Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/443

Rh not so much in the sense of Plato as in the spirit of Parmenides, and Haureau applies to this form of Realism Bayle's description of Realism in general as " le Spinosisme non developpe." The 10th century as a whole is especially marked out as a dark age, being partly filled with civil troubles and partly characterized by a reaction of faith against reason. In the monastery of St Gall there was considerable logical activity, but nothing of philosophical interest is recorded. The chief name of the century is that of Gerbert (died as Pope Sylvester II. in 1003). He studied at Aurillac under Otto of Clugny, the pupil of Remigius, and later among the Moors in Spain, and taught afterwards himself in the schools of Tours, Fleury, Sens, and Rheims. He was a man of universal attainments, but only his treatise De Rationali et Ratione uti need be mentioned here. It is more interesting as a display of the logical acquirements of the age than as possessing any direct philosophical bearing. The school of Chartres, founded in 990 by Fulbert, one of Gerbert's pupils, was distinguished for nearly two centuries not so much for its dialectics and philosophy as for its humanistic culture. The account which John of Salisbury gives of it in the first half of the 12th century, under the presidency of Theodoric and Bernard, gives a very pleasant glimpse into the history of the Middle Ages. Since then, says their regretful pupil, "less time and less care have been bestowed on grammar, and persons who profess all arts, liberal and mechanical, are ignorant of the primary art, without which a man proceeds in vain to the rest. For albeit the other studies assist literature, yet this has the sole privilege of making one lettered." 1 Hitherto, if dialectical studies had been sometimes viewed askance by the stricter churchmen it was not because logic had dared to stretch forth its hands towards the ark of God, but simply on the ground of the old opposition between the church and the world : these secular studies absorbed time and ability which might have been employed for the glory of God and the service of the church. But now bolder spirits arose who did not shrink from applying the distinctions of their human wisdom to the mysteries of theology. It was the excite- ment caused by their attempt, and the heterodox con- clusions which were its first result, that lifted these Scholastic disputations into the central position which they henceforth occupied in the life of the Middle Ages. And whereas, up to this time, discussion had been in the main of a purely logical character, the next centuries show that peculiar combination of logic and theology which is the mark of Scholasticism, especially in the period before the 13th century. For reason, having already asserted itself so far, could not simply be put under a ban. Orthodoxy had itself to put on the armour of reason; and so panoplied its champions soon proved themselves superior to their antagonists on their own battlefield. One of the first of these attacks was made by Berengarius of Tours (999-1088) upon the doctrine of transubstantiation ; he denied the possibility of a change of substance in the bread and wine without some corre- sponding change in the accidents. Berengarius had studied at Chartres, where his exclusive devotion to dialectic caused Fulbert more than once to remonstrate with his pupil. According to the testimony of his oppo- nent and former fellow-student, Lanfranc, he seems even in his student days to have been by temperament a rebel against authority. "When we were in the schools together," says Lanfranc, "it was your part always to collect authorities against the Catholic faith." M. de 1 Metalogicus, i. 27, quoted in Poole's Illustrations of Mediaeval Thought. 421 Remusat characterizes his view on the Eucharist at; a specific application of Nominalism ("un nominalismo special ou restreint h une seule question"). More inti- mately connected with the progress of philosophical thought was the tritheistic view of the Trinity propounded by Roscellinus as one of the results of his Nominalistic Roscel- theory of knowing and being. The sharpness and one- sidedness with which he formulated his position were the immediate occasion of the contemporaneous crystallization of Realism in the theories of Anselm and William of Champeaux. Henceforth discussion is carried on with a full consciousness of the differences involved and the issues at stake ; and, thanks to the heretical conclusion disclosed by Roscellinus, Realism became established for several centuries as the orthodox philosophical creed. Roscellinus (ob. c. 1125) was looked upon by later times as the originator of the sententia vocum, that is to say, of Nom- inalism proper. Unfortunately, we are reduced for a knowledge of his position to the scanty and ill-natured notices of his opponents (Anselm and Abelard). From these we gather that he refused to recognize the reality of anything but the individual ; he treated " the universal substance," says Anselm, as no more than " flatum vocis," a verbal breathing or sound ; and in a similar strain he denied any reality to the parts of which a whole, such as a house, is commonly said to be composed. The parts in the one case, the general name or common attributes in the other, are only, he seems to have argued, so many subjective points of view from which we choose to regard that which in its own essence is one and indivisible, existing in its own right apart from any connexion with other individuals. This pure individualism, consistently interpreted, involves the denial of all real relation what- soever ; for things are related and classified by means of their general characteristics. Accordingly, if these general characteristics do not possess reality, things are reduced to a number of characterless and mutually indifferent points. It is possible, as Haureau maintains, that Roscel- linus meant no more than to refute the untenable Realism which asserts the substantial and, above all, the inde- pendent existence of the universals. Some of the expres- sions used by Anselm in controverting his position favour this idea, since they prove that the Realism of Anselm himself embraced positions discarded by the wiser advo- cates of that doctrine. Anselm upbraids Roscellinus, for example, because he was unable to conceive whiteness apart from its existence in something white. But this is precisely an instance of the hypostatization of abstrac- tions in exposing which the chief strength and value of Nominalism lie. Cousin is correct in pointing out, from the Realistic point of view, that it is one thing to deny the hypostatization of an accident like colour or wisdom, and another thing to deny the foundation in reality of those "true and legitimate universals" which we under- stand by the terms genera and species. "The human race is not a word, or, if it is, we are driven to assert that there is really nothing common and identical in all men that the brotherhood and equality of the human family are pure abstractions, and that, since individuality is the sole reality, the sole reality is difference, that is to say, hostility and war, with no right but might, no duty but interest, and no remedy but despotism. These are the sad but necessary consequences which logic and history impose upon Nominalism and Empiricism." 2 It is not for a moment to be supposed that .the full scope of his doctrine was present to the mind of Roscellinus ; but Nominalism would hardly have made the sensation it did had its assertions been as innocent as Haureau would make them. Like most innovators, Roscellinus stated his posi- 2 Outrages intdils <f Aboard, Introd., p. cvi.