Chapter III: Part 3

Ptolemy among his good services did one ill to mankind by his _Tetrabiblon_ or "Quadripertit," an astrological treatise which was current with the Almagest in the Western Schools. This authoritative treatise, together with the Aristotelian conception of the heavens, gave to astrology the aspect of a regular science with its own principles and methods; a science admired and even courted by princes. As Frederick the Second and Charles the Fifth would learn of the stars the moment to take the field against their foes, so the medieval physician sought their countenance in the letting of blood or in the exhibition of a clyster or emetic. The Church, abhorring all concurrent dominion, and justly abhorring this bondage of the judgment of God and of the will of man, almost alone withstood the astrologer. If the doctors of theology did not know how to deny the power of the stars in the material cosmos, they vehemently denied it in the world of the spirit. "Et ideo pro certo tenendum est," says Aquinas, "grave peccatum esse circa ea quæ a voluntate hominis dependent judiciis astrorum uti." Of the priestly assailants of astrology, the most attractive to us for his wit, sagacity and sound knowledge, was Nicholas Oresme, sometime Bishop of Lisieux (died 1382), translator of the _Ethics_ and other Aristotelian treatises, as he is portrayed for us by Hauréau (_Dict. des Sciences philosophiques_, art. Oresme) and M. Charles Jourdain. The fun of the thing is that the outspoken Oresme was the counsellor, the friend, and even the tutor of that notable astrologer Charles the Fifth; a story as honourable to the prince as to the subject. As Charles issued from the chambers of his astrologers the discourses of Oresme must have made him a little uncomfortable, especially when Oresme records the misfortunes of astrologising captains, such as Alphonso king of Castille, of whom, says he, I have heard nothing notable except that he cast horoscopes, was unfortunate in war, and neglected his kingdom; or such again as James the king of Majorca, a passionate astrologer, who on the dictation of the stars made a sortie against Peter of Aragon, and never came back again. It is all very well, says Oresme, for kings to know somewhat of the noble science of astronomy, but they must be content to hear of it in talk with sages, and not to spend upon the stars time and care which they should devote to the interests of their people. "Mesmement tele chose (astrology, necromancy, geomancy and "quelconques tels ars") est plus périlleuse à personnes d'estat, comme sont princes et seigneurs ausquelz appartient le gouvernement publique. Et pour ce ay je composé ce livret en françois afin que gens lais le puissent entendre, desquels, si comme j'ay entendu, plusieurs sont trop enclins à telles fatuités. Et autres fois ay je escript en latin de ceste matière" etc. In spite of the Bishop of Lisieux, astrology at the end of the fourteenth century reached the summit of its influence and popularity. In the course of his argument Oresme gives an admirable account of the nature of hallucination and the parts it may play in perverting knowledge; not only so but he explains also the fallibility of the normal senses in respect of organic defects, of media, of false inference, of association, of imposition of the imagination, and so forth. Under such circumstances, he says, a mystic might conceive himself to have been visited by an angel!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] To bring the oration within the time allotted, this portion, and
the paragraphs on astrology added as an appendix, were omitted. For
the same reason the paragraphs on scepticism (p. 82) were also omitted
but by inadvertence have held their continuity in the text. It is
customary to print the text as delivered; and this must be my excuse
for the cumbrous apparatus of notes, much of which might have been
taken into an enlarged text. The notes are necessary to fortify
statements which orally may pass, but do not satisfy a reader.

[2] The "humoral doctrine" is imperfectly known. The four _elements_
are earth, water, air, fire; the four _qualities_ are hot, cold,
moist, dry; the four _humours_ are blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black
bile. By permutation of these were obtained the endless elaborations
of the galenist doctrine which for many centuries blinded Europe not
to the truth only, but also to the clinical and physiological methods,
example, and attainments of Galen himself.

[3] "Nec ullum satis validum imperium erat coercendis seditionibus
populi, flagitia hominum ut cæremonias deum protegentis." Tac. Ann.
III. 60.

[4] It must not be supposed that the idealism of Plato and the
mysticism of the East were alike, or even akin. Plato was a Greek; his
mind, as we appreciate such qualities, was sane and lucid: he had no
yearning whatever for absorption in the Infinite; but rather, like
Aristotle, for a noble life.

[5] "Oftener on her knees than on her feet
Died every day she lived."
Macbeth IV. 3.

[6] I see in recent reports of Egyptian exploration that at
Oxyrhynchus Plato was represented with curious persistence by the
Phædo and the Laches; and these treatises appear in the early Fayyum
papyri.

[7] A few axioms, collected from the physical and metaphysical
treatises (perhaps by Cassiodorus from Boetius), were current from an
early date. The translations of Boetius must for a time have lain in
some neglect?

[8] Alcuin had but a translated abridgment or summary of the
Categories, attributed to Augustine; and in a MS. of the tenth century
we find no more than this. Boetius' full translation of the Categories
was not current till the end of this century, when all the logic of
Aristotle was in the hands of the doctors. In the earlier Middle Ages,
as in the writings of John of Salisbury and of William of Conches, we
hear even more of Boetius than of the master himself. Virgil, Seneca
and Cicero also were the sources of much of the culture of this
period. Alcuin was a grammarian; he taught from Priscian and Donatus,
improved the eighth century Latin, and probably made Virgil and Cicero
known in Gaul and Britain. He knew but little Greek, as we infer from
his quotation of the names of the Categories. Erigena knew more Greek
and carried some of it to the Court of Charles the Bald. See note 2,
p. 65. Alcuin probably did not visit Ireland. Boetius had translated
also both Analytics and the Topics.

