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.
Father, of one substance with the * Hamack, OutlineB of History of
the Dogma, pp. 193, ff.
 DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 145 Father
(homoousios) ; sharing fully in the nature of the Father, without loss
to the Father and without ceasing to be another person. In the
historical Jesus, the Logos-6od, or the Son, was united, in essence,
with a human body ; the incarnation was a complete incarnation.
The Holy Ghost is a third being; the one Godhead is a trinity of the
same substance, consisting of three persons identical in nature. The
Anti-Arians won the victory at the Council ; the Arian doctrines were
condemned and Arius and his followers excommunicated. The words
*' begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father "
were inserted in the creed which has come to be called the Nicene
creed. An unsuccessful attempt was later made to effect a
compromise between Arianism and Athanasianism by declaring God
and Christ to be, not of the same substance (homooiisios) , but of
like nature (homoiousios) ^ and failure to agree on this point led to
a division between the Roman and Greek Churches. Both parties to
the controversy had sought support for their views in the
Neoplatonic philosophy of Origen; and the orthodox interpretation,
no less than the defeated theory, is based on the logos'doctrine.
Another question to stir up controversy was the problem of the
relation of the man Jesus to the Logos-God, the Christological
problem. Many answers were offered and many factions formed in
support of the different theories. The interpretation that Christ had
two natures, '^ each perfect in itself and each distinct from the
other, yet perfectly united in one person, who was at once both God
and man," was accepted by the Synod of Chalcedon, in 451, and
became the orthodox dogma. After the establishment of the dogma
at Niciea, Christian philosophy was studied chiefly in the school of
Origen, at Alexandria. The orthodox doctrines were adopted, in the
main, and such teachings in Origen's system as conflicted with them
rejected. Among the representatives of the school who assisted in
the work of reconstruction, were Gregory of Nyssa (+394), Basil the
Great (+379), and Gregory of Nazianzen (+390). Neoplatonism, as
taught by Plotinus, also had a large following, among the leaders
being: Bishop Synesius (+430), Bishop Nemesius (c. 450), JEneas of
Gaza (c. 530), Zacharias Scholasticus, Johannes Granvnaticus, and
Johannes Philoponus, all of the sixth century. The Neoplatonic work,
falsely attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, appeared at the end
of the fifth century.
 146 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES A third question
demanded an ofBcial answer: What is the place of man in the
scheme of salvation f According to one view, which was widespread,
the whole human race had Free Will been corrupted by the sin of the
first man or a Original Sin ^*^^®^ angel; and divine help, in some
form or other, was needed to redeem mankind. The fundamental
article of faith that Christ had come down from heaven for our
salvation seemed to favor such an interpretation: if it was necessary
to deliver man from sin, then evidently he could not save himself, he
was a slave to sin and by nature a sinner (original sin) or had
become a sinner in some way; at any rate he was not free. This
conception received support from the Manichsans, a numerous sect
accepting the teachings of the Persian Mani (+277), who read
Persian dualism and Gnosticism into the Scriptures and combined
Christianity with the doctrines of Zoroaster. They taught that the
principle of light in man was under bondage to matter, the principle
of darkness, and that the soul could be purified and enabled to
return to the kingdom of light whence it came, only by asceticism,
by abstention from meat, wine, marriage, property, and labor. But it
was possible to read a different view into the article of faith : Christ
came to save man from sin. Sin implies guilt, guilt implies
responsibility on the part of the guilty person ; only a being who is
free to choose between right and wrong can be a sinner. Hence, if
man sinned, he must have been free. The same conclusions were
reached in another way. God is allpowerful and man, therefore, weak
and unfree, incapable of saving himself from sin; only a miracle can
deliver him. Or: God is absolutely good and just, and cannot,
therefore, be responsible for sin ; hence, man himself must be the
author of sin, that is, free. Pelagius, a monk, came to Rome, in the
year 400, with a doctrine opposed to the notion of original sin : Qod
is a good and just God, and everything created by him good; hence,
human nature cannot be radically evil. Adam was free to sin or not
to sin ; his sensuous nature, which is evil, determined him, and he
chose sin. Sin, however, cannot be transmitted from generation to
generation, because every man has free will : sin implies freedom.
