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INTRO since the time when Carneades and the disciples of the Later

DUCTION. Academy proposed no longer to aspire to the possession of

the effects

Influence dis- positive or absolute truth, but to rest contented in the hope produced by that they had attained to the. probable. It was one of the sive attention effects, and undoubtedly a very pernicious effect, of the

a too exclu

to formal

Logic.

almost exclusive study of the Categories, that the men of this time were beginning to imagine that neither knowledge nor faith was of any assured value or certainty unless reducible to formal logical demonstration; not merely that conformity was deemed essential to those laws of thought of which the syllogism is the embodiment, but that all belief was held to be susceptible of proof in a series of concatenated propositions like a theorem in geometry. It was consequently only in compliance with the fashion of his time that Berengar thus moulded the form of his first treatise, and incurred the ridicule of Lanfranc for his pedantry. In method he followed, while in argument he challenged, the traditions he had inherited.

The spirit in which Lanfranc sought to defend the opposite interpretation indicates no advance upon the conventional. treatment; and the whole tenor of his argument reveals rather the ecclesiastic alarmed for the authority of his order than the dispassionate enquirer after truth. It must, howMental cha- ever, be admitted that the general tone of Berengar's treatise Berengar. was ill-calculated to disarm hostility. If his mental charac

racteristics of

teristics may be inferred from thence, we should conclude that he was one in whom the purely logical faculty overwhelmed and silenced his emotional nature; one unable to 'comprehend that union of faith and reason which commends itself to those in whom the religious sentiment maintains. its power.' The mind of the archbishop to some extent resembled that of the archdeacon. Then came the inevitable collision. The one sternly asserting the claims of authority; the other contemptuously demonstrating the rigid conclusions of logic. At first it seemed that the former would secure an easy triumph. Berengar, to save his life, capitulated at the summons of the second Lateran Council, and formally recanted his opinions; but, in a short time, he had revoked

his recantation, and again betaking himself to those weapons of logic which he wielded with such remarkable adroitness, successfully parried the attacks of his opponents. The decisions of three successive Councils vainly denounced his tenets. Protected by the powerful arm of Hildebrand, the archdeacon of Angers died in full possession of his honours, unsilenced and unconvinced. The following year died Lanfranc, and the mitre of his episcopacy descended to his pupil Anselm.

INTRO

DUCTION.

b. 1083 (?).

But before Anselm succeeded to the see of Canterbury, Anselm. another controversy had arisen, which unmistakably attested d. 1109. how the chord somewhat roughly touched by Berengar had found response in the growing thoughtfulness of the time. Speculations once confined to solitary thinkers were now beginning to be heard in the schools and to be discussed in the cloister. It was at the request of his fellow monks, as Anselm himself tells us', that he entered upon those subtle enquiries wherein we find the echo of Augustine's finest thought, and the anticipation of Descartes. But it is rather as participant in the controversy which would appear to mark the true commencement of the scholastie era, that this illustrious thinker claims our attention, and here, before we become involved in the great metaphysical dispute, it

1 Præfatio ad Monologion.

'It may appear at first singular that the thought which suggested itself to the mind of a monk at Bec should still be the problem of metaphysical theology; and theology must, when followed out, become metaphy. sical; metaphysics must become theological. This same thought seems, with no knowledge of its mediæval origin, to have forced itself on Descartes, was reasserted by Leibnitz, if not rejected was thought insufficient by Kant, revived in another form by Schelling and Hegel; latterly has been discussed with singular fulness and ingenuity by M. de Rémusat. Yet will it less surprise the more profoundly reflective, who cannot but perceive how soon and how inevitably the mind arrives at the verge of

human thought; how it cannot but
encounter this same question, which
in another form divided in either
avowed or unconscious antagonism,
Plato and Aristotle, Anselm and his
opponents, (for opponents he had of
no common subtlety), Leibnitz and
Locke; which Kant failed to reconcile;
which his followers have perhaps
bewildered by a new and intricate
phraseology more than elucidated;
which modern eclecticism harmonises
rather in seeming than in reality; the
question of questions; our primary,
elemental, it may be innate or in-
stinctive, or acquired and traditional,
idea, conception, notion, conviction
of Gop, of the Immaterial, the Eter-
nal, the Infinite.' Milman, Hist. Lat.
Christianity, Bk. viii c. 5.

