And Abaelard cites the verse from Matthew about the blind leaders of the blind, and goes on to tell of the success of his treatise, which pleased everybody, yet provoked the greater envy because of the difficulty of the questions which it elucidated; and at last envy blew up the condemnation of his book, at the Council of Soissons, in the year of grace 1121.[425]

Here one has the plain reversal. We must first understand in order to believe. Doubtless the demands of Abaelard’s students to have the principles of the Christian Faith explained, that they might be understood and accepted rationally, echoed the master’s imperative intellectual need. Not that Abaelard would breathe the faintest doubt of these verities; they were absolute and unquestionable. He accepted them upon authority just as implicitly (he might think) as St. Bernard. Herein he shows the mediaeval quality of deference. But he will understand with his mind the profoundest truths enunciated by authority; he will explain them rationally, that the mind may rationally comprehend them.

Men of an opposite cast of mind foresaw the outcome of this rationalization of dogma more surely than the subtle dialectician for whom this process was both peremptory and proper. And the Church acted with a true instinct in condemning Abaelard in spite of his protestations of belief, just as with a like true instinct Friar Bacon’s own Franciscan Order looked askance on one whose mind was suspiciously set upon observation and experiment—and cavilling at others. Celui-ci tuera cela! The ultra-scientific spirit is dangerous to faith—and Bacon’s asseverations that no knowledge was of value save as it helped the soul’s salvation, was doubtless regarded as a conventional insincerity. Yet Roger Bacon had his mediaeval deferences, as will appear.[426]

Neither one extreme view nor the other was to represent the attitude of thoughtful and believing Christendom; not William of St. Thierry and St Bernard, nor yet (on these points) Abaelard and Friar Bacon should prevail; but the all-balancing and all-considering Aquinas. He will draw the lines between faith and reason, and bulwark them with arguments which shall seem to render unto reason the things of reason, and unto faith its due. Yet it is actually Roger Bacon who accuses Thomas of making his Theology out of dialectic and very human reasonings. It was true; and we are again reminded how variant views shaded into each other in the Middle Ages, and all within certain lines of similarity. Practically all mediaeval thinkers defer to authority—more or less; and all hold to some principle of faith, to the necessity of believing something, for the soul’s salvation. There is likewise some similarity in their attitudes toward intellectual interests. For all recognized their propriety, and gave credit to the human desire to know. Likewise all saw that salvation, the summum bonum for man, included more than intellection; and felt that it held some consummation of other human impulses; that it held love—the love of God along with the intellectual ardour of contemplation; and well-nigh all recognized also that the faith held mystery, not to be solved by reason. Thus all were rational—some more, some less; and all were devotional and believing, pietistic, ardent—some more, some less; according as the intellectual nature dominated over the emotional, or the emotions quelled the conscious exercise of reason, yet reached out and upward from what knowledge and reason had given as a base to spring from.

Thus the mediaeval spirit, variant within its lines of likeness; and of a piece with it was the field it worked in, which made its range and scope. Here as well, a saving knowledge of God and the soul was central and chief among all intellectual interests. None denied this. Augustine, the universal prototype of the mediaeval mind, had cried, “God and the soul, these will I know, and these are all.” But wide had been the scope of his knowledge of God and the soul; and in the centuries which hung upon his words, wide also was the range of knowledge subsumed under those capitals. How would one know God and the soul? Might one not know God in all His universe, in the height and breadth thereof, and backwards and forwards through the reach of time? Might not one also know the soul in all its operations, all its queries and desires; would not it and they, and their activities, make up the complementary side of knowledge—complementary to the primal object, God, known in His eternity, in His temporal creation, in His everlasting governance? Wide or narrow might be the intellectual interests included within a knowledge of God and the soul. And while many men kept close to the centre and saving nexus of these potentially universal themes, others might become absorbed with data of the creature-world, or with the manifold actions of the mind of man, so as to forget to keep all duly ordered and connected with the central thought.