[9] Yet Roger Bacon seems to have apprehended both progress and the
relativity of truth. Before Newman, he declared that God makes no full
revelation but gives it in instalments; and in another passage he
speaks of the judgments of Aristotle, and of other great teachers,
"secundum possibilitatem sui temporis ... aliud tempus fuit tunc, et
aliud nunc est"--a remarkable saying. Of the Saints he says "they had
their time, we have our own." Vid. also note, p. 80.

[10] Modern French historians do us the honour of annexing our heroes;
in respect of the scholars of the Middle Ages M. Charles Jourdain has
set, or followed, this example. John of Salisbury, that charming child
of renascence, born out of due time, was first claimed as a Frenchman;
then, as this "provenance" becomes untenable, he, and others, are
called "Anglo-French." The University of Paris in the XIIth century
was no more France than Rome was Italy. In our sedentary arable life
we do not realise the nomad habits of our forefathers. Edward the
First would inhabit six distant castles in less than as many weeks;
indeed Great Britain itself was then no island. The heroes, nay the
armies, of Froissart's Story fly about the world in their seasons like
migrating birds. All keen scholars of the West went to the University
of Paris, the daughter of kings and popes, and the intellectual centre
not of a strip of kingdom between Anjou and the Empire, but of Europe
itself. And of the scholars of Paris, Englishmen were, we hear, the
most turbulent, but the boldest in argument and the most greedy of
learning; this last character perhaps it is that now-a-days looks
least English. Kuno Fischer admires the procession of great Englishmen
down the highway of medieval thought, from Erigena to Francis Bacon.
John was born at Salisbury, spent thirteen of his early years at the
University of Paris, the best of them in the stormy service of Thomas
Becket, and but the last five as Bishop of Chartres. We do not call
Lanfranc an Englishman, nor even Adrian the Fourth an Italian.

[11] The name Realism has been improperly used--improperly because
previously engaged--to signify the conception of an objective world,
from the play of which our impressions arise, and of which our
impressions are, if not likenesses, at any rate symbols, as opposed to
the name "Idealism" which, with a like violence, has been turned to
signify the conception that the universe of things is but a picture
produced by the evolution of the phenomena of consciousness. The
proper names for these opposite conceptions are of course Noumenalism
and Phenomenalism. Realism proper as a habit of thought, whatever may
have been its provisional uses, is now a mischievous habit;
noumenalism is a harmless amusement.

[12] Roscellinus, the Roger Bacon of the eleventh century, learned,
rebellious, lucid and heroic, withstood the Church for philosophy as
did Bacon in the thirteenth for natural science. It would seem that in
heroism at any rate Abélard was below his master.

[13] Vid. p. 50.

[14] The opponents of the theory of the Mass are apt to charge the
Roman Church with the proposition that therein the elements are
changed into "real" flesh and blood. In the nineteenth century, as in
the thirteenth, this Church has not, I believe, determined whether the
"real" substance be corporeal or incorporeal, separable or inseparable
from the sensible properties of things; whether in a word it be
something or, as many of us would say, nothing at all. Spinoza
regarded "substance" as intelligent and extended.

[15] Thus it was difficult to claim his authority for one side or the
other. The metaphysical treatises were not known till the later part
of the twelfth century. (See p. 75, note 2.) At the outset of the
Physics Aristotle discusses what nature is in itself, and defines
first elements; in the Second Analytics on the other hand, although
thinking of science as deductive and expository, he strongly opposes
the primary existence of ideas, though these are predicable of many
individuals. By excess of logical formations, the division of
properties, the use of such terms as "[Greek: genê hypokeimena]," &c.
&c., he laid himself open to misconception, and so was readily
platonised by his commentators. It would seem indeed that for
Aristotle universals were not merely propositions obtained by negation
of individual variations, but something more active. A [Greek: noêsis]
became somehow a [Greek: poiêsis]; e.g. "[Greek: hê dêmiourgêsasa
physis]." His position may be appreciated briefly thus:--In the
Categories Aristotle speaks of individuals as primarily existent,
while in Met. Z, and elsewhere, the primary existent is the form. The
inconsistency is, however, more apparent than real; for in the
Categories it is the individual so far as he represents his natural
kind which is primarily existent, whilst the form which in the
Metaphysics is primarily existent occurs only in the individual. This
terse appreciation is one of my many debts to Dr Jackson.

[16] It were almost to be desired, for our own lucidity, that we could
get rid of the words cause and law, and use language significant of
order only. Aristotle's influence has weighed heavily in favour of
studying "Causes" rather than sequences; thus it is hard to clear our
own minds, and impossible to clear the minds of our pupils, of a
genetic notion of causation--that an effect comes, as it were, from
the womb of its causes. Even Ockham taught as if causes contained
their effects. Mr Marshall (West. Rev. loc. cit.) is of opinion that
Roger Bacon by his "non oportet causas investigare" intended to
confine scientific thought to the relations of phenomena.

[17] As St Anselm put it, "Participatione speciei plures homines sunt
unus homo." Out of humanity individual men proceed.

[18] Vid. p. 32, note.

[19] Erigena, "the miracle of the Holy Ghost"; a figure of almost
mythical grandeur, arising in the far west, full of new learning, of
lyric enthusiasm, and heroic courage. He did not protest, with St
Columba, against the Papacy only; he protested against authority, and
he protested against mighty ignorance; neither of which should
withstand the persuasion of right reason. "Ratio immutabilis ... quæ
... nullius auctoritatis adstipulatione roborari indiget." His works
were proscribed and burned.

[20] The one, to which alone Parmenides and Melissus attributed
existence, was a material although an incorporeal unity. We must
beware of accepting "matter" in the current dualist sense; for
Aristotle himself [Greek: hylê] was hardly distinguishable from
[Greek: dynamis].

