
do with either Plato or the medieval controversy. For in whatever sense we
attribute “conceptualism” to medieval logicians, it must certainly not be
in a sense that would bring them into line with an idealist philosophy
never clearly formulated before the seventeenth or eighteenth century.
Apart from the unabashed Platonists, the prevailing tendency of
medieval writers was to follow Aristotle or Boethius in holding that
universals could not“subsist” except in association with individual things.
At the same time it was freely allowed that the intellect had the power
of viewing them in abstraction from sensible things, and that the common
element in things, from which we derive the notions of genus and species,
was no mere fiction of the mind. What complicated the dispute between
Platonists and Aristotelians was the appearance of Nominalism; and what
has thrown the whole history of the subject into confusion is the belief,
originating mainly with some distinguished French scholars, that the war
of Nominalists and Realists began in the ninth century and persisted
until the close of the Middle Ages. Since it is impossible here to scrutinise
the evidence, nothing more can be offered than a dogmatic assertion that
this view is untenable. Nominalism was an intellectual firework of the
age of Roscelin and Abelard; for which reason, among others, it is also
an anachronism to talk of Realism in connexion with John the Scot or
other writers of that period. Even when the nominalis secta (as John of
Salisbury was perhaps the first to call it) has been rightly dated, it is no
easy task to define and explain its doctrine. The contention that only
individual things exist in their own right is no more Nominalist than
Aristotelian. Nothing characteristic of the new sect appears until the
whole stress is laid on voces or nomina. If universals are mere flatus vocis,
if their reality is only the physical reality belonging to a percussio aeris,
then indeed we have a doctrine inconsistent alike with the Platonic Realism
and with the tradition of Boethius. Absurd as the doctrine may sound
to modern ears, it was a not unnatural product of the long-established
opinion that logic, in company with grammar and rhetoric, was primarily
concerned with words. Meanwhile the importance of Nominalism for the
twelfth century was that it re-opened the whole question of universals, split
up the camp of the anti-nominalists into factions, and produced all the
varieties of doctrine enumerated by John of Salisbury and other writers.
The logical and metaphysical problems thus brought to light were per-
fectly genuine. Much the same difficulties may be found in modern books
CH. XXIII.


## p. 796 (#842) ############################################

796
Anselm and Roscelin
3
of logic, and the solutions offered do not differ fundamentally from those
current in medieval times.
According to Anselm, Roscelin presented the world with a dilemma.
Either, he argued, the three Persons of the Trinity are one res; in which
case the Father and the Spirit were incarnate together with the Son: or
they are three, like three souls or three angels; in which case only con-
vention forbids us to speak of three Gods. The second alternative, a kind
of Tritheism, Roscelin felt himself driven to prefer by his denial of reality
to universals and his reduction of them to mere flatus vocis. Much in-
genuity has been wasted in arguing that Roscelin's doctrine was not
genuine Nominalism (whatever that may happen to be), and that Anselm
must have misrepresented the case. But where is the evidence? There is
none of importance but Roscelin's letter to Abelard, which contributes
nothing to the point, a few words by Abelard himself, who speaks of
Roscelin's "insane opinion” that voces alone could have parts or species,
and a statement by John of Salisbury, who makes Roscelin the author of
the “exploded opinion,” voces ipsas genera esse et species. What little we
learn from these sources is at least consistent with the assertions of Anselm.
Anselm was no fanatical heresy-hunter, and Roscelin was doubtless sincere
in repudiating heretical intentions. But that is not the point. The
question is whether there is any ground for regarding him as a distressed
and persecuted champion of reason; and the answer, surely, must be that
there is none.
The flatus vocis theory, whether invented by Roscelin or by one John
the Sophist, was clearly a modernism, a heresy in dialectic, with no support
from tradition. To translate it into Conceptualism appears to be wholly
unwarrantable; Anselm treats it rather as a kind of stupid materialism,
and gives not the slightest hint that he and Roscelin are ranged on oppo-
site sides in an old and respectable controversy. He does not even trouble
to define his own view of universals, but leaves us to gather what we may
from scattered passages in his writings. Distressing as this may be to the
historian of logic, the historian of philosophy will find in Anselm's very
silences and omissions fresh reason for rejecting the once common opinion
that medieval thinkers exhausted themselves for centuries in trying to
define the nature of universals. It is scarcely too much to say that Anselm
does not care what they are, so long as the function of reason is not
simply confounded with sensuous perception. Neither things nor ideas
are mere words and breath, but in what sense things and ideas are iden-
tical or distinct he is at no great pains to decide. The term “Nominalism”
was not yet invented, nor the varieties of Realism yet arranged for
classification. Nevertheless, we may still find reason to doubt whether
Nominalism is exactly the right name for the doctrine propounded by
Roscelin.
Among those who once called Roscelin master was he who called no
man master for long. The stormy and romantic career of Peter Abelard