So the search for knowledge might roam afield. Likewise as to its motive; practically with many men it was, in itself, a joy and end; although they might continue to connect this end formally with the salvation of the soul. Roger Bacon of a surety was such a one. Another was Albertus Magnus. The laborious culling of twenty tomes of universal knowledge surely had the joy of knowing as the active motive. And Aquinas too; no one could be such an acquisitive and reasoning genius, without the love of knowledge in his soul. Yet Thomas never let this love point untrue to its goal of research and devotion, to wit, sacred doctrine, theology, the Christian Faith in its very widest compass, yet in its unity of saving purpose.

In Thomas Aquinas the certitude of faith, the sense of grace, the ardour of love, never quenched the conscious action of the reasoning and knowing mind; nor did reasoning quench devotion. A balance too, though perhaps with one scale higher than the other, was kept by Bonaventura, whose mind had reason’s faculty, but whose heart burned perpetually toward God. Another rationally ardent soul was Bonaventura’s intellectual forerunner, Hugo of St. Victor. In these men intellect did not outstrip the fervours of contemplation. But such catholic balance did not hold with Abaelard and Bacon, who lacked the pietistic temperament. With others, conversely, the strength of the pietistic and emotional nature overbore the intellect; the mind was less exacting; and devotional ardour used reason solely for its purposes. The mightiest of these were Bernard and Francis. To the same key might chime the woman, St. Hildegard of Bingen. We narrow down from these to hectic souls content with a few thoughts which serve as a basis for the heart’s fervours.

The varying attitudes of mediaeval thinkers toward reason and authority, and even their different views upon the limits of the field of salutary knowledge, are exemplified in their methods, or rather in the variations of their common method. Here the factors were again authority and the intellect which considers the authority, and in terms of its own rational processes reacts upon the proposition under view. The intellect might simply accept authority; or, on the other hand, it might, through dialectic, seek a conclusion of its own. But midway between a mere acceptance of authority, and the endeavour of dialectic for a conclusion of its own, there is the reasoning process which perceives divergence among authorities, compares, discriminates, interprets, and at last acts as umpire. This was the combined and catholic scholastic method. It contained the two factors of its necessary duality; and its variations (besides the gradual perfecting of its form from one generation to another) consisted in the predominant employment of one factor or the other.

The beginning was in the Carolingian time, when Rabanus compiled his authorities from sources sacred and profane, scarcely discriminating except to maintain the pre-eminence of the sacred matter. His younger contemporary, Eriugena, was a translator of his own chief source, Pseudo-Dionysius, him of the Hierarchies, Celestial and Ecclesiastical. Yet he composed also a veritable book, De divisione naturae, in which he put his matter together organically and with argument. And while professing to hold to the authority of Scripture and the Fathers, he not only took upon himself to select from their statements, but propounded the proposition that the authority which is not confirmed by reason appears weak. Eriugena made his authorities yield him what his reason required. His argumentative method became an independent rehandling of matter drawn from them. It was very different from the plodding excerpt-gathering of Rabanus.

We pass down the centuries to Anselm. Contemplative and religious, his reverence for authority was unimpaired by any conscious need to refashion its meaning. Though he possessed creative intellectual powers, they were incited and controlled by his deep piety. Hence his works were constructed of original and lofty arguments, but such as did not infringe upon either the efficient or the final priority of faith.

With Abaelard of many-sided fame the duality of method becomes explicit, and is, if one may say so, set by the ears. On the one hand, he advances in his constructive theological treatises toward a portentous application of reason to explain the contents of the Christian Faith; on the other, somewhat sardonically, he devises a scheme for the employment and presentation of authorities upon these sacred matters, a scheme so obviously apt that once made known it could not but be followed and perfected.