[21] With every allowance for the phases of church and school in
successive academical generations it seems strange that in 1209
Aristotle should have been forbidden under excommunication, and in
1231 restored to such favour that for the disciples of Albert and St
Thomas the master almost attained the authority of a father of the
church; the explanation probably is that "Aristotle" meant for a time
the paynim interpretations of Toledo, particularly of the Physics (the
Metaphysics were not translated from the Greek till about 1220); and
meant not this only, but also liberal quotation and incorporation of
the writings of Arab philosophers. To show how learning, even in the
University of Paris, lay under ecclesiastical control, some extracts
from the Edicts of the Synod of Paris and of Gregory the Ninth may be
cited in illustration:--After directing that "Corpus magistri Amaurici
extrahatur e cimiterio, et projiciatur in terram non benedictam" the
Synod farther orders that the "Quaternuli ["Quaternuli" is translated
by Ducange, Quatuor quartæ chartæ, seu octo folia: i.e. the octavos]
magistri David de Dinant, ... afferantur et comburantur; nec libri
Aristotelis de naturali philosophia, nec Commenta legantur Parisiis,
publice vel secreto. Et hoc sub poena excommunicationis
inhibemus.... De libris theologicis scriptis in romano, præcipimus
quod episcopis diocesanis tradantur, et Credo in Deum et Pater noster
in romano, præter vitas sanctorum." The order two years later
confirming these prohibitions differs but in form. Even the Bull of
Gregory in 1231, relieving the schools of this proscription, says, "Ad
hæc jubemus ut magistri artium unam lectionem de Prisciano et unam
post aliam ordinarie semper legant, et libris illis naturalibus, qui
in concilio provinciali ex certa causa prohibiti fuere, Parisiis non
utantur, quousque examinati fuerint, et ab omni errorum suspicione
purgati." The pope adds paternally, "Magistri vero et scholares
theologiæ, in facultate quam profitentur, se studeant laudabiliter
exercere, nec philosophos se ostendant, sed satagant fieri theodocti:
nec loquantur in lingua populi, et populi linguam hebræam cum azotica
confundentes" [azotica or arethica means the profane tongue (Ducange);
Hebrew being a Sancta lingua]. The pantheistic outburst of the later
twelfth century, although deriving in part from Erigena, was probably
fed by the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias. This commentary was
widely read in Arabic and Arab-latin translations, the latter of which
were made, as we know (v. A. Jourdain, p. 123 and seq.), by Gerard of
Cremona (d. 1187). Alexander's more material interpretation of [Greek:
hylê] involved the return of All into God; hence no resurrection, no
future life. In his followers these doctrines become grosser and
grosser, and, fused with other Arabian doctrine, prepared for and
afterwards strengthened the Averroism of Padua, in the XV-XVIth
century, in which system it was taught that the universal soul,
dipping for the time into the individual man, is at death resumed into
the universal soul. This virtual denial of personal immortality was of
course bitterly resented by the Church. (Vid. p. 68, note.) Thus from
the thirteenth century onwards pantheistic infidelity survived and
even defied the menaces and the punishments of the Church.

[22] Both Albert and Aquinas were inconsistent. Hauréau points out
that St Thomas was a vitalist in physics, an animist in metaphysics, a
nominalist in philosophy, and a realist in theology. "Il a cherché à
reconcilier des morts (i.e. Plato and Aristotle) qui, toute leur vie,
se sont contredits." But even sceptics contradict themselves; and it
is fair to add that St Thomas pushed universals back to immanence in
the Divine mind. For Plato the ideas are thoughts of universal mind;
for Aristotle God, or Nature by its thoughts or plans determines the
lines of phenomena: thus Plato and Aristotle were more alike than
Thomas knew, or Hauréau admits. There was no such thing of course as
The Scholastic Philosophy, of which I read again but the other day in
a modern work. Scholasticism is the very various teaching of the
schools of the XI-XVth centuries; though its general tendency was to
search rather into the origin and nature than into the functions of
being. The philosophy of the thirteenth century on the whole was
eclectic;--though perhaps eclectic by confusion rather than by
reconciliation. The rule of authority prevented an appreciation of the
relative values of opinions; the recognised authorities were equally
true, and had to be dovetailed together somehow. Critical
interpretation had not begun.

[23] The objection should not lie against hair splitting, for thought
cannot be too penetrating; but against the splitting of imaginary
hairs.

[24] M. Charles Jourdain thus describes the procession of Rector,
doctors and disciples of the University of Paris at the beginning of
the fourteenth century. At the end of this century its decay began.

[25] For Aristotle the principle of individuation was matter and form
(vid. note, p. 33); for Averroes it was form; for St Thomas it was
matter. For all "vitalists" the identity of form, soul and life is
essential; thus Stahl regarded soul as bestowing on body all activity,
as determining all vital functions. In Aristotle [Greek: psychê] is
untranslatable = anima and animus--soul and vital principle. [Greek:
Pneuma] again in various writers may mean anything, from air to spirit
or other essence; cf. Arist. De Generat. An. II. 3, and the "aura" of
Harvey, and even of Haller in the same connexion as the fertilising
element.

[26] Not for all, not for the greatest of them! Aristotle, in vain,
warned later generations against prophesying what seems likely,
instead of looking to see how things come about:--"[Greek: ouk alêthê
legontes, alla manteuomenoi to symbêsomenon ek tôn eikotôn, kai
proslambanontes hôs houtôs echon prin ginomenon houtôs idein]." (De
Gen. Anim. IV. i.) "Croire tout ce qu'on rêve," if useful and possibly
admirable in its day, in "neo-Hegelians" is a little stale.

