The General Character of this Last Period. The first one hundred and fifty years of this period was the golden age of scholasticism; the remaining one hundred years was a period of decline. The period of Classic Scholasticism was a natural growth from the Transitional Period. At the end of the Transitional Period the church, in spite of Mohammedans, Jews, heretics, and the classics, outshone all else, and its life and dogma were the most worth while. In this period appeared a theology, adequate to its life and dogma,—a theology which was floated by the wave of piety of the Mendicant Orders. Acquaintance with the true Aristotle was the needed stimulus. The favorable conditions for that stimulus were (1) the triumph of the church and papacy, (2) the intense piety of the Mendicants, (3) the general culture derived from an inner development of the church and from contact with the East in Constantinople, Palestine, and Spain. Aristotle and the Mendicants were the new forces, and they achieved their position against the hostility of the old Orders, the universities, and the teachers. The triumph was possible because the new forces contributed nothing really new, but merely completed the old scheme of things. The new Aristotle, as it was understood, taught metaphysics, epistemology, and politics in a way to vindicate dogma as against the opposition of William of Champeaux and Roscellinus. The Mendicants on their part vindicated all dogma by blending it with faith on the one hand, and with reason on the other.
The scholasticism of the Transitional Period was predominantly controversial, while the character of this period, which we are now entering, is synthetic and constructive. The infusion of fresh blood into culture, from not only the logical but the physical works of Aristotle, resulted in the renewal of interest in the dialectic and in the construction of systems of metaphysics and psychology. The central problem now concerns the respective scopes of reason and faith, and to its solution logic and psychology are applied. A complete solution seemed to be made by Thomas Aquinas, which had its literary expression in Dante. Without the introduction of any new philosophical principle the world of nature, as interpreted by Aristotle, was apparently brought by Thomas into theoretical harmony with the Augustinian conception of the world of grace. But no sooner did Thomas seem to have formulated scholastic philosophy for all time, than controversy broke out afresh. For pantheistic mysticism gained its independence through one of Thomas’s own brother Dominicans, Eckhart; then Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, drew up a metaphysical programme based upon the Augustinian theory of the will, and gave a new direction to philosophy; and furthermore nominalism grew great upon Aristotle’s logic and the new empirical psychology. For the churchman, philosophy reached its completeness in Thomas Aquinas. The later tendencies are regarded by the churchman as deteriorations, and even modern philosophy is looked upon as but temporizing with the classic system of Thomas.
GROWTH OF MOHAMMEDANISM DURING THE MIDDLE AGES, SHOWING ITS CONTACT WITH CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION
The Conquests of the Mohammedans during the different epochs are shown by the different shading and the dates placed on the map.
The Two Civilizations. This is one of the periods of thought resulting from the shiftings of distinct civilizations. We have already noted the influence of the struggles of the Orient and the Occident in the Persian wars and in the campaigns of Alexander; and we have lately seen an entirely new epoch ushered in by the invasions of the northern tribes into Rome. With the new epoch before us, we find ourselves confronted with another new ethnic situation. The civilization of the Mohammedan had grown in mighty strength in the East, had possessed itself of Asia Minor, northern Africa, and Spain, and was now facing Europe from the east, west, and south. All through the First Period of the Middle Ages the Christian and Mohammedan civilizations had been contestants for supremacy. Only as late as 732 the Mohammedan claim upon Europe had been defeated at the battle of Tours. Mohammed (570–632) converted the whole of Arabia to Islam during the ten years between his Hegira (622) and his death. His successors took Palestine (637), Syria (638), Egypt (647), Persia (710), all north Africa (by 707), invaded Spain (711), and were repulsed at Tours (732). All this occurred within a century, and for the next two hundred years (800–1000) the Mohammedans harassed Rome and the islands of the Mediterranean. With the two civilizations facing each other on the Mediterranean, only mutual religious fanaticism could stand in the way of their mutual cultural influence. In point of fact, because of fanaticism the cultures of the two civilizations during the first centuries of the Middle Ages touched each other but little. In those first centuries of the Middle Ages, when western Europe was shrouded in darkness, the schools of the Arabs at Bagdad, Basra, Kufa, and other cities were enjoying a splendid intellectual life. From 850 to 1100 the centre of learning of the world was in the Arabian cities of the East.58 In 1100 the fanatical faction of the Arabians crushed this intellectual movement in the East, the scholars fled to Spain, and for a century longer Saracen learning flourished in Spain, especially in Cordova. In 1200 the Arabian orthodoxy made itself felt in Spain, and the Arabian scholars there had to find refuge among the Jews or Christians.