## p. 797 (#843) ############################################

The position of Abelard
797
has won for him a kind of immortality not conceded to philosophy alone.
By his side, to claim a share in that immortality, stands the partner in his
calamities and his joys:
Poeta, volentieri
Parlerei a quei due che insieme vanno.
With all his weakness, his vanity, his almost wanton pugnacity, there
must have been in Abelard some quality of greatness, something that
forbade men to gaze on him with indifference and pass by on the other
side. He had at least the virtuosity of genius; he was born to fascinate
or to repel. Wherever his tent was pitched, at Paris or on the borders
of the wilderness, thither, as an old chronicler has it, paene de tota Latini-
tate viri litterati confluebant. In vain was he driven into exile; for where
the master was there was the school.
Much the same gift of attraction and repulsion has been transmitted,
it would seem, with Abelard's writings, to perplex the judgment of modern
historians, and to fashion estimates of his worth non solum diversa verum
etiam adversa, as once he said himself of the utterances of the saints.
Unfair detraction is too apt to provoke extravagant eulogy; for to main-
tain that we have in Abelard the greatest mind of the Middle Ages is
surely extravagant. A great teacher he certainly was, a shrewd and fearless
critic, a mighty champion of dialectic, the mistress, as he declared, of all
philosophical studies. But when we look for inspiration, for profundity
of insight, for constructive power and masterly comprehension, we find
but little to justify comparison of Abelard with John the Scot or Anselm
or Thomas Aquinas. His passion for dialectic was even a sign of his
limitations, the more conspicuous as we come to understand by closer
scrutiny that he never wholly succeeded in raising dialectic to the level
at which it ceases to be an ingenious art of words. His theory of universals,
which agrees neither with Roscelin's nor with contemporary realism, it
will be convenient to postpone until we have occasion to look at John of
Salisbury's review of the subject. Even apart from that vexatious question,
Abelard exhibits clearly the disadvantages of imperfect acquaintance with
Aristotle, and also the restricted scope of Aristotle's reputation. The title
of Peripateticus Palatinus (i. e. of Palais), bestowed by the common voice
on Abelard himself, is fully interpreted by his own repeated identification
of Peripatetics with dialecticians. Peripateticorum, id est, dialecticorum
princeps is his description of Aristotle, and of Aristotle he knew no more
than the labours of Boethius had conveyed to the Latins six hundred
years ago. We find, accordingly, in Abelard (as in other medieval writers)
a curious gap between his logical or dialectical opinions and the general
character of his philosophy. It is not so much a question of positive in-
consistency as of failure to see any reason why a professed Peripatetic
should not also be an ardent follower of Plato. For, as Platonism was
then understood, Abelard may certainly be called a Platonist. Immensely
CH. XXIII.


