[635] Op. maj. pp. 2 and 3.

[636] P. 322 sqq. (Brewer).

[637] Opus tertium, p. 102.

[638] Ante, p. 128.

[639] As, e.g. where he says that it would have been better for the Latins “that the wisdom of Aristotle should not have been translated, than to have been translated with such perverseness and obscurity.” Compend. studii, p. 469, (Brewer).

[640] See Opus majus, pars iii.

[641] Opus majus, Bridges, vol. i. p. 106.

[642] Commonly called “mathematica.”

[643] Opus majus (Bridges, i. p. 253). Bacon goes into this matter elaborately.

[644] Cf. S. Vogl, Die Physik Roger Bacos (Erlangen, 1906). Gives Bacon’s sources.

[645] Opus minus, pp. 367-371.

[646] Opus majus, pars v. dist. iii. (Bridges, ii. p. 159 sqq.).

[647] A contemporary of Bacon named Witelo composed a Perspectiva about 1270, following an Arab source; and a few years later a Dominican, Theodoric of Freiburg, was devoted to optics, and wrote on light, colour, and the rainbow. Baeumker, “Witelo, ein Philosoph und Naturforscher des XIII. Jahrh.” (Beiträge, etc., Münster, 1908); Krebs, “Meister Dietrich, sein Leben, etc.” (Baeumker’s Beiträge, 1906).

[648] With Bacon, experientia does not always mean observation; and may mean either experience or experiment.

[649] See Charles, Roger Bacon, pp. 17-18.

[650] Ante, pp. 313-315. Duns Scotus puts clearly the double aspect of logic, which Albertus Magnus approached: “It should be understood that logic is to be considered in two ways. First, in so far as it is docens (instructs, holds its own school): and from its own necessary and proper principles proceeds to necessary conclusions, and is therefore a science. Secondly, in so far as we use it, by applying it to those matters in which it is used: and then it is not a science” (Super universalia Porphyrii, Quaestrio i., Duns Scotus, Opera, t. i. p. 51).

[651] The two aspects of the experimental science appear in the following statement from the Gasquet Fragment: “The antepenultima science is called experimental; and is the mistress of those which precede it; for it excels the others in three chief prerogatives. One is that all the sciences except this either use arguments alone to prove their conclusions, like the purely speculative sciences, or possess general and imperfect experiences. But only the perfect experience (experientia perfecta, i.e. the scientific experiment or observation), sets the mind at rest in the light of truth; which is certain and is proved in that part [of my work]. Wherefore it was necessary that there should be one science which should certify for us, all the magnificent truths of the other sciences, through the truth of experience, and this is that whereof I say that it is called scientia experimentalis of its own right from the truth of experience (per autonomasiam ab experienciae veritate); and I show by the illustration of the rainbow and other things, how this prerogative is reserved to that science.

“The second prerogative is the dignity which relates to those chief truths which, although they are to be formulated (nominandae) in the terms (vocabulis) of the other sciences, yet the other sciences cannot furnish (procurare) them; and of this character are the prolongation of life through remedies to counteract the lack of a hygienic regimen from infancy, or constitutional debility inherited from parents who have not followed such a regimen. I shall show how it is possible thus to prolong life to the term set by God. But men, through neglecting the rules of health, pass quickly to old age, and die before reaching that term. The art of medicine is not able to furnish (dare) these remedies, nor does it; but it says they are possible (sed fatetur ea possibilia), and so experimental science has devised remedies known to the wisest men alone, by which the ills of old age are delayed, or are mitigated when they arrive.

“The third prerogative of this science belongs to it secundum se et absolute; for here it leaves the two ways already touched on, and addresses itself to all things which do not concern the other sciences, save that often it requires the service of the others. As a mistress it commands the others as servants ... and orders them to do its work, and furnish the wise instruments which it uses; as navigation directs the art of carpentry, to make a ship for it; and the military art directs the forger’s art to make it a breastplate and other arms. In like manner, this science [the experimental], as a mistress, directs geometry to make it a burning-glass, which shall set on fire things near or far, one of the most sublime wonders that can come to pass through geometry. So it commands the other sciences in all the wonderful and hidden things of nature and art” (pp. 510-511).

[652] Opus tertium, chap. xxviii.

[653] Opus majus, pars vi. 1 (Bridges, ii. p. 169).

