284. THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 



demands his own rights in the way of feeling, do 

 ing, and knowing for himself. Science, art, re 

 ligion, political life, must all be made over on the 

 basis of recognizing the claims of the individual. 

 Pardon me these commonplaces, but they are 

 necessary to the course of the argument. By his 

 toric fallacy we often suppose, or imagine that we 

 suppose, that the individual had been present as a 

 possible center of action all through the Middle 

 Ages, but through some external and arbitrary in 

 terference had been weighted down by political and 

 intellectual despotism. All this inverts the true 

 order of the case. The very possibility of the 

 individual making such unlimited demands for him 

 self, claiming to be the legitimate center of all 

 action and standard for all organization, was de- 

 pendent, as I have already indicated, upon the in 

 tervening medievalism. Save as having passed 

 through this period of tremendous discipline, and 

 having gradually worked over into his own habits 

 and purposes the truths embodied in the church 

 and state that controlled his conduct, the individ 

 ual could be only a source of disorder and a dis 

 turber of civilization. The very maintenance of 

 the spiritual welfare of mankind was bound up in 

 the extent to which the claim of truth and reality 

 to be universal and objective, far above all indi 

 vidual feeling and thought, could make itself valid. 

 The logical realism and universalism of scholastic 