The divers works of a man are likely to bear some relation and resemblance to each other. Abaelard was a reasoner, more specifically speaking, a dialectician according to the ways of Aristotelian logic. And in categories of formal logic he sought to rationalize every matter apprehended by his mind. Swayed by the master-interest of the time, he turned to theology; and his own nature impelled him to apply a constructive dialectic to its systematic formulation. The result is exemplified in the extant portion of his Theologia (mis-called Introductio ad Theologiam), which was condemned by the Council of Sens in 1141, the year before the master’s death. The spirit of this work appears in the passage already quoted from the Historia calamitatum, referring to what was substantially an earlier form of the Theologia.[427] The Theologia argues for a free use of dialectic in expounding dogma, especially in order to refute those heretics who will not listen to authority, but demand reasons. Like Abaelard’s previous theological treatises, it is filled with citations of authority, principally Augustine; and the reader feels the author’s hesitancy to reveal that dialectic is the architect. Nor, in fact, is the work an exclusively dialectic structure; yet it illustrates (if it does not always inculcate) the application of the arguments of human reason to the exposition and substantiation of the fundamental and most deeply hidden contents of the Christian Faith. Obviously Abaelard was not an initiator here. Augustine had devoted his life to fortifying the Faith with argument and explanation; Eriugena, with a far weaker realization of its contents, had employed a more distorting metaphysics in its presentation; and saintly Anselm had flown his veritable eagle flights of reason. But Abaelard’s more systematic work represents a further stage in the application of independent dialectic to dogma, and an innovating freedom in the citation of pagan philosophers to demonstrate its philosophic reasonableness. Nevertheless his statement that he had gathered these citations from writings of the Fathers, and not from the books of the philosophers (quorum pauca novi),[428] shows that he was only using what the Fathers had made use of before him, and also indicates the slightness of his independent knowledge of Greek philosophy.

On the other hand, Abaelard’s way of presenting authorities for and against a theological proposition was more distinctly original. He seems to have been the first purposefully to systematize the method of stating the problem, and then giving in order the authorities on one side and the other—sic et non; as he entitled his famous work. But the trail of his nature lay through this apparently innocent composition, the evident intent of which was to emphasize, if not exaggerate, the opposition among the patristic authorities, and without a counterbalancing attempt to show any substantial accord among them. This, of course, is not stated in the Prologue, which however, like everything that Abaelard wrote, discloses his fatal facility of putting his hand on the raw spot in the matter; which unfortunately is likely to be the vulnerable point also. In it he remarks on the difficulty of interpreting Scripture, upon the corruption of the text (a perilous subject), and the introduction of apocryphal writings. There are discrepancies even in the sacred texts, and contradictions in the writings of the Fathers. With a profuse backing of authority he shows that the latter are not to be read cum credendi necessitate, but cum judicandi libertate. Assuredly, as to anything in the canonical Scriptures, “it is not permitted to say: ‘The Author of this book did not hold the truth’; but rather ‘the codex is false or the interpreter errs, or thou dost not understand.’ But in the works of the later ones (posteriorum, Abaelard’s inclusive designation of the Fathers), which are contained in books without number, if passages are deemed to depart from the truth, the reader is at liberty to approve or disapprove.”

This view was supported by Abaelard’s citations from the Fathers themselves; and yet, so abruptly made, it was not a pleasant statement for the ears of those to whom the writings of the holy Fathers were sacred. Nothing was sacred to the man who wrote this prologue—so it seemed to his pious contemporaries. And who among them could approve of the Prologue’s final utterance upon the method and purpose of the book?

To use the discordant statements of the Fathers to sharpen the wits of the young! Was not that to uncover their shame? And the character of the work did not salve the Prologue’s sting. Abaelard selected and arranged his extracts from pagan as well as Christian writers, and prepared sardonic titles for the questions under which he ordered his material. Time and again these titles flaunt an opposition which the citations scarcely bear out. For example, title iv.: “Quod sit credendum in Deum solum, et contra”—certainly a flaming point; yet the excerpts display merely the verb credere, used in the palpably different senses borne by the word “believe.” There is no real repugnancy among the citations. And again, in title lviii.: “Quod Adam salvatus sit, et contra”—there is no citation contra. And the longest chapter in the book (cxvii.) has this bristling title: “De sacramento altaris, quod sit essentialiter ipsa veritas carnis Christi et sanguinis, et contra.”

Because of such prickly traits the Sic et non did not itself come into common use. But the suggestions of its method once made, were of too obvious utility to be abandoned. First, among Abaelard’s own pupils the result appears in Books of Sentences, which, in the arrangement of their matter, followed the topical division not of the Sic et non, but of Abaelard’s Theologia, with its threefold division of Theology into Fides, Caritas, and Sacramentum.[429] But the arrangement of the Theologia was not made use of in the best and most famous of these compositions, Peter Lombard’s Sententiarum libri quatuor. This work employed the method (not the arrangement) of the Sic et non, and expounded the contents of Faith methodically, “Distinctio” after “Distinctio,” stating the proposition, citing the authorities bearing upon it, and ending with some conciliating or distinguishing statement of the true result. In canon law the same method was applied in Gratian’s Decretum, of which the proper name was Concordia discordantium canonum.