The First Contact of the Two Civilizations. From the beginning of the Middle Ages the point of contact between the two civilizations was either war or commerce. The Jew was the globe-trotter of that day, and was constantly bringing into Europe reports of Arabian civilization. He was a philosopher, a monotheist, a Semite, like the Arab, and he had an interest in more than commercial matters. About the end of the Early Period of the Middle Ages he found it profitable to make first Hebrew and then Latin translations of Arabian learning, and to sell them in Europe. In this form, between 1000 and 1100, medical and astronomical knowledge entered Europe. Greek philosophical writings came next in translations from the Arabic, which had previously been translated from the Syriac. Thus for the two hundred years, between 1000 and 1200, the Christian schools were beginning to read portions of Greek philosophy in Latin, which had previously passed through Syriac and Arabian (and sometimes Hebrew) translations. Before 1200, there were none but these Arabic versions. A pertinent example of these was the works of Aristotle. Before 1200 all of Aristotle’s writings, except the Organon, appeared in Europe in this form, and the Organon as a whole was not known until 1150. In 1125 some of Aristotle’s physics was known by the school of Chartres; in 1200 all the physics, metaphysics, and ethics were known in translations from the Latin and Hebrew. These were accompanied by Arabian commentaries, which interpreted Aristotle as if he were a neo-Platonic pantheist. There were many churchmen interested in the work of translation, as, for example, Gerbert, and Raymond of Toledo. Roger II of Sicily (d. 1154) and Frederick II (d. 1250) had their courts filled with Arabian philosophers. Frederick had many translations made and presented to the Universities of Oxford, Paris, and Bologna.
Thus the influence of the Arabian upon the Christian culture before the Classic Period of the Middle Ages was not inconsiderable. But this must be said of Arabian culture—it was mainly borrowed. Arabia59 acted merely as a transmitter of the materials of knowledge from the Greeks and Hindoos; and so far as philosophy was concerned, the Arab was returning to Europe, in a perverted form, the Aristotle which had been deposited with him centuries before. The Mohammedans were the world’s carriers of a considerable body of science and of many new agricultural products; and of the amount which they introduced into Europe only a small portion was their own. At the end of the twelfth century the Christian at Rome and York was richer in the principles of discovery, but poorer in the amount of traditional learning and of scientific wealth, than the Mohammedan at Bagdad and Cordova.
The Conflict between the Two Civilizations.—The Crusades.60 The rivalry between the two civilizations became intensified into an open conflict about the year 1100. Up to the year 1000 the Mohammedan leaders were Arabians, but in the eleventh century these Arabians were conquered by tribes of Turks or Mongolians from the north of Asia. These became converted to Mohammedanism, but they had no love for culture nor reverence for the places in Palestine, which were sacred alike to the Christian and the Arab. From the fourth to the twelfth century the pilgrimages of the Christians, individually or in multitudes, largely increased, but in the eleventh century the new race of Mohammedan Turks made the access to Jerusalem more difficult. They began to subject the pilgrims to cruelties, so that the Christian was beginning to find the door of his Holy Land closed to him. Then did Platonic Christianity rush to the rescue of those sacred places that symbolized its ideals. This onslaught upon the Mohammedans came in a series of surges, traditionally spoken of as the eight Crusades.61 The Crusades resulted quite contrary to the expectations of the church, for the Crusaders failed in permanently recapturing Jerusalem. But the Crusades accomplished the unexpected thing—they awakened Europe. The effect of the Crusades upon Europe was far greater than upon the Orient. The results may be enumerated as follows:—
1. The dormant European intellect was shaken up by contact with the heathen, whom the Europeans had previously despised, but whom they found to be their superiors.
