S16 



>( llol, ASTK'IS.M 



agea. A* under ihe names of it* leading repre 

 entatirw *pecial account* have been given of their 

 di-tmctive leaching, it will here lie sullicii-nt to 

 Ae the condition* from wliicli scholasticism 

 the general course of its hi-tory. and tlir 

 t thai wrought n- decay. In the cane of no 

 other great development of human thought can we 

 mark with such precision K- U-ginning, process, 

 and end. 



It was with tin- reign of Charlemagne (died 814) 

 that the start wax fairly made towards a new 

 civilisation ilh tin- ( SuTMU religion and theology 

 for 11- IKI-I-, and witli a character and aim of it- 

 own enaentially di-nnct from the civilisation of 

 antiquity which had died with tin- min of the 

 empire of Koine. In tin- imlitical confusions that 

 followed tin- dismemberment of the ('arlovingian 

 empire niiicli was lost that had been recently 

 gained, yet iln- tradition wax never again lost of 

 tnoiie ideals of a higher culture inaugurated in tlic 

 schools founded hy Charlemagne. In John Scot us 

 Erigena (died H7">) we have tin- lirst great thinker 

 of tin 1 early middle ages. As he drew his inspira- 

 tion from Plato rather than from Aristotle, how- 

 ever, and as hi- methods are not those of the 

 schoolmen proper, he doe* not in strictness helong 

 to tlif scholastic philosophy. It is by his transla- 

 tion of the writing* of the I'seudo Dioiiysius, a work 

 which exercised the profoundest .influence on the 

 religion* life of the middle ages, that he holds his 

 place among the thinkers who have determined the 

 development of Christian Europe. In the 10th 

 century the tradition of higher studies was repre- 

 sented hy one who, though also not a schoolman, 

 cannot he passed over in any history of the origins 

 of the new civilisation, liv his great school at 

 Kheims, Ce.rbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II. 

 (died 1003), kept alive in France that intellectual 

 eagerness which it hail mainly owed to the genius 

 of Charlemagne, and which eventually justified 

 the Haying of the middle ages 'To the Germans the 

 the Italians the pope, to France studies !' 



I lining the 1 1th century western Europe grew to 

 a clearer consciousness of the aims il had to follow 

 in the development of the ideas on which the 

 Chriiitian society must be based. Till the year 

 |ii all endeavour had been paralysed hy the belief 

 that with that year (tod's account with men must 

 close. As the dreaded hour wits left hehind. how 

 ever, the sense of relief and gratitude showed itself 

 in a quickened life in every held of human acti\ ity. 

 The first crusade (1096) 'is conclusive proof that 

 the church now confidently reckoned on a renewed 

 term of terrc-trial cxi-lencc. and that it felt the 

 duty of signalising the unexpected respite. In the 

 sphere of thought, also, that movement now licgan 

 which, in spite of its fatuities and eventual stulti 

 Heat ion, had for it essential aim the reasoned 



ac. nt of the idea on which the new order wa.s 



founded. In this endeavour there were initial 

 condition- which at once determined the nature 

 and direction of men's reasonings and vitiated at 

 the sourer the value of their results. It is the 

 il distinction lietween the schoolmen and 

 the thinker, of antiquity that the former were not 

 left freo to question the subject-matter on which 

 their ingenuity was expended. (If all ultimate 

 n the church providi-d a solution ready to 

 hand ami beyond ap]wal. The liberty to choose or 

 i hat solution would have nullified the very 

 principle of the church'- existence. Moreover, the 

 UXclliTtiinl life of the middle ages din-ctlv pro 

 reeded from the organisation of the church, and 

 individual thinkers wen- but the organs of its 

 doctrine and tradition. The media-vat university 

 was a* nventially a religious institution as a 

 waartary or a cathedral, and it* members held 

 their place solely on condition of their acceptance 



of the church's standard of faith. Hut it was 

 exclusively in the univcisilies that intellectual life 

 was (lien possible. With their thought thus 

 fettered in its fundamental process, a natural 

 development, following every indication of inith 

 to ii- legitimate conclusion, could not l<e looked 

 for in the schoolmen. The most daring conclusion 

 they could reach was to question whether the 

 teaching of the church could ! made good to the 

 mind by any process of merely human reasoning. 

 I'niforn'iity of method, and futile distinctions or 

 petrifying routine, were thus i he inevitable out- 

 come of the mediaeval philosophy. 



According to the statement of Victor Cousin, 

 now generally accepted us tine, the fundamental 

 problem of scholasticism had its liist suggestion in 

 a remark of Porphyry (died 304) regarding the ditli- 

 culty of settling the ipiestion whether r/cntni and 

 tpeciex have a real objective existence or are ineiely 

 abstractions of the mind. Put in as simple Ian 

 guage as ite nature admits, the problem is this: Is 

 there or is there not an objective reality correspond 

 ing to our general notion, say of /. MflM.Mmr, 

 &c. ? Those who answered the question in the 

 allii niative came to be known as realists, their 

 opponent- as niniiiiiiilists. Trilling as the question 

 nrny apjiear in itself, for the schoolmen it lay at 

 the root of even' attempt to render account to 

 human reason of divinely revealed truth. An 

 abstract question assumed vital importance when 

 the disputants saw behind it the doctrines of the 

 Trinity, the Incarnation, the Immaculate Conn p 

 lion, and the nature and existence of angels. It 

 was especially in its liearing on the doctrine of the 

 Trinity that the question of Nominalism vrrtHS 

 Realism for more than four centuries exercised the 

 ;u utest intellects the world has perhaps seen. It 

 was the contention of the Kealist.s that on the prin- 

 ciple of Nominalism the doctrine of the Trinity was 

 irrational and inconceivable. Grant, they argued, 

 that our general notions have objective reality, 

 then, just as front the totality of men we have an 

 objective unity in the notion iimn, so from the 

 Divine Trinity of Persons we can conceive a Divine 

 I nity of Sulwtance. On the other hand, if general 

 notions lie mere names, the doctrine of the Trinity 

 in Unity is absurd on the face of it. Of the two 

 theories it was Healism which had the approval of 

 the church, and which was as-ociatcd with the 

 pious feeling of the middle ages. Till its final 

 triumph in William of Ockhani Nominalism had to 

 light for its existence against the main current of 

 the religions and speculative tendency of the 



i liii'val church. The history of scholasticism 



is in large degree the history of the varying 

 fortunes of these two rival theories and their rival 

 champions. 



An event of the first importance divides this his- 

 tory into two periods so distinctly marked that they 

 have come to be known as the periods of the curlier 

 and the later scholasticism. This event was the 

 introduction into the Christian schools through the 

 medium of the Arabian commentators (chielly 

 Avicennaand Averrhoea ) of the w riling- of A list ot li- 

 on natural science, metaphysics, and ethics. Till 

 the licginniiig of the 13th century Aristotle had 

 been known to the schoolmen only' by his M tilings 

 on logic. From the knowledge of Aristotle's com 

 plete work, then-fore, they received an impulse 

 which led the way to Udder speculation, and gave 

 birth to questionings that stirred the deepest. 

 consciousness of the later middle age. On the 

 one hand, the new Aristotle ministered to the 

 intellectual want of the time in supplying the 

 material it needed to exercise those faculties which 

 had been so assiduously trained by Aristotle's 

 own dialectic. But Aristotle was a pagan, and 

 many poinU in his teaching ran counter to Christian 



