Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 17.djvu/723

* SCHOLASTICISM. 653 SCHOLASTICISM. speculative science of the Middle Ages, is some- times included under I lie term scholasticism. This, hout'vi'r, is oliviuusly an exaggeration, since medi;eval speculalion ran in such markedly di- verging channels as the Arabian, Jewish, and Greek phiU)supliies, while against the current of genuine scholasticism there were all along two directly anti-scholastic movements — pure ration- alism and mysticism. Again, scholasticism is not unfrequently made to stand for a metliod of demonstration chielly characterized by lideism, apriorism, logomachy, endless subtlety, and liair- splitting, whose sole organ is supposed to be the deductive syllogism. This interpretation, liow- evei-, is justified only as regards the method of its adherents of inferior rank, and of its for- mative and declining periods. Scholasticism is essentiallv a Weltanschatiung — a synthetic view of the universe, embracing the world, man, and God with their inter-relations, in so far as this is attainable by the aid of experience, reason, and revelation cooperating in due subordination. Thus regarded it is, sub- jectively, one of the countless efi'orts of the human mind to obtain a unified comprehension of reality. Objectively and in its developed form, scholasticism is a systematized result of this striving for unity, an orderly synthetic view of reality. Among the peculiarities which on the whole diff'erentiate it from other world-views the fol- lowing especially deserve attention: (1) The completeness of its criteria, and consequently of the materials which, resulting from their co- ordination, combine in its composition. Con- sciousness, sense-experience, intellectual intui- tion, reasoning, inductive and deductive demon- stration, human testimony conjoin in it with divine revelation in the endeavor to ascertain the ultimate nature of the reality that presents itself to the mind. Sense-experience and the inductive process were, it is true, inadequately and un- critically employed by the mediieval scholastics, but this defect has been made good by their modern successors. (2) Its method combines analj-sis with synthesis, induction with deduc- tion — a union which, harmonizing the process of inquiry and proof with man's dual nature, can alone, it is asserted, engender intellectual per- fection. (3) The continuity of its evolution. The beginnings of scholasticism are traced his- torically to Socrates, the results of whose search for the pemianent element in the contingent, the universal in the particular, w-ere devefoped by Plato. The Platonic system was pruned of its idealistic excrescences and its extremely dualistic view- of human nature by Aristotle. Into the Greek synthesis Saint Augustine built many of the conceptions derived from Christian revela- tion: and thus enlarged and interpreted, it passed tlirough the more immediately formative stages of the earlier iliddle Ages, and through the hands of Saint Anselm. to receive a mature develop- ment in the thirteenth century under the influ- ence of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Then followed the age of decline and arrested progress. In the second half of the nineteenth century it came forth in renewed vigor, and has since been assimi- lating to its organism the results of philosophical criticism and empirical research. The scholastic synthesis is therefore the outcome of a rational eclecticism' on independent and original lines. Its philosophical content is mainly derived from Aristotle, though in following him the schoolmen were by no means .servile. Other sys- tems, I'latonism, Xeol'latonism, Stoicism, I'ythagoreanism, as well as the philosophical speculations of the Fathers, enter into its body. Us theological content is the truths of revelation as gleaned from the Bible, ecclesiastical tradi- tion, and the authoritative pronouncements of the Church. Scholasticism has also been defined as the application of Aristotle to theology, or the expression oj the facts and realities of revela- tion in the mind-language of the Peripatetics. The definition is true so far as it goes, but is inadequate. The inference, however, should imt be drawn that the Catholic Church has com- mitted herself to Aristotle's philosophy. .She makes use of it, indeed, as a standard of expres- sion, but she indorses none of its tenets that are not necessarily accepted by plain ccimmon sense; for, like every other philosophy, it contains ele- ments iniplieate<l in the very nature of the mind, combined with other peculiar debatable features which are the product of human ingenuity. HiSTOKY 01' THE ScilOL.SrlC MOVEMENT. The more innnediate history of mediieval scholasti- cism may be divided into four periods: ( 1 ) The formative period, reaching from the ninth to the closing of the twelfth century. (2) The period of maturity. (3) The period of decline. (4) The subsequent stage culminating in what is known as Neo-scholasticism of the present day. Two distinct currents run through the history of media'val speculation — the strictly scliulaiitic and the mi/stical. Indications of the divergence of these two streams are noticeable in the Patris- tic period, but the distinction became broad and deep in the Middle Ages. Scholasticism repre- sents the speculative, mysticism the contempla- tive phase of thought. Scholasticism strives to comprehend truth by the investigations of rea- son; mysticism by the methods of contemplation, by the sympathies and emotions of the heart. The two schools, however, were at one in their reer- ence for Christian truths, and whatever their differences on other points, they supplemented each other's teaching and, on the whole, so counterbalanced one another as to prevent cither from pushing its doctrine to a dangerous ex- treme. During the first period the broader outlines of the scholastic synthesis were gradually laid. The first attempts were vast accumulations of raw material, general cyclopicdias or summaries of the intellectual possessions of the age, like the Otigines of Isidore of Seville, the Dc X at lira Rerum of Bede. and the De Universo of Khabanus Maurus. Gradually the special philosophical problems difl'erentiate themselves, and the broken threads of the ancient and patristic traditions are gathered up. The dominant subject of stidy was dialectic, and the question of the nature of universals, with which the period may properly be said to have opened, mainly absorbed atten- tion. There speedily developed a ridiculous despotism of formal logic, mainly due to the wrong philosophical orientation of the early schoolmen owing principally to their meagre sup- ply of philosophical literature. The earlier scholastics drew their doctrines from conllicting sources. Mutilating one author, misunderstand- ing another, ignoring in all the historical and logical relation, they elaliorate<l irregular sys- tems without always knowing how to escape in-