2. A new national rivalry was aroused among the Christian soldiers. This national spirit was helped negatively by the losses among the feudal lords.
3. Commercial activity was given an immense impulse. A new social class was formed, which allied itself with the kings against the feudal lords. Trade was opened with the East, revealing new luxuries and new needs. Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, and in a secondary way also the German, French, and English towns, became prosperous commercial centres.
4. The power of the Latin church was extended.
5. The works of Aristotle were introduced in translations direct from the original Greek. In the fourth Crusade Constantinople was captured by the Crusaders (1204), and in this way the treasures of the Greeks were opened to the western scholars. The complete works of Aristotle were introduced into western Europe at a time when Aristotle was being interpreted as a pantheist by the Arabian commentators.
The Revival of Learning. The need of learning, that had been felt in the twelfth century, was now being satisfied. The entire logic of Aristotle and his entire natural science gave the new materials for knowledge. These came into Europe within the century between 1150 and 1250, (1) through translations from the Arabic, and then (2) directly through translations from the Greek. Aristotle’s logic revived scholasticism and his science became the foundation of metaphysics. Mediæval thought was ready for this and there was a complete readjustment without the introduction of a new philosophical principle. The side of Augustine’s teaching that emphasized the intellect rather than the will, gained by being confirmed by the systematic intellectualism of Aristotle. The founder of this was Albert of Bollstaedt; the organizer and literary codifier was Thomas Aquinas; the poetic expression was Dante. The new centres of learning were Paris and Constantinople. The centres of teaching were transferred from the monasteries to the new Universities (1100–1300). Salerno had its beginnings in the latter part of the eleventh century. Bologna in law, Oxford in general culture and theology, Paris in the same studies, show traces of general organization between 1160 and 1200. There were established seventy-nine of these universities between 1150 and 1500. They were not “founded,” but grew up as part of this movement.62
DIAGRAM OF DANTE’S POETIC CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSE
From Rossetti’s Shadow of Dante
(Showing its divisions of Hell (at centre of the earth), Purgatory, and the nine heavens. The evident plan beneath this is the Ptolemaic cosmography.)
Nevertheless, the struggle was a full century long before official recognition of Aristotle came. The name of Aristotle had been associated with pantheism for many years, on account of the Arabian versions of his teaching. The neo-Platonic doctrine of emanations, with its pantheism in the Arabian versions, was a tendency of which the church had been shy since the days of Erigena. Until the theistic character of Aristotle’s teaching became assured by the direct Latin translations from the Greek, there was a powerful reaction against the whole of the new learning. The church had condemned the Physics in 1209 and the Metaphysics in 1215. But in 1254 Aristotle was officially recognized, and fifty years later he became the guide of the church, whom no one could contradict without being accused of heresy.
The Catholic church never showed its ability to greater advantage than in its dealings with the new problems of this period. The people of a purely religious epoch now came into possession of Aristotelianism. For centuries the intellect had been starving on formal logic. An intellectual revolution was imminent. Here in Aristotle was presented a rich theory of nature that the church had never considered. Yet it is doubtful if Aristotle would have been accepted, had the Mendicant Friars—the Dominicans and Franciscans—not succeeded in establishing chairs in the University of Paris. These monks did not love philosophy in itself. They saw, however, that philosophy must be able to defend itself against infidel philosophy by the weapons of philosophy. But curiously enough, Aristotelianism, which was the spring of this renaissance, became, by its incorporation into the church, the great obstacle to the real Renaissance two hundred and fifty years later.
The Strength and Burden of Aristotle to the Church.
