Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/450

Rh 428 SCHOLASTICISM except where their differences make it necessary ; and in giving an account of their common system it will be well to present it at once in its most perfect form. Albert was "the first Scholastic who reproduced the whole philosophy of Aristotle in systematic order with constant reference to the Arabic commentators, and who remodelled it to meet the requirements of ecclesiastical dogma " (Ueberweg, i. 436). On this account he was called by his contemporaries " the Universal Doctor." But in Albert it may be said that the matter was still too new and too multifarious to be thoroughly mastered. The fabric of knowledge is not fitly jointed together in all its parts ; the theologian and the philosopher are not perfectly fused into one individual, but speak sometimes with different voices. In St Thomas this is no longer so ; the fusion is almost perfect. The pupil, entering into his master's labours, was able from the first to take a more compre- hensive survey of the whole field ; and in addition he was doubtless endowed with an intellect which was finer, though it might not be more powerful, than his master's. Albert had the most touching affection for his distinguished scholar. When he went to Paris in 1245 to lecture and to take his doctor's degree, his pupil accompanied him ; and, on their return to Cologne, Aquinas taught along with his master in the great Dominican school there. At a later date, when Aquinas proceeded to Paris to lecture inde- pendently, he occupied the Dominican chair at the same time that Bonaventura held the Franciscan professorship. They received the degree of doctor in the same year, 1257. Rivals in a manner though they were, and differing on points of philosophy, the Angelic and Seraphic Doctors were united in friendship and Christian charity. " Mys- The monotheistic influence of Aristotle and his Arabian teries " commentators shows itself in Albert and Aquinas, at the 6 outset, in the definitive fashion in which the " mysteries " philo- of the Trinity and the Incarnation are henceforth detached sophy. from the sphere of rational or philosophical theology. So long as the Neoplatonic influence remained strong, attempts were still made to demonstrate the doctrine of the Trinity, chiefly in a mystical sense as in Erigena, but also by orthodox churchmen like Anselm. Orthodoxy, whether Catholic or Protestant, has since generally adopted Thomas's distinction. The existence of God is maintained by Albert and Aquinas to be demonstrable by reason ; but here again they reject the ontological argu- ment of Anselm, and restrict themselves to the a posteriori proof, rising after the manner of Aristotle from that which is prior for us (irportpov Trpos rj/MLs) to that which is prior by nature or in itself (-rrporepov <vo-). God is not fully comprehensible by us, says Albert, because the finite is not able to grasp the infinite, yet he is not alto- gether beyond our knowledge ; our intellects are touched by a ray of his light, and through this contact we are brought into communion with him. God, as the only self-subsistent and necessary being, is the creator of all things. Here the Scholastic philosophy comes into con- flict with Aristotle's doctrine of the eternity of the world. Albert and Aquinas alike maintain the beginning of the world in time ; time itself only exists since the moment of this miraculous creation. But Thomas, though he holds the fact of creation to be rationally demonstrable, regards the beginning of the world in time as only an .article of faith, the philosophical arguments for and against being inconclusive. The question of univereals, though fully discussed, no longer forms the centre of speculation. The great age of Scholasticism presents, indeed, a substantial unanimity upon this vexed point, maintaining at once, in different senses, the existence of the universals ante rent, in re, and post rem. Albert and Aquinas both profess the moderate viduatio Aristotelian Realism which treats genera and species only as substantiae secundae, yet as really inherent in the individuals, and constituting their form or essence. The universals, therefore, have no existence, as universals, in rerum natura ; and Thomas endorses, in this sense, the polemic of Aristotle against Plato's hypostatized abstrac- tions. But, in the Augustinian sense of ideas immanent in the divine mind, the universal ante rem may well be admitted as possessing real existence. Finally, by abstraction from the individual things of sense, the mind is able to contemplate the universal apart from its accom- paniments (animal sine komine, asino, et aliis specielnts) ; these subjective existences are the universalia post rem of the Nominalists and Conceptualists. But the difficulties which embarrassed a former age in trying to conceive the mode in which the universal exists in the individual reappear in the systems of the present period as the pro- blem of the principium individuationis. The universal, The as the form or essence of the individual, is called its pnncipli quidditas (its "what-ness" or nature); but, besides pos- ot in<ii " sessing a general nature and answering to a general defi- nition (i.e., being a " what "), every man, for example, is this particular man, here and now. It is the question of the particularity or " this-ness " (haecceitas, as Duns Scotus afterwards named it) that embarrasses the Scholastics. Albert and Aquinas agree in declaring that the principle of individuation is to be found in matter, not, however, in matter as a formless substrate but in determinate matter (materia signata which is explained to mean matter quan- titatively determined in certain respects. " The variety of individuals," says Albert, " depends entirely upon the division of matter" (individuorum multitudo fit omnis per divisionem materiae) ; and Aquinas says " the principle of the diversity of individuals of the same species is the quantitative division of matter " (divisio materiae secundum quantitatem), which his followers render by the abbreviated phrase materia quanta. A tolerably evident shortcoming of such a doctrine is that, while declaring the quantitative determination of matter to be the individual element in the individual, it gives no account of how such quantitative determination arises. Yet the problem of the individual is really contained in this prior question ; for determinate matter already involves particularity or this-ness. This difficulty was presently raised by Duns Scotus and the real- istically-inclined opponents of the Thomist doctrine. But, as Ueberweg points out, it might fairly be urged by Aquinas that he does not pretend to explain how the individual is actually created, but merely states what he finds to be an invariable condition of the existence of individuals. Apart from this general question, a difficulty arises on the Thomist theory in regard to the existence of spirits or disembodied personalities. This affects first of all the existence of angels, in regard to whom Aquinas admits that they are immaterial or separate forms (fortnae separatae). They possess the principle of individuation in themselves, he teaches, but plurality of individuals is in such a case equivalent to plurality of species (in eis tot sunt species quot sunt indi^ndua). The same difficulty, however, affects the existence of the disembodied human spirit. If individuality depends in matter, must we not conclude with Averroes that individuality is extinguished at death, and that only the universal form survives ? This conclu- sion, it is needless to say, is strenuously opposed both by Albert and Thomas. Albert wrote a special treatise De Unitate Intellectus contra Averroistas, and Thomas in his numerous writings is even more explicit. It is still admis- sible, however, to doubt whether the hateful consequence: does not follow consistently from the theory laid down. Aquinas regards the souls of men, like the angels, as immaterial forms ; and he includes in the soul-unit, so to