Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/106

 many centuries before, and only needed to be revived. The mere revival is infinitely to the credit of the Italian and English scholastic philosophers. To re-establish such ideas under such conditions and circumstances was to display all the character and effective force of originality. There is indeed a conceivable suggestion that the Moors of Spain, who gave to Europe from Arabic sources more than one work of Greek philosophy and science, had furnished Marsiglio in the same manner with the elements of his constitutional treatise.

The central and most striking of Marsiglio's political—ideas from which, indeed, his other political ideas are seen to radiate—is that of the sovereignty of the people. The people, he maintains, must be ultimate lawgiver and ultimate judge; the State must have a supreme executive, selected and authorised by itself. "The king's power is limited in every possible direction. He has the eye of the people or its representatives on all his actions. He may be restrained or even deposed if he overpass his prescribed bounds; and, even though his conduct be not amenable to the letter of the law, he is still subject to the final judgment of the national will. On no side is there any room for despotism; in no point is he absolute." And Ockham, in the third part of his Dialogus, goes over the same ground and arrives at the same conclusions. It is indeed arguable whether Marsiglio or Ockham was the more original writer of the two. Pope Clement, in a bull condemning the writings of Marsiglio, declared them to