RITTER ON SCROLISTIC PHILOSOPHY. * • Ir is not a very usual
course to notice a periodical miscellany for the sake of one article only,but with respect to the paper which Heinrich Ritter has furnished to this year's number of Raumer's " Historical Pocket-book," we find a reason to depart from the ordinary rule. So very little is known to the world in general about the once celebrated Schoolmen, and so short is the time that mankind commonly loves to bestow on obsolete branches of learn- ing, that we record as a piece of acceptable news the fact that so eminent a philosophical historian as Heinrich Ritter has com- pressed within eighty pages a description of the course of soho-
lastio philosophy during a period of something like two hundred years—the period which touches the commencement and close of an intellectual empire that has passed away, leaving behind it a heap of monuments that scarcely attract even the passing glance of the literary wayfarer. In most instances, when a whole school of authors is consigned to oblivion, it is because their works have perished ; but even in the event of material destruction, fate is often kindly to reputations, and there are several names whose greatness in art and literature is accepted on faith, though there is scarcely an obtainable voucher by which to justify an independent opinion. Sappho is not a whit the less world-famous because only a minimum of her poetry has come down to posterity, than she would have been had her relics been as numerous as those of Pinder.
But the neglect of the Schoolmen of the middle ages must be especially provoking to their manes from the circumstance that they cannot console themselves with the supposition that a material obstacle has alone prevented their thoughts from flowing down to posterity. There is no Caliph Omar, no Goth, no Vandal, on whose shoulders the blame can be thrown, or on whose head can be lavished the execrations of wounded vanity. The principal works of the Schoolmen are all in existence—all more or less accessible— all capable of being reprinted, reedited, and condensed. They are simply forgotten, because they are not oared about. Even the names of the two or three celebrities of the first magnitude, (e. g. Thomas Aquinas, or Duns Scotus,) live in the memory as.names only, without distinctive attributes, just as some old 'generals are remembered less on account of their victories than from the fact that their heads frequently adorn a sign-post; unless, indeed, they owe their immortality to some circumstance totally unconnected with their philosophical views. Thousands are familiar with Peter Abe- lard as the lover of Helnise, and hundreds have thrown wreaths upon his tomb at Pere-la-Chaise, for one who has dipped into his theolo- gical controversies ; while Albertns Magnus, ignored as a specula- tive theorist, enjoys a dim immortality as a sort of Professor An- derson of the dark ages. However, while the Schoolmen have been individually forgotten, they have been allowed to retain a bad reputation en masse; and their character as a sort of literary nuisance is accepted without inquiry. 'Youngsters, scarce in their teens, are taught to be grate- ful to Bacon and Locke for liberating philosophy from "the jargon of the Schools," and utter the required thanksgiving in the true spirit of faith, without troubling themselves as to what were the Schools, and in what the so-called jargon consisted. Generally, he who attempts to asperse a character is liable to be called upon for an explanation ; but for many years it has been perfectly safe to abuse the Schoolmen, wholesale, without even affecting a know- ledge of their transgressions. Now, the little treatise of H. Ritter has this use, that it will show at a glance that the old scholastic philosophers were not such mere tricked-out dews in the world of thought as it has been the fashion to regard them. "At a glance," we v emphatically, be- cause if any great amount of trouble were required to arrive at the truth.on this subject, the generality of mankind would, we fear, allow the veil of error to remain just where circumstances had caused it to fall.
By a few extracts we hope to contribute our mite to the dif- fusion of uncommon knowledge ; and we begin with a summary of the sort of Platonism that was taught in the early part of the twelfth century. To obtain this summary, Ritter has had recourse to Ber- nard of Chartres, a teacher of the period ; who was not, however, a Schoolman in the strict sense of the word, as ho devoted himself to philosophy. only, without touching theology. "The Platonism of the School in that day was called the doctrine of the three principles. The three principles of everything that is are God, Hat- ter, and the Soul; but the last two of these are not principles in the same sense as the first, for God is the highest and universal principle while mat- ter and soul are not universal and ultimate principles, but are rather emana- tions or creations of God. Only God is eternal, (ceternus,) while matter and the soul merely endure for ever, (are perpetua,) and are only principles of i that temporal generation which, n the great and small world, makes mani- fest the eternal ideas of God. For the eternal ideas in the Divine Intellect,. representing the universal conceptions of genera and species among mun- dane things, give the patterns and universal laws according to which every- thing forms itself in the generation of the world. Matter, however, is merely conceived as the supporter of a confused mixture of ideas, which come and go in it as accidents, that find therein their permanent substance, but have in it themselves no permanent being. Hence, though matter is to be accounted a principle of the mundane phenomena, it holds a very subor- dinate part, namely, that of taking into itself the ideate that give it form : it is a merely passive principle; nay, the idealistic tendency which prevails in this doctrine allows it to appear even as something null, which has no significance in itself, and only consists of the confusion of ideas. On the other hand, the active principle in the world is the soul, in which the ideas come to consciousness, and by which they are produced in the world as mat- ter. It is first conceived as an universal soul or Anima Hundi, which per- vades everything, and rules the life of the whole world, so that nothing re-
* Bistorisches Tascbenbueb. Edited by F. Raumer. Leipzig, Brockbaus. Lon- don, Nutt.
mains dead, but everything is filled with life. Of this the individual souls are only parts, while the human soul in particular is regarded as a micro- cosm—as a mirror of the whole world. By this soul of man everything is to revert to its eternal principle."
As a theory that admits of brief description, we next take the view of Albertus Magnus, who flourished in the thirteenth cen- tury, and was the teacher of Thomas Aquinas.
