CHAPTER IV.
PHILOSOPHY.
Theera of the subversion of the western empire,A.D.476, presents a point from which a step forward, and a change for the better in human affairs, was distinctly marked. It was one from which we may most advantageously survey the field of political and moral philosophy.
The exterminating swords of barbarian conquerors left scarcely a vestige of former systems behind them. A deluge of new influences prevailed, and the moral aspect of earth was transformed. Men came upon a broader stage, amid more expanding scenes, and were soon acting a new character under impulses and in situations before unknown. Standing on this elevation, we see that old things have passed away, and all things have become new; mental pursuits in general have assumed an augmented interest, and especially is philosophy improved in its influence, accelerated in its progress, and enlarged in its extent. As the gorgeous but unsatisfactory pictures of oriental mysticism gave place to the fervor and fluctuations of more intellectual destinies in Greece—gleams of grandeur and wide tracks of gloom—and as this in turn fell before the gradual rise, broad dominion, and fatal decline of mighty Rome, so the latter sank in darkness, but the night of its tomb was soon seen to rest on a horizon of immortal day, which eventually rose to the zenith with augmented splendor. The Hyrcinian forest teemed with nascent states, and islands which the empress of the seven hills had known only to despise, assumed an imposing attitude to produce a language and dictate laws over realms wider than Rome ever knew.
Greek and Roman philosophy comprised the free efforts of reason to acquire a knowledge of first principles and the laws of nature,without a clear consciousness of the method most conducive to such attainments. The philosophy of the middle ages endeavored to attain the same end, but under the influence of a principle superior to itself, derived from revelation. In the course of transitional progress, it fell into a spirit exclusively dialectic, whence it emerged through fresh and independent exertions toward the discovery of fundamental principles. Thenceforth a combination of all human knowledge, in a more complete and systematic form, has tended with unfaltering success to explore, found, and define the principles of philosophy as a science. This, like every other element of cotemporaneous civilization, had its successive periods of origin, foundation, and development, stretching over a wide space, of which the twelfth century formed the middle line. Previous to that epoch, the various elements were disengaging themselves, and entering into a higher, as well as more practical amalgamation, which was destined rapidly to achieve the widest possible good.
The early fathers of the Greek church went deeply into the current of oriental speculation, and they are worthy of special research, since so many golden grains of philosophy may be picked up in that sacred stream. It has already been shown, that by a range of imaginative reasoning, which soared far above the world of sense and outward experience, Plato sought a return to the supreme Godhead, infinitely exalted above all nature, deriving his chief proofs from immediate intuition and primeval revelation, or profound internal reminiscence. This fundamental tenet of the prior existence of the human soul was closely allied to the Indian doctrine of the metempsychosis, and, regarded in a literal sense, must be equally rejected by true Christian philosophy. But if we are to consider this Platonic notion of reminiscence under a more spiritual view, as the resuscitation of the consciousness of the divine image implanted in our souls, or the soul's perception of that image, this theory would then coincide with evangelical doctrine, and we ought not to wonder that this Platonic mode of thinking became the first great philosophy of revelation which was fashioned and promulgated in a mediæval form. It was most adapted to captivate the profoundest Christian thinkers, and pour a sweet solace into their aspiring hearts; hence, the prevalency of this system in the schools, until the end of the twelfth, and the beginning of the thirteenthcentury. Many leading minds even believed that they discovered in it the types of their own religious views. The symbolical fancies of Timæus respecting physical phenomena, were taken up with spirit, and erroneous ideas respecting the laws of creation long prevailed, although the mathematicians of Alexandria had demonstrated their fallacies. Nevertheless, under various forms, the echo of Platonism was propagated from Augustin to Alcuin, far into the middle ages.