[654] Ibid. p. 171. Doubtless the meaning of the above is connected with Bacon’s view of the Aristotelian intellectus agens, which he takes to signify the direct illumination of the mind of man by God. “All the wisdom of philosophy is revealed by God and given to the philosophers, and it is Himself that illuminates the minds of men in all wisdom. That which illuminates our minds is now called by the theologians intellectus agens. But my position is that this intellectus agens is God principaliter, and secondarily, the angels, who illuminate us” (Opus tertium, p. 74; cf. Op. majus, pars i. chap. v.).

[655] Compendium studii (Brewer), p. 397.

[656] De secretis operibus artis et naturae, et de nullitate magiae, p. 533 (Brewer). Cf. Charles, Roger Bacon, p. 296 sqq.

[657] The most convenient edition of the works of Joannes Duns Scotus is that published by Vives, at Paris (1891 sqq.) in twenty-six volumes. It is little more than a reprint of Wadding’s Edition.

[658] See Seeberg, Die Theologie des Johannes Duns Scotus (Leipzig, 1900), p. 8 sqq., a work to which the following pages owe much.

[659] Grosseteste’s philosophical or theological works are still unpublished or very difficult of access; and there is no sufficient exposition of his doctrines.

[660] Seeberg, o.c. p. 16 sqq.

[661] See De Wulf, History of Medieval Philosophy, p. 363 sqq.

[662] See Seeberg, o.c. p. 34 sqq.

[663] The kernel of Duns’s proof is contained in the following passage, which is rather simple in its Scotian Latin: “Dicendum, quod Universale est ens, quia sub ratione non entis, nihil intelligitur: quia intelligibile movet intellectum. Cum enim intellectus sit virtus passiva (per Aristotelem 3, de Anima, cont. 5 et inde saepe), non operatur, nisi moveatur ab objecto; non ens non potest movere aliquid ut objectum; quia movere est entis in actu; ergo nihil intelligitur sub ratione non entis. Quidquid autem intelligitur, intelligitur sub ratione Universalis: ergo illa ratio non est omnino non ens” (Super universalia Porphyrii, Quaestio iv.).

[664] Cf. the far from clear exposition in Seeberg, o.c. p. 86 sqq. and 660 sqq.

[665] Miscell. quaest. 6, 18, cited by Seeberg, o.c. p. 114.

[666] The last two or three pages have been drawn mainly from Seeberg, o.c. p. 113 sqq. In discussing Duns Scotus, I have given less from his writings than has been my wont with other philosophers. And for two reasons. The first, as I frankly avow, is that I have read less of him than I have of his predecessors. With the exception of such a curious treatise as the (doubtful) Grammatica speculativa (tome i. of the Paris edition); and the elementary, and comparatively lucid, De rerum principio (tome iv. of the Paris edition)—with these exceptions Duns is to me unreadable. My second reason for omitting excerpts from his writings, is that I wished neither to misrepresent their quality, nor to cause my reader to lay down my book, which is heavy enough anyhow! If I selected lucid and simple extracts, they would give no idea of the intricacy and prolixity of Duns. His commentary on the Sentences fills thirteen tomes of the Paris edition! No short and simple extract will illustrate that! On the other hand, I could not bring myself by lengthy or impossible quotations to vilify Duns. It is unjust to expose a man’s worst features, nakedly and alone, to those who do not know his better side and the conditions which partly explain the rest of him.

[667] Quodlibetalia, i. Qu. 14, cited by De Wulf, o.c. p. 422.

[668] Expos. aurea, cited by De Wulf, o.c. p. 423, whose exposition of Occam’s theory I have followed here.

[669] On Occam, see Seeberg’s article in Hauck’s Encyclopaedia; Siebeck, “Occams Erkenntnislehre, etc.,” in Archiv für Ges. der Philosophie, Bd. x., Neue Folge (1897).

[670] Quoted by Seeberg.

[671] De Wulf, o.c. p. 425.

[672] In view of the enormous literature upon Dante, popular as well as learned, it would be absurd to give any bibliographical, biographical or historical information as to his works, himself, or his Italian circumstances.

[673] De mon. ii. 3.

[674] De mon. ii. chaps. 4, 10, 12.

[675] De mon. iii. 4 sqq.

[676] All this seems supported by Conv. i. 1, and ii. 13, the main explanatory chapters of the work.