"The world is to be regarded as the work of God, not, as the Arabians taught, sea work of his highest emanation, of the active understanding, of the intelligent mover of the starry heavens ; for we ought not to stop at mediate causes, these being only the instruments of God. God is himself the Active Intelligence, who forms everything. Neither ought we to set up matter as a second cause in addition to the Deity, but we ought to teach that God has created the world out of nothing. Averiiies had shown that the form which is to be given to an object, must already, guoad its possibility, be contained in its material, and that therefore formation is nothing more than the elicit- ing of the form, which already lies dormant in the matter. From this Al- bertus concluded that matter was nothing but the production of form. He therefore calls it the beginning of form, (inehoatio forme) and regards form as the complement of matter, (complementum snateria). By the formation of matter, that which in matter is only in its commencement is brought to perfection. Now he who gives the snore and the perfection, must also give the /ass and the beginning. Hence God is to be regarded not only as the artificer, but as the creator of the world. Albertus thus rejects the Aristotelian Dualism ; he likewise—adhering to the Platonic doctrine—re- jects the Aristotelian theory of the eternity of the world, for all material things must have a beginning in their matter. It is true that the generation of mundane things is not preceded by time, but time itself has a beginning, and God is not only the end but the commencement of all things. With the contest against Dualism is combined a contest against Materialism, and the doctrine of Albertus shows a tendency to Idealism. For matter is only the lowest, still undeveloped state of mundane existence, which in its higher development is to appear as form and as something spiritual ; in matter the spiritual designs of God only begin to reveal themselves. Start- ing from these principles in the relation of the world to the Deity, Albertus also solves in an easy manner the points of dispute between the Realists and the Nominalists. Three opinions were commonly opposed to each other,— the theory of Plato, that the universal preceded the (individual) things ; the theory of Aristotle, that the universal was in the things ; and the theory of the Nominalists, that the universal came after the things. Albertus finds that all the three theories are correct and compatible with each other. God creates everything according to its genus and species ; that is to say, accord- ing to his universal ideas or patterns, which serve as the general laws of nature. Hence the universal is in the intellect of the Deity before all things. * * * * The universal ideas are also realized by the Divine Intellect in the things; dwelling in them as their genera and species, and constituting a portion of their essence. As, however, form out of matter, only gradually attains actuality and comes within the reach of experience, so do we only gradually attain a knowledge of the universal, and it must be in the things themselves before it is brought within our knowledge and experience. Hence, g mad our own understanding, the universal comes after the things. Thus, Albertus agrees with the Realism of the Platonists, but admits, that so far as the course of our knowledge is concerned, the relation of the uni- versal to the particular is not incorrectly indicated by Nominalism."
The above scheme is not only well-digested, but the manner in which Albert proposes to reconcile the opposite theories of Nominal- ism and Realism touches on a point which must have occurred even to the most thoroughgoing empirist of the present day. Do we not make a distinction between real and artificial classifica- tion—between genera that concern the nature of things, and lexi- cographical divisions regulated by the sameness of an initial letter ? Do we not consider-that a white horse has more affinity to a black one than to a white stone, even if the latter be of the same weight, and be hewn into a similar form. And while we make such dis- tinctions, there is something like a belief in the old Platonic idea glimmering in the background ; and we are tacitly admitting, that although we obtain our general notions by a process of abstraction, these notions are only true when they correspond with some abori- ginal universal antecedent to particulars. If, on the other hand, we turn to the Nominalists Durand and William of Occam, (surnamed the "Invincible Doctor,") who flourished in the fourteenth century, when the world of speculators was divided by the controversies of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Sco- tus into rival camps of Thomists and Scotists, we may fancy we are listening to the exposition of one of those popular systems of phi- losophy that were so prevalent in the last age, during that happy period when the theories of Athens were ignored, and those of KOnigsberg and Berlin had not yet burst their shell.
"Nominalism formed itself in the schools of both Thomists and Scotists, but was far more strongly represented by the latter than the former. Wil- liam Durand, of St. Pourcain, who belonged to the Thomists, was satisfied with the development of a few Nominalistic propositions, without giving a more accurate Nominalistic explanation of our knowledge. He remarked, that the truth of thought cannot consist in this, that it represents the truth of things as they are. If things are bodies, it is obvious that no thought can represent a body as it is. Things are substances, but a thought is only an accident of a substance ; and to a substance no accident can be adequate. Our-science extends only to generalities ; for individual things do not admit of scientific knowledge, while the universal is only known by comparison, and is only in the comparing intellect."
Is not this similar to Berkeley's position, that a sensation can only be like a sensation ? Our countryman William of Occam is more subtile.
"Occam maintains, like Durand, that no thought can be adequate to a thing exterior to the soul. For every thing is a substance, but thought is only an accident of the soul; every thing is an individual, and as such is simple, while every thought is composed of subject and predicate. Since, however, Occam will not entirely set aside the use of natural knowledge, he must endeavour to deduce for it a significance ; and since all science is con- cerned with the universal, the significance of the universal must not be passed over. On this account Occam assumes a certain natural similarity between thoughts and things, just as signs have a similarity to the things signified., This similarity may indeed be very remote. Occam explains this by comparing thoughts with speech and written words, whioh are signs of thoughts, although their similarity to thought is very small. From this comparison we see that we must assume signs of signs, proximate and remote signs ; for thoughts are signs of things, speech is a sign of thought, and writing a sign of speech. The difference between these signs merely con- slats in this, that thought is a natural, while speech and writing are arbi- trary signs of things. Our natural science, therefore, merely gives us the knowledge of a series of natural signs, which, in our soul, indicate (external) things, without letting us know them. They are, in fact, phenomena in our soul, natural signs of things, which they resemble but little, just as smoke is a natural sign of fire, and a sigh a natural sign of pain."
We trust we have made out that
There are less things in heaven and earth, oh public! Than are dream'd of in these philosophies.
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