Freedom is the original act of grace, the first gift
 WORLD-VIEW OF AUGUSTINE 147 bestowed by a good
Qod; hence, man needs no help, he can resist sin and will the good.
And yet, the example of Adam^s sin was baneful; the imitation of
his bad example has led to a habit, which it is difScult to overcome,
and which is responsible for man's fall. But, the churchman asked: If
man is not enslaved by sin, if his freedom of choice has not been
destroyed, what part can divine grace and the Christian religion play
in his redemption f The Pelagians answer: It is by an act of divine
grace that knowledge is revealed (in Scripture, in the teachings and
example of Jesus, and in the doctrines of the Church) which will lend
support to the human will in choosing the good. Baptism and faith in
Jesus Christ are necessary to admission into the kingdom of heaven.
Qod, being omniscient, knows exactly what choices men are going
to make in their lives, — ^how they will use their power of freedom,
— and determines beforehand the rewards and punishments to be
meted out (predestination). 19. WORLD-VIBW OF AUGUSTINB The
Pelagian teaching is opposed by Augustine, the greatest constructive
thinker and the most influential teacher of the early Christian
Church. In his system the most important theological and
philosophical problems of -^^^^stme his age are discussed, and a
Christian world-view developed which represents the culmination of
Patristic thought and becomes the guide of Christian philosophy for
centuries to come. It is owing to the significance of Augustine's
views for medieval philosophy, as well as for the Christian theology
of the Reformation and the modem period, that we shall consider his
system in its different phases. Anrelius Augnstinus was bom in
Tagaste, Northern Africa, in 353, of a pagan father and a Christian
mother, Monica, who exercised a profound influence on her son. He
became a teacher of rhetoric, first in his native city, later at Milan
(384-386), and devoted himself to the study of theological and
philosophical questions, which carried him from Manichffiism to
skepticism, and left him unsatisfied. In 386 he began to read some
of the writings of Plato and the Neoplatonists, which gave stability to
his thought, and came under the infiuence of the eloquent Bishop
Ambrose of Milan, whose sermons touched his heart After bis
conversion in 387 he returned to Tagaste, where he
 148 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES lived for three
years (388-391) according to monastic rules, and waa ordained to
the priesthood. In 396 he was raised to the bishopric of Hippo, in
Africa^ which he held until his death in 430, devoting his great gifts
to the development and propagation of Catholic doctrine. Among the
works of Augustine are: De libera arbitrio; De vera religione; De
prcBdeatinatione et gratia; Be trinitaie; De civitate Dei;
Confessiones; Retractiones; and Letters, Works in Migne's collection,
vols. XXXII-XLVII; transl. ed. by Dods, 15 vols.; also in Schaff's
Library, vols. I- VIII. McCabe, 8t. Augustine and his Age; Boissier, La
fin du paganisme; writings by Bindemann, A. Domer, Renter,
Bohringer in his Church History, vol. XI, Martin. Characteristic of the
spirit of the entire Christian age is the Augustinian view that the only
knowledge worth having is the knowledge of Gk)d and self. All the
other sciences, K^nowkdee ^^8^^* metaphysics, and ethics, have
value only in so far as they tell us of God. It is our duty to
understand what we firmly believe, to see the rationality of our faith.
** Understand in order that you may believe, believe in order that
you may understand. Some things we do not believe unless we
understand them; others we do not understand unless we believe."
Besides natural knowledge, faith in divine revelation is a source of
knowledge of God. Intelligence is needed for understanding what it
believes; faith for believing what it understands. Reason, to be sure,
must first decide whether a revelation has actually taken place.
When faith has comprehended the revelation, reason seeks to
understand and explain it. We cannot, however, understand
everything we believe, but must accept the truths of faith on the
authority of the Church, which is the representative of God on earth.
We know that we exist; our thinking and existence are indubitable
certainties. And we know that there is eternal and immutable truth:
our very doubts prove that we are conscious of truth, and the fact
that we call a judgment true or false points to the existence of a
world of truth. Augustine here conceives truth, after the Platonic
fashion, as having real existence, and the human mind as possessing
instinctive knowledge of it. Sometimes he speaks as if we envisaged
the divine ideas, at other times he says that God creates them in us.
