Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/448

Rh 426 SCHOLASTICISM more as a cultivated humanist than as a Scholastic divine. His Policraticus, it has been said, " is to some extent an encyclopaedia of the cultivated thought of the middle of the 12th century." The Metaloaicus is a defence of logic against those who despised all philo- sophical training. But John recoiled from the idle casuistry which occupied his own logical contemporaries ; and, mindful probably of their aimless ingenuity, he adds the caution that dialectic, valuable and necessary as it is, is " like the sword of Hercules in a pigmy's hand " unless there be added to it the accoutrement of the other sciences. Catholic in spirit rather than dogmatic, John ranks him- self at times among the Academics, " since, in those things about which a wise man ma'y doubt, I depart not from their footsteps." The list which he gives of things which may be doubted (quae sunt dubitabilia sapienti) is at once curious and instructive. It is not fitting to subtilize overmuch, and in the end John of Salisbury's solution is the practical one, his charitable spirit pointing him in particular to that love which is the fulfilling of the law. The first period of Scholasticism being thus at an end, there is an interval of nearly half a century without any Extension noteworthy philosophical productions. The cause of the of know- new development of Scholasticism in the 13th century ledge of was ^6 translation into Latin for the first time of the of Aris- S com pl e te works of Aristotle. An inventory has been given totle. of the scanty stock of works accessible to students in the 9th century. The stock remained unenlarged till towards the middle of the 12th century, when the remaining trea- tises of the Oryanon became known. Abelard expressly states that he knew only the Categories and the De Inter- pretatione ; but it seems from passages adduced by Prantl that he must, before the date of his Dialectica, have had some indirect and hearsay knowledge of the contents of the other treatises, though without being able himself to con- sult a copy. The books made their way almost noiselessly into the schools. In 1132 Adam de Petit-Font, it is stated, made a version of the Prior Analytics. Gilbert de la Porre"e, who died in 1154, refers to the Analytics as currently known. His disciple Otto of Freising carried the Analytics, the Topicrt, and the Soph. Elenchi from France to Germany, probably in the translation of Boetius. John of Salisbury was acquainted with these and also with newer and more literal translations. But, while the fuller knowledge of the ancient logic resulted in an increase of formal acuteness, it appears to have been of but small benefit to serious studies till there was added to it a know- ledge of the other works of Aristotle. This knowledge came to the Scholastics in the first instance through the medium of Arabian philosophy. (See ARABIAN PHILO- SOPHY.) The doctrines and the works of Aristotle had been transmitted by the Nestorians to the Arabs, and among those kept alive by a succession of philosophers, first in the East and afterwards in the West. The chief of these, at least so far as regards the influence which they exerted on mediaeval philosophy, were Avicenna, Avem- pace, and Averroes. The unification by the last-men- tioned of Aristotle's active intellect in all men, and his consequent denial of individual immortality are well known. The universal human intellect is made by him to proceed from the divine by a series of Neoplatonic emanations. In the course of the 1 2th century the writings of these men were introduced into France by the Jews of Andalusia, of Marseilles, and Montpellier. " These writings contained," says Haure"au, "the text of the Organon, the Physics, the Metaphysics, the Ethics, the De Anima, the Parva Naturalia, and a large number of other treatises of Aristotle, accompanied by continuous commentaries. There arrived besides by the same channel the glosses of Theophrastus, of Simplicius, of Alexander of Aphrodisias, of Philoponus, annotated in the same sense by the same hands. This was the rich but dangerous present made by the Mussulman school to the Christian " (i. 382). To these must be added the Neoplatonically inspired Fons Vitae of the Jewish philosopher and poet Ibn Gebirol, whom the Scholastics cited as Avicebron and believed to be an Arabian. By special command of Raimund, archbishop of Toledo, the chief of these works were translated from the Arabic through the Castilian into Latin by the archdeacon Dominicus Gonzalvi with the aid of Johannes Avendeath ( = ben David), a converted Jew, about 1150. About the same time, or not long after, the Liber de Causis became known a work destined to have a powerful influence on Scholastic thought, especially in the period immediately succeeding. Accepted at first as Aristotle's, and actually printed in the first Latin editions of his works, the book is in reality an Arabian compilation of Neo- platonic theses. Of a similar character was the pseudo- Aristotelian Theologia, which was in circulation at least as early as 1200. The first effects of this immense acquisition of new First material were markedly unsettling on the doctrinal ortho- effects < doxy of the time. The apocryphal Neoplatonic treatises *' ie ne>l and the views of the Arabian commentators obscured for the first students the genuine doctrine of Aristotle, and the 13th century opens with quite a crop of mystical heresies. The mystical pantheism taught at Paris by Amalrich of Bena (ob. 1207 ; see AMALRICH and MYSTICISM), though based by him upon a revival of Scotus Erigena, was doubtless connected in its origin with the Neoplatonic treatises which now become current. The immanence of God in all things and His incarnation as the Holy Spirit in themselves ap- pear to have been the chief doctrines of the Amalricans. They are reported to have said, " Omnia unum, quia quicquid est est Deus." About the same time David of Dinant, in a book De Tomis (rendered by Albertus De Divisionibus), taught the identity of God with matter (or the indivisible principle of bodies) and nous (or the indivisible principle of intelligences) an extreme Realism culminating in a materialistic pantheism. If they were diverse, he argued, there must exist above them some higher or common element or being, in which case this would be God, nous, or the original matter. The spread of the Amalrican doctrine led to fierce persecutions, and the provincial council which met at Paris in 1209, after con- demning the heresies of Amalrich and David, expressly decreed " that neither the books of Aristotle on natural philosophy, nor commentaries on the same, should be read, whether publicly or privately, at Paris." In 1215 this prohibition is renewed in the statutes of the university of Paris, as sanctioned by the papal legate. " Et quod legant libros Aristotelis de dialectica tarn veteri quam de nova. . . Non legantur libri Aristotelis de metaphysica et naturali philosophia, nee summa de iisdem." Permission is thus given to lecture on the logical books, both those which had been known all along and those introduced since 1128, but the veto upon the Physics is extended to the Meta- physics and the summaries of the Arabian commentators. By 1231, however, the fears of the church were beginning to be allayed. A bull of Gregory IX. in that year makes no mention of any Aristotelian works except the Physics. As these had been " prohibited by the provincial council for specific reasons," they are not to be used in the university " till such time as they have been examined and purged of all suspicion of errors." Finally, in the year 1254, we find the university officially prescribing how many hours are to be devoted to the explanation of the M' f>/physics and the principal physical treatises of Aristotle. These dates enable us to measure accurately the stages by ledge.