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7 o PHILOSOPHIC SCIENCES. 



Gospels, he worshipped exclusively his divine Plato. Then, again, we have 

 the infant prodigy, Jean Pic de la Mirandola, who, after having studied all 

 the sciences known at that time, and after having, at the age of three-and- 

 twenty, argued the thesis " De omni re scibili," endeavoured to reconcile the 

 philosophy of Aristotle and Plato by the aid of wild cabalistic and astro- 

 logical evocations. This was the origin of a new school of cabalists, 

 magicians, and astrologers. They were, no doubt, consummate men of 

 learning, those Germans and Italians (Fig. 52), who sought to bring to the 

 light of day the material and immaterial arcana of nature. Thus, Jean 

 Reuchlin associated in his writings cabalism and scholasticism. George of 

 Venice held that in the mysteries of generation and of life substance is the 

 unique and absolute being, the only God. Th.cophrast.us Paracelsus, who is 

 no other than Philip Bombastes of nohenhehn, mixing metaphysics willi 

 physics like two medical substances, affirmed that God, of whom he made the 

 principle of universal life, has united the body and the soul by an animal 

 fluid. There was a wide interval between these vain musings and the safe 

 doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas, or the dialectical abstractions of Duns Scotus. 



Aristotle still had followers who alleged that they remained faithful to 

 his doctrine, but the general tendency of the time carried them over the 

 precipice. Peter Pomponacius of Mantua (born in 1462, died in 1526) 

 announced that he took his stand upon peripateticism, but he raised a very 

 dangerous question by inquiring whether or not Aristotle admitted the 

 principle of the immortality of the soul. He concluded in the negative, 

 adding that reason and faith must supplement the silence of the master in 

 this respect. This reverse was not taken any account of by his adversaries, 

 who reproached him, the one side with outraging Aristotle, and denounced 

 him as a heretic ; the other side with having made a treacherous use of the 

 doctrines of peripateticism to advance an abominable heresy. Pomponacius 

 had, notwithstanding, many devoted followers, who went more or less astray 

 in the occult sciences or in scholasticism, amongst them being Augustine 

 Niphus of Calabria, and Julius Caesar Scaliger of Padua. 



As to scholasticism, the aberration of its opponents obtained for it several 

 ardent champions. Such were Thomas de Tio, surnamed Cajetan, bom in 

 1469, who became cardinal, after having professed the philosophy of 

 St. Thomas ; his pupil, Lconicus Thomsons of Venice, who devoted all his 

 energies to the restoration of pure logic, which was neither more nor less 