These Books of Sentences have sometimes been called Summae, inasmuch as their scope embraced the entire contents of the Faith. But the term Summa may properly be confined to those larger and still more encyclopaedic compositions in which this scholastic method reached its final development. The chief makers of these, the veritable Summae theologiae, were, in order of time, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas. The Books of Sentences were books of sentences. The Summa proceeded by the same method, or rather issued from it, as its consummation and perfect logical form; thus the scholastic method arrived at its highest constructive energy. In the Sentences one excerpted opinion was given and another possibly divergent, and at the end an adjustment was presented. This comparative formlessness attains in the Summa a serried syllogistic structure. Thomas, who finally perfects it, presents his connected and successive topics divided into quaestiones, which are subdivided into articuli, whose titles give the point to be discussed. He states first, and frequently in his own syllogistic terms, the successive negative arguments; and then the counter-proposition, which usually is a citation from Scripture or from Augustine. Then with clear logic he constructs the true positive conclusion in accordance with the authority which he has last adduced. He then refutes each of the adverse arguments in turn.

Thus the method of the Sentences is rendered dialectically organic; and with the perfecting of the form of quaestio and articulus, and the logical linking of successive topics, the whole composition, from a congeries, becomes a structure, organic likewise, a veritable Summa, and a Summa of a science which has unity and consistency. This science is sacra doctrina, theologia. Moreover, as compared with the Sentences, the contents of the Summa are enormously enlarged. For between the time of the Lombard and that of Thomas, there has come the whole of Aristotle, and what is more, the mastery of the whole of Aristotle, which Thomas incorporates in a complete and organic statement of the Christian scheme of salvation.[430]

CHAPTER XXXV

Having considered the spirit, the field, and the dual method, of mediaeval thought, there remain its classifications of topics. The problem of classification presented itself to Gerbert as one involved in the rational study of the ancient material.[431] But as scholasticism culminated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the problem became one of arrangement and presentation of the mass of knowledge and argument which the Middle Ages had at length made their own, and were prepared to re-express. This ordering was influenced by a twofold principle of classification; for, as abundantly shown by Aquinas,[432] theology in which all is ordered with reference to God, will properly follow an arrangement of topics quite unsuitable to the natural or human sciences, which treat of things with respect to themselves. But the mediaeval practice was more confused than the theory; because the interest in human knowledge was apt to be touched by motives sounding in the need of divine salvation; and speculation could not free itself of the moving principles of Christian theology. On the other hand, an enormous quantity of human dialectic, and a prodigious mass of what strikes us as profane information, or misinformation, was carried into the mediaeval Summa, and still more into those encyclopaedias, which attempted to include all knowledge, and still were influenced in their aim by a religious purpose.[433]

As the human sciences came from the pagan antique, the accepted classifications of them naturally were taken from Greek philosophy. They followed either the so-called Platonic division, into Physics, Ethics, and Logic,[434] or the Aristotelian division of philosophy into theoretical and practical. The former scheme, of which it is not certain that Plato was the author, passed on through the Stoic and Epicurean systems of philosophy, was recognized by the Church Fathers, and received Augustine’s approval. It was made known to the Middle Ages through Cassiodorus, Isidore, Alcuin, Rabanus, Eriugena and others.

Nevertheless the Aristotelian division of philosophy into theoretical and practical was destined to prevail. It was introduced to the western Middle Ages through Boëthius’s Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge,[435] and adopted by Gerbert; later it passed over through translations of Arabic writings. It was accepted by Hugo of St. Victor, by Albertus Magnus and by Thomas, to mention only the greatest names; and was set forth in detail with explanation and comment in a number of treatises, such as Gundissalinus’s De divisione philosophiae, and Hugo of St. Victor’s Eruditio didascalica,[436] which were formal and schematic introductions to the study of philosophy and its various branches.

