DOGMATISM OF THE STATIONARY PERIOD. 329 



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 commenting 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 intellectual me- 

 chanism of the Greek ; fixed and augmented the pre- 

 valent feebleness and barrenness of intellect. Men 

 forgot, or feared, to consult nature, to seek for new 

 truths, to do what the great discoverers of other 

 times had done ; they were content to consult li- 

 braries, 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 cou- 

 rage and originality. There are various 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 Autho- 

 rity 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 