1. The Strength of Aristotle to the Church: (1) Aristotle elaborated for the church, with great clearness, the conception of a transcendent God. This was a weapon for the church against neo-Platonism and mysticism. (2) Aristotle gave to the church a theory of nature that supplemented its theory of grace. (3) Aristotle established a philosophical standard for the truth of things. This proved of great value to the church because it was under the control of the church. In the first two periods of the Middle Ages philosophical thought had a relative independence because it was without a recognized standard; now philosophy could be controlled by the standard of Aristotle. For example, with the coming of Aristotle there came certain standard definitions of substance, person, nature, accident, mode, potency, and act.
2. The Burden of Aristotle to the Church: (1) Aristotle encouraged a taste for science and analysis. At first the Aristotelian influence in this direction was very small, but its growth was only a question of time. (2) Aristotle became for the church a second standard. The problem for the churchman now became a double one: (a) Is my teaching consistent with church dogma? (b) Is my teaching consistent with Aristotle? “My son,” was the reply to a youth who thought he had discovered spots on the sun, “I have read Aristotle many times and I assure you there is nothing of the kind in him.” Dogma, not now the only standard, is not infallible. The reason need not follow dogma, but its own standard. Revelation became a realm of mystery which the reason could not reach, but to which it pointed. A doctrine thus might be of such a nature that it might be philosophically true, but theologically not true.
The Predecessors of Aquinas. Many distinguished names stand at the close of the Transitional Period and the beginning of the Classic Period. These express the transitional character of the thought of the threshold of this time. They show, like Abelard, the tendency toward rationalism. Alexander of Hales (d. 1264), William of Aubergne (d. 1249), Vincent of Beauvais (d. 1246), Albert of Bollstaedt, called Albertus Magnus (d. 1280), show the influence of the new Aristotelian science. Albert was the teacher of Thomas Aquinas. The attempt of Thomas to form a theological system for the church was anticipated by the so-called Sums of the twelfth century, of which the work of Peter the Lombard was the model. The four books of Sums of Peter were collections of opinions of the Fathers on questions of dogma. They show the influence of Aristotle and the method of Abelard. The Sums of Peter became for several centuries the text-book of the schools and the subject of innumerable commentaries. It was the core of Classic scholastic literature, and around it grew up the problems of metaphysics and psychology.
The Life of Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274).—The Founder of the Dominican Tradition. Thomas belonged to a noble house which was related to the royal family. He studied in the University of Naples, but at the age of nineteen, upon resolving to enter the Dominican order, he was captured and kept a prisoner by his brothers. After two years he made his escape, and, his family having consented to his taking orders, he went to Cologne under the instruction of Albert. He was then sent to Paris, where he obtained his degree in 1257. He was a successful lecturer at Paris until 1261, when he was called by the Pope to teach philosophy in Rome, Bologna, and Pisa. During this period he composed his greatest work, Summa Theologiae. He declined preferment and finally resided at Naples. He always enjoyed the highest consideration of the church authorities.
Thomas, the founder of the “Dominican tradition,” was the first to formulate Christian Aristotelianism and to draw for the church the line between the realms of reason and faith. He did not so much create doctrine as he transformed and assimilated it. The sources from which he drew were many: the Scriptures, the Fathers, Greek philosophy, and the teaching of contemporary Arabians and Jews. If, as some historians maintain, he was not a thinker of the first rank, he at least relieved the church from a delicate situation by means of a conciliating theology. Certainly his predecessors and contemporaries stand eclipsed by him. He satisfied the mediæval demand for order and he prevented deterioration in the church doctrine. He did not rise above his age, although he stood at the head of its intellectual movement. He was, on the contrary, the most perfect expression of scholasticism, and he was affectionately regarded as doctor angelicus and again as doctor universalis.
The Central Principle of Thomas’s Doctrine—The Twofold Truth. The life-purpose of Thomas was to bring Christianity into closer relation with civilization and science. He sought to give all departments of knowledge their rights and at the same time to protect the ascendency of religion. This was to him the same as bringing Christianity and Aristotle together, for Aristotle meant to him the entire product of ancient civilization. To the mediæval world of grace he added a world of nature, and, fully dominated by the mediæval love of order, he unfolded so comprehensive a view of life that he included all its problems. He felt that the natural and the revealed must not become a contradiction.