DUCTION.

INTRO becomes necessary to turn aside awhile to examine briefly a preliminary and not unimportant question.

Dictum of

Cousin with

Scholastic

the

It was originally asserted by Cousin, and his dictum has respect to the been repeatedly quoted, that the scholastic philosophy had Philosophy. its origin in a sentence from the Isagoge of Porphyry as interpreted by Boethius. 'Scholasticism,' he says, 'was born at Paris and there it died; a sentence from Porphyry,-a single ray from the literature of the ancient world,-called it into being; the same literature, which when more completely revealed, extinguished it'. This statement, startling though it may appear, is probably substantially correct; it is certainly not conceived by Cousin in any contemptuous spirit; but it has been insisted on by a later writer in another tone, and apparently under considerable misapprehension with respect to its real import; and a fact which simply points to, the scantiness of the sources whence the earlier schoolmen derived their inspiration, has been wrested into fresh proof of their proneness to convert a purely verbal or grammatical distinction into a lengthened controversy. It may accordingly be worth while here to endeavour to ascertain, in what sense influences which so long controlled the whole course of education and learning can with accuracy be referred to so narrow and apparently inadequate a source. The passage in Porphyry, which is nothing more than a Porphyry. passing glance at a question familiar to his age but not admitting of discussion in an introduction to a treatise on logic and grammar, is to the following effect, Having premised that he must equally avoid questions of grave importance and those of a trifling character, he goes on to say:Thus, with respect to genera and species, whether

The original

passage from

1 The terseness of the French is
not easily preserved:-
:-un rayon dé-
robé à l'antiquité la produisit; l'an-
tiquité tout entière l'étouffa...... 'Il
faut supposer,' he adds, le monde
ancien détruit, la philosophie ancien-
ne ensevelie avec la civilisation dont
elle faisait partie, et la longue et
brillante polémique qui avait fait la
vie même de cette philosophie, ré-
duite à la phrase de Porphyre dans
la traduction latine de Boëce. C'est

sur cette phrase et autour d'elle que va peu à peu se reformer une philosophie nouvelle. Les commencements de cette philosophie seront bien faibles, il est vrai, et se ressentiront de la profonde barbarie du temps; mais une fois née, la puissance de l'éternal problème la développera et lui ouvrira une carrière immense.' Fragments Philosophiques, Abélard, pp. 82, 88, 89. ed. 1840.

!

INTRODUCTION.

known to the Middle Ages

medium of two trans

lations.

they have a substantial existence or exist only as mere concepts of the intellect,-whether, supposing them to have a substantial existence, they are material or immaterial,— and again whether they exist independently of sensible objects or in them and as part of them,-I shall refrain from enquiring. For this is a question of the greatest profundity and demanding lengthened investigation'. It is to be noted that of this passage two translations were familiar to the scholars of the Middle Ages: the first that in the translation of Porphyry by Victorinus, to which Boethius appended a commentary in the form of a dialogue; the second that in The passage the translation made by Boethius himself and accompanied through the by a second and fuller commentary, also from his pen. In the interval between the composition of these two commentaries it is evident, as Cousin has very clearly pointed out, that the views of Boethius had undergone an important change. In the first he insists upon an ultra-Realistic interpretation, and would seem to have misapprehended Porphyry's meaning; in the second, he inclines to a Nominalistic view, and pronounces that genus and species have no objective existence. Our concern however is with two important facts which appear beyond dispute:-first, that the passage in Porphyry was known to the Middle Ages through the medium of two translations; secondly, that in both his commentaries Boethius recognises the question involved as one of primary importance. Of this the following Criticism of passages are conclusive evidence: 'Hæc se igitur Porphyrius breviter mediocriterque promittit exponere. Non enim in- tion of Victroductionis vice fungeretur, si ea nobis a primordio fundaret, ad quæ nobis hæc tam clara introductio præparatur. Servat

