616 COSMOS. 



Augustine to Alcuin, Johannes Scotus, and Bemhard Oi 

 Chartres.* 



When the Aristotelian philosophy gained the ascendancy 

 by its controlling influence over the direction of the human 

 mind, its effect was manifested in the two-fold channel of 

 investigation into speculative philosophy and a philosophical 

 elaboration of empirical natural science. Although the 

 former of these directions may appear foreign to the object I 

 have had in view in the present work, it must not be passed 

 without notice, since in the midst of the age of dialectic 

 scholastics, it incited some few noble and highly-gifted men 

 to the exercise of free and independent thought in the most 

 various departments of science. An extended physical con- 

 templation of the universe not only requires a rich abundance 

 of observation as the substratum for a generalization of 

 ideas, but also a preparatory and invigorating training of the 

 human mind, by which it may be enabled, unappalled amid 

 the eternal contest between knowledge and faith, to meet the 

 threatening impediments which, even in modern times, 

 present themselves at the entrance of certain departments 01* 

 the experimental sciences, and would seem to render them 

 inaccessible. There are two points in the history of the 

 development of man, which must not be separated the con- 

 sciousness of man's just claims to intellectual freedom, and 

 his long unsatisfied desire of prosecuting discoveries in remote 

 regions of the earth. These free and independent thinkers 

 form a series, which begins in the middle ages with Duns 

 Scotus, Wilhelm of Occam, and Nicolas of Cusa, and leads 

 from Rainus, Campanella, and Giordano Bruno to Des- 

 cartes.f 



The seemingly impassable gulf between thought and actual 

 being the relations between the mind that recognises and 



* Friedrich ron Raumer, Ueber die Philosophic des ctreizehnten 

 Jahrhunderts, in his Hist. Taschevbuch, 1840, s. 468. On the ten- 

 dency towards Platonism in the middle ages, and on the contests of the 

 schools, see Heinrich Hitter, Oesch. der christl. Philosophic, th. ii. 8. 

 159; th. iii. s. 131-160, and 381-417. 



t Cousin, Cours deVHist. de la Philosophic, t. i. 1829, pp. 360 and 

 389-436; Fragmens de Philosophic cartesiennc, pp. 8-12 and 408. 

 Compare also the recent ingenious work of Christian Bartholomew 

 entitled Jordano Bruno, 1847, t. i. p. 308; t.ii. pp. 409-416 