To accomplish this Thomas found in Aristotle his own ideal estimate of things. Looking at Aristotle through his own neo-Platonism, he naturally found in Aristotle more of the inner and religious estimate of nature than the facts will allow. Yet it was evident to Thomas that there was in Aristotle a great interest in nature and a great reserve on ultimate questions. Nature was, according to Aristotle, an essence unfolding in a system of grades. This became the central principle of Aquinas in this form: Nature is a sketch in outline of the world of grace. Before the eye of the religious mind these two truths should appear: (1) the world of faith and the world of nature are two properly distinct worlds; (2) the world of faith is a continuation of the world of nature. The world of grace and the world of nature are two grades of the whole of existence. Nature is the lower stage of development, and the point of contact between it and the world of grace is the soul of man. Religion and philosophy thus have different spheres, but they are not contradictory. Grace does not destroy, but it perfects nature. Nature is subordinate to grace as man is subordinate to the Christian, the state to the church, the Emperor to the Pope.63
The difference between philosophy and theology is not that theology treats of God and divine truths, and philosophy does not. Philosophy discusses divine truths. But the difference lies here, that theology views truths in the light of revelation, while philosophy views them in the light of reason. Yet there are truths that belong to philosophy, truths that belong to theology, and truths that belong to both. The problems of the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the relation of the world to God are theological problems, yet they can also be demonstrated by the reason of philosophy; but the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the temporal creation are beyond the scope of the reason and belong to theology. Philosophy and theology are distinct, yet they are in harmony. Theology supplements philosophy with faith; philosophy supplements theology by (1) establishing preliminary motives, (2) supplying analogies, (3) answering objections. Thomas accepts both propositions which had divided his predecessors: credo ut intelligam and intelligo ut credam.
Above historical revelation there is something even higher, which could be called another realm, were it not more of a hope than a possession of man. Its appearance in the doctrine of Thomas shows the influence of Plato upon him. It is the immediate union of the individual with God in mystic ecstasy.64 It is the dome of the religious temple that Thomas has built. But Thomas was careful to insist that this heavenly glory could not be gained except through the offices of the church. The individual cannot reach God through his own unaided efforts, but the sacraments of the church form the mysterious background of the religious life.
The Problem of Individuality—The Relation of Particulars and Universals. The all-absorbing question of the Transitional Period, of the relation of particulars and universals, became for Thomas and his successors the problem of individuality. For the schoolman was obliged to define the individual and fix his place in his Aristotelian world, if he was to be successful against the pantheism of the Arabian Aristotelianism. What is the nature and standing of the individual? What constitutes the difference between individuals? The whole theological edifice of Thomas would collapse in mystic unity, the immortality of the soul would be lost and the offices of the church would be nullified, unless Thomas showed the positive nature of the individual. In this connection we must remember that on the whole the Middle Ages had accepted Abelard’s analysis of the problem of the relation of universals and particulars: the universals exist in three ways, ante rem or in God’s mind; post rem or in man’s mind; in re or in nature. To Thomas the universals as abstractions (universalia post rem) in the human mind cannot be individuals, for they have no real existence. To have real existence the universal must exist in re, in the many, as the essence of things; not as abstraction beside the many.
The question of individuality therefore to Thomas concerns properly only objects in re, or objects in the corporeal world.65 These are objects of Form and Matter. The question is, whether the Form or the matter of corporeal things is the principle of its individuality. Thomas says that matter is this principle,—not indeterminate matter, but matter with quantitative determinations. The difference between earthly individuals is numerical—a difference of time and space relations. The Forms of nature objects change continually according to their material conditions, but these conditions do not change. Nevertheless the quantitative determinations of individuals are not the cause, but the condition, of their existence.
