DOGMATISM OF THE STATIONARY PERIOD. 231 



took place after the darkness and sleep of the ninth and tenth centu- 

 ries, the Platonic doctrines seem to have had, at first, a strong attrac- 

 tion for men's minds, as better falling in with the mystical speculations 

 and contemplative piety which belonged to the times. John Scot 

 Erigena 7 may be looked upon as the reviver of the New Platonism in 

 the tenth century. Towards the end of the eleventh, Peter Damien, 6 

 in Italy, reproduced, involved in a theological discussion, some Neopla- 

 tonic ideas. Godefroy 9 also, censor of St. Victor, has left a treatise, 

 entitled Microcosmus ; this is founded on a mystical analogy, often 

 afterwards again brought forward, between Man and the Universe. " Phi- 

 losophers and theologians," says the writer, " agree in considering man 

 as a little world ; and as the world is composed of four elements, man 

 is endowed with four faculties, the senses, the imagination, reason, and 

 understanding." Bernard of Chartres, 10 in his Megascosmus and Micro- 

 cosmus, took up the same notions. Hugo, abbot of St. Victor, made a 

 contemplative life the main point and crown of his philosophy ; and is 

 said to have been the first of the scholastic writers who made psychol- 

 ogy his special study." He says the faculties of the mind are "the 

 senses, the imagination, the reason, the memory, the understanding, 

 and the intelligence." 



Physics does not originally and properly form any prominent part of 

 the Scholastic Philosophy, which consists mainly of a series of ques- 

 tions and determinations upon the various points of a certain technical 

 divinity. Of this kind is the Book of Sentences of Peter the Lombard 

 (bishop of Paris), who is, on that account, usually called " Magister 

 Sententiarum ;" a work which was published in the twelfth century, 

 and was long the text and standard of such discussions. The questions 

 are decided by the authority of Scripture and of the Fathers of the 

 Church, and are divided into four Books, of which the first contains 

 questions concerning God and the doctrine of the Trinity in particular ; 

 the second is concerning the Creation ; the third, concerning Christ 

 and the Christian Religion ; and the fourth treats of Religious and 

 Moral Duties. In the second book, as in many of the writers of this 

 time, the nature of Angels is considered in detail, and the Orders of 

 their Hierarchy, of which there were held to be nine. The physical 

 discussions enter only as bearing upon the scriptural history of the 

 creation, and cannot be taken as a specimen of the work ; but I may 

 observe, that in speaking of the division of the waters above the fir- 



7 Deg. iv. 35. s ib. i v . 367. 9 lb. iv. 413. » lb. iv. 419. » lb. iv. 415. 