The usual subdivisions of these two general parts of philosophy were as follows. Theoretica (or Theorica) was divided into (1) Physics, or scientia naturalis, (2) Mathematics, and (3) Metaphysics or Theology, or divina scientia, as it might be called. Physics and Mathematics were again divided into more special sciences. Practica was divided commonly into Ethics, Economics, Politics, or into Ethics and Artes mechanicae. There was a difference of opinion as to what to do with Logic. It had, to be sure, its position in the current Trivium, along with grammar and rhetoric. But this was merely current, and might not approve itself on deeper reflection. Gundissalinus speaks of three propaedeutic sciences, the scientiae eloquentiae, grammar, poetics, and rhetoric, and then puts Logic after them as a scientia media between these primary educational matters and philosophy, i.e. the whole range of knowledge, theoretical and practical. Again, over against philosophia realis, which contains both the theoretica (or speculativa) and the practica, Thomas Aquinas sets the philosophia rationalis, or logic; and Richard Kilwardby opposes logica, the scientia rationalis, to practica, in his division.[437]

The last-named philosopher was the pupil and then the hostile critic of Aquinas, and also became Archbishop of Canterbury. He was the author of a careful and elaborate classification of the parts of philosophy, entitled De ortu et divisione philosophiae.[438] In it, following the broad distinction between res divinae and res humanae, Kilwardby divides philosophy into speculativa and practica. Speculativa is divided into naturalis (physics), mathematica, and divina (metaphysics). He does not divide the first and third of these; but he divides mathematica into those sciences which treat of quantity in continuity and separation respectively (quantitas continua and quantitas discreta). The former embrace geometry, astronomy and astrology, and perspective; the latter, music and arithmetic. Practica, which is concerned with res humanae, is divided into activa and sermocinalis: because res humanae consist either of operationes or locutiones. The activa embraces Ethics and mechanics; the scientia sermocinalis embraces grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Such are Kilwardby’s bare captions; his treatise lengthily treats of the interrelations of these various branches of knowledge.

An idea of the scholastic discussion of the classification of sciences may be had by following Albertus Magnus’s ponderous approach to a consideration of logic: whether it be a science, and, if so, what place should be allotted it. We draw from the opening of his liber on the Predicables,[439] that is to say, his exposition of Porphyry’s Introduction. Albert will consider “what kind of a science (qualis scientia) logic may be, and whether it is any part of philosophy; what need there is of it, and what may be its use; then of what it treats, and what are its divisions.” The ancients seem to have disagreed, some saying that logic is no science, since it is rather a modus (mode, manner or method) of every science or branch of knowledge. But these, continues Albertus, have not reflected that although there are many sciences, and each has its special modus, yet there is one modus common to all sciences, pertaining to that which is common to them all: the principle, to wit, that through reason’s inquiry, from what is known one arrives at knowledge of the unknown. This mode or method common to every science may be considered in itself, and so may be the subject of a special science. After further balancing of the reasons and authorities pro and con, Albertus concludes:

He next considers whether logic is a part of philosophy. Some say no, since there are (as they say) only three divisions of philosophy, physics, mathematics, and metaphysics; others say that logic is a modus of philosophy and not one of its divisions. But, on the contrary, it is shown by others that this view of philosophy omits the practical side, for philosophy’s scope comprehends the truth of everything which man may understand, including the truth of that which is in ourselves, and strives to comprehend both truth and the process of advancing from the known to a knowledge of the unknown. These point out that

And finally it may be shown that

From these latter arguments, approved by him and in part stated as his own, Albertus advances to a classification of the parts of logic, which he makes to include rhetoric, poetics, and dialectic, and to be demonstrative, sophistical or disputatious, according to the use to which logic (broadly taken) is applied and the manner in which it may in each case proceed, in advancing from the known to some farther ascertainment or demonstration.[440] Soon after this, in discussing the subject of this science, Albertus points out how logic differs from rhetoric and poetics, although with them it may treat of sermo, or speech, and be called a scientia sermonalis; for, unlike them, it treats of sermo merely as a means of drawing conclusions, and not in and for itself.