But the question about the status of beings in the spiritual world, “separate Forms,” is a more difficult one for Thomas. This is the problem about God, the angels, and the souls of men. They are evidently not individualized by matter. What is the principle that distinguishes them from one another? They are Forms without matter and they are individualized through themselves, since they have no need of material determinations. Thus God is distinguished from everything else as pure Form or pure actuality. He is the unique individual in whom all differences merge. But so also are the angels actualized through themselves. What is the difference between God and the angels? God is an absolute genus; the angel is a relative genus, i. e. it is the only one of its kind. But what is the condition of the souls of men? Are they all alike or do they have a principle of distinction? Yes, they are distinguishable, for each soul upon separation from its body carries with it a love for its former body, and that distinguishes it from other souls.
The Primacy of the Will or the Intellect. Up to this time there had been no psychological dispute as to which of the faculties was fundamental. Now the question appears in full force. Much of the literature of this period is upon the question of the primacy of the will or the intellect, and it appears to be almost the leading motive of the time. Augustine had placed the will in the foreground of his teaching. His successors had never disputed the subject, but had been engaged in discussing what products of the intellect are real—the particulars or the universals. With the introduction of the intellectualism of Aristotle, there almost immediately arose defenders of Augustine. To them Aristotelianism was too rationalistic. Thomas follows Aristotle unconditionally, and with him stand the German mystics. Intellectualism becomes the central principle of what is known as the “Dominican tradition.” Duns Scotus was a Franciscan monk. He took up arms for the primacy of the will, and this became the central principle of the “Franciscan tradition.” On this point the nominalists were his allies.
The problem of the will arose first with reference to the human will. Thomas contended against Duns Scotus that man is free so far as he follows his knowledge of the good. The intellect is therefore primal, for it determines the will by showing the will what the good is.
The question next arose as to the priority of the faculties in God. Does God’s will dominate His intellect or His intellect dominate His will? This was a vital point in the Augustinian theodicy. Does God will the good to be good, or does His will act according to what He knows to be good? Here lies the point at issue between the Dominican Thomas and the Franciscan Scotus. Thomas maintained that the intellect of God determines His will. The intellect is determined by the truth so long as the intellect is true to itself. Why should not the will be determined by the truth in the same way? With God this freedom for the truth is God himself. The world is the best possible world, for God has willed it out of himself.
The world is determined by goodness and man’s will is determined by the same goodness. When the sense conquers the morally determined will, there is sin. The senses, and not the will, are the cause of sin.
Duns Scotus (1270–1308), the Founder of the Franciscan Tradition—Life and Philosophical Position. Thus the Middle Ages did not come to a standstill with Thomas. A greater movement existed after him than is often thought. The leading minds who succeeded Thomas refused to follow the middle course which he had mapped out. New attempts were made to relate the world of grace and the world of nature. One was mysticism, represented by Eckhart (d. 1372). The other was the reaction of the Augustinians against the intellectualism of the new Aristotelianism as represented by Thomas. The leader in this was Duns Scotus. The seat of this movement was Oxford.66
Duns Scotus was born in Ireland and at an early age he joined the Franciscan order. He graduated from Oxford, which at that time was anti-Thomistic. He then taught theology and philosophy at Oxford for ten years. His lectures were largely attended and his fame spread over Europe. He went to Paris in 1304, where he taught for four years. He was then transferred to Cologne, where he died.
Scotus was the Kant of scholasticism. The time of construction of scholasticism had passed, and the time of criticism and analysis had come. Scotus was the intellectual knight-errant who refused to accept any theory without subjecting it to criticism. He was the acutest mind of the Middle Ages and was called the doctor subtilis.
Duns Scotus’s Conception of the Twofold Truth.—The Separation of Science and Religion. The distinction between revelation, theology, and philosophy, that appears in this period of Classic Scholasticism, was sharply drawn by Scotus. In Thomas’s conception of a graded world of development the distinction between theology and philosophy was not emphasized. Philosophy now in the hands of Scotus becomes science, having the marks of exactness that compel belief, but is, however, restricted to its own realm. By philosophy Scotus means logic. In matters of faith logic has nothing whatever to say, for at that extreme stands revelation possessing the absolute truth that compels faith. Between revelation and philosophy Scotus squeezes theology—the science that his predecessors had used to clarify revelation. With Scotus it becomes a domain that is poor indeed. Its objects are the highest, but it can never reach them. It has not the divine assurance of revelation nor the exactness of logical science. Its highest conclusions are only probable, and it can help revelation only in a negative way. It cannot prove the doctrine of the Trinity, incarnation, creation, immortality, and even its proofs for the existence of God have no cogency. Philosophy and revelation both profit at the expense of scholastic theology. After Scotus scientific heresy frequently shielded itself on the ground that its conclusions apply only to the realm of science, while the opposite may be true in revelation.