The philosophy of Aristotle was based upon ample and substantial logic, and from the beginning was a wonderfulorganum, admirably adapted to the uses of scientific truth. His perspicacious, piercing, and comprehensive intellect reduced all the historical and philosophic principles of preceding ages and of his own time, to the exactest system, and for twenty centuries he remained the master-guide. Considered merely as an effort of unassisted reason, the ethics of Aristotle have an extraordinary interest; but as a scientific introduction to divine revelation, and in all important moral questions, the Stagyrite is far from being so valuable a guide as Plato. It was an ominous gift to western Europe, when the works of Aristotle were brought from the East, translated into Arabic, and thence turned again into Latin almost as obscure. The Christian philosophers belonging to the first period of the middle ages, such as Bernard and Abelard of France, Anselm, and Scotus Erigena, the cotemporary of Alfred of England, were incomparably more luminous and forcible than the schoolmen of succeeding times, being much more free from idle logic and empty subtleties. Apparently, it would have been much better if the powerful emperors and potentates who patronized science had brought away with them, from the Latin empire at Constantinople, those philological treasures which there abounded, instead of fostering a universal and irresistible rage for the most metaphysical of authors, and whom it was quite impossible for them to comprehend. But the strange proceeding was overruled for the greatest benefit. The whole foundation of the scholastic philosophy was doubtless thoroughly false, and inflicted great injury, not only on theology, but on the whole range of mediæval thought. But when the evil became most formidable, a mighty service was rendered to mankind, when acute and sagacious men like Thomas Aquinas, endowedwith exalted philosophical talents, adopted the old Aristotelian rationalism, and founded thereon a system in which they attempted to reconcile philosophy with faith, and thus avert from their age the dangerous consequences of false dialectics. This, however, was no true reconciliation, and the rationalism of the middle age afterward broke into a violent collision with the divine doctrines to which it had been unnaturally allied. But before this extreme was arrived at, the resuscitation of a nobler rationalism began, and gradually obtained the mastery over leading minds, producing a radical change in the whole spirit of literature and science. Philosophy passed through a very important renovation, and its profoundest votaries began to set themselves wholly free from the authority of Aristotle in his own department, and proceeded to the unfettered investigation of the deepest and most solemn problems. Their main purpose, indeed, was, as one of them declared, to compare the tenets of former teachers with the original handwriting of God, the world and nature.
The now almost forgotten contest between theRealistsandNominalistsof the middle ages, exercised a decided influence upon the final establishment of the experimental sciences. These were the two philosophic schools which labored respectively to bridge the apparently impassable "gap between thought and actual existence, and the relations between the mind which discerns, and the objects which are discerned." According to Humboldt, "The Nominalists, who only admitted a subjective existence to belong to general ideas in the imagination of man, after many oscillations, ultimately in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries became the victorious party. From that great aversion to mere abstractions, they first arrived at the necessity of experience, and of increasing the physical basis of knowledge. This direction of their ideas had, at any rate, a secondary influence upon empirical natural science; but even while the views of the Realists still prevailed, the acquaintance with the Arabian literature had diffused a love for Nature's works, in happy contrast with the study of theology, which otherwise absorbed every thing. Thus we see, that in the different periods of the Middle Ages, to which we have been perhaps accustomed to attribute too great a unity of character, in very different courses, namely, in the ideal and the experimental way, the great work of distantdiscoveries, and the possibility of their being of avail in the extension of the general ideas of the earth, were gradually advanced."
The Arabians cultivated philosophy with characteristic ardor, and founded upon it the fame of many ingenious and erudite men. Al-Farabi, in Transoxiana, died in 950. It is affirmed that he spoke seventy languages, wrote upon all the sciences, and collected them into an encyclopædia. Al-Gazeli of Thous, who submitted religion to the test of philosophy, died in 1111. Avicenna, from the vicinity of Chyraz, who died in 1037, was a profound philosopher, as well as a celebrated physician. Averrhoes of Cordova, was the most erudite commentator on the works of Aristotle, and died in 1198. The system of the great Macedonian metaphysician was well fitted to the mathematical genius of the Arabians, and they worshiped him as a sort of divinity. According to their belief, all philosophy was to be found in his writings, and they explained every problem according to his arbitrary rules. In the preceding chapter, we have seen with what success the Arabians cultivated all the sciences; and let us here add that, while of all their studies, philosophy was the one in particular which penetrated most rapidly into the West, and had the greatest influence in the schools of Europe, it was the one, in fact, the progress of which was the least real. The ardent sons of Shem were more ingenious than profound, more abstract than practical, and attached themselves rather to the subtleties of fancy than to the substantial ideas of reason. They possessed many qualities which enabled them to dazzle, but few attributes of a character adapted to instruct. More enthusiastic than enterprising, they were willing to place themselves under the supreme dictation of another, rather than to feed their own minds at the original sources of knowledge. They gathered up much that had been produced by their superiors in the East, and brought it forward as the nourishment of still nobler races destined to succeed them; but they produced little that was native to themselves, especially in the realm of philosophy, and now exert absolutely no influence on western mind.
