Page:History of Philosophy.djvu/25

§ 1.] There was at first little change in these relations, when the remains of ancient science passed over into the culture of the present peoples of Europe as the determining forces of their intellectual life. Content and task of that which the Middle Ages called philosophy coincided with the conception held by later antiquity. And yet the meaning of philosophy underwent an essential change by finding philosophy's task already performed, in a certain sense, by religion. For religion, too, afforded not only a sure conviction as a rule for the guidance of personal life, but also in connection with this, a general theoretical view of all reality, which was the more philosophical in its character, as the dogmas of Christianity had been formulated entirely under the influence of ancient philosophy. Under these circumstances, during the unbroken dominance of Church doctrine, there remained for philosophy, for the most part, only the position of a handmaid to ground, develop, and defend dogma scientifically. But just by this means philosophy came into a certain opposition to theology as regards method; for what the latter taught on the ground of divine revelation, the former was to win and set forth by means of human knowledge.

But the infallible consequence of this relation was, that the freer individual thinking became in its relation to the Church, the more independently philosophy began the solution of the problem which she had in common with religion; from presentation and defence of doctrine she passed to its criticism, and finally, in complete independence of religious interests, sought to derive her teaching from the sources which she thought she possessed in the "natural light" of human reason and experience. The opposition to theology, as regards methods, grew in this way to an opposition in the subject matter, and modern philosophy as "world-wisdom" set itself over against Church dogma. However manifold the aspects which this relation took on, shading from a clinging attachment to a passionate conflict, the office of "philosophy" remained always that which