782 SCHOLASTIC 
other amusement or pleasure, these dialectic questions still 
dwelt upon their tongues, and dialectic books still remained 
in their hands. 
It is scarcely to be conceived with what ardour, approach¬ 
ing even to madness, the first geniuses of the age applied to 
this kind of study. Losing themselves in a wood of abstract 
conceptions and subtle distinctions, the further they pro¬ 
ceeded the greater were the darkness and confusion, till at 
length what was commonly called philosophy no longer 
deserved the name. Ludovicus Vives, one of the most in¬ 
telligent writers of the 16th century, speaking of the 
scholastic philosophy, says, “ from the writings of Aristotle 
they have selected not the most useful, but the most intri¬ 
cate and unprofitable parts; not his books of Natural 
History or his Problems, but his Physics, and those treatises 
which most resemble theirs in subtlety and obscurity ; for 
example—his books upon the First Philosophy, upon 
Heaven, and upon Generation. For as to the treatise on 
Meteors, they are so entirely unacquainted with Ihe subject, 
that it seems to have been admitted among the scholastic 
books rather by accident than design. The truth is, that 
these philosophers are less acquainted with’nature than hus¬ 
bandmen or mechanics; and so much offended are they with 
that nature which they do not understand, that they have 
framed for themselves another nature, which God never 
framed, consisting of formalities, hsecceities, realities, rela¬ 
tions, Platonic ideas, and other subtleties, which they honour 
with the name of the metaphysical world; and if any man 
has a turn of mind averse to the study of real nature, but 
adapted to the pursuit of these visionary fictions, they say 
he is possessed of a sublime genius.” 
“The topics, upon which these philosophers spent the 
whole force of their ingenuity, were of a kind at once the 
most difficult and abstruse, and the most trifling and useless. 
Intention and remission, proportion and degree, infinity, 
formality, quiddity, individuality, and other abstract ideas, 
furnished innumerable questions to exercise their subtlety. 
Not contented with considering properties and relations as 
they subsist, and are perceived in natural objects, they sepa¬ 
rated, in their conceptions, the former from the latter, and 
by this artifice transferred them into universal notions. 
Then forgetting that these notions are merely the offspring of 
the reasoning mind, they considered them as real entities, and 
made use of them as substantial principles in explaining the 
nature of things. This they did not only in metaphysics 
but in physics, in which these imaginary entities confused 
and obscured all their reasonings. If these creatures of 
abstraction be brought back to their natural connection 
with real objects, and with the terms which express them, 
it will appear, that they had nothing more than an imagi¬ 
nary existence, and the whole contest concerning them will 
vanish into a mere war of words. Whence some judgment 
may be formed concerning the value of this most profound, 
angelic, and seraphic philosophy.” 
Notwithstanding all the homage which was paid to the 
name of Aristotle, it is certain that the scholastics were 
very imperfectly acquainted with the true sense of his 
writings: for, not to insist at present upon the difficulties 
which unavoidably attend the study of his works, arising 
from the abstract nature of the subjects upon which he treats, 
from the studied ambiguity with which he frequently writes, 
from the extreme conciseness of his style, and from his 
obscure and defective report of the opinions of preceding 
philosophers, it must be recollected that these philosophers 
engaged in the study of Aristotle without a previous ac¬ 
quaintance with history, or with the Greek philosophy, and 
even without the knowledge of the Greek language, and 
saw the doctrines of their master through the obscure me¬ 
dium of very imperfect translations. Hence they never 
understood his whole system in connection, and often created 
monstrous forms, at which the Stagyrite himself would have 
been terrified. 
Another evil which arose from the scholastic philosophy 
was, that instead of attempting to distinguish the real dif- 
PHILOSOPHY. 
ferenc.es of things, and to deduce clear conclusions from 
certain principles, in order to enlarge the boundaries of 
human knowledge, it employed all the powers of ingenuity, 
and all the arts of sophistry, to obscure the principles of 
science, to mix truth with fallacy, and to open the door to 
universal scepticism. By the help of confused notions, un¬ 
meaning distinctions, barbarous terms, and a sophistical 
method of reasoning, men were prepared to advance and 
defend the most frivolous and absurd positions; both theolo¬ 
gical and philosophical disputations degenerated into a mere 
trial of skill ; and the honest inquirer after truth was left 
without any certain guide. The consequences were, that 
tenets destructive of all religion were often publicly main¬ 
tained in the schools; a corrupt system of moral philosophy, 
which left open many avenues to dishonesty and debauchery, 
w'as taught; and great depravity of manners prevailed. 
This corruption of opinions and manners was accom¬ 
panied with barbarism of language. Little attention was 
now paid to the study of grammar, or rhetoric; a vast mass 
of terms, wholly unknown in the Augustine age, were in¬ 
troduced into the Latin tongue, to express the abstract 
notions of dialectics and metaphysics; and a verbose, puerile, 
and inelegant mode of writing generally prevailed. John 
of Salisbury, who took much pains to revive an attention to 
literature, complained, that in his time, those who professed 
to be acquainted with all arts, both liberal and mechanic, 
and to teach them in a short time, neglected the study of 
grammar; whence they were ignorant of the first art, with¬ 
out which it is in vain that any one attempts to become 
master of the rest. Even the best writers of this period were 
not wholly free from literary barbarism. 
Although logic and metaphysics were the peculiar pro¬ 
vince of the scholastics, their labours in these branches of 
learning were of little use. Their logic was rather the art 
of sophistry than that of reasoning; for it was applied to 
subjects which they did not understand, and employed upon 
principles which were not ascertained. Their whole business 
being disputation, they sought out for such thorny questions 
as were likely to afford them sufficient exercise for their 
ingenuity. Their own care was to conduct themselves in 
the contest by the rules of art, and their whole ambition to 
obtain the victory. For want of clear principles, and ac¬ 
curate definitions, their metaphysical system was a chaos of 
abstract notions and obscure terms. They professed, indeed, 
to follow the metaphysics of Aristotle, but for want of un¬ 
derstanding the ancient doctrine of physics and metaphysics, 
or even the language of Aristotle, they frequently substituted 
the fictions of their own imaginations in the room of the 
true Aristotelian principles. 
Of this the manner in which they handled the subject of 
frst matter affords a clear example. The Stagyrite, in his 
metaphysics, had called matter that of which considered in 
itself, neither quantity nor quality can be predicated, and in 
which being terminates. In this definition Aristotle had a 
reference to the ancient doctrine, that bodies are composed 
of corpuscles; and by mental abstraction, separated from 
these that which is the first formal cause of their existence, 
and called it frst matter. But the scholastics, being igno¬ 
rant of the ancient notion of body, and confounding the 
purely metaphysical conception of matter with an extended 
subject endued with form and quantity, fell into trifling 
disputes, and devised innumerable subtleties, by which the 
original obscurity of the doctrine of Aristotle concerning 
the first matter was greatly increased. The first matter, 
according to the followers of Thomas Aquinas, was simple 
power without actual energy. Others, who perceived that 
this was a mere phantom of the imagination, defended 
the real existence of matter, though they confessed themselves 
ignorant of its nature. Whilst others, concluding that the 
attributes ascribed to matter could belong only to God, con¬ 
tended that God was the first matter. Nor did these subtile 
reasoners trifle less on the subject of divine and spiritual 
natures. Bonaventure, in his “ Compendium of Theology,” 
treats of angels, their substance, order's, offices, language. 
