DOGMATISM OF THE STATIONARY PERIOD. 333 



were selected and adopted ; and these, presented in 

 a most technical form, and applied in a systematic 

 manner, constitute a large portion of the philosophy 

 of which we now speak, so far as it pretends to deal 

 with physics. 



2. Scholastic Dogmas. But before the com- 

 plete ascendancy of Aristotle was thus established, 

 when something of an intellectual waking took 

 place after the darkness and sleep of the ninth and 

 tenth centuries, the Platonic doctrines seem to have 

 had, at first, a strong attraction 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 8 , in 

 Italy, reproduced, involved in a theological discus- 

 sion, some Neoplatonic ideas. Godefroy 9 also, cen- 

 sor of St. Victor, has left a treatise*, entitled Micro- 

 cosmus ; this is founded on a mystical analogy, 

 often afterwards again brought forward, between 

 Man and the Universe. " Philosophers and theolo- 

 gians," 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 understand- 

 ing." Bernard of Chartres 10 , in his Megascosmus 

 and Microcosmus took up the same notions. Hugo, 



7 Deg. iv. 35. 8 Ib. iv. 367. 9 Ib. iv. 413. 



10 Ib. iv. 419. 



