Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/615

Rh ETHICS tony, Unchastity, are found in all the lists ; the remaining two (or three) are variously selected from among Envy, Vain-glory, and the rather singular sins Gloominess (Tris- titia) and Languid Indifference (Acidia or Acedia, from Greek aKi]ia). These latter notions show pretty plainly, what indeed might be inferred from a study of the list as a whole, that it especially represents the moral experience of the monastic life ; which for some centuries was more and more unquestioningly regarded as in a peculiar sense &quot; religious.&quot; It should be observed that the (also Augustinian) distinc tion between &quot; deadly &quot; and &quot; venial &quot; sins had a technical reference to the quasi-jural administration of ecclesiastical discipline ; which grew gradually more organized as the spiritual power of the church established itself amid the ruins of the Western empire, and slowly developed into the theocracy that almost dominated Europe during the latter part of the Middle Ages. &quot; Deadly &quot; sins were those for which formal ecclesiastical penance was held to be necessary, in order to save the sinner from eternal damnation; for &quot; venial &quot; sins he might obtain forgiveness, through prayer, almsgiving, and the observance of the regular fasts. We find that &quot; penitential books &quot; for the use of the confessional, founded partly on traditional practice and partly on the express decrees of synods, come into general use in the 7th century. At first they are little more than mere inventories of sins, with their appropriate ecclesiastical punishments ; gradually cases of conscience come to be discussed and decided, and the basis is laid for that system of casuistry which reached its full development in the 14th and 15th centuries. This elaboration of ecclesiastical jurisprudence, and indeed the general relation of the church to the ruder races with which it had to deal during this period, necessarily tended to encourage a somewhat external view of morality ; but a powerful counterpoise to this tendency was continually maintained by the Augustinian doctrine, transmitted through Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, and other influential writers of the philosophically barren period that intervened between the destruction of the Western empire and the rise of Scholasticism. di;eval The great effort of the scholastics to philosophize in ral harmony with the Christian dogma attained its completest result in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. But before giving a brief account of the ethical part of his system, it will be well just to notice the salient points in the long and active discussion that led up to it, the dogmatic construc tion of Anselm, the bold questions and suggestive paradoxes of Abelard, the subtle distinctions of Petrus Lombardus, and the novel Aristotelian erudition of Albertus Magnus ; nor must we overlook the Neo-Platonic mysticism of Johannes Scotus (Erigena), though separated in time and thought from the main course of scholasticism. In the pantheistic system of this earliest of the great mediajval thinkers (circ. 810-877), the chief philosophic element is supplied by the influence of Plotinus, transmitted through an unknown author of the 5th century, who assumed the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. Accordingly the ethical side of his doctrine has the same negative and ascetic char acter that we have observed in Neo-Platonism. God is the only real Being ; evil is essentially unreal and incognizable, and the concrete world of individuals only real in so far as it partakes of the divine nature ; the true aim of man s life is to return to perfect union with God out of the degraded material existence into which he has fallen. This doctrine found no immediate acceptance, and was certainly unortho dox enough to justify the condemnation which it subse quently received from Pope Honorius III.; but its influence, together with that of the Pseudo-Dionysius, had a consider able share in developing the more emotional orthodox mysticism of the 12th and 13th centuries; and Xeo- Platoniam remained a distinct element in medieval thought, though obscured by the growing influence of Aristotle, un til its revival in the age of the Renaissance. Passing on to Anselm (1033-1109), the first real scholastic of importance, we observe that the Augustinian doctrine of original sin and man s absolute need of unmerited grace is retained in his theory of salvation ; he also follows Augustine in de fining freedom as the &quot; power not to sin ; &quot; though in saying that Adam fell &quot; spontaneously&quot; and &quot; by his free choice,&quot; though not &quot; through its freedom,&quot; he has implicitly made the distinction that Petrus Lombardus afterwards expressly draws between the freedom that is opposed to necessity and freedom from the slavery to sin. Anselm further softens the statement of Augustinian predestinatiouism by explain ing that the freedom to will is not strictly lost even by fallen man ; it is inherent in a rational nature, though since Adam s sin it only exists potentially in humanity, like the faculty of sight in a dark place, except where it is made actual by grace. In a more real sense Abelard (1079-1 142) tries to establish the connexion between man s ill desert and his free consent ; boldly asserting that the inherited propensity to evil is not strictly a sin, which is only com mitted when the conscious self yields to vicious inclination. With a similar stress on the self-conscious side of moral action, he argues that Tightness of conduct depends solely on the intention ; at one time pushing this doctrine to the paradoxical assertion that all outward acts as such are indifferent. 1 In the same spirit, under the reviving in fluence of ancient philosophy (though as yet imperfectly known), he argues that the old Greek moralists, as incul cating a disinterested love of good and so implicitly love of God as the highest good were really nearer to Christianity than Judaic legalism was. Nay, further, in the Christian &quot; love to God &quot; he distinguishes the disinte rested love of God for Himself from the affection of which the real object is the happiness which God gives, and re gards the former alone as pure. The general tendency of Abelard s thought was suspiciously regarded by contem porary orthodoxy ; 2 and the over-subtlety of the last-men tioned distinction provoked vehement replies from more than one of the orthodox mystics of the age. Thus, Hugo of St Victor (1077-1141) argues that all love is necessarily so far &quot; interested&quot; that it involves a desire for union with the beloved ; and since eternal happiness consists in this union, it cannot truly be desired apart from God ; while Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) more elaborately distin guishes four stages by which the soul is gradually led from (1) merely self-regarding desire for God s aid in distress, to (2) love Him for His loving-kindness to it, then also (3) for His absolute goodness, until (4) in rare moments this love for Himself alone becomes the sole all absorbing affection. This controversy, as well as others, Petrus Lombardus en deavoured to compose by the scholastic art of taking dis tinctions, of which he was a master. His famous treatise, Libri Sententiariim, though not systematic or profound, deserved the place it long held as a text-book of Catholic theology, by its combined comprehensiveness and minute ness of view, and its sobriety of judgment. It is mainly based on Augustinian doctrine, though we find in it a dis tinct softening of the traditional antithesis between nature and grace ; somewhat anticipating the remarkable union of Aristotelian and Christian thought, which, in the succeeding century, when the study of Aristotle had been revived by the influence of the great Arabian commentators, was initiated by Albert the Great and completed by Thomas Aquinas. 1 Abelard afterwards retracted this view, at least in its extreme form ; and in fact does not seem to have been fully conscious of the difference between (1) unfulfilled intention to do an act objectively right, and (2) intention to do what is merely believed by the agent to be right. VIII. - 75
 * He was condemned by two synods, in 1121 and 1140.