280 



CHAPTER II. 



THE COMMENTATORIAL SPIRIT OF THE 



MIDDLE AGES. 



WE have already noticed, that, after the first 

 great achievements of the founders of sound 

 speculation, in the different departments of human 

 knowledge, had attracted the interest and admira- 

 tion which those who became acquainted with them 

 could not but give to them, there appeared a dispo- 

 sition among men to lean on the authority of some 

 of these teachers ; to study the opinions of others 

 as the only mode of forming their own ; to read 

 nature through books; to attend to what had 

 been already thought and said, rather than to what 

 really is and happens. This tendency of men's 

 minds requires our particular consideration. Its 

 manifestations were very important, and highly 

 characteristic of the stationary period ; it gave, in 

 a great degree, a peculiar bias and direction to the 

 intellectual activity of many centuries; and the 

 kind of labour with which speculative men were 

 occupied in consequence of this bias, took the 

 place of that examination of realities which must 

 be their employment, in order that real knowledge 

 may make any decided progress. 



In some subjects, indeed, as, for instance, in 