In either case, truth is objective, not a mere subjective product of
the human mind; there is something independent and compelling
 WORLD-VIEW OF AUGUSTINE 149 about it; whether you or
I have it or not, it is and always will be. The source of this eternal
and changeless world of truth is Ood; indeed, the divine mind is the
abode of the Platonic world of ideas, forms, archetypes, or essences,
even of the ideas of particular things. The impelling motive in
Augustine's theology is the Neoplatonic conception of the
absoluteness and majesty of God and the insignificance of his
creatures, considered apart . from him. God is an eternal,
transcendent being, all-powerful, all-good, all-wise; absolute unity,
absolute intelligence, and absolute will ; that is, absolute spirit. He is
absolutely free, but his decisions are as unchangeable as his nature ;
he is absolutely holy and cannot will evil. In him willing and doing
are one: what he wills is done without the help of any intermediate
being or Logos. In him are all ideas or forms of things ; which
means that he proceeded rationally in creating the world and that
everything owes its form to him. Augustine accepts the Athanasian
doctrine of the Trinity, although the illustrations which he uses to
make it clear are tainted with Sabellianism. God created the world
out of nothing; it is not a necessary evolution of his own being, as
the pantheistic Neoplatonists hold, for this transcends the nature of
his creatures. His creation is a continuous creation (creatio
continua)^ for otherwise the world would go to pieces : it is
absolutely dependent on him. We cannot say that the .world was
created in time or in space, for before God created the world there
was neither time nor space; in creating, he created time and space;
he himself is timeless and without space. Yet, God's creation is not
an eternal creation ; the world has a beginning ; creatures are finite,
changeable and perishable. God also created matter; it is not earlier
than the form, though prior to it in nature, that is, we have to
presuppose matter logically, as the basis of the form. Since God is
omnipotent, every conceivable thing, even the most insignificant,
must be present in the universe. In order to^ prove divine
omnipotence, Augustine is driven to the position that God is the
cause of everything. In order. to prove his goodness, it is necessary
to exclude evil from the world or explain it away. Creation is a
revelation of God's goodness;
 X50 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES he created the
universe on account of his infinite love. (But, — Augustine hastens
to add, for fear of depriving the Deity of absolute power, — ^he was
not bound to create, his love did not compel him ; it was an act of
his free will.) Every kind of existence is, therefore, in a sense, good ;
only we should not judge its value from the standpoint of human
utility. If Qpd has created and predetermined everything and is at
the same time an absolutely good being, he has willed everything for
the best of his creatures, and even evil must be good in its way. Like
the shadows in a picture, it belongs to the beauty of the whole ; evil
is not good, black is not white, but it is good that evil is. Or, it is
conceived as a defect, as privation of essence {privatio substantioR)
f as an omission of the good; in this sense, if there were no good,
there could be no evil. Qood is possible without evil, but evil is not
possible without the good ; for everything is good, at least so far as
it has any being at all. Privation of good is evil because it means an
absence of something nature ought to have. Nor can moral evil mar
the beauty of universal crea- tion. Moral evil springs from the will of
man or fallen angels; it is the result of an evil will, which, however, is
nothing positive; hence, it merely represents a defective will; it, too,
is privation of good (privatio boni). The worst evil is privatio Dei, the
turning away from God, or the highest good, to the perishable world.
God could have omitted evil from the scheme of things, but he
preferred to use it as a means of serving the good; the glory of the
universe is enhanced by its presence (optimism). He foresaw, for
example, that man would turn from the good to sin; he permitted it
and predetermined his punishment. That is, in order to save God's
goodness along with his omnipotence, Augustine (1) denies the
existence of real evil or makes it relative; (2) defines it as a privation
of the good; (3) shifts the responsibility for it to man. Man, the
highest creature in the visible world, is a union of soul and body.