[27] Thus, in ascending from general to more general, in the most
general will be sought unique and perfect being; the primary cause and
sole object of science--the [Greek: autozôon] of the Alexandrians:
whereas by successive eliminations utter abstractions would become
utter vacuity. To such realists all subordinate beings are integral
parts of the primary being. It would serve no useful end here to
analyse these doctrines, or to indicate the pythagorean or stoical
elements of them; for platonists and realists had their schools and
degrees of subtlety; and Plato himself was inconsistent. Some brought
secondary agents--demiurges or angels--into more creative activity,
others carried creative reason back to the ideal good, and so on.

[28] Held by Gilbert, and attributed to Averroes; but older than
Averroes. In turning to Francis Bacon's hypothesis I read (Ed. E. and
S. II. 263. Hist. Densi et rari--chapter, "Dilatationes per spiritum
innatum se expandentem," a Paracelsian sort of chapter) "Pulsus cordis
et arteriarum in animalibus fit per irrequietam dilatationem
spirituum, et receptum ipsorum, per vices." The muscular quality of
the heart was known to Galen, forgotten, and rediscovered. Spiritus
vitalis, for Bacon, was "aura composita ex flamma et aere" (cf. Æn.
VI. 747). Glisson has been fortunate in two generous judges, in Haller
and Virchow; it would ill become me to depreciate a distinguished
Fellow of my own College, and as a clinical observer Glisson had
considerable merits; but as a physiologist he was sunk in realism. He
was happy in the invention of the technical term "irritability," but
for him this virtue was as metaphysical an essence as the vital
spirit; his prime motor was not physical. As a philosopher I fear the
independent reader of his works will find him fanciful and wearisome.

[29] Herein Harvey's sagacity brought him towards the truth. "Air," he
says in the _De generatione_, "is given neither for the cooling nor
the nutrition of animals ... it is as if heat were rather enkindled
within the foetus (at birth) than repressed by the influence of the
air." Boyle (who says that he worked under the influence of Harvey's
discoveries) carried this matter forward by most interesting and
sagacious experiments with his air-pump. For the layman, I may add
that (to speak generally) before Harvey's time respiration was
regarded not as a means of combustion but of refrigeration. How man
became such a fiery dragon was the puzzle!

[30] Perfection was attributed, not only by medieval philosophers but
also by Plato and Aristotle, to the circle. Circular movement was
therefore the most perfect, and therefore again must be that of the
planets. This is a good illustration of the almost necessary tendency
in the earlier excursions of thought to equate incoordinates, and to
fill gaps in reasoning from alien sources.

[31] Not only movement but also formative activity. The [Greek: archê
tês kinêseôs] is the efficient cause of Aristotle; for him final
causes direct motion--the [Greek: hou heneka]. Thus dialectic was
taken for dynamics. Even Kant confused cause and effect with reason
and consequence in hypothetical propositions (Benn). Caverni (Storia
del methodo sperimentale in Italia, 1891-5) says that Jordanus
Nemorarius (of Borgentreich near Warburg, d. 1236) made the great
advance of extending the static physics of the ancients to establish
dynamics; and that he introduced the word "moment." In a cursory
survey of the two works of Nemorarius which we have in Cambridge I
have not been able to verify this statement; the notion I have found
but not the word itself.

[32] Vid. p. 44, note 2.

[33] And Goethe:

"Wie Himmelskräfte auf und nieder steigen
Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen!
Mit segenduftenden Schwingen
Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen,
Harmonisch all das All durchklingen."

Faust I. i. 1.

In many of the older poets the same motive is found. Vaughan, a
contemporary of Harvey, says:

"And round beneath it Time in houres, dayes, yeares,
Driven by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved."

The only celestial messenger who has discussed this matter with
mankind was something of an obscurantist. Vid. Paradise Lost, Bk.
VIII.

[34] The word "philosophy" in the Middle Ages signified the pursuit of
knowledge of things human and divine, and of the causes of them. It
was often divided into Physics, Ethics and Logic. Cicero, to some of
whose writings I have referred as then popular, says (in many
passages, e.g. in the Acad. I. and II.) that philosophy "Prima rerum
naturam scrutatur, secunda animum componit, tertia bene disserendi
rationem docet."

[35] Vid. note, p. 77.

[36] The judicious reader will remember in the Letters to Martinus
Scriblerus the "familiar instance" of the jack. "In every roasting
jack there is a meatroasting quality which neither resides in the fly,
nor in the weight, nor in any particular wheel of the jack ... but is
inherent in the jack.... As sensation, reasoning, volition &c. are the
several modes of thinking, so roasting of beef, roasting of mutton,
roasting of pullets, geese, turkeys &c. are the several modes of
meatroasting.... And as the general quality of meatroasting, with its
several modifications as to beef, mutton, pullets &c. does not inhere
in any part of the jack, so neither does consciousness" &c. &c.

[37] Or indeed he shrank from them, as the continual exclusion of
divine interference seemed to him a starvation of moral growth. Vid.
Phædo, 96, the interesting passage beginning "[Greek: egô gar neos ôn
Thaumastôs ôs epethumêsa tautês tês sophias ên dê kalousi peri phuseôs
istorian k.t.l.]"

[38] The encyclopedic method, followed by Francis Bacon, and
perpetuated even in the nineteenth century by some German
metaphysicians, was not the mere collection of matter from any or all
quarters, after the manner of Pliny; nor again mere omniscience; but
was the demonstration of a cosmical theory from all departments of
knowledge. When knowledge was a theological philosophy theologians
were bound to supply thinking men with "Summæ," or comprehensive
applications and casuistries of it. Hugo of St Victor (d. 1141) and
Robert Pullen (d. 1150) were the first scholastic Summists.

[39] Aristotle made many experiments, but experiments are not
necessarily verification; and for the most part his were not. It is
not experiment which makes science but the experimental method. Dr
Payne, in the Harveian Oration of 1896, reminded us that among the
ancients the forerunner of Harvey in this method was Galen.