[677] Conv. iii. 12.

[678] e.g. “benigna volontade,” Par. xv. 1.

[679] Cf. A. d’Ancona, I Precursori di Dante (Florence, 1874); M. Dods, Forerunners of Dante (Edinburgh, 1903); A. J. Butler, Forerunners of Dante (Oxford, 1910); Hettinger, Göttliche Komödie, p. 79 (2nd ed., Freiburg im Breisgau, 1889). Mussafia, “Monumenti antichi di dialetti italiani,” Sitzungsber. philos. hist. Classe (Vienna Academy), vol. 45, 1864, p. 136 sqq., gives two old Italian descriptions, one of the heavenly Jerusalem, the other of the infernal Babylon.

[680] 2 Cor. xii. 2; Paradiso, i. 73-75.

[681] Ante, Chapter XIX.

[682] Ante, pp. 98-100.

[683] The coarseness of Inf. xxi. 137-139 is of a piece with the way of mediaeval art in making demons horrible through a grotesquely indecent rendering of their persons.

[684] e.g. Inf. xviii. 100 sqq.; and Inf. xxviii. and xxix.

[685] Inf. viii. 37 sqq.; xxxii. 97 sqq.; xxxiii. 116 and 149.

[686] Cf. Moore, Dante Studies, vol. ii. pp. 266-267.

[687] Any one who looks through the first volume of Tiraboschi’s great Storia della letteratura italiana, written in the early part of the nineteenth century, will find a generous acceptance of myth as fact; just as he would find the same in the Histoire ancienne of the good Rollin, written a century or more before.

[688] Dante has frequently been spoken of as the “first scholar” of his time. I do not myself know enough regarding the scholarship of every scholar in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to confirm or deny this. Personally, I do not regard him as a Titanic scholar, like Albertus Magnus for example. He studied all the classic Latin authors available. Doubtless he had a memory corresponding to his other extraordinary powers. His also was the intellectual point of view, and the intellectual interest in knowledge and its deductions. His view of life was as intellectual as that of Aquinas. But as Dante’s powers of plastic visualization were unequalled, so also, it seems to me, were his faculties of using as a poet what he had acquired as a scholar. Regarding the extent of Dante’s use and reading of the Classics, nothing could be added to Dr. Moore’s Studies in Dante, First Series; though I think what Dr. Moore has to say of “Dante and Aristotle” would have cast a more direct light upon the matter, had he cited as far as possible from the Latin translation probably used by Dante, instead of from the original Greek.

[689] Inf. iv. 88. Cf. Moore, Studies in Dante, i. p. 6. The application of the term satirist to Horace is peculiarly mediaeval.

[690] Inf. iv. 131.

[691] Inf. ii. 20.

[692] Par. xx. 68.

[693] Purg. xxv. 22.

[694] Inf. xviii. 83 sqq.

[695] Inf. xxvi. 88 sqq.

[696] Purg. xii.

[697] Purg. xv.

[698] According to Dr. Moore, Dante quotes or refers to the “Vulgate more than 500 times, to Aristotle more than 300, Virgil about 200, Ovid about 100, Cicero and Lucan about 50 each, Statius and Boëthius between 30 and 40 each, Horace, Livy, and Orosius between 10 and 20 each,”—and other scattering references.

[699] Inf. xxxiii. 4; Aen. ii. 3.

[700] Par. ii. 16.

[701] Aen. vi. 309; Inf. iii. 112.

[702] Aen. vi. 700; Purg. ii. 80.

[703] Purg. i. 135; cf. Aen. vi. 143 “Primo avulso non deficit alter, etc.”

[704] See Inf. xxxi.; Purg. xii. 25 sqq.

[705] Purg. vi. 118: “O highest Jove that wast on earth crucified for us.”

[706] Par. i. 13 sqq.; Par. ii. 8.

[707] The provenance, etc., of Dante’s classification of sins in the Inferno, like everything else in Dante, has been interminably discussed. The reference to the De officiis of Cicero is due to Dr. Moore. See “Classification of Sins in the Inferno and Purgatorio,” Studies in Dante, 2nd Series. Also cf. Hettinger, Die göttliche Kömödie, pp. 159-162, and notes 6 and 23 on p. 204 and 207 (2nd ed., Freiburg in Breisgau, 1889). Dante’s main statement is in Inf. xi.