This union is not the result of sin ; the body is not the prison-house
of the soul, and evil. The syc 0 ogy ^^^ ^ ^ simple immaterial or
spiritual substance, entirely distinct in essence from the body; it is
the directing and forming principle, the life of the body ; but how it
acts on the body is a mystery. Sensation is a mental, not a physiciil
 WORLD-VIEW OF AUGUSTINE 151 process. Sense-
perception, imagination, and sensuous desire are functions of the
sensitive or inferior soul ; memory, intellect, and will, of the
intellectual or superior soul or spirit, which is in no wise dependent
on the body. All these functions, however, ave functions of one soul :
the soul is a unity, three in one, the image of the triune God. Since
the will is present in all modifications of the soul, we may say that
these are nothing but wills. The soul is not an emanation from God;
each man has his own individual soul. Nor did souls exist before
their union with bodies (preexistence). How they arose, Augustine
leaves unsettled; it is a problem he is unable to solve. He finds it
hard to decide in favor of any of the views common in his day : that
God creates a new soul for every child that is born (creaiionism) or
that souls are generated from the souls of parents in the same way,
and at the same time, as bodies from bodies (traducianism) ,
Although the soul has a beginning in time, it does not die. Augustine
proves its immortality by the usual arguments of his age, which go
back to Plato. Still, although the soul is immortal in the sense of
continuing to exist, it is not necessarily immortal in the sense of
realizing eternal blessedness. The eternal blessedness of the soul in
God cannot be demonstrated: our hope in it is an act of faith. The
supreme human goal is union with Gk>d, that is, a religious,
mystical ideal: the vision of God. Such a union cannot take place in
an imperfect world, but only in a future life, which is the true life.
Our earthly life is but a pilgrimage to Qod; in comparison with
eternal blessedness, it is not life, but death. We have here the
characteristic pessimism of early Christianity with respect to the
visible universe, and buoyant optimism so far as the hereafter is
concerned : coniemptus mundi on the one hand, and amor Dei on
the other. The dualism between the good God and the evil world,
however, Augustine seeks to reconcile by his theory of evil, which we
have already considered and according to which there is no absolute
evil. The way is also shown by which the ethical dualism between
the highest good and our workaday mo* rality may be bridged.
 152 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES By love we are
united with (Jod, the highest good ; hence love is the supreme
virtue, the source of all the other virtues: of temperance or self-
control, which is love of Ood as opposed to love of the world ; of
fortitude, which overcomes pain and suffering by love; of justice,
which is the service of Qod; and of wisdom, which is the power of
right choice. Love of Qod is the basis of true love of self and of
others. It is the love of Ood alone that makes the so-called pagan
virtues genuine virtues ; unless inspired and prompted by this love,
they are nothing but ** splendid vices." The love of God is the work
of divine grace acting within: a mystical process taking place in the
sacraments of the Church under the influence of Qod's power. Faith,
hope, and charity are the three stages in moral conversion, love
being the highest. '^ Whoever loves right, doubtless also believes
and hopes right." ** Without love faith can do nothing; nor is love
without hope, nor hope without love, nor either without faith." In
this teaching lies the possibility of a more positive attitude toward
earthly life and human institutions than seemed possible under the
ideals of primitive Christianity. The early Christians had assumed a
negative attitude toward human institutions: marriage, the affairs of
State, war, the administration of justice, commercial pursuits, and so
on. But with the development of an organized Church and the
Christianization of the Roman Empire, a change became necessary:
the immediate result of this change was a kind of oscillation
between world-denial and world-afSrmation. We find it in Augustine:
he wavers between the ascetic ideal and the worldly ideal. His
attitude is the characteristic attitude of medieval moralists. Thus, he
recognizes the right of property; he does not agree with the old
Fathers that property is based on injustice, that all have an equal
right to property, that wealth is a '' damnable usurpation "
(Ambrose). He also regards rich and poor alike as capable of
salvation. Nevertheless, he looks upon the possession of private
property as a hindrance to the soul, and places a higher value upon
poverty. Let us, therefore, abstain from the possession of private
property, he says, or if we cannot do that, let us abstain from the
love of possession. The same dualism ^nfrgnts us in the estimate of
marriage and vii^inii^: mar*
 WORLD-VIEW OF AUGUSTINE 158 riage is conceived as a
sacrament, and yet the unmarried state is the highest. His
conception of the State reveals the same thing. The earthly State is
based on selMove and even contempt of God (contempttis Dei) ; the
City of God, on love of God and contempt of self. Nevertheless, the
temporal State is an ethical community with the mission to promote
earthly happiness, and justice reigns in it. But its goal is relative,
while that of the Church is absolute ; hence, the State is subordinate
to the Church ; the authority of the Church is infallible, it is the
visible appearance of the kingdom of God. In short, we find in
Augustine a twofold ideal. The highest good or perfection is a
transcendent good, which even the Christian is unable to realize in
the fiesh, being still under the sway of carnal concupiscence:
consequently, his perfection consists in love of God, in the good will.
