[755] Cum relatum esset ad Societatem (Sorbonicam) nonnullos philosophiæ, professores, ex iis etiam aliquando qui ad Societatem anhelant, novas quasdam doctrinas in philosophicis sectari, minusque Aristotelicæ doctrinæ studere, quam hactenus usurpatum fuerit in Academiâ Parisiensi, censuit Societas injungendum esse illis, imo et iis qui docent philosophiam in collegiis suo regimini creditis, ne deinceps novitatibus studeant, aut ab Aristotelica doctrina deffectant. 31 Dec. 1693. Argentré, Collectio Judiciorum, iii., 150.
[756] Réflexions sur la Poétique, p. 368. He admits, however, that to introduce more experiment and observation would be an improvement. Du reste il y a apparence que les loix, qui ne souffrent point d’innovation dans l’usage des choses universellement établies, n’autoriseront point d’autre méthode que celle qui est aujourd’hui en usage dans les universités; afin de ne pas donner trop de licence à la passion qu’on a naturellement pour les nouvelles opinions, dont le cours est d’une dangereuse conséquence dans un état bien réglé; vu particulièrement que la philosophie est un des organes dont se sert la religion pour s’expliquer dans ses décisions.
Their decline. Thomas White. 2. It is a difficult and dangerous choice, in a new state of public opinion (and we have to make it at present), between that which may itself pass away, and that which must efface what has gone before. Those who clung to the ancient philosophy believed that Bacon and Descartes were the idols of a transitory fashion, and that the wisdom of long ages would regain its ascendancy. They were deceived, and their own reputation has been swept off with the systems to which they adhered. Thomas White, an English catholic priest, whose Latin appellation is Albius, endeavoured to maintain the Aristotelian metaphysics and the scholastic terminology in several works, and especially in an attack upon Glanvil’s Vanity of Dogmatizing. This book, entitled Sciri, I know only through Glanvil’s reply in his second edition, by which White appears to be a mere Aristotelian. He was a friend of Sir Kenelm Digby, who was himself, though a man of considerable talents, incapable of disentangling his mind from the Peripatetic hypotheses. The power of words indeed is so great, the illusions of what is called realism, or of believing that general terms have an objective exterior being, are so natural, and especially so bound up both with our notions of essential, especially theological, truth, and with our popular language, that no man could in that age be much censured for not casting off his fetters, even when he had heard the call to liberty from some modern voices. We find that even after two centuries of a better method, many are always ready to fall back into a verbal process of theorising.
Logic. 3. Logic was taught in the Aristotelian method, or rather in one which, with some change for the worse, had been gradually founded upon it. Burgersdicius, in this and in other sciences, seems to have been in repute; Smiglecius also is mentioned with praise.[757] These lived both in the former part of the century. But they were superceded, at least in England, by Wallis, whose Institutio Logicæ ad Communes Usus Accommodata was published in 1687. He claims as an improvement upon the received system, the classifying singular propositions among universals.[758] Ramus had made a third class of them, and in this he seems to have been generally followed. Aristotle, though it does not appear that he is explicit on the subject, does not rank them as particular. That Wallis is right cannot be doubted by anyone who reflects at all; but his originality we must not assert. The same had been perceived by the authors of the Port-Royal Logic; a work to which he has made no allusion.[759] Wallis claims also as his own the method of reducing hypothetical to categorical syllogisms, and proves it elaborately in a separate dissertation. A smaller treatise, still much used at Oxford, by Aldrich, Compendium Artis Logicæ, 1691, is clear and concise, but seems to contain nothing very important; and he alludes to the Art de Penser in a tone of insolence, which must rouse indignation in those who are acquainted with that excellent work. Aldrich’s censures are, in many instances, mere cavil and misrepresentation; I do not know that they are right in any.[760] Of the Art de Penser itself we shall have something to say in the course of this chapter.
[757] La Logique de Smiglecius, says Rapin, est un bel ouvrage. The same writer proceeds to observe that the Spaniards of the preceding century had corrupted logic by their subtleties. En se jettant dans des spéculations creuses qui n’avoient rien de réel, leur philosophes trouvèrent l’art d’avoir de la raison malgré le bon sens, et de donner de la couleur, et même je ne scai quoi de specieuse, à ce qui étoit de plus déraisonnable, p. 382. But this must have been rather the fault of their metaphysics than of what is strictly called logic.
[758] Atque hoc signanter notatum velim, quia novus forte hic videar, et præter aliorum loquendi formulam hæc dicere. Nam plerique logici propositionem quam vocant singularem, hoc est, de subjecto individuo sive singulari, pro particulari habent, non universali. Sed perperam hoc faciunt, et præter mentem Aristotelis (qui, quantum memini, nunquam ejusmodi singularem, την κατα μερος appellat aut pro tali habet) et præter rei naturam: Non enim hic agitur de particularitate subjecti (quod ατομον vocat Aristotelis, non κατα μερος) sed de partialitate prædicationis.... Neque ego interim novator censendus sum qui hæc dixerim, sed illi potius novatores qui ab Aristotelica doctrina recesserint; eoque multa introduxerint incommoda de quibus suo loco dicetur, p. 125. He has afterwards a separate dissertation or thesis to prove this more at length. It seems that the Ramists held a third class of propositions, neither universal nor particular, to which they gave the name of propria, equivalent to singular.
[759] Art de Penser, part ii., chap. iii.
[760] One of Aldrich’s charges against the author of the Art de Penser is, that he brings forward as a great discovery the equality of the angles of a chiliagon to 1996 right angles; and another is, that he gives as an example of a regular syllogism one that has obviously five terms; thus expecting the Oxford students, for whom he wrote, to believe, that Antony Arnauld neither knew the first book of Euclid, nor the mere rudiments of common logic.
Stanley’s History of Philosophy. 4. Before we proceed to those whose philosophy may be reckoned original or at least modern, a very few deserve mention who have endeavoured to maintain or restore that of antiquity. Stanley’s History of Philosophy, in 1655, is in great measure confined to biography, and comprehends no name later than Carneades. Most is derived from Diogenes Laertius; but an analysis of the Platonic philosophy is given from Alcinous, and the author has compiled one of the Peripatetic system from Aristotle himself. The doctrine of the Stoics is also elaborately deduced from various sources. Stanley on the whole brought a good deal from an almost untrodden field; but he is merely a historian, and never a critic of philosophy. He does not mention Epicurus at all, probably because Gassendi had so well written that philosopher’s life.
Gale’s Court of Gentiles. 5. Gale’s Court of the Gentiles, partly in 1669 and partly in later years, is incomparably a more learned work, than that of Stanley. Its aim is to prove that all heathen philosophy, whether barbaric or Greek, was borrowed from the Scriptures, or at least from the Jews. The first part is entitled Of Philology, which traces the same leading principle by means of language; the second, Of Philosophy: the third treats of the Vanity of Philosophy, and the fourth of Reformed Philosophy, “wherein Plato’s moral and metaphysic or prime philosophy is reduced to an useful form and method.” Gale has been reckoned among Platonic philosophers, and indeed he professes to find a great resemblance between the philosophy of Plato and his own. But he is a determined Calvinist in all respects, and scruples not to say, “Whatever God wills is just, because he wills it;” and again, “God willeth nothing without himself because it is just, but it is therefore just because he willeth it. The reasons of good and evil extrinsic to the divine essence are all dependent on the divine will, either decernent or legislative.”[761] It is not likely that Plato would have acknowledged such a disciple.