[708] In whom does not the awful anguish of the suicides (Inf. xiii.) arouse grief and horror?

[709] Inf. xvi. 59. They are more respectable than the blessed denizens of the Heaven of Venus, Par. ix.

[710] Inf. xix.

[711] Inf. vi. 103 sqq.

[712] The intellectual temperament finds voice in many great expressions, which are very Dante and also very Thomas, as Par. xxviii. 106-114; xxix. 17; xxx. 40-42.

[713] Inf. iii. 18.

[714] Hettinger, o.c. p. 254.

[715] Aeneid vi. 327 sqq.; Hettinger, o.c. p. 226.

[716] See Taylor, Classical Heritage, p. 162.

[717] These are pointed out in the Commentaries (e.g. Scartazzini’s) and in many monographs. Hettinger’s Göttliche Kömödie is serviceable: also Moore’s Studies in Dante and Toynbee’s Dante Studies.

[718] Purg. i. 71; John viii. 36.

[719] Purg. i. 89.

[720] Purg. iii. 34 sqq.

[721] Purg. iv. 4 sqq.

[722] Purg. v. 105 sqq.

[723] Purg. vii. 54; iv. 133-135.

[724] Cf. e.g. Purg. xii. 109.

[725] Purg. xv. 40 sqq.

[726] Purg. xvi. 64 sqq.

[727] Purg. xvii. 85 sqq., and xviii.; Hettinger, o.c. p. 235 sqq., and pp. 261-264.

[728] Purg. xxiii. 72; xxvi. 14.

[729] Purg. xxv. The notes in Hettinger, o.c., are quite full in citations of passages from Thomas and other scholastics.

[730] Thomas, Summa, iii. Qu. 89, Art. 5.

[731] As it is rather in Par. xxvii. 76 sqq.

[732] Par. iii. 52, 64, 89.

[733] Par. iv.

[734] Par. xi. 1 sqq.

[735] Par. xiv.

[736] Par. xv. 10.

[737] Par. xix. 40 sqq.

[738] Par. xx.

[739] Par. xxiv.-xxvi.

[740] Typified in St. Bernard, Par. xxxi. and following. Suitable reasons for this choice may be suggested by the extracts from Bernard’s De deligendo Deo and Sermons on Canticles, ante, Chapter XVII.

[741] Conv. ii. 13. The symbolism inherent in all human mental processes seems indicated by the argument of Aquinas (ante, p. 466) that the mind knows “the particular through sense and imagination; ... it must turn itself to images in order to behold the universal nature existing in the particular.” This is a necessity of our half material nature.

[742] Convito ii. 1. Letter to Can Grande, par. 7.

[743] In the Can Grande letter, having stated this fourfold significance, Dante does not proceed to exemplify it in the interpretation which follows of the opening lines of the Paradiso. Possibly those lines did not admit of the fourfold interpretation; yet, in general, Dante does not try to carry it out in practice, any more than other mediaeval writers commonly.

[744] Convito ii. ch. 14 and 15.

[745] Doubtless the commentator habit is fixed in the nature of man; but it was pre-eminently mediaeval. We have seen enough elsewhere of the multiplication of Commentaries on the Sentences of the Lombard and other scholastic works. Dante’s friend, Guido Cavalcanti, wrote a little poem beginning Donna mi priego, upon which we have eight Commentaries, the first from Egidio Colonna in 1316.

[746] Yet, however obvious the meaning, tying the pole of the Chariot to the Tree of Life was a great stroke (Purg. xxxii. 49).

[747] There is a piece of allegory in the Paradiso which almost gets on one’s nerves, i.e. the ceaseless whirling of the blessed spirits, usually in wheel formations: e.g. Par. xii. 3; xxi. 81; xxiv. 10 sqq.: cf. x. 145; xiii. 20.

[748] One notes that all the symbolizing personages of the poem—Virgil, Statius, Matilda, Lia, Beatrice—have literal reality, however subtle or far-reaching may be the allegorical intendment with which the poet has invested them.

[749] See e.g. Par. xxxi. 67.

[750] Cf. De Sanctis, Storia della letteratura italiana, i. p. 46 sqq.

[751] Compare Purg. xxvii. 34 sqq.; xxx.; xxxi.; Par. xviii. 13 sqq.; xxiii.; xxx.; xxxi.; xxxii. 8.