A certain degree of perfection, however, a kind of holiness, may be
reached by the performance of certain external works: venial sins
may be wiped out by prayer, fasting, alms. Yet the supreme and true
goal is, after all, renunciation of the world, withdrawal from social
life, asceticism, imitation of Christ. The monastic life remains, for
Augustine, the Christian ideal. The leading trait of this ethical
teaching is its idealism. The greatest thing in the universe is not the
material aspect of existence, but spirit; the greatest thing in man is
not body, not his sensuous-impulsive nature, not the satisfaction of
appetite, but spirit. Augustine opposes the Pelagian theory of the
will. Man was, indeed, free to sin or not to sin in Adam ; God not
only created him free, but also endowed him with supernatural gifts
of grace : immortality, holiness, justice, free- ^^^rjj? ^ dom from
rebellious desire. But Adam chose to disobey God and thereby not
only lost the divine gifts, but corrupted the entire human race, so
that it has become a ^'mass of perdition." The first man transmitted
his sinful nature, and the punishment necessarily connected with it,
to his offspring, for he represented the whole human race. And now
it is impossible for man not to sin {non posse nan peccare) : he
went into sin free and came out of it unfree. Adam's sin is
 154 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES not merely the
beginning and example of sin, it is original, hereditary sin. The result
of it all is that the entire human race stands condemned, and no one
will be saved from merited punishment except by the mercy and
unmerited grace of Qod. Ood alone can reform corrupted man. He
does not select the recipients of his grace according to their good
works, — indeed, the works of sinful man cannot be good in the true
sense of the term, — only those whom Ood has elected as marks of
his grace can perform good works: ** the human will does not
achieve grace by an act of freedom, but rather achieves freedom by
grace." That is, God can bring about such a change in the human
soul as will give it the love of the good which it possessed before
Adam fell. The knowledge and love of the highest good, or God,
restores to man the power to do good works, the power to turn
away from the life of sense to God: in other words, the power of
freedom, the will to emancipate himself from the flesh. Freedom
means love of the good; that is, only the good will is free. The
thought underlying this teaching is that unless a man has a notion of
the good, unless he knows what is truly good and loves it, he is lost.
Some men have the good will, others are without it. Augustine's
problem is to account for its appearance in some persons and not in
others, and he explains it as a free gift of God. Why God should
have chosen some for eternal happiness and others for eternal
punishment is a mystery; but there is no injustice in his choice, since
man has forfeited any claim he may have had to salvation. Yet, is
not predestination identical with fatalism ; does it not mean that Qod
has determined beforehand who shall be saved and who destroyed,
and that his choice is purely arbitrary? Predestination is the eternal
resolve of God to lead this or that man to eternal life by the infallible
means of grace. Predestination implies foreknowledge of his choice.
But that has nothing to do with the man's freedom, Augustine
thinks: he was free to choose eternal life, he did not choose it; God
knew that he would not, and has decided beforehand whom to save.
Here, again, we have an example of Augustine's conception of the
absolute power of God; he is unwilling to limit divine freedom in the
slightest degree : God can do as he pleases
 DARK AGES 155 with man, and he has settled from all
eternity what is going to happen to every individual. Man has had his
chance in Adam; he abused the privilege, and Ood knew he would
abuse it; but he was under no compulsion to go wrong and he has
no right to complain if he is not among the elect. Nevertheless, if he
truly loves Gkwl, if he has the holy will, he is redeemed. Those
whom God has chosen for redemption constitute the City of Gk)d,
and those who are chosen for destruction form the city of this world,
the kingdom of evil. Human history represents a struggle between
the two kingdoms, the last stage of which is the period inaugurated
by Christ, through whom divine grace is bestowed. The kingdom of
God reaches its perfection in the Christian Church: it is the kingdom
of God on earth. No one can be saved outside of the Church,
although not every one in it will be saved. Who is to be saved, no
one knows. The battle between the forces of good and evil will end
in the victory of the righteous; then will follow the great Sabbath, in
which the members of the City of God will enjoy eternal blessedness,
while the children of evil will suffer eternal punishment in the eternal
fire together with the devil. BEGINNINGS OF SCHOLASTICISM 20.