[40] Those who are curious in manners will observe that during the
last few years the medievalising clergy in England have discarded that
fair linen which in the elder clergy was the emblem and the example of
cleanliness.

[41] "Nemo psychologus nisi prius physiologus," said Johannes Müller.

[42] For example, one man, fixing his eyes on a sublime ideal of
holiness, confesses on his knees that he is a miserable sinner;
another, surveying men about him, repudiates this imputation: it is a
matter of parallax.

[43] Boyle, Essays, 2nd Ed. 1669, p. 119. In his Edition of 1661 Boyle
speaks of the discovery of Harvey "our English Democritus" (published
1628) as commonly accepted. Whereby, he says, other "very plausible
and radicated opinions" (the old schemes of the circulation) ... "are
generally grown out of request."

[44] Haeser says (vol. II. p. 433): "Einen sehr bedeutenden Aufschwung
nahm die Chirurgie im Zeitalter Harvey's bei den Engländern, unter
denen bis dahin kein Wundarzt ersten Ranges aufgetreten war. Nach
kurzer Zeit erlangten die englischen Chirurgen durch allgemeine
Bildung, gründliche Kenntniss der Anatomie, und praktische Gelegenheit
ein entschiedenes Uebergewicht über die bis dahin herrschende
französische Schule." Cf. also Daremberg, Hist. et Doct. vol. I. p.
281 et seq.

[45] In the Medical Magazine (May, June, July, August, and Sept. 1899)
is an interesting essay by Mr D'Arcy Power, "How Surgery became a
profession in London." Mr Power tells us that a scheme for the unity
of the medical profession in London was set on foot in 1423, when the
surgeons were the more highly organised body. A "Rector of Medicine"
was indeed elected (Master Gilbert Kymer). It is not known how long
the conjoint faculty of medicine and surgery lasted in London; but
unhappily for our profession it seems to have been dissolved in a very
few years.

[46] This relation was somewhat one-sided: the philosophers forged
doctrines and presented them to the Church; whereupon the Church
consecrated them to eternity, and the philosophers were not allowed
thereafter to improve or to restore their own creations. "La théologie
n'est quelque chose qu'à condition d'être tout."

[47] As Erigena and Rabanus knew some Greek, Ireland, like Edessa and
Bagdad, seems to have shared the honour of preserving original texts;
we may infer from the doctrines of Erigena that in Ireland the Timæus
was the chief of them.

[48] See Baas, Geschichtliche Entwickelung des ärztlichen Standes,
1896, p. 128. Charlemagne journeyed in Italy where some schools still
existed, and where Priscian, Donatus, Boëtius, Cassiodorus, Augustine,
even Virgil and Cicero were read; thence he called teachers to his
palace schools; and to Lyons, Orleans or Tours. How Paris became the
centre of enlightenment in the Western world is not clear. The "palace
school" probably was of no place, but of the royal retinue; that the
School of Paris was made up of those of St Geneviève, St Germain des
Près and the Cathedral school seems not to be a very probable
conjecture.

[49] The "Arabs" were a mixed throng of orientals; some of them were
Aryans, as the Persians and Nestorians; some were Arabs, Syrians, or
Hebrews. The Nestorians were eminent as physicians, and it is
interesting to this College to know that one of the best translators
of Aristotle into Arabic was Johannitius, a Nestorian physician. The
Eastern peoples, as the Western, owed all to the Greeks except a
double measure of dialectical ingenuity, which was their own, and is
their own to-day. By the incisive methods of Aristotle the Christian
neo-platonists had been variously carved into heretics--such as the
Monophysites; and these when driven eastwards carried Greek to Edessa
and Bagdad: from these centres it was, and from Nisibur in Persia and
elsewhere, that the "Saracens" drew their culture. Aristotle was first
translated into Arabic in the reign of Al Mansur, the son of Harûn al
Raschid (813-833); Avicenna carried the Aristotelian encyclopedia to
its culmination; and Cordova in the tenth century was as full of
fervid disciples as was Paris in the thirteenth. The Arabian medicine
was Aristotle and Galen. The Arabian philosophy was originally built
upon the Alexandrian emanations and hypostases (the soul of the
universe, intelligence the first of creatures, nature and mutability,
and so forth). Essences and forms were produced, as the
"intelligibilia" of "real" knowledge, till, as some one has wittily
put it, "universals became almost palpable." Avicenna indeed
approached understanding from the senses, and Averroes accepted this
right position; but he taught the permanent subsistence of
intelligence, as a sphere in a hierarchy of spiritual principles
independent of matter and persons. In no long time this was turned
into the unity, as opposed to the individuality, of the soul; the
universal soul dipping as it were into the individual, and at his
death returning into the universal; a virtual denial of personal
immortality. Hence the bitter defiance of Albert and St Thomas. The
Averroistic doctrines were enthusiastically propagated on the other
hand by that "malleus Ecclesiae Romanae" Frederick the Second
(1212-1250). The Arabian science consisted in medicine, mathematics,
astronomy, and alchemy. Averroes it was who first asserted the
independence of the spheres of science and religion; a division
popular at the present day, and one which lent itself to many a
convenient subterfuge, in Padua.

[50] Dante, Inf. (XX. 115). Michael Scot translated Averroes from
Arabian to Latin; also the _De cælo_ and _De anima_ of Aristotle,
which reached Roger Bacon about 1230. Thus we may regard Michael as
the founder of Paduan Averroism. All persons who busied themselves
with natural experiment in the Middle Ages were accused of magic; even
Albert did not escape the suspicion or the credit of sorcery.

