Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/208

190 The Policraticus, John's most extensive work, allows full play to his characteristic genius: indeed the multitude of digressions and episodes which enliven its course is apt to distract one from appreciating its real purpose. It cannot be fairly called a satire upon the society of the time; while on the other hand it is far from being a methodical treatise on morals. The former description has this excuse, that the author touches with a light hand the follies he sees about him; but the satire, like Juvenal's, is prompted by a deep underlying seriousness: nor is it in any way the motive of the book, in which the positive ethical element greatly preponderates. The title, according to the only plausible interpretation that has been put upon it, designates it as The Statesman's Book: its alternative, sive de Nugis Curialium et Vestigiis Philosophorum, marks its two-fold aim. But the first part of the work is by no means mainly critical: the vanities of courts are thus styled by comparison with the more solid realities of philosophy which form the subject of the second part. The former deals with politics in the wide acceptation of the term, the latter with what one may term the internal polity of a man's self.

John begins in the first three books by clearing away the obstacles to the healthy life of the state, the vices and follies that impede its motion: in the next three he makes the first attempt since Augustin to frame an ideal system of government, on the basis of the necessary subordination of the secular to the religious state; a view to which we shall have occasion to return hereafter. In the second section of the work, the last two books, John passes to the individual: he proceeds from a review of the different schools of philosophy to lay down the principles of true knowledge, and seeks to determine the aim of philosophy, the assertion of the supremacy of the spirit over the senses, of the ideal over the material.