Dark Ages Patristic philosophy reached its climax in the system of
Augustine, which was the last great product of classical-Christian
civilization and a heritage bequeathed by dying antiquity to its
barbarian successors. The century that had given birth to this work
also witnessed the downfall of the Western Roman Empire and the
rise to political power of the young and vigorous peoples of the
North. The Visigoths took possession of Gaul and Spain, the Vandals
overran Africa, and the Ostrogoths placed themselves on the throne
of the Caesars (476). The problem now became to amalgamate
RomanChristian culture with the notions and institutions of the
Germanic peoples, a task which required a thousand years to
complete. During this period, called the Middle Ages, a new
 156 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES civilization is
slowly developed from the mixture of materials contributed by the
different human factors involved, and a new political, social,
intellectual, and religious order arises. How thoroughgoing was the
process of transformation going on, may be seen from the evolution
of new languages, new states, new customs and laws, new religions,
new forms of life of every kind ; the old civilization disappeared in
the great melting-pot of European races. The completion of the
process marks the beginning of the modem era. That this work did
not proceed very rapidly is not surprising ; the traditions and
institutions of the past could not be assimilated except by slow
degrees. No people changes its life all at once, and no people is ever
completely transformed. Before becoming the bearers of the
civilization offered by Roman Chris-, tianity, the barbarous tribes had
many lessons to learn; they were obliged to assimilate the new
culture with their own organs ; it had to pass into a barbarian soul
with a long history of its own. Nor is it surprising that the higher
culture of the old world should have fallen into neglect and that the
field of philosophy, which the Christians had in part appropriated and
cultivated, should have lain fallow for many centuries. It was no time
for the construction of metaphysical and theological systems ; the
age was confronted with serious practical problems in every
department of human activity. Besides, philosophy is a man 's
business, and the hew peoples were still in their schooldays.
The'^very elements and instruments of knowledge had first to be
acquired before they could appreciate the highest achievements of a
cultivated race. The immediate problems were pedagogical, and the
learned literature of the period, from Augustine down to the ninth
century, was largely limited to textbooks on the seven liberal arts
and compendia of Christian dogmatics. Philosophy, tethered as it
was ' to Christian theology, was merely preserving the traditioiis of
the past. In the more cultivated Eastern Empire interest in
theological questions was wellnigh universal, but it expressed itself
in fruitless dogmatic controversies and in the production of
encyclopedic manuals or ^stematized collections of the dogmas, like
that of John of Damascus (around 700). In the West, scientific,
logical, and
 DARK AGES 157 philosophical text-books and commentaries
were written by Martianus Capella (around 430), Boethius (480-
525), and Cassiodonis (477-570), while Isidore of Seville (+636) and
the Venerable Bede (674-735) achieved an easy fame for learning by
compiling compendia remarkable only for their meagemess of
original thought. For several centuries there were practically two
distinct literatures running along side by side, the classical and the
Christian ; for the hybrid Christian works many educated Greeks and
Romans had nothing but contempt. Of the classical philosophy,
which continued along the lines of Stoicism, Neopythagoreanism,
and Neoplatonism we have already spoken in our account of Greek
thought. With the conversion of the educated classes in the Roman
Empire, and the development of the ecclesiastical organization, the
Christian clergy had gradually assumed the . . inteUectual leadership