[51] Renan, Averroès. And to like effect M. Hauréau says, "Le
péripatéticisme d'Averroès ne diffère pas moins de l'antique doctrine
du Lycée que l'Alhambra du Parthenon"; and he compares "le
péripatéticisme d'Albert et d'Aquinas" to the "monuments fiers et
bizarres du Gothique du XIIIme siècle."

[52] I may venture to quote again the "locus classicus":--

"Wel knew he the olde Esculapius,
And Deiscorides, and eek Rufus,
Old Ypocras, Haly, and Galien;
Serapion, Razis, and Avicen;
Averrois, Damascien, and Constantyn;
Bernard, and Gatesden, and Gilbertyn."

Chaucer, C. T. Prol. 429-434 (Skeat's Ed.).

[53] See pp. 24 and 28.

[54] As a school of thought; in fine art of course it was glorious.

[55] Ozanam (Doc. inédits, quoted by Rashdall, p. 78) says this early
light was "une de ces nuits lumineuses où les dernières clartés du
soir se prolongent jusqu'aux premières blancheurs du matin."

[56] Albert--"nostri temporis stupor et miraculum!"--is an attractive
figure, and deserves his renown as the greatest of the medieval sages.
His endowments were richer and wider than those of the great Italian
logician, his pupil, whose name has had a greater vogue, and whose
doctrines are still the accepted discipline of the Church of Rome.
Albert restored Aristotle, and in astronomy and chemistry sought for
truth in nature. That St Thomas was a man of the highest intellectual
power and attainments, an eminence which is claimed for him by many
scholars, as by Mr Vernon in his edition of the Paradise, I cannot
admit; unless it be to a critical scholar who has mastered the
contents of his many folios, if such a scholar there be. For my part,
after reading much of what is written of St Thomas, I have but done
what was possible to me in other such cases; that is, I have run my
eye over the titles of his books and chapters, and formed some rapid
judgment here and there of the ways of his thought. Now I venture to
assert that the ways of the thought of Aquinas, subtle and symmetrical
as they are, lie wholly within the formulas of his age. He left
science for logic, the stuff of thought for its instrument; satisfying
himself with such tinkling cymbals as "Nihil potest per se operari,
nisi quod per se subsistit; ... Impossibile est quod forma separetur a
seipsa ... quod subsistens per se desinat esse" ... and so forth.
Albert though a less symmetrical is a more original genius. To Aquinas
indeed I should hesitate to attribute genius; to Albert it seems to me
this title may be granted, if with some hesitation. "Vir famosus et
erroneus" was Roger Bacon's summary of Albert's career, but Bacon was
scarcely an indifferent witness.

[57] Among the MSS. in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, are letters
of Innocent IV. to the Archdeacon of Canterbury (and others), "Ut
(Episc. Linc.) nepotem suum Fredericum (of Lavagna) in canonicatum in
ecclesia Lincolniensi, proximè vacaturum, inducat, et Resp. Episc.
Linc. in quâ probat talem provisionem esse contra voluntatem et cultus
Dei; ideoque negat se concessurum." I see that the authenticity of
some of these letters has been called in question by M. Charles
Jourdain, but in any case they are contemporary, and consonant with
Robert's acts and character. Moreover, two years before, Innocent had
suspended the bishop for refusing to induct an Italian, ignorant of
English, to a rich benefice in his diocese. I find that Dr Luard, in
1880, had no doubts of the authenticity of these letters (Encycl.
Brit. XI. 211). Mons. Charles Jourdain's collected essays, in which he
discusses their authenticity, were published posthumously in 1888; but
his Editor makes the slovenly omission of the dates and places of the
first publications of the several essays.

[58] There were three ways of access to the Greek texts of Aristotle:
by the Arab-latin translations; by translations into Latin direct from
the Greek; and by the use of the Greek text itself. These means were
modified again by the chances of access to particular authors, and, as
in the case of Aristotle for example, to particular treatises. To
ascertain the dates of access to these new sources I have made some
search; and herein I have found great help in the "Recherches
critiques" of Amable Jourdain. We must remember that though the source
of Western culture is not Latin, but Greek, yet its meagre channels in
medieval Europe were Latin; its best tradition lay in Lucretius,
Cicero, Seneca, Virgil. The ill-starred Boetius was the last of the
Grecians. Greek was driven East and West: West into Ireland, where in
the ninth century a few Greek MSS. survived, and were read in the
original by Erigena and his disciples; but this Irish Greek tradition
was soon lost, and there were no teachers of Greek. Yet it seems
certain that, in Oxford, Robert of Lincoln and Adam Marsh had at any
rate learned assistance in the production of some Greco-latin
translations of Aristotle, of the Ethics for example. Dr Jackson has
pointed out to me a passage in Aquinas' Commentary on the Ethics,
where "the presentation of the right reading misspelt, and of a
ludicrous etymology side by side with one which is very nearly right,
seem to show that, whilst Aquinas had about him people who knew Greek,
he himself had no substantial knowledge of it." Grosseteste himself
may have had some efficient knowledge of Greek; "vir in latino et in
greco peritissimus," says Matthew Paris. Dr Jackson (in a private
letter) feels assured that "Roger Bacon was plainly a competent Greek
scholar. Of this there is proof in the _Opera inedita_, edited by
Brewer for the Master of the Rolls." We know also that more than one
scholar of the 11-12th centuries travelled in the East, though, as Dr
Daremberg says, travellers to the East were more apt to bring back
false relics than genuine manuscripts. There was a small Greek
community and a Greek monastery at Auriol, near the old colony of
Marseilles. Still, for lack of masters and materials, Greek then was a
very rare accomplishment; and it is manifest, from much internal
evidence, that Albert had no Greek; though he certainly possessed
Greco-latin translations of some few Aristotelian treatises by other
hands, of the _De anima_ and of the Physics for example, whence he
makes quotations without interspersion of Arabic titles, proper names,
nouns and terms, such as he rather helplessly reproduces in his
rendering of the ninth book of the _De cælo_ and elsewhere. We know
from other sources that a few treatises, such as the _De anima_, and
the first two books of the Ethics, existed in Greco-latin rendering
before the Arab-latin versions of Michael Scot and others (1220-1225).
In later life Albert had the assistance of Aquinas to whom we have
attributed some knowledge of Greek; for we find Aquinas, with the
countenance of Urban the Fourth, not only searching Europe for Greek
manuscripts, sending emissaries to Spain to make versions for him, and
supervising the preparation of translations directly into Latin, but
also personally comparing the Latin translations with the Greek texts
of the Ethics and Politics, and recording variants; variants which
Albert copied from his disciple. (It may be worthy of remark that even
so late as 1586 there were no Greek types in Oxford, and that in 1599
Casaubon (Life by Pattison) could find no compositors for Greek in
Lyons.) The great debt of the West to the Arabs was a new enthusiasm
for learning, and for the "Princeps philosophorum"; not their
travestied texts and unwieldy commentaries, which Roger Bacon,
probably perceiving that his contemporaries swore by the Arab rather
than by the Greek, wished he could burn.

