Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/641

 Books and Science in the Middle Ages S47 of the courses of lectures were devoted to the explanation of Aristotle's some one of his numerous treatises — his Physics, his Meta- become physics, his treatises on logic, his Ethics, his minor works ^jJ^g^'^g^'J upon the soul, heaven and earth, etc. Only his Logic had been known to Abelard, as all his other works had been forgotten. But early in the thirteenth century all his comprehensive con- tributions to science reached the West, either from Constantinople or through the Arabs, who had brought them to Spain. The Latin translations were bad and obscure, and the lecturer had enough to do to give some meaning to them, to explain what the Arab philosophers had said of them, and, finally, to reconcile them to the teachings of Christianity. Aristotle was, of course, a pagan. He was uncertain whether Veneration the soul continued to exist after death ; he had never heard of the Bible and knew nothing of the salvation of man through Christ. One would have supposed that he would have been promptly rejected with horror by the ardent Christian believers of the Middle Ages. But the teachers of the thirteenth cen- tury were fascinated by his logic and astonished at his learn- ing. The great theologians of the time, Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), did not hesitate to prepare elaborate commentaries upon all his works. He was called " The Philosopher " ; and so fully were scholars convinced that it had pleased God to permit Aristotle to say the last word upon each and every branch of knowledge that they humbly accepted him, along with the Bible, the church fathers, and the canon and Roman law, as one of the unquestioned authorities which together formed a complete guide for humanity in conduct and in every branch of science. The term " scholasticism " is commonly given to the beliefs and Scholas- method of discussion of the medieval professors. To those who later outgrew the fondness for logic and the supreme respect for Aristotle, scholasticism, with its neglect of Greek and Roman literature, came to seem an arid and profitless plan of education. Yet, if we turn over the pages of the wonderful works of