The human spirit was not less active and indomitable in the middle age than at earlier periods; and although it was placed under the severest religious restrictions, it still sought to render to itself an account of its speculative belief. The more methodicalsystem of instruction which originated in the cloisters, and ascended thence to the universities, gave rise to diversified sects, whose impassioned conflicts occasioned increased liberty of disquisition. For a long time the scholastic philosophy was exercised in a circle it did not itself trace, and which it dared not pass; but meanwhile it was approaching emancipation, and grew finally into a bolder strength and traversed broader realms. Still it was not thought in that exact form and absolute freedom which should characterize philosophy, and the pedantic system therefore ended with the age it was created to serve.
The scholasticism which was so marked a peculiarity of the age of Leo X., was the labor of intellect in the service of faith, and we know its starting point, its progress, and its end. It arose with the new society of that formative era, and arrived at perfect dominion after having been delivered from all the ruins of the ancient civilization, when the soil of Europe had become more firm and capable of receiving the foundations upon which a nobler and broader social compact might arise. Charlemagne, who with one hand arrested the Saracens in the South, and with the other resisted the barbarians of the North, became the type and leader of western civilization in the dawn of the third great period; and, succeeded by Charles the Bald and Alfred the Great, carefully fanned the sparks of ancient culture, in order to rekindle the flame of progressive science. It was he who first opened the schools, and originated scholasticism. As the Mysteries of olden times had been the primary source of Greek philosophy, so the convents of the eighth century were the cradle of the ethical systems we still possess and desire to improve.
Scholasticism commenced in the absolute submission of philosophy to theology, advanced to the separation of these two spheres of mental exercise, and culminated in the entire independence of thought. The first epoch comprised, with the inspired Scriptures, the Christian fathers generally, and especially those of the Latin church, of whom Augustine was the chief. The little knowledge in this department that had escaped barbarism was then principally contained in the meagre writings of Boethius, born in 470, and senator of Theodoric; of Capella, born at Madaura, in Africa, about 474; of Mamert, at Vienna, who died in the year 477; ofCassiodorus, who flourished in the first half of the sixth century; of the Venerable Bede, who opened the chief sources of British civilization at the end of the seventh century; and of that other Anglo-Saxon, Alcuin, born at York, 726, and whom Charlemagne placed on the heights of mediæval culture, at the head of the regeneration of mind at large. John Scot, or Johannes Scotus Erigena, as he was called because an Irishman, lived long at the court of Charles the Bald, and afterward returned to England at the invitation of Alfred the Great, to teach at Oxford, where he died in 886, expressed the great text of his cotemporaries which they all labored to expound and exemplify: "There are not two studies, one of philosophy, and the other of religion; true philosophy is true religion, and true religion is true philosophy."
Anselm, born in Piedmont in 1034, Prior of Bec in Normandy, and, at the time of his death, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the true metaphysician of this epoch. He was called the second Saint Augustine, and his writings achieved a remarkable progress. To him is accredited the argument, which draws from the idea alone of an absolute maximum of greatness, of beauty, and of goodness, the demonstration of the existence of its object, which can be only God. This was doubtless inspired by the genius of Christian idealism, and was so effectively elaborated by Saint Anselm that it is supposed to have extended its influence even down to Leibnitz and Descartes.
Another beautiful classic spirit, who struggled and triumphed in the midst of mediæval gloom was Abelard. Born near Nantes, in 1079, and having acquired all the strength that could be furnished by provincial knowledge, he went to Paris, where from a pupil he soon became a rival of the most renowned masters, and thenceforth for a long time in dialectics ruled supreme. He attracted such multitudes of scholars from all parts of Europe, that, as himself said, the hotels were neither sufficient to contain them, nor the ground to nourish them. He moved the church and the state, eclipsed Roscellinus and Champeaux, having Arnold of Brescia among his friendly disciples, and a powerful adversary in the great Bernard. We are told that this "Bossuet of the twelfth century" was handsome, was a poet, and musician. He wrote songs which amused the refined, gave lectures which absorbed the profound, andboth as canon and professor, was regarded with the most absolute devotion by that noble creature, Heloise, who loved like Theresa the saint. As a hero who was active to reform abuses and wise to enlighten barbarism, the chief of an advancing school, and the martyr of exalted opinions, Abelard was indeed an extraordinary personage.