[59] To wonder why Roger Bacon became a clerk and a Franciscan is to
look upon the thirteenth century with the eyes of the nineteenth. The
vision of St Francis had not grown dim; the strange beauty of his life
held men captive still, and his cheerful natural religion still
animated his disciples. None could have said more truly than St
Francis

"While others fish with craft for great opinion,
I with great truth catch mere simplicity."

The grey friar of the fourteenth century, as we know him in Langland
and Chaucer, or later in the degraded fanaticism of the Observants,
had fallen far from the example of his master. Perhaps the chief
reason for Bacon's decision was that his friend Grosseteste, who on
the first coming of the friars wrote eloquently to Gregory the Ninth
of their illumination, humility and piety, was a member of the Order,
and was the first of its Rectors in Oxford. (Rd. Grosseteste, Epist.
ed. Luard; Rolls, 1861, p. 179.) Even in Cambridge, till 1877,
teachers and professors, save those of Law or Medicine, were
generally speaking in holy orders; for instance, the following
extract, of date 1849, which I owe to the kindness of Dr Donald
MacAlister, "Cæterum neminem in socium unquam admitti volumus qui non
sit aut Theologiam professurus et sacros ordines post certum temporis
intervallum inferius definiendum suscepturus aut e Collegio
discessurus, nisi unus e duobus sociis qui Medicinæ aut ex illis
duobus qui Juris Civilis studio deputati sunt, electus fuerit." (Stat.
Coll. Div. Joh. Evan. Cant. cap. xii. 28 April, 12 Vict. 1849.) To
this hour in England the clergy command the public schools. In a
warlike society learning and contemplation must fall to the clergy;
without the fortresses of war or learning, if there was any safety,
there was not dignity or peace. The mendicant orders were young
institutions, ascendant, and in favour with the great. Of their
usurpations in the universities I have spoken. Within them even Popes
could not meddle, as Bacon found to his sorrow. Hales and Ockham also
became Minors, as Albert and St Thomas, both of illustrious descent,
became Preachers. Moreover the Franciscans had devoted themselves to
the care of the sick, and especially of those smitten with the new
pestilences--such as leprosy, syphilis, and plague--which Oriental
dirt and asceticism had engendered or inflamed; and thus a bent to
observation of natural phenomena may have been encouraged (see art.
Roger Bacon, Westminster Rev. loc. cit.). To say that to the monks we
owe the conservation of learning is not so true as to say that learned
men betook themselves to the religious houses in order to find relief
from turmoil, to secure the subsistence of life without its cares, to
get access to books, and to profit by the counsel of comrades who had
enjoyed not only the culture of their own house, but also the
interchange of ideas and manuscripts with all the learned houses in
Europe. When these advantages were to be had in the world, learning
deserted the monasteries. Again, Bacon was not an unbeliever, nor
anything like it; in the _Opus Majus_ he declares the Holy Scriptures
to be the source of all truth; not only, like Socrates before him and
Kant after him, did he fix his eyes on moral perfection as the end,
but also on the Church as the means: on the other hand the resentments
of passionate genius under harsh duress did not make a naturally
rebellious temper more tractable. "Fames et mora bilem conciunt." It
is evident that within the Franciscan order there were three
well-marked parties; namely, of the naturalists, as Bacon; of the
mystics, as Bonaventura; and of the sophists, as John Duns the
Northumbrian. Now Bacon's troubles did not begin till the succession
to the Generalship of the Order of the seraphic Bonaventura, an
argumentative mystic (like Duns, and unlike the ecstatic mystics of St
Victor), who, rejecting Aristotle, had steeped himself in the
neo-platonism of Augustine and "Dionysius the Areopagite"; and
Bonaventura and his party it was who stopped Bacon's mouth at Oxford,
and shut him up in Paris. What the life of Bacon and the direction of
medieval thought might have been had Grosseteste been able to spare
Adam Marsh from Oxford for the Generalship it were perhaps too curious
to consider; yet we may profitably remember that Bacon, brushing aside
Porphyry and his questions, and denouncing the "vain physics" of
Paris, urged that enquiry should begin with the simplest objects of
research, and rise gradually to the higher and higher; every
observation being controlled by experiment. He says indeed that by
experiment only can we distinguish a sophism from a demonstration.
(Op. Tert. XIX.) Earnestly he tried to follow this method; he seems to
have spent on it substance of his own, and, after this was exhausted,
to have appeared for the first time in history as a petitioner for
"scientific grants in aid." Diderot speaks of Bacon as "Un des génies
les plus surprenants que la nature ait produits, et un des hommes les
plus malheureux"; he lived in vain, died unhonoured, and left no
disciple.