The Inscrutable Will of God. Revelation is thus placed beyond the reach of the human reason because it rests on the inscrutable will of God. Revelation is God’s free act. God must be free. If Thomas’s conception of God’s will as determined by his intellect were true, God would not be free. The intellect in man or God must be the servant of the will, if the will be free. In man consciousness produces at first a number of indistinct and imperfect ideas. Those ideas become distinct upon which the will fixes its attention, while the others cease to exist because they are unsupported by the will.
God’s will is more fundamental than the good. God makes the good to be good. Both Thomas and Scotus say that the moral law is the command of God. Thomas conceives it to be God’s command because it is in accord with the good; Scotus, for no other reason than that it is God’s command. The good might be different if God so created it. In opposition to Thomas, Scotus maintained that God does not have to create what He does create, and that this is not the best possible world. God creates what He wills; He can, therefore, grant dispensation, and so can the church. If God’s will were determined by His intellect, He would have no independence, He would not even exist, He would be only nature or one of its causes, there could be no evil nor accident. He can supersede the moral law by a new law, just as He superseded the Mosaic law by the Gospel. Individuality, revelation, salvation, and all objects of faith have their existence only in the groundless and inscrutable will of God. For this reason there can be no rational theology.
This founder of the “Franciscan tradition” of practical piety and meritorious action could not have other than the freedom of the will as his central principle. An Augustinian he refused, however, to follow Augustine in centralizing freedom in God. The object of faith is the will of God, the subject of faith is the will of man. Human freedom consists in coöperation with divine grace. Man can help in the work of God. His freedom is partly formal: he can will or not will. It is partly material: he can will A or B. There is no ulterior ground to determine the human will, and this undetermined freedom is the ground for merit, provided the human will coincides with the divine.
The Problem of Individuality. The problem of individuation was a favorite one with Scotus. While Scotus agrees with Thomas as to the threefold existence of the universal, the individual and not the universal is the ultimate fact. The individual cannot be deduced from the universal, nor can it be constituted by the quantitative determinations of matter. It is already individualized and substantialized. Form, not matter, individualizes. The definite individual form, the “thisness” (hæcceitas), is the ultimate fact. The individual can only be verified as actual fact. The individual is irreducible, and no further explanation can be made than to say that it is an individual. Thus the inquiry into the Principium individuationis has no meaning.
After Duns Scotus. The church failed to canonize Scotus; for though he claimed to be its most faithful son, he taught the dangerous doctrine of freedom of the individual will. His doctrine also marks the beginning of empirical investigation of nature and the decadence of formal logic. Although a most faithful follower of the church, he brought scholasticism to the point where it no longer served the church. The result was ultrarationalism—not what Scotus intended. But when revelation no longer rests upon rational ground, and when there exists by its side a philosophical science whose basis is rational, it is only a question of time when revelation shall lose its authority for men. When philosophy passed from Scotus to Ockam, Ockam’s conception of the individual as the ultimately real and of the unrationality of revelation gave him the old name of nominalist. This is a misnomer, for the doctrine of Ockam is quite different from the nominalism of Roscellinus. The temper of the time was different from those days when Roscellinus followed upon Anselm, for the superior minds were now turning away from orthodoxy. Disciples of both Thomas and Scotus were becoming nominalists. It was an epoch when scholasticism was being discredited by the universities, when theology was less a study in the curricula, when religion was being superseded by magic, when there were rival claimants for the Pope’s chair, when there was strife between the church and the state. The spirit of the age was toward nominalism in every form. The command, in 1339, to the University of Paris not to use Ockam’s works shows how powerful had become his following during his lifetime. Dominicans and Augustinians went over in crowds to nominalism. This beginning of nominalism betrays the growth of European national life, modern languages, art, and the sciences. It shows the beginning of Protestantism in all departments. The church attempted to crush it in the way that it had crushed Roscellinus. But this nominalism had too deep root.
