228 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



CHAPTER IV. 



Of the Dogmatism of the Stationary Period. 



IN speaking of the character of the age of commentators, we noticed 

 principally the ingenious servility which it displays ; — the acuteness 

 with which it finds ground for speculation in the expression of other 

 men's thoughts; — the want of all vigor and fertility in acquiring any 

 real and new truths. Such was the character of the reasoners of the 

 stationary period from the first ; but, at a later day, this character, 

 from various causes, was modified by new features. The servility which 

 had yielded itself to the yoke, insisted upon forcing it on the necks of 

 others : the subtlety which found all the truth it needed in certain ac- 

 credited writings, resolved that no one should find there, or in any 

 other region, any other truths ; speculative men became tyrants with- 

 out ceasing to be slaves; to their character of Commentators they 

 added that of Dogmatists. 



1. Origin of the Scholastic Philoso2')hy. — The causes of this change 

 have been very happily analyzed and described by several modern 

 writers. 1 The general nature of the process may be briefly stated to 

 have been the following. 



The tendencies of the later times of the Roman empire to a com- 

 menting literature, and a second-hand philosophy, have already been 

 noticed. The loss of the dignity of political freedom, the want of the 

 cheerfulness of advancing prosperity, and the substitution of the less 

 philosophical structure of the Latin language for the delicate intel- 

 lectual mechanism of the Greek, fixed and augmented the prevalent 

 feebleness and barrenness of intellect. Men forgot, or feared, to con- 

 sult nature, to seek for new truths, to do what the great discoverers of 

 other times had done ; they were content to consult libraries, to study 

 and defend old opinions, to talk of what great geniuses had said. They 

 sought their philosophy in accredited treatises, and dared not question 

 such doctrines as they there found. 



The character of the philosophy to which they were thus led, was 

 determined by this want of courage and originality. There are various 



1 Dr. Hampden, in the Life of Thomas Aquinas, in the Encyc. Metrop. Degeraudo, 

 Hist. Compark, vol. iv. Also Tennemann, Hist, of Phil. vol. viii. Introduction. 



