292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" Summa Theologice " (Sum of Theology) and hardly be missed. Yet, 

 arrogant as this encyclopedic comprehensiveness now seems, there 

 was really nothing else to be done. Mathematics was the only one 

 of the natural sciences which had succeeded in disengaging itself from 

 theology ; there was no social science, no independent science even of 

 politics; there was no history other than ecclesiastical; and (what 

 concerns us here) there was no science of man. Man was not yet a 

 unit in the creation, and inquiries concerning him were properly 

 included in Cosmology, which is pagan for Theology. '•'• Naturam 

 autem^'' says Thomas, ''' hominis considerare ]r)ertinet ad Theologum 

 ex parte animm " ^ (It is the theologian's province to consider man's 

 nature on the sovil's side). The theologus kept hold of the nature of 

 man till Descartes had emancipated him from his serfdom ; but to him 

 and his theological science — our statical factor — we may justly ascribe 

 that first successful raising of the problem of human individuality 

 which made possible, as we shall see, its establishment and utilization 

 under the influence of the dynamical factor — physical science. 



The fostering aid of Theology to Psychology does not, however, 

 end when the latter is able to walk alone. All great questions subse- 

 quently raised, the settlement of which by physical methods marks 

 each fresh stage, issue from the theological incunabula (cradle) where 

 the science was reared. A history of the embryogeny of ideas would 

 demonstrate that ideas which were afterward properly philosophical 

 were at first purely theological. The idea of the infinite, at first nega- 

 tive, was made positive, through being made theological, by the Greek 

 Fathers. Prof. Jevons believes that his "Law of Simplicity," though 

 almost unnoticed in modern times, was known to Boethius, an(> he 

 adds : 



"Ancient discussions concerning the doctrine of the Trinity drew more at- 

 tention to subtle questions concerning the nature of unity and plurality than 

 has ever since been given to them." ^ 



With greater emphasis, which, however, only exaggerates an important 

 truth, it has been said that the doctrine of the Trinity is the " foun- 

 dation of -all the metaphysical thought and speculation of the ages after 

 Gregory the Great."' This will be sufficiently near the mark if the 

 honor is shared with the dogma of Transubstantiation after, say, the 

 " captivity " at Avignon. In more recent times, especially in Ger- 

 many in the first half of the present century, the doctrine of the 

 Incarnation has been the " motive " of various metaphysical develop- 

 ments. 



In Psychology the final cause of Locke Avas theological ; for the 

 rise of an a priori philosophy in Herbert of Cherbury was theological, 

 and it was to overthrow apriorism that Locke undertook his examina- 



1 " Summa Tlieologijc," prima pars, qu. Ixxv. 2 u The Principles of Science," i., 40. 

 3 Quoted in Mullinger, " History of Cambridge University," p. 55. 



