Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/451

Rh SCHOLASTICISM 429 speak, not merely the anima rationalis of Aristotle, but also the vegetative, sensitive, appetitive, and motive functions. The latter depend, it is true, on bodily organs during our earthly sojourn, but the dependence is not necessary. The soul is created by God when the body of which it is the entelechy is prepared for it. It is the natural state of the soul to be united to a body (Animae prius con- venit esse unitani corpori quam esse a corpore separa- tam), but being immaterial it is not affected by the dis- solution of the body. The soul must be immaterial since it has the power of cognizing the universal ; and its immor- tality is further based by St Thomas on the natural longing for unending existence which belongs to a being whose thoughts are not confined to the " here " and " now," but are able to abstract from every limitation. Thomism, which was destined to become the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church, became in the first instance the accepted doctrine of the Dominican order, who were presently joined in this allegiance by the Augustinians. The Franciscan order, on the other hand, early showed their rivalry in attacks upon the doctrines of Albert and Aquinas. One of the first of these was the Reprehensorium seu Correctorium Fratris Thomae, published in 1285 by William Lamarre, in which the Averroistic consequences of the Thomist doctrine of individuation are already pressed home. More important was Richard of Middletown (died about 1300), who anticipated many of Duns the objections urged soon after him by Duns Scotus. Scotus. This renowned opponent of the Thomist doctrine was born in the second half of the 13th century, and after achieving an extraordinary success as a lecturer in Oxford and Paris died at an early age in the year 1308. His system is conditioned throughout by its relation to that of Aquinas, of which it is in effect an elaborate criticism. The chief characteristic of this criticism is well expressed in the name bestowed on Duns by his contemporaries Doctor Subtilis. It will be sufficient therefore to note the chief points in which the two great antagonists differ. In general it may be said that Duns shows less confidence in the power of reason than Thomas, and to that extent Erdmann and others are right in looking upon his system as the beginning of the decline of Scholasticism. For Scholasticism, as perfected by Aquinas, implies the har- mony of reason and faith, in the sense that they both teach the same truths. To this general position Aquinas, it has been seen, makes several important exceptions ; but the exceptions are few in number and precisely defined. Scotus extends the number of theological doctrines which are not, according to him, susceptible of philosophical proof, including in this class the creation of the world out of nothing, the immortality of the human soul, and even the existence of an almighty divine cause of the universe (though he admits the possibility of proving an ultimate cause superior to all else). His destructive criticism thus tended to reintroduce the dualism between faith and reason which Scholasticism had laboured through cen- turies to overcome, though Scotus himself, of course, had no such sceptical intention. But the way in which he founded the leading Christian doctrines (after confessing his inability to rationalize them) on the arbitrary will of God was undoubtedly calculated to help in the work of disintegration. And it is significant that this primacy of the undetermined will (voluntas superior intdlectu) was the central contention of the Scotists against the Thomist doctrine. Voluntary action, St Thomas had said, is action originating in self or in an internal principle. As com- pared with the animals, which are immediately determined to their ends by the instinct of the moment, man deter- mines his own course of action freely after a certain pro- cess of rational comparison (ex collatione quadam rationis). It is evident that the freedom here spoken of is a freedom from the immediacy of impulse a freedom based upon our possession of reason as a power of comparison, memory, and forethought. Nothing is said of an absolute freedom Freedom of the will ; the will is, on the contrary, subordinated to of. tlie the reason in so far as it is supposed to choose what reason pronounces good. Accordingly, the Thomist doctrine may be described as a moderate determinism. To this Scotus opposed an indeterminism of the extremest type, describing the will as the possibility of determining itself motivelessly in either of two opposite senses. Trans- ferred to the divine activity, Thomas's doctrine led him to insist upon the perseitas boni. The divine will is, equally with the human, subject to a rational determination ; God commands what is good because it is good. Scotus, on the other hand, following out his doctrine of the will, declared the good to be so only by arbitrary imposition. It is good because God willed it, and for no other reason ; had He commanded precisely the opposite course of con- duct, that course would have been right by the mere fact of His commanding it. Far removed from actuality as such speculations regarding the priority of intellect or will in the Divine Being may seem to be, the side taken is yet a sure index of the general tendency of a philosophy. Aquinas is on the side of rationalism, Scotus on the side of scepticism. While agreeing with Albert and Thomas in maintaining the threefold existence of the universals, Duns Scotus attacked the Thomist doctrine of individuation. The dis- tinction of the universal essence and the individualizing determinations in the individual does not coincide, he maintained, with the distinction between form and matter. The additional determinations are as truly "form" as the universal essence. If the latter be spoken of as quidditas, the former may be called haecceitas. Just as the genus becomes the species by the addition of formal determina- tions called the difference, so the species becomes the individual by the addition of fresh forms of difference. As animal becomes homo by the addition of humanitas, so homo becomes Socrates by the addition of the qualities signified by Socratitas. It is false, therefore, to speak of matter as the principle of individuation ; and if this is so there is no longer any foundation for the Thomist view that in angelic natures every individual constitutes a species apart. Notwithstanding the above doctrine, how- ever, Scotus holds that all created things possess both matter and form the soul, for example, possessing a matter of its own before its union with the body. But the matter of spiritual beings is widely different from the matter of corporeal things. In his treatment of the con- ception of matter, Duns shows that he inclined much more to the Realism which makes for pantheism than was the case with the Aristotelianism of Thomas. A perfectly formless matter (materia prima) was regarded by him as the universal substratum and common element of all finite existences. He expressly intimates in this connexion his acceptance of Avicebron's position. Ego autem ad posi- tionem Avicebronis redeo, that is, to the Neoplatonically conceived Fons Vitae of the Jew Gebirol. In the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the Thomists 14th the Thomists and Scotists divided the philosophical a and theological world between them. Among the Thomists may be named John of Paris, ^gidius of Lessines (wrote in 1278), Bernard of Trilia (1240-92), and Peter of Auvergne. More important was ^gidius of Colonna (1247-1316), general of the Augustinian order, surnamed Doctor Funda- tissimus or Fundamentarius. Hervaeus Natalis (ob. 1323) and Thomas Bradwardine (ob. 1349) were determined oppo- nents of Scotism. Siger of Brabant and Gottfried of Fon- taines, chancellor of the university of Paris, taught Thomism Scot-