## p. 798 (#844) ############################################

798 The Condemnation of Abelard. His view of dialectic
influenced by Macrobius, and by what he knew of the Timaeus, he carries
Platonism freely into his Christian theology, and, when he styles Plato
maximus omnium philosophorum, we cannot doubt that he speaks with
conviction. Here, as always before the thirteenth century, the explanation
is that Aristotle, the supreme dialectician, was virtually unknown as a
physicist, a psychologist, or a metaphysician. Plato, on the other hand,
was known, through his admiring reporters, to have scaled all the heights
of speculation, and to have won the approval of many Catholic theologians.
What actually brought Abelard to trial and condemnation was neither
his general advocacy of dialectic, nor his doctrine of universals, nor the
particular method proposed in the Sic et Non. Despite the strong oppo-
sition, of which he tells us, to the free use of argument in the province
of theology, he would never have furnished his enemies with adequate
weapons, had he not been lured by Macrobius into such hazardous sug-
gestions as the identification of the Holy Spirit with the anima mundi,
and had he refrained from speculations on the Person of Christ which
involved him in questions beyond the range of any ancient philosopher.
How far the actual condemnations, at Soissons in 1121 and at Sens in
1140, were due to genuine concern for the faith, and how far to personal
hostility, it is difficult to tell. A man who ridiculed his masters, such as
William of Champeaux and Anselm of Laon, besides imperilling the
reputation of other accredited teachers, such as Alberic of Rheims, could
not hope to tread with impunity even on the borders of heresy. Yet the
case of St Bernard of Clairvaux, the chief instigator of the second prose-
cution, is different. Bernard was a great man, a saint and a mystic, sharply
touched, no doubt, with the defects of his qualities, but neither petty nor
insincere. His own unique position could scarcely be shaken by Abelard;
and just as it is fair to Abelard to believe in the sincerity of his faith, so
is it fair to Bernard to allow that he had considerable reasons for regarding
as a pestilent fellow one who caused trouble always and everywhere, and
who apparently encouraged his pupils to think that the rudiments of
philosophy were enough to reveal to them the secrets of heaven and earth.
But the time has gone by for taking sides in this unhappy quarrel. Our
business is only to enquire what Abelard did, or failed to do, for philosophy
in an age when it was as hard to distinguish philosophy from theology as
to disentangle the State from the Church.
On the whole he must stand or fall by his services to dialectic, the
chosen object of his perpetual enthusiasm. To what lengths he went in
magnifying its importance (even though he inveighs at times against its
abuse) we may gather from his thirteenth epistle, where he argues that
logic, as derived from logos, and thus connected with the verbum Dei, is
pre-eminently the Christian science. Jesus Christ was the Logos incarnate,
and logic was the wisdom promised to the disciples, the os et sapientia
which their enemies would be unable to resist. Christ prepares for them,
says Abelard, an armour of reasons, qua in disputando summi efficiantur


## p. 799 (#845) ############################################

The Sic et Non
799
logici. And who is ignorant, he adds, that Our Lord Himself convinced
the Jews by frequent disputations? Rarely has the fundamental ambiguity
of the word logos been better illustrated than by this passage, or indeed
by the whole work of Abelard. Natural as it seems to suppose him to be
upholding the sacred cause of reason and the mission of philosophy as a
fearless search for the truth, he is never, at least in his eulogies of dialectic,
more than half way towards that position. Dialectic remains for him the
ars disputandi, by which you sharpen your wits to detect fallacies, and
learn to know a good argument from a bad. Much service, indeed, may
thus be rendered to the cause of truth; for how can truth and falsity be
distinguished by one whom sophistical reasoning may deceive? Neverthe-
less, the gulf between the art of reasoning without fallacy and the real
inquisition of truth is formidable and wide, too wide, one is forced to
admit, for any bridge of Abelard's construction. A fairer criticism would
be that he did not try to span it. He glorified dialectic and believed
that all theological questions should be freely debated. Again, he believed
that Gentile philosophers, if not actually inspired from heaven, should at
least be allowed to bring their treasures of knowledge into the house of
the Lord. But the plea for an unfettered use of dialectic and the plea
for (let us roughly call it) a Platonised theology were very imperfectly
unified in Abelard's mind.
The Sic et Non, Abelard's most famous exposition of method, is
chiefly remarkable for its prologue. Dialectic being the proper solvent of
contradictions, he proposes to apply it to a long list of apparent discrep-
ancies, some of them found in the canonical books of Scripture, others in
the teaching of the Fathers and the Saints. His rules of procedure are
various. We must beware of apocryphal books and sayings; we must note
that the Fathers (Augustine, for instance) sometimes retracted their
earlier views, sometimes quoted opinions not endorsed by themselves,
sometimes adapted or modified their precepts to suit special cases.
Especially must we take into account the diverse meanings of words and
their various usage by different authors. If, however, there remain, after
all these precautions, certain contradictions beyond the help of dialectic,
we must first balance and compare the authorities, and then firmly take
our stand with the best. Not even prophets and apostles were infallible;
much more, then, must errors be expected in the doctrines of ordinary
men. Abelard does not, however, admit that the Scriptures can err.
When we seem to detect absurdities on the sacred pages, we inust attribute
them to bad manuscripts, to faulty interpretations, or to deficiencies in
our own intelligence. Outside the Old and New Testaments, on the
other hand, we have perfect freedom of judgment, and when dialectic
has done its best for the Fathers, we retain our right to dissent from their
doctrine.
The sanity and good sense of these principles has not prevented much
uncertainty as to their ultimate intention. But while it is possible to hold
CH. XXIII.