From the purely philosophical division of the sciences we pass to the hybrid arrangement adopted by Vincent of Beauvais, who died in 1264. This man was a prodigious devourer of books, and for a sufficient pabulum, St. Louis set before him his collection of twelve hundred volumes. Thereupon Vincent compiled the most famous of mediaeval encyclopaedias, employing in that labour enormous diligence and a number of assistants. His ponderous Speculum majus is drawn from the most serviceable sources, including the works of Albertus, his contemporary, and great scholastics like Hugo of St. Victor, who were no more. It consisted of the Speculum naturale, doctrinale, and historiale; and a fourth, the Speculum morale, was added by a later hand.[441] Turning its leaves, and reading snatches here and there, especially from its Prologues, we shall gain a sufficient illustration of the arrangement of topics followed by this writer, whose faculties seem to drown in his shoreless undertaking.[442]

In his turgid generalis prologus to the Speculum naturale, Vincent presents his motives for collecting in one volume

He then refers to the evils of false copying and the ascription of extracts to the wrong author. And it seems to him that Church History has been rather neglected, while men have been intent on expounding knotty problems. And now considering how to proceed and group his various matters, Vincent could find no better method than the one he has chosen, “to wit, that after the order of Holy Scripture, I should treat first of the Creator, next of the creation, then of man’s fall and reparation, and then of events (rebus gestis) chronologically.” He proposes to give a summary of titles at the end of the work. Sometimes he may state as his own, things he has had from his teachers or from very well-known books; and he admits that he did not have time to collate the gesta martyrum, and so some of the abstracts which he gives of these are not by his own hand, but by the hand of scribes (notariorum).

Vincent proposes to call the whole work Speculum majus, a Speculum indeed, or an Imago mundi, “containing in brief whatever, from unnumbered books, I have been able to gather, worthy of consideration, admiration, or imitation as to things which have been made or done or said in the visible or invisible world from the beginning until the end, and even of things to come.” He briefly adverts to the utility of his work, and then gives his motive for including history. This he thinks will help us to understand the story of Christ; and from a perusal of the wars which took place “before the advent of our pacific King, the reader will perceive with what zeal we should fight against our spiritual foes, for our salvation and the eternal glory promised us.” From the great slaughter of men in many wars, may be realized also the severity of God against the wicked, who are slain like sheep, and perish body and soul.[443]

As to nature, Vincent says:

Moreover, to know about things is useful for preachers and theologians, as Augustine says. But Vincent is conscious of another motive also:

Here Vincent feels it well to apologize for the limitlessness of his matter, being only an excerptor, and not really knowing even a single science; and he refers to the example of Isidore’s Etymologiae. He proceeds to enumerate the various sources upon which he relies, and then to summarize the headings of his work; which in brief are as follows:

One may stand aghast at the programme. Yet practically all of it would go into a Summa theologiae, excepting the human history, and the matter of what we should call the arts and sciences! A programme like this might be handled summarily, according to the broad captions under which it is stated; or it might be carried out in such detail as to include all available information, or opinion, touching every part of every topic included under these universal heads. The latter is Vincent’s way. Practically he tries to include all knowledge upon everything. The first of his tomes (the Speculum naturale) is to be devoted to a full description of the forms and species of created beings, which make up the visible world. Yet it includes much relating to beings commonly invisible; for Vincent begins with a treatment of the angels. He then passes to a consideration of the seven heavens; and then to the physical phenomena of nature; then on to every known species of plant, the cultivation of trees and vines, and the making of wine; then to the celestial bodies, and after this to living things, birds, fishes, savage beasts, reptiles, the anatomy of animals,—and at last comes to man. He discusses him body and soul, his psychology, and the phenomena of sleep and waking; then human anatomy—nor can he keep from considerations touching the whole creation; then human generation, and a description of the countries and regions of the earth, with a brief compendium of history until the time of Antichrist and the Last Judgment. Of course he is utterly uncritical, even the pseudo-Turpin’s fictions as to Charlemagne serving him for authority.