[60] "Colliget," Mr E. G. Browne tells me, is a corruption of
Kulliyyat. It does not exactly mean "Summary" (as commonly stated) but
rather "General Principles" (Kull means "the whole"; Kulli universal
or general; fem. pl. Kulliyyat). It may also mean collected writings
(e.g. of a poet).

[61] Vid. p. 50.

[62] I venture to say "even of Caius," though Caius was a competent
and indeed for his time an able clinical physician, as we observe in
his work on the sweating sickness. (Vid. note, p. 96.)

[63] Oxford fell in the first instance under Franciscan influence, yet
Alexander Hales (of this order) gave the peripatetic bent to Oxford
which it retains to this day. Creed rather than conduct was the
dominant note of the Faith (p. 85); it is interesting therefore to
learn that for Oxford Robert of Lincoln and Adam Marsh translated, or
procured a translation of, the Ethics. On the probability that
Grosseteste had some substantial knowledge of Greek, see p. 75, note
2.

[64] In Casaubon's diary we get a glimpse of Oxford in 1613. The
University was wealthy enough; it had escaped the Paris devastation,
but had scarcely deserved its good fortune. There was much active
teaching of a routine kind, many formalities, much serving of tables;
but of living interest in science, learning, or high culture there was
not a trace. Of classical learning, in Casaubon's sense, there was
naught. Ecclesiastical controversies absorbed or overwhelmed all other
subjects; and the University was regarded by the Government as an
instrument of party. The professors were all clerks, and ardent only
as pamphleteers. Thus, says Pattison, "the University took its full
share of national passion, prejudice and religious sentiment, but was
wholly destitute of any power to vivify, to correct, to instruct, or
to enlighten." Pattison's Casaubon, p. 417.

[65] Both in Bologna and Padua of course there was a faculty of
Medicine; but its tradition in Bologna was traditional and galenical,
in Padua independent and progressive. Montpellier had suffered in the
desolation of Languedoc.

[66] See page 82.

[67] Contra Medicum quendam Invectivarum Libri Quatuor. (Op. T. II.
pp. 1086, 801. Ed. Basel, 1555, quoted Renan, Aver. p. 331.)

[68] The Royal College of Physicians of London had its birth in the
schools of Italy; and perhaps in revolt from Averroism the elegant
humanity of Linacre has too often prevailed in this College rather
than Harvey's strenuous control of tradition and rhetoric by more
positive conceptions, and of all conceptions by direct experimental
verification.

[69] Niccolò Leonico (I give his Latin name in the text as Ueberweg
gives it) seems to have been a spirited and effective philosophical
lecturer of Hellenist and critical qualities, and of much charm both
of style and character. He is not to be confounded with his elder
contemporary, Nicolaus Leonicenus, of Vicenza and Ferrara, professor
of medicine and an elegant latiner, who translated the aphorisms of
Hippocrates; and whose friend Linacre, in translating parts of Galen,
did a like service to medicine and letters in England.

[70] Not only of the circulation of the blood. In his treatise _De
generatione_ Harvey disposed of the belief in spontaneous generation
(so far as regards visible creatures, its abolition we owe to
Pasteur), yet Bacon (N. O. II. 41) accepts it, perhaps as fully as did
Sir Thomas Browne. The _De generatione_ however was not actually
published till 1651, some 30 years after the _Novum Organon_.

[71] Galileo and Kepler had proved the validity of terrestrial physics
and mathematics in astronomy. Aristotle of course was the first to
apply physics to astronomy, but wrong physics.

[72] With which Malpighi was in close association.

[73] The _Consilia medica_, or Consultations, were published records,
either of particular cases or of diseases in a more general sense,
which seem to have been instituted by Thaddæus of Florence in the
thirteenth century, were abundant in the fifteenth, and were continued
into the sixteenth, and even later. In the fifteenth century these
records have a considerable historical value, and no little clinical
interest, as the questions to the patient and the records of symptoms
are often orderly and graphic, and enable the modern reader to revise
the diagnoses, many of them grotesque enough. These Consilia make a
great bulk of matter, and one which has not been thoroughly explored.
A general account of the Consilia may be read in any good history of
medicine, but perhaps the most interesting is to be found in the
chapters on medieval medicine in Daremberg's "Histoire et Doctrines"
(e.g. tom. 1. p. 334 et seq.).

[74] Originally by Fracastorius, Montanus and others, in the former
half of the sixteenth century. Caius in England, Mercado in Spain,
Baillou in Paris, if not bedside teachers, had done good clinical
work, in Consilia and otherwise, in the same century. What
Fracastorius did for syphilis, Caius did for the sweating sickness,
and Mercado for petechial typhus. Baillou was too dependent upon the
letter of tradition.

[75] Even Descartes has some share with Hegel in the profound error
that whatsoever is clearly and definitely conceived is true. The
inference if true for formal logic, is not true for natural processes;
for instance, Descartes' well-known attribution of the soul to the
pineal gland, because all other parts of the brain are double, and the
soul is single!

[76] "The share of Servetus was small"; that is, the effect of his
remarkable discovery was small, for it was buried in a theological
work of which but a few copies were rescued from the burning; namely
"Christianismi restitutio. Viennæ Allobrogum, 1553." (Haeser gives the
reference to pp. 170-177, De Trinitate divina.) The work was reprinted
at Nuremberg in 1790.

[77] Quæ, simul æthereos animo conceperat ignes,
Ore dabat vero carmina plena dei.

Ovid, _Fasti_ I, 473.

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.