Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/80

62 a species of the animal kingdom, and that if the genus perish, the species must perish with it. The immortality of man is the warrant for the immortality of the whole creation. All nature will return to its first causes.

The question about the survival of evil is more embarrassing, and it cannot be concealed that the Scot does in some places seem to affirm something like a relique of the doctrine of eternal damnation. But in the first place this doctrine is much less plainly declared in the books of The Division of Nature than in the treatise On Predestination; and the latter is an occasional work, written for a special purpose and hampered by its conditions; the former is the representative book of the philosopher’s life. In the second place, when a man makes use of conventional language and also of expressions entirely opposed to it and strikingly original, we cannot hesitate as to which is the genuine utterance of his own opinion: and the declaration that eternal torment is totally incompatible with the truth that the whole world is set free by the incarnation of the divine Word, is made in distinct terms and closely interwoven with the fabric of John Scotus's reasoning. An eternity of suffering and evil is irreconcilable with an eternity of goodness and life and blessedness. There is no room for it in his system. He files away its edges and rounds off its corners until its orthodox shape has disappeared. First he denounces the 'irrational' folly of trying to combine a sensible hell with a spiritual existence: the punishment of the wicked must stand solely in their memory of past wrong. New evil cannot arise then; they will be pained by the phantasies of their old misdeeds. But, proceeds John, though they be deprived of blessedness, something will yet remain to them: the 'natural goods' in which they were created cannot be taken away. Doubt less all gifts are made in proportion to man's capacity of receiving; but the philosopher is sure that this capacity can and will grow and develop until evil is all swallowed up in good, There may be degrees and stages in happi-