Page:Science and medieval thought. The Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900 (IA sciencemedievalt00allbrich).pdf/44

 its sacraments, yet therein it found itself in a dilemma between the conceptions of a Creator working under conditions, and of a spirit imma- nent in matter; and when theological philosophy culminated in St Thomas, and was fixed by him as it now rules in Rome, this difficulty was rather con- cealed in his system than resolved'. Every scheme of

profitentur, se studeant laudabiliter exercere, nec philosophos se ostendant, sed satagant fieri theodocti: nec loquantur in lingua populi, et populi linguam hebræam cum azotica con- fundentes" [azotica or arethica means the profane tongue (Ducange); Hebrew being a Sancta lingua] The pantheistic outburst of the later twelfth century, although deriving in part from Erigena, was probably fed by the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias. This commentary was widely read in Arabic and Arab-latin translations, the latter of which were made, as we know (v. A. Jourdain, p. 123 and seq.), by Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187). Alexander's more material interpretation of an involved the return of Ali into God; hence no resurrection, no future life. In his followers these doctrines become grosser and grosser, and, fused with other Arabian doctrine, prepared for and afterwards strengthened the Averroism of Padua, in the xv-Xvith century, in which systom it was taught that the universal soul, dipping for the time into the individual man, is at death resnmed into the universal soul. This virtual denial of personal immortality was of course bitterly resented by the Church. (Vid. p. 68, note.) Thus from the thirteenth century onwards pantheistic infidelity survived and even defied the menaces and the punishments of the Church.

1 Both Albert and Aquinas were inconsistont. Hauréau points out that St Thomas was a vitalist in physics, an animist in metaphysics, a nominalist in philosophy, and a realist in