Nominalism and Realism found a new competitor on the philosophic stage when the advanced and victorious system of Conceptualism was established by Abelard. Of this school, John of Salisbury was an enlightened and polished disciple. To him and his co-laborer in the same faith and age, Peter Lombard, succeeded the three great masters who represented the succeeding epoch. Albert the Great, born in Suabia, was by turns professor at Cologne and Paris. In 1260 he was bishop of Ratisbon, but soon withdrew from that post to devote himself exclusively to his philosophical pursuits at Cologne, where he died in 1280. Thomas Aquinas was of a rich and illustrious family, who wished to give him a good position in the world. But he declined all secular honors, and became a Dominican, that he might devote himself entirely to philosophy. He is said to have been an incomparable teacher, and was called the Angel of the School. His birth occurred near Naples, in 1225; he studied under Albert, both at Cologne and Paris, died in 1274, and was canonized in 1323. He was not so scientific as his master, nor so mystical as his compatriot, Bonaventura. He could not dream of modern equality; but, as a Christian philosopher he recommended humanity toward the persecuted, and exemplified the high morality he taught. The English Duns Scotus, born at Dunston, in Northumberland, according to others at Duns, in Ireland, near 1275, possessed a mind of uncommon firmness and powerful action. Physics and mathematics were his forte, while more spiritual themes won the preference and exercised the skill of Albert and Thomas. Cotemporaries named the first the seraphic Doctor, and the second the angelic Doctor, but the third was characterized by another epithet more descriptive of his genius, namely, the subtile, Doctor subtilis.
Roger Bacon, born in 1214, and whose great scientific capacities were alluded to in the preceding chapter, was a man who stood alone in the thirteenth century on account of his linguistic skilland attainments in philosophy. The poor persecuted Franciscan was three centuries in advance of his age, but, despite all difficulties, he did much to promote a movement of mental independence which, soon after his death made itself rapidly manifest. The separation of philosophy from theology began to be perfected, and the destruction of scholasticism was thus secured. Roscelin, a canon of Compiègne, did not a little toward the attainment of this end, but much more was accomplished by an English pupil of Duns Scotus, at the commencement of the fourteenth century. He was named John Occam, born in the county of Surrey, and is often called simply Occam. He was a successful teacher at Paris, under Philip le Bel, at the epoch when the political powers strove to emancipate themselves from the ecclesiastical power. The monk sided with the sovereign, and wrote against the pretensions of pope Boniface VIII. Afterward he said to the emperor Louis of Bavaria, "Defend me with the sword, and I will defend you with the pen," and in like manner resisted pope John XXII. A man so bold in politics could not have been timid in philosophy, and his persevering courage procured him the name of Doctor invincibilis. The spirit of independence was everywhere aroused under the auspices of Occam, so that the old schools were quickened, and new masters were produced. Walter Burleigh flourished about 1337, and wrote commentaries on Aristotle, Porphyry, etc., while professor at Paris and Oxford. He was author of the first history of philosophy written in the middle age. Marsile of Inghen, founder of the university of Heidelberg, died in 1394. Thomas of Strasburg, author of a Commentary on The Master of Sentences, died in 1357. Thomas of Bradwardin, Archbishop of Canterbury, was not only a mathematician of uncommon power, but a great proficient in the more literary departments of high philosophy. He died in 1439.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after the heated conflicts between nominalism and realism, another species of philosophy, mysticism, separated itself from all other systems, acquired consciousness of itself, exposed its own theory, and by its own name was called. Near the close of his life, Petrarch abandoned literary pursuits, in order to devote himself to contemplative philosophy, was a mystic in belief, and died in 1374. Most of the remarkablemen of this epoch were disciples of the same transcendental faith. Such were John Tauler, the celebrated preacher at Cologne, and the still more illustrious author of the "Imitation of Jesus Christ." Whether that work belongs to Gerson, or to Thomas à Kempis, it may be regarded as the most perfect reflection of philosophy in those foreboding times, when the thoughtful, oppressed with doubt, aspired after relief through reliance on the mercy of God. Scholasticism ceased at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and was succeeded by mysticism, which continued till the opening of the seventeenth century, when modern philosophy, properly so called, began, and is now molding a grander philosophic age. The mystical polemics which brought all learning to a low ebb at the epoch of the decline of ancient literature, long lurked faintly among the cloisters, by the dim lamp of dreaming solitaries, to whom true science was an unfathomable ocean, of which they vainly strove to sound the depths, while their only object should have been to sail across it. But their dogmatical fixedness was overruled for good, since all the great elements of speculative thought were thus conserved, and progressive philosophy, nevertheless, like its type and hero, through night and tempest westward took its course.
