CHAPTER XXXIV
SCHOLASTICISM: SPIRIT, SCOPE, AND METHOD
The religious philosophy or theology of the Middle Ages is commonly called scholasticism, and its exponents are called the scholastics. The name applies most properly to the respectable academic thinkers. These, in the early Middle Ages, usually were monks living in monasteries, like St. Anselm, for instance, who was Abbot of Bec in Normandy before, to his sorrow, he was made Archbishop of Canterbury. In the thirteenth century, however, while these respected thinkers still were monks, or rather mendicant friars, they were also university professors. Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Dominicans, and their friend St. Bonaventura, who became the head of the Franciscan Order, all lectured at the University of Paris, the chief university of the Middle Ages in the domain of philosophy and theology. Moreover, as the scholastics were respectable and academic, so they were usually orthodox Churchmen, good Roman Catholics. The conduct or opinions of some of them, Abaelard for example, became suspect to the Church authorities; yet Abaelard, although his book had been condemned, kept within the Church’s pale, and died a monk of Cluny. There were plenty of obdurate heretics in the Middle Ages; but their bizarre ideas, sometimes coming down from Manichaean sources, were scarcely germane to the central lines of mediaeval thought.[419]
One hears of scholastic philosophy and scholastic theology; and assuredly these mediaeval theologian-philosophers endeavoured to distinguish between the one and the other phase of the matters which occupied their minds. The distinction was intelligibly drawn and, in many treatises, doubtless affected the choice and ordering of topics. Whether it was consistently observed in the handling of those topics, is another question, which perhaps should be answered in the negative. At all events, to attempt to observe this distinction in considering the ultimate intellectual interests of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, might sap the matter of the human interest attaching to it, to wit, that interest and validity possessed by all serious effort to know—and to be saved. These were the motives of the scholastics, whether they used their reason, or clung to revelation, or did both, as they always did.
Mediaeval methods of thinking and topics of thought are no longer in vogue. For the time, men have turned from the discussion of universals and the common unity or separate individuality of mind, and are as little concerned with transubstantiation as with the old dispute over investitures. But the scholastics were men and so are we. Our humanity is one with theirs. Men are still under the necessity of reflecting upon their own existence and the world without, and still feel the need to reach conclusions and the impulse to formulate consistently what seem to them vital propositions. Herein we are blood kin to Gerbert and Anselm, to Abaelard and Hugo of St. Victor, to Thomas Aquinas as well as Roger Bacon: and our highest nature is one with theirs in the intellectual fellowship of human endeavour to think out and present that which shall appease the mind. Because of this kinship with the scholastics, and the sympathy which we feel for the struggle which is the same in us and them, their intellectual endeavours, their achieved conclusions, although now appearing as but apt or necessitated phrases, may have for us the immortal interest of the eternal human.
Let us then approach mediaeval thought as man meets man, and seek in it for what may still be valid, or at least real to us, because agreeing with what we find within ourselves. Being men as well as scholars, we would win from its parchment-covered tomes those elements which if they do not represent everlasting verities, are at least symbols of the permanent necessities of the human mind. Whatever else there is in mediaeval thought, as touching us less nearly, may be considered by way of historical setting and explanation.
In different men the impulse to know bears different relationships to the rest of life. It sometimes seems self-impelled, and again palpably inspired by a motive beyond itself. In some form, however, it winds itself into every action of our mental faculties, and no province of life appears untouched by this craving of the mind. Nevertheless to know is not the whole matter; for with knowledge comes appetition or aversion, admiration or contempt, love or abhorrence; and other impulses—emotional, desiderative, loving—impel the human creature to realize its nature in states of heightened consciousness that are not palpable modes of knowing, though they may be replete with all the knowledge that the man has gained.
These ultimate cravings which we recognize in ourselves, inspired mediaeval thought. Its course, its progress, its various phases, its contents and completed systems, all represent the operation of human faculty pressing to expression and realization under the accidental or “historical” conditions of the mediaeval period. We may be sure that many kinds of human craving and corresponding faculty realized themselves in mediaeval philosophy, theology, piety and mysticism—the last a word used provisionally, until we succeed in resolving it into terms of clearer significance. And we also note that in these provinces, realization is expression. Every faculty, every energy, in man seeks to function, to realize its power in act. The sheer body—if there be sheer body—acts bodily, operates, and so makes actual its powers. But those human energies which are informed with mind, realize themselves in ardent or rational thought, or in uttered words, or in products of the artfully devising hand. All this clearly is expression, and corresponds, if it is not one and the same, with the passing of energy from potency to the actuality which is its end and consummation. Thus love, seeking its end, thereby seeks expression, through which it is enhanced, and in which it is realized. Likewise, impelled by the desire to know, the faculties of cognition and reason realize themselves in expression; and in expression each part of rational knowledge is clarified, completed, rendered accordant with the data of observation and the laws or necessities of the mind.
Human faculties form a correlated whole; and this composite human nature seeks to act, to function. Thus the whole man strives to realize the fullest actuality of his being, and satisfy or express the whole of him, and not alone his reason, nor yet his emotions, or his appetites. This uttermost realization of human being—man’s summum bonum or summa necessitas—cannot unite the incompatible within its synthesis. It must be kept a consistent ideal, a possible whole. Here the demiurge is the discriminating and constructive intelligence, which builds together the permanent and valuable elements of being, and excludes whatever cannot coexist in concord with them. Yet the intelligence does not always set its own rational activities as man’s furthest goal of realization. It may place love above reason. And, of course, its discriminating judgment will be affected by current knowledge and by dominant beliefs as to man and his destiny, the universe and God.
Manifestly whatever the thoughtful idealizing man in any period (and our attention may at once focus itself upon the Middle Ages) adjudges to belong to the final realization of his nature, will become an object of intellectual interest for him; and he will deem it a proper subject for study and meditation. The rational, spiritual, or even physical elements, which may enter and compose this, his summum bonum, represent those intellectual interests which may be termed ultimate, for the very reason, that they relate to what the thinker deems his beatitude. These ultimate intellectual interests possess an absolute sanction, for the lack of which whatever lies outside of them tends to adjudge itself vain.