## p. 800 (#846) ############################################

800
Abelard and authority. Hugh of St Victor
that Abelard's real aim was the destruction of authority, it is more
reasonable to credit him with the true purpose of the dialectician, the
removal of apparent contradictions and the establishment of truth on a
critical basis. For all his love of contention, Abelard was no mere rebel
or anarchist. In his own way he had a sincere respect for authority. He
believed that truth was inherent in the tradition of the Church, but he
did not believe in the promiscuous swallowing of contradictions. We
should do injustice, therefore, to his dialectical acumen, if we supposed
him to have piled up a mass of affirmations and negations with no other
design but to discredit the testimony of the past. Even when his candour
and the excellence of his intentions are freely admitted, it is easy enough,
if we please, to disparage Abelard's performance. The application of his
method to a long array of theological problems is strangely barren of
result. Again and again he simply opposes the sic and the non, without
attempting any critical solution. Here, too, and elsewhere in his writings,
he fails to advance much beyond the verbal or linguistic aspect of the dia-
lectical art. The presentation of opposite views, quite apart from verbal
ambiguities, as complementary to one another, and hence as equally true
or equally false, is somewhat beyond his range. And again, the originality
of his method has been challenged. Bernold of Constance (ob. 1100), lately
resuscitated by Grabmann, seems to have adopted much the same proce-
dure; while the influence of Ivo of Chartres and the canonists has also to
be considered. Equally doubtful is it how far the dialectical method of
subsequent theologians was due to imitation of Abelard, and how far to
the recovery of Aristotle's Topics. On no hypothesis, however, can the
weight of Abelard's contribution to intellectual progress be fairly denied.
His stimulus to slumbering dogmatists was invaluable; his courage in
attacking difficulties was an example to the timorous; in the number
and eminence of his pupils his high distinction of mind is loudly pro-
claimed.
From Abelard it will be convenient to pass to one of his contemporaries,
whose influence, very different in quality, was perhaps equally great.
Hugh of St Victor (c. 1096–1141), the most distinguished of a group of
men attached to the same religious foundation at Paris, is seldom named
without expressions of the deepest respect. So far as he allows himself to
appear in his writings, we cannot fail to get a delightful impression of
his character, if only because he has the rare gift of wearing humility
without affectation, as a kind of natural charm. By temperament he was
a genuine mystic. Principium in lectione, consummatio in meditatione was
his motto, and the nature of our subject perhaps forbids us to disturb his
meditations. Nor will it be possible to examine his theological master-
piece, the De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei. But Hugh was not only a
mystic, nor merely, in the restricted sense, a theologian. In him were
united, says St Bonaventura, the gifts derived from Augustine, from
1 MPL, CLxxvl, 772.


## p. 801 (#847) ############################################

Hugh's account of Logic
801
Gregory the Great, and from Dionysius the Areopagite. In reasoning, in
preaching, in contemplation he was equally proficient; to which we may
add that in his Didascalicon he has left us a valuable document on the
nature of philosophy, its divisions and ultimate goal. This book betrays,
in the first place, a wide and generous appetite for knowledge. Omnia
disce, he urges; videbis postea nihil esse superfluum. Coarctata scientia
iucunda non est'. His own diligence as a schoolboy he paints in pleasing
colours; and already, perhaps, he was noting the weakness of teachers who
would not stick to their subject, but wandered away into variations too
weighty for their theme. Non omnia dicenda sunt quae dicere possumus,
ne minus utiliter dicantur ea quae
dicere debemus? .
Classification and definition of subjects within the whole field of
knowledge form the main purpose of the Didascalicon. The fourfold
partition into theorica, practica, mechanica, and logica is remarkable for
the inclusion of mechanica (divided into seven arts and crafts), but is not,
in that respect, original. Grabmann has found the same division in an
unpublished work by Radulphus Ardens, who is last heard of in 1101. So
much, in fact, is common to the two writers that it is difficult to believe
in their complete independence. An even greater debt to Boethius must
be acknowledged. From him Hugh borrows the threefold division,
anciently though wrongly ascribed to Plato, upon which mechanica is
grafted; and from him, in the main, come the subdivisions of theorica and
practica, with their reminiscences of Aristotle, as well as of other sources
familiar to Boethius. Much of the detail we must be content to pass over,
but it is worth while to look rather narrowly at Hugh's conception of
logic, which is not the less interesting because here too the authority of
Boethius is preponderant.