The interior of the cathedral at Florence, so imposing from its dim light and great extent, is full of that local interest which connects itself with a mausoleum of greatness and museum of art. Upon the north wall is a portrait of Dantè, and behind the choir is an unfinished Pieta by Michael Angelo, whose fervid and impatient genius designed so much more than it could possibly execute. Under the crowning glory of the dome, that masterpiece and model of renaissant architecture, lie the remains of Giotto and Brunelleschi, in spots marked by commemorative busts; and the same honor is paid to the remains of Facino, the great restorer of the Platonic philosophy. It was this erudite scholar who, at the revival of learning, procured the printing of Plato, performed the same service for the illustrious leaders of the later school, and illustrated his edition of the great master with many commentaries, in which he showed himself an equal adept in the mysteries of Plotinus and Porphyry, as in the sense of Plato. In order to give additional zest to the study of Platonism, Lorenzo and his friends formed the intention of renewing, with extraordinary pomp, the solemn annual feasts to the memoryof the great philosopher, which had been celebrated from the time of his death to that of his disciples, Plotinus and Porphyrius, but had been discontinued for twelve hundred years. The day fixed on for this purpose was the 7th of November, the supposed anniversary of both the birth and death of Plato. Francesco Bandini, eminent for rank and learning, was fixed on by Lorenzo to preside over this ceremony at Florence. On the same day another party met at Lorenzo's villa at Careggi, where he presided in person. The new academy of Platonists, in the fifteenth century, embraced a large number of the most eminent men, the greatest part of whom were natives of Florence, a fact that may give us some idea of the surprising attention which was then paid to philosophy, as well as to art, science, and literary pursuits. In this respect, the birthplace of Leo X., and the great mental centre of his age stands unrivaled; a species of praise as indisputable as it is well-deserved.
We have seen that the capacious mind of Aristotle absorbed the whole existing philosophy of his age, and that it was reproduced, digested, and transmitted, in a form still preserved, and of which the spirit early penetrated into the inmost recesses of mediæval mind. Translated in the fifth century into Syriac, and thence into Arabic, four hundred years later, his writings furnished the Mohammedan conquerors of the East with the germs of science which they bore so opportunely to the West, and thus extended the empire of an exacter philosophy from Bagdad to Cordova, from Egypt to Britain's occidental shore.
Platonism took deep root in Germany, and was the favorite of the ablest philosophers; and whether the mystic Reuchlin, or the mathematical Leibnitz, or the recondite Kant, elaborated their respective theories, they equally acknowledged the great Greek master to be the one model of their admiration. Sydenham, Spens, and Taylor, translated him in the bosom of the English race; and among the British admirers of Plato, besides the cabalists Gale and More, and the eloquent pupil of the Alexandrian school, Cudworth, were many of the ablest philosophers and poets. Not to anticipate the new age, on the border of which shone the Platonic minds of Milton and Gray, we allude to Berkeley, whose enthusiastic esteem is well known, and to Bacon, who never speaks of the political ormoral works of Plato without marked respect. The mighty architects of the age to come, best understood the worth of those foundations on which they built, and with a noble sadness sometimes bemoaned the obscurity which progress necessarily throws upon the superseded past.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, philosophy appeared to have but one home, Italy; but in the seventeenth century, all Europe became the field of its culture, and the richest fruits were ripened by the setting sun. At earlier periods, inventive mind had scarcely any means of expression, save a single language, and that a dead one; but in the seventeenth century the Latin became the exception, and philosophy began to use national tongues, which it enriched and reformed. At the moment a new world was opened to the sublimest advance, philosophy admitted to its service only living languages, full of the future, and which placed it in direct communication with the masses. Thus it accumulated its resources, concentrated its influence, and pressed forward in its majestic career, promising soon to become an independent, universal, and popular power.