Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/444

Rh 422 SCHOLASTICISM tion in bold language, which emphasized his opposition to accepted doctrines ; and his words, if not his intentions, involved the extreme Nominalism which, by making universality merely subjective, pulverizes existence into detached particulars. And, though we may acquit Roscel- linus of consciously propounding a theory so subversive of all knowledge, his criticism of the doctrine of the Trinity is proof at least of the determination with which he was prepared to carry out his individualism. If we are not prepared to say that the three Persons are one thing in which case the Father and the Holy Ghost must have been incarnate along with the Son then, did usage permit, he says, we ought to speak of three Gods. Anselm. It was this theological deduction from his doctrine that drew upon Roscellinus the polemic of his most celebrated opponent, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109). Roscel- linus appears at first to have imagined that his tritheistic theory had the sanction of Lanfranc and Anselm, and the latter was led in consequence to compose his treatise De Fide Trinitatis. From this may be gathered, in a some- what indirect and incidental fashion, his views on the nature of universals. "How shall he who has not arrived at understanding how several men are in species one man comprehend how in that most mysterious nature several persons, each of which is perfect God, are one God ?" The manner in which humanity exists in the individual was soon to be the subject of keen discussion, and to bring to light diverging views within the Realistic camp ; but St Anselm does not go into detail on this point, and seems to imply that it is not surrounded by special difficulties. In truth, his Realism, as has just been seen, was of a somewhat uncritical type. It was simply accepted by him in a broad way as the orthodox philosophic doctrine, and the doctrine which, as a sagacious churchman, he perceived to be most in harmony with Christian theology. But Anselm's heart was not in the dialectical subtleties which now began more and more to engross the schools. The only logical treatise which he wrote, De Grammatica, falls so far below the height of his reputation that it leads Prantl into undue depreciation of Anselm's eminence as a thinker. Anselm's natural element was theology, and the high metaphysical questions which are as it were the obverse of theology. Haureau calls him with truth " the last of the fathers"; the sweep of his thought recalls St Augus- tine rather than the men of his own time. On the other hand, as the first to formulate the ontological argument for the existence of God, he joins hands with some of the profoundest names in modern philosophy. This celebrated argument, which fascinated in turn Descartes, Leibnitz, and Hegel, not to mention other names, appears for the first time in the pages of Anselm's Proslogium. To Anselm specially belongs the motto Credo ut intelligam, or, as it is otherwise expressed in the sub-title of his Pros- logium, Fides quaerens intellectum. " His method, " says Cousin (p. ci.), " is to set out from the sacred dogmas as they are given by the hand of authority, and without at any time departing from these dogmas to impregnate them by profound reflexion, and thus as it were raise the darkness visible of faith to the pure light of philo- sophy." In this spirit he endeavoured to give a philo- sophical demonstration not only of the existence of God but also of the Trinity and the Incarnation, which were placed by the later Scholastics among the "mysteries." The Christological theory of satisfaction expounded in the Cur Deus Homo falls beyond the scope of the present article. But the Platonically conceived proof of the being of God contained in the Monologium shows that Anselm's doctrine of the universals as substances in things (univer- salia in re) was closely connected in his mind with the thought of the universalia ante rem, the exemplars of perfect goodness and truth and justice, by participation in which all earthly things are judged to possess these qualities. In this way he rises like Plato to the absolute Goodness, Justice, and Truth, and then proceeds in Neo- platonic fashion to a deduction of the Trinity as involved in the idea of the divine Word. Besides its connexion with the speculations of Anselm, the doctrine of Roscellinus was also of decisive influence within the schools in crystallizing the opposite opinion. William of Champeaux is reputed the founder of a Willia definitely formulated Realism, much as Roscellinus is of *-"" regarded as the founder of Nominalism. William of P eaux< Champeaux (1070-1121) was instructed by Roscellinus himself in dialectic. His own activity as a teacher belongs to the first years of the 12th century. He lectured in Paris in the cathedral school of Notre Dame till the year 1108, when he retired to the priory of St Victor on the outskirts of Paris. But soon afterwards, unable to resist the importunities of his friends and pupils, he resumed his lectures there, continuing them till his removal to the see of Chalons in 1113, and thus laying the foundation of the reputation which the monastery soon acquired. Unfortunately none of the philosophical works of William have survived, and we are forced to depend for an account of his doctrine upon the statements of his opponent Abelard, in the Historia Calamitatum Mearum, and in certain manuscripts discovered by Cousin. From these sources it appears that William professed successively two opinions on the nature of the universals, having been dislodged from his first position by the criti- cism of Abelard, his quondam pupil. There is no obscurity about William's first position. It is a Realism of the most uncompromising type, which by its reduction of individuals to accidents of one identical substance seems to tremble on the very verge of Spinozism. He taught, says Abelard, that the same thing or substance was present in its entirety and essence in each individual, and that individuals differed no whit in their essence but only in the variety of their accidents. "Erat autem in ea sententia de communitate universalium, ut eandem essen- tialiter rem totam simul singulis suis inesse adstrueret individuis, quorum quidem nulla esset in essentia diver- sitas, sed sola multitudine accidentium varietas." Thus "Socratitas" is merely an accident of the substance "humanitas," or, as it is put by the author of the treatise De Generibus et Speciebus, 1 "Man is a species, a thing essentially one (res una essentialiter}, which receives certain forms which make it Socrates. This thing, remaining essentially the same, receives in the same way other forms which constitute Plato and the other individuals of the species man ; and, with the exception of those forms which mould that matter into the individual Socrates, there is nothing in Socrates that is not the same at the same time under the forms of Plato. . . . According to these men, even though rationality did not exist in any individual, its existence in nature would still remain intact " (Cousin, Introduction, &c., p. cxx.). Robert Pulleyn expresses the same point of view concisely when he makes the Realist say, "Species una est substantia, ejus vero individua multae personae, et hae multae personae sunt ilia una substantia." But the difficulties in the way of treating the universal as substance or thing are so insuperable, and at the same time so obvious, that criticism was speedily at work upon William of Champeaux's position. He had said expressly that the universal essence, by the addition 1 This treatise, first published by Cousin in his Ouvrages intdits cTAbilard, was attributed by him to Abelard, and he was followed in this opinion by Haureau ; but Prantl adduces reasons which seem satisfactory for believing it to be the work of an unknown writer of somewhat later date (see Prantl, Oeschichte d. Logik, ii. 143).