1 Αὐτίκα περὶ γενῶν τε καὶ εἰδῶν, τὸ μὲν εἴτε ὑφέστηκεν εἴτε καὶ ἐν μόναις ψιλαῖς ἐπινοίαις κεῖται, εἴτε καὶ ὑφεστη κότα σώματά ἐστιν ἢ ἀσώματα, καὶ πότερον χωριστὰ ἢ ἐν τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς καὶ περὶ ταῦτα ὑφεστῶτα παραιτήσομαι λέγειν βαθυτάτης οὔσης τῆς τοιαύτης πραγματείας, καὶ ἄλλης μείζονος δεομένης ἐξετάσεως.

2 Cousin, Fragments Philosophiques, Philosophie Scholastique, Abé

lard, pp. 92, 93. ed. 1840. Dean
Mansel is of opinion that Boe-
thius in his second commentary is to
be regarded as a conceptualist, see
Artis Logica Rudimenta, Appendix,
p. 160.

3 Cousin's remark that Boethius
n'avait pas l'air d'y attacher une
grande importance, appears to be in
no way warranted by the text of
Boethius himself.

Boethius in his Commentary on the transla

torinus.

DUCTION.

INTRO igitur introductionis modum doctissima parcitas disputandi ut ingredientium viam ad obscurissimas rerum caligines aliquo quasi doctrinæ suæ lumine temperaret. Dicit enim apud antiquos alta et magnifica quæstione disserta, quæ ipse nunc parce breviterque composuit. Quid autem de his a priscis philosophiæ tractatoribus dissertum sit, breviter ipse tangit et præterit. Tum Fabius :-Quid illud, inquit, est? Et ego:-Hoc, inquam, quod ait se omnino prætermittere genera ipsa et species, utrum vere subsistant, an intellectu solo et mente teneantur, an corporalia ista sint an incorporalia: et utrum separata, an ipsis sensibilibus juncta. De his sese quoniam alta esset disputatio, tacere promisit: nos autem adhibito moderationis freno, mediocriter unumquodque tangamus'.

Criticism of Boethius in his Commentary on his own version.

Boethius as interpreted by Cousin.

The foregoing passage is from the first Dialogue on the translation by Victorinus: the following are from the Commentary by Boethius on his own translation:-'Sunt autem quæstiones, quæ sese reticere promittit et perutiles; et secretæ, et temptatæ quidem a doctis viris nec a pluribus dissoluta......"

'Ipsa enim genera et species subsistunt quidem aliquo modo, intelliguntur vero alio modo et sunt incorporalia, sed sensibilibus juncta subsistunt insensibilibus. Intelliguntur vero præter corpora, ut per semetipsa subsistentia, ac non in aliis esse suum habentia. Sed Plato genera et species cæteraque non modo intelligi universalia, verum etiam esse atque præter corpora subsistere putat: Aristoteles vero intelligi quidem incorporalia atque universalia, sed subsistere insensibilibus putat, quorum dijudicare sententias aptum esse non duxi. Altioris enim est philosophiæ, idcirco vero studiosius Aristotelis sententiam exsecuti sumus, non quod eam maxime probaremus, sed quod hic liber ad Prædicamenta conscriptus est, quorum Aristotelis auctor est3.'

The view taken by Boethius of that which he thus conceived to be the Aristotelian theory respecting Universals,

1 Boethius, Dialogus 1. ed. Basil.

pp. 7 and 8.

2 Boethius, Commentariorum in

Porphyrium a se Translatum, Lib. 1 ed. Basil. p. 54.

3 Ibid. p. 56.

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