which fonnerly rested in the J^K^ philosophers' schools, and had
become the custodians of learning; nearly all the great writers in the
East and West belonged to the clergy. At the beginning of the Middle
Ages, however, with the ascendency of the Germanic races, the
torch of knowledge flickered dimly, and the secular Christian clergy,
recruited now, for the most part, from the sons of barbarians, found
neither pleasure nor honor in the cultivation of Greek philosophy,
literature, and art. The seventh and eighth centuries constitute
perhaps the darkest period of our Western European civilization, a
period of boundless ignorance and brutality, in which the literary and
artistic achievements of the classical past seemed destined to be lost
in the general ruin. It was during this bleak age that the monasteries
became the refuge, not only of the persecuted and oppressed, but
of the despised and neglected liberal arts. In them, what had
survived of literature, science, and art was being preserved and
cultivated ; manuscripts were copied and the love of higher spiritual
ideals kept alive. The monasteries also established schools, and gave
instruction, meager and barren though it was. A more hopeful epoch
began when Charlemagne, in order to encourage education, called
scholars to his realm and founded schools in which the seven liberal
arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and
music) were taught: Paul the Deacon (the
 158 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES historian of the
Lombards), Einhard, Angilbert, and, greatest of all, the Anglo-Saxon
Alcuin (735-804), a pupil of the monastic school at York, who
became the Emperor's chief adviser in matters of education, and
who seems to have succeeded in arousing a lively interest in
philosophical questions at his monastic school at Tours. Alcuin
himself wrote text-books on grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics, —
^the trivium, — ^and a work on psychology that shows the
influence of the Platonic-Augustinian conceptions. Among his pupils
were Fredegisus (author of De nihUo et tenebris) and Babanus
Maurus (776-856), compilator and text-book writer, who has been
called the creator of the German schools. No work of any importance
to the history of thought appeared, however, until the middle of the
ninth century, when John Scotus Erigena (or Eriugena) published a
book which may be regarded as the continuation of Patristic
philosophy and the forerunner of a new era in the history of
Christian thinking. To tUs period, which has received the name of
Scholasticism, we shall now turn, outlining first the general
characteristics of the Middle Ages. Church, Beginning of the Middle
Ages; P. Mimroe, History of Education; Graves, History of Medieval
Education, chaps, i-iv; Mullinger, The Schools of Charles the Great;
Lecky, op. cit,, chap, iv; Gaskoin, Alcuin; West, Alcuin and the Rise of
Christian Schools; Werner* Alcuin und sein Jahrhundert. Feasy,
Monasticism; Wishart, Short History of Monks and Monasteries;
Gasquet, English Monastic Life; Zockler, Askese und Monchtum;
Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen, 3 vols.; A. Hamack,
Monasticism, transl. by Kellett and Marseille. 21. Spmrr of thb
MmoLE Ages and Christian Philosopht During the Middle Ages, the
words authority, obedience, subordination, form important terms in
the vocabulary of life. In politics, religion, morals, education,
philosophy, Authon^^ science, literature, art, — in every sphere of
human activity, — ^the influence of organized Christianity is
supreme. As the vice-gerent of God on earth and the source of
revealed truth, the Church becomes the guardian of education, the
censor of morals, the court of last resort in intellectual and
 SPIRIT OF THE MIDDLE AGES 159 spiritual affairs, indeed
the organ of civilization and the bearer of the keys of heaven. Since
she receives the truth from God direct, what need is there of
searching for it: what need of philosophy except as the handmaiden
of theology? Human reason is limited to systematizing and rendering
intelligible the revealed truths or dogmas of the Christian religion.
