Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/440

Rh 418 SCHOLASTICISM maid of faith (ancilla fidei). But it is only fair to add that this principle of the subordination of the reason wears a different aspect according to the century and writer referred to. In Scotus Erigena, at the beginning of the Scholastic era, there is no such subordination con- templated, because philosophy and theology in his work are in implicit unity. According to his memorable expres- sion, " Conficitur inde veram esse philosophiain veram religionem, conversimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam " (De Divisione Naturae, i. 1). Reason in its own strength and with its own instruments evolves a system of the universe which coincides, according to Erigena, with the teaching of Scripture. For Erigena, therefore, the speculative reason is the supreme arbiter (as he himself indeed expressly asserts) ; and in accordance with its results the utterances of Scripture and of the church have not infrequently to be subjected to an alle- gorical or mystical interpretation. But this is only to say again in so many words that Erigena is more of a Neoplatonist than a Scholastic. In regard to the Scholastics proper, Cousin suggested in respect of this point a threefold chronological division, at the outset the absolute subordination of philosophy to theology, then the period of their alliance, and finally the beginning of their separation. In other words, we note philosophy gradually extending its claims. Dialectic is, to begin with, a merely secular art, and only by degrees are its terms and distinc- tions applied to the subject-matter of theology. The early results of the application, in the hands of Berengarius and Roscellinus, did not seem favourable to Christian orthodoxy. Hence the strength with which a champion of the faith like Anselm insists on the subordination of reason. To Bernard of Clairvaux and many other con- servative churchmen the application of dialectic to the things of faith at all appears as dangerous as it is impious. At a later date, in the systems of the great Schoolmen, the rights of reason are fully established and amply acknow- ledged. The relation of reason and faith remains, it is true, an external one, and certain doctrines an increasing number as time goes on are withdrawn from the sphere of reason. But with these exceptions the two march side by side; they establish by different means the same results. For the conflicts which accompanied the first intrusion of philosophy into the theological domain more profound and cautious thinkers with a far ampler appa- ratus of knowledge had substituted a harmony. ' "The constant effort of Scholasticism to be at once philosophy and theology" 1 seemed at last satisfactorily realized. But this harmony proved more apparent than real, for the further progress of Scholastic thought consisted in a with- drawal of doctrine after doctrine from the possibility of rational proof and their relegation to the sphere of faith. Indeed, no sooner was the harmony apparently established by Aquinas than Duns Scotus began this negative criti- cism, which is carried much farther by William of Occam. But this is equivalent to a confession that Scholasticism had failed in its task, which was to rationalize the doc- trines of the church. The two authorities refused to be reconciled. The Aristotelian form refused to fit a matter for which it was never intended ; the matter of Christian theology refused to be forced into an alien form. The Scholastic philosophy speedily ceased therefore to possess a raison cFetre, and the spread of the sceptical doctrine of a twofold truth proclaims the destruction of the fabric erected by mediaeval thought. The end of the period was thus brought about by the internal decay of its method and principles quite as much as by the variety of external causes which contributed to transfer men's interests to other subjects. Milman's Latin Christianity, ix. 101. But, although the relation of reason to an external Scholaj authority thus constitutes the badge of mediaeval thought, ticism it would be in the last degree unjust to look upon Scholas- nc as if unpro- gvessivi ticism as philosophically barren, and to speak reason, after an interregnum of a thousand years, resumed its rights at the Renaissance. Such language was excusable in the men of the Renaissance, fighting the battle of classic form and beauty and of the many- sidedness of life against the barbarous terminology and the monastic ideals of the schools, or in the protagonists of modern science protesting against the complete absorp- tion of human talent by metaphysics an absorption never witnessed to the same extent before or since. The new is never just to the old ; we do not expect it to be so. It belongs to a later and calmer judgment to recognize how the old contained in itself the germs of the new ; and a closer study of history is invariably found to diminish the abruptness of the picturesque new beginnings which furnish forth our current divisions of epochs and periods. In the schools and universities of the Middle Age the intellect of the semi-barbarous European peoples had been trained for the work of the modern world. It had advanced from a childish rudeness to an appreciation of the subtlest logical and metaphysical distinctions. The debt which modern philosophy owes to the Schoolmen for this formal training has been amply acknowledged even by a writer like J. S. Mill. But we may go further and say that, in spite of their initial acceptance of authority, the Scholastics are not the antagonists of reason ; on the contrary they fight its battles. As has often been pointed out, the attempt to establish by argument the authority of faith is in reality the unconscious establishment of the authority of reason. Reason, if admitted at all, must ultimately claim the whole man. Anselm's motto, Credo ut intelligam, marks well the distance that has been traversed since Tertullian's Credo quia absurdum est. The claim of reason has been recognized to manipulate the data of faith, at first blindly and immediately received, and to weld them into a system such as will satisfy its own needs. Scholasticism that has outlived its day may be justly identified with obscurant- ism, but not so the systems of those who, by their mighty intellectual force alone, once held all the minds of Europe in willing subjection. The scholastic systems, it is true, are not the free products of speculation ; in the main they are summx tkeologix, or they are modified versions of Aristotle. But each system is a fresh recognition of the rights of reason, and Scholasticism as a whole may be justly regarded as the history of the growth and gradual eman- cipation of reason which was completed in the movements of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Indeed, the widening of human interests which then took place is not without its prelude in the systems of the second period of Scholasticism. The complementary sciences of theology and philosophy remain, of course, the central and dominat- ing interest ; but Albertus Magnus was keenly interested in natural science, and a system like that of Aquinas is as wide as Aristotle's in its range, and holds no part of nature to lie outside its inquiries. In speaking of the origin of Scholasticism name and " Uni- thing it has been already noted that mediaeval specula- versala tion takes its rise in certain logical problems. To be more precise, it is the nature of " universals " which forms the central theme of Scholastic debate. This is the case almost exclusively during the first period, and only to a less extent during the second, where it reappears in a somewhat different form as the difficulty concerning the principle of individuation. Otherwise expressed, the question on which centuries of discussion were thus expended concerns the nature of genera and species and their relation to the individual. On this, Nominalists and