Vincent’s Prologue to his second tome, the Speculum doctrinale, briefly mentions the topics of the tota naturalis historia, contained in his first giant tome. In that he had brought his matter down to God’s creation of humana natura, omnium rerum finis ac summa—and its spoliation (destitutio) through sin. Humana natura as constituted by God, was a universitas of all nature or created being, corporeal and spiritual. Now

So Vincent begins with the fall and misery of man; the peccatum and the supplicium. Then he proceeds to discuss the goods (bona) which God bestows, like the mental powers, by which man may learn wisdom, and how to strive against error and vice, and be overcome solely by the desire of the highest and immutable good. He speaks also of the corporeal goods bestowed on man, and the beauty and utility of visible things; and then of the principal evils;—ignorance which corrupts the divine image in man, concupiscence which destroys the divine similitude, sickness which destroys his original bodily immortality. “And the remedies are three by which these three evils may be repelled, and the three goods restored, to wit, Wisdom, Virtue, and Need.”

Here we touch the gist of the ordering of topics in the Speculum doctrinale, which treats of all the arts and sciences:

Thus the entire round of arts and sciences is connected with man’s corporeal and spiritual welfare, and is made to bear directly or indirectly on his salvation. All constitutes doctrina, and by doctrina man is saved. This is the reason for including the arts and sciences in one tome, rightly called the Speculum doctrinale. We need not follow the detail, but may view as from afar the long course ploughed by Vincent through his matter. He first sketches the history of antique philosophy, and then turns to books and language, and presents a glossary of Latin synonyms. Book II. treats of Grammar, Book III. of Logic, Book IV. of Practica scientia or Ethica, first giving pagan ethics and then passing on to the virtues of the monastic life. Book V. is a continuation of this subject. Book VI. concerns the Scientia oeconomica, treating of domestic economy, then of agriculture. Books VII. and VIII. take up Politica, and, having discussed political institutions, proceed to a treatment of law—the law of persons, things, and actions, according to the canon and the civil law. Books IX. and X. consider Crimes—simony, heresy, perjury, sacrilege, homicide, rape, adultery, robbery, usury. Book XI. is more cheerful, De arte mechanica, and tells of building, the military art, navigation, alchemy, and metals. Book XII. is Medicine, and Books XIII. and XIV. discuss Physics, in connection with the healing art. Book XV. is Natural Philosophy—animals and plants. Book XVI., De mathematica, treats of arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy, and metaphysics cursorily. Book XVII. likewise thins out in a somewhat slight discussion of Theology, which was to form the topic of the tome that Vincent did not write.

But Vincent did complete another tome, the Speculum historiale. It is a loosely chronological compilation of tradition, myth, and history, with discursions upon the literary works of the characters coming under review. It would be tedious to follow its excerpted presentation of the profane and sacred matter.

We may leave Vincent, with the obvious reflection that his work is a conglomerate, both in arrangement and contents. It has the pious aim of contributing to man’s salvation, and yet is an attempted universal encyclopaedia of human knowledge, much of which is plainly secular and mundane. The monstrous scope and dual purpose of the work prevented any unity in method and arrangement. More single in aim, and better arranged in consequence, are the Sentences of Peter Lombard and the Summa theologiae of Aquinas. For although their scope, at least the scope of the Summa, is wide, all is ordered with respect to the true aim of sacra doctrina, just as Thomas explained in the passage which we have already given.

The alleged principle of the Lombard’s division strikes one as curious; yet he got it from Augustine: Signum and res—the symbol and the thing: verily an age-long play of spiritual tendency lay back of these contrasted concepts. Christian doctrina related, perhaps chiefly, to the significance of signa, signs, symbols, allegories, mysteries, sacraments. It was not so strange that the Lombard made this antithesis the ground of his arrangement. Quite as of course he begins by saying it is clear to any one who considers, with God’s grace, that the “contents of the Old and New Law are occupied either with res or signa. For as the eminent doctor Augustine says in his Doctrina Christiana, all teaching is of things or signs; but things also are learned through signs. Properly those are called res which are not employed in order to signify something; while signa are those whose use is to signify.” Then the Lombard separates the sacraments from other signa, because they not only signify, but also confer saving aid; and he points out that evidently a signum is also some sort of a thing; but not everything is a signum. He will treat first of res and then of signa.

As to res, one must bear in mind, as Augustine says, that some things are to be enjoyed (fruendum), as from love we cleave to them for their own sake; and others are to be used (utendum) as a means; and still others to be both enjoyed and used.