The individual is subordinate to the Church in his religious beliefs
and practices, the Church stands between him and his God; in all the
important matters of life and death, the shadow of the cross
appears. There is no salvation for the individual outside the great
City of God, which watches him from the cradle to the grave and
even gives him his passports to heaven. Education, too, is a function
of the ecclesiastic hierarchy: to be sure, who should teach God's
truth but the mediator through whom it is revealed; and who,
besides, exercise the censorship over human conduct but the
supreme earthly authority of right and justice f The Church likewise
holds herself superior to the State and seeks to apply her theory in
practice, as witness her conflicts with the German Emperors; as the
sun is to the moon, so is the Church to the State. The ambition of
Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), under whom ecclesiastical power
reached its climax, was to be the master of the world. The State
itself in time comes to assume the same attitude of authority toward
the people: kings rule by divine right and subjects are divinely
ordained to obey. Within the body politic the individual finds himself
under restraint and discipline, socially, politically, economically : for
the great mass obedience is the law of life, subjection of self to the
authority of some group: obedience to the ruler, obedience to the
lord, obedience to the guild, obedience to the master, obedience to
the head of the family. Authority and tradition are superior to public
opinion and the individual conscience; faith, superior to reason; the
corporation, superior to the person ; and the caste, superior to the
man. The philosophical thought of this period mirrors the spirit of
the times. Tradition and authority play a leading role in it; scholars
swear by the Church, by Augustine, Plato or Aristotle, by their
monastic orders or by g^ol^icism their schools. Assuming the truth
of the church doctrines and yet feeling: a strong desire for
speculation, they
 160 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES endeavor to
harmonize, wherever they can, by reading the Chris* tian faith into
their philosophies or their philosophies into the Christian faith. But
the faith is the beginning and the end of their labors, theology the
crown of all knowledge, the royal science. And even where
knowledge is dumb, where reason stumbles, the truths of religion
are still believed, all the more firmly believed by some because of
their mystery; and speculative theology is either cast aside as futile
or consolation sought in the principle of a twofold truth, — ^truth of
reason and truth of faith. Patristic philosophy had been occupied in
developing and formulating the articles of faith and organizing them
into a rational system. Scholasticism is confronted with a fixed body
of established doctrine when it enters upon the scene ; the process
of fermentation had practically come to an end. It is confronted,
likewise, with an organized hierarchy, ready and able to defend its
truths against all dissenters with the weapons of Church and State.
The problem now is to work out a system of thought that will square
with the dogmas, that is, harmonize Science and Faith. The
schoolmen, like the Qreek philosophers before them, aim at a
rational explanation of things ; only they approach the task with a
definite preconception of the goal. Certain fundamental truths are
already known; the scheme of salvation is itself a universal fact ; the
business of the philosopher is to interpret it, to connect it with the
rest of our knowledge or to render it intelligible. The assumption of
the medieval thinker is either that the truths of religion are rational,
that reason and faith agree, that there can be no conflict between
divine revelation and human thinking; or that, even though some of
them may transcend human reason, they are, none the less,
guaranteed by faith, which is another source of knowledge. Under
such circumstances, a number of alternatives are possible. The
thinker may start out with the Christian world-view and prove it with
the help of philosophy or some particular system of philosophy ; or
he may develop a system of philosophy of his own in harmony with
Christian principles ; or he may give his attention to problems that
have no direct connection with theology. In any case, however, the
dogma will be the regulative principle ; the schoolman will not
knowingly accept as true a propositicm
 SPIRIT OF THE MIDDLE AGES I6l contradicting an essential
article of faith, at least not without offering some explanation leaving
the truth of the dogma unimpaired. He may satisfy himself, in some
way, that both propositions are true even though contradictory, but
he will not drop the dogma. The purpose of scholasticism determines
its method : in so far as it consists in the demonstration of
propositions already accepted, it will largely employ deduction. The
nature of these propositions, and the need of prov- Char^terising
them, account for several other characteristics s^<5a8ticiam of
scholastic philosophy. The object of chief interest to the schoolman
is the transcendent world, the world of Qod, the angels, and the
saints; his thought is fixed not so much on thingd of this
phenomenal order as upon the invisible realm of spirits. This
explains the great importance of theology and the relative
unimportance of the natural and mental sciences in scholasticism. It
also explains the failure of the schoolmen to occupy themselves with
an empirical study of subjects in which they had an interest, namely,
psychology and ethics. They did not care so much about how the
soul acts, as about its ultimate nature and destiny ; and that, in their
opinion, could not be learned by analyzing its contents. Nor did it
seem possible to appeal to the world of experience for an answer to
the questions of ethics. The highest good is the blessed life in God,
that is settled; but there are no empirical means of finding the way
to such a life : it is bestowed by divine grace upon those who do the
will of God. Obedience to the will of God is the standard of right and
wrong; what his will is cannot be discovered from an analysis of
experience; it is a divine revelation^ Scholastic ethics cannot
abandon the field of theology. The truth is, the world about which
the schoolman is chiefly concerned is not perceivable by the senses ;
he is dependent on his thinking for the knowledge of which he is in
search. Logic, therefore, is a most important study for him,
particularly deductive or syllogistic logic: the logic of the method
which he employs in his pursuit of truth. In this field the schoolmen
evinced great subtlety, not only in analyzing logical processes, but,