DOGMATISM OF THE STATIONARY PERIOD. 229 



antagonist principles of opinion, -which seem alike to have their root 

 in the intellectual constitution of man, and which are maintained and 

 developed by opposing sects, when the intellect is in vigorous action. 

 Such principles are, for instance — the claims of Authority and of Reason 

 to our assent; — the source of our knowledge in Experience or in Ideas; 

 — the superiority of a Mystical or of a Skeptical turn of thought. 

 Such oppositions of doctrine -were found in writers of the greatest 

 fame ; and tw r o of those, who most occupied the attention of students, 

 Plato and Aristotle, were, on several points of this nature, very diverse 

 from each other in their tendency. The attempt to reconcile these 

 philosophers by Boethius and others, we have already noticed ; and 

 the attempt was so far successful, that it left on men's minds the belief 

 in the possibility of a great philosophical S) 7 stem which should be 

 based on both these writers and have a claim to the assent of all sober 

 speculators. 



But, in the mean time, the Christian Religion had become the lead- 

 ing subject of men's thoughts ; and divines had put forward its claims 

 to be, not merely the guide of men's lives, and the means of reconcil- 

 ing them to their heavenly Master, but also to be a Philosophy in the 

 widest sense in which the term had been used ; — a consistent specula- 

 tive view of man's condition and nature, and of the world in which 

 he is placed. 



These claims had been acknowledged ; and, unfortunately, from the 

 intellectual condition of the times, with no due apprehension of the 

 necessary ministry of Observation, and Reason dealing with observation, 

 by which alone such a system can be embodied. It was held without 

 any regulating principle, that the philosophy which had been be- 

 queathed to the world by the great geniuses of heathen antiquity, and 

 the Philosophy which was deduced from, and implied by, the Revela- 

 tions made by God to man, must be identical ; and, therefore, that 

 Theology is the only true philosophy. Indeed, the Neoplatonists had 

 already arrived, by other roads, at the same conviction. John Scot 

 Erigena, in the reign of Alfred, and consequently before the existence 

 of the Scholastic Philosophy, properly so called, had reasserted this 

 doctrine. 2 Anselm, in the eleventh century, again brought it forward f 

 and Bernard de Chartres, in the thirteenth. 4 



This view was confirmed by the opinion which prevailed, concern- 

 ing the nature of philosophical truth ; a view supported by the theory 



» Beg. to. 351. ^ ib. i v . 388. * lb. iv. 418. 



