SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY 



ultimate nature of anything that we soon arrive at 

 that borderland beyond which we cannot advance, 

 even in thought. If we attempt to frame an idea in 

 words they fail us, or we repeat in other words that 

 which was said at first. It is as impossible for us to 

 conceive that space is limited as it is to conceive its 

 negative that it is unlimited. If limited, what lies 

 beyond? If unlimited, how can it extend forever 

 and forever? As Herbert Spencer says: " We find 

 ourselves totally unable to form any mental image of 

 unbounded space, and yet totally unable to imagine 

 bounds beyond which there is no space." So it is 

 with time, and so with motion. Apparently clear 

 and evident when vaguely considered, they melt into 

 the incomprehensible when we try "to understand 

 their essential nature, and bring us to alternate im- 

 possibilities of thought." So it is with matter. From 

 the time of Plato and Aristotle it has been the battle- 

 field of metaphysicians, and in mediaeval times of 

 the scholastic philosophers. Plato believed in the 

 original co-existence of the two principles one, the 

 formless Matter; the other the Form or the Spirit, 

 the artisan of all substance. Matter was without 

 form and void, existing only in potency, " for in the 

 beginning, before the generation of the compound, 

 matter and form existed only in their causes, for 

 nothing proceeds from nothing;" but it was matter 



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