William of Ockam (1280–1349): Life and Teaching. Ockam was called Doctor Invincibilis. He was born in Ockam, England, and studied at Oxford, where he probably had Scotus as a teacher. After teaching in Paris (1320–1325), he left Paris and joined the opponents of the temporal power of the Pope. He was imprisoned at Avignon, but escaped to the court of Louis of Bavaria, where he died. To Louis he made his celebrated promise, “If you will defend me with your sword, I will defend you with my pen.” He has been called “the first Protestant.”
The nominalism of Ockam was more complex than that of Roscellinus, and yet it was essentially a tendency to simplification by discarding all metaphysics and psychology as useless. “Ockam’s razor” was the nickname of his philosophy. He regarded concepts as subjective signs or “terms” of actual facts. Hence his philosophy was also called terminism. There was also in it a naturalistic tendency which was the result of the scientific studies of the Aristotelian Arabians. With these logical and naturalistic motives were united the Augustinian doctrine of the will. These were the three factors of a nominalism that felt the conviction of the importance of the inner life as well as the need of an extended investigation of nature.
It is, moreover, no accident that Ockam was conservative, for he belonged to the Franciscans, the most conservative of the monastic bodies. This nominalism was a reaction against scholasticism, in order to strengthen the supernatural character of dogma. Ockam felt that scholasticism had waxed too great—that under the guise of serving religion it had virtually subordinated religion. The reactionary Franciscans proclaimed the entire separation of religion and philosophy in order to make room for faith. Faith could be purified only by renouncing scholasticism. The temporal power must be given up by the church, the state and the church must be separated. No new knowledge about faith can be obtained. The dogma must be left impregnable, even though scientifically men become skeptics.
Consistent, therefore, was it for this movement to disjoin entirely the parts of the twofold truth. Scotus had almost crowded out natural theology; Ockam completed the work of Scotus. Scholasticism or natural theology is a rubbish-heap of hypotheses. The church should abandon speculation and emphasize faith. It should return to the simplicity and holiness of the Apostolic church. Ockam was devoted to the true upbuilding of the church and was a follower of St. Francis. It was his love for the church that made him take sides against her pretensions to temporal power.
Ockam was the natural precursor of his fellow countryman John Locke, and the English empirical school. Individual things have the reality of original Forms, for they come to us intuitively. Our ideas are only signs of them. This is a relation of the “first intention.” As individual ideas are related to individual things, so general ideas are related to individual ideas. This is the relation of the “second intention.” The general idea referring thus indirectly to an individual thing is therefore arbitrary and capricious. Real science deals with things intuitively observed; rational science only with the relations between ideas. Nevertheless real science deals only with an inner world, even if its material is intuitively known. Intuitions are only representatives of the real world. How much less real must the world of rational science then be, since it presupposes these inner intuitions of real science. The universal, therefore, has no reality. It is a name, a sign of many things, a term. Only the individual is real.
After Ockam. William of Ockam was the last schoolman. When his doctrine of terminism was united with Augustine’s powerful doctrine of the will,—forming an extreme individualism,—the glimmering of the dawn of modern times appears. The movement was made still stronger by the study of the history of development psychologically, and it became a kind of idealism of the inner life. Already, too, there were beginning investigations in natural science, based upon empirical study. Modern subjectivism was at hand; scholasticism had run its course. The representatives of the scholastic philosophy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries forgot the principle of the Classic Schoolmen and became mere commentators of the leaders of the tradition to which they belonged. Their verbal subtleties were too refined to be understood. The efforts of Nicolas Cusanus to bring secular science under a system of scholastic mysticism only promoted the modern movement. Cusanus therefore belongs to the next period, and of him we shall subsequently hear.