“Euclide geometra, e Tolommeo, Ippocrate, Avicenna, e Galieno, Averrois, che il gran comento feo.” Inf. iv. 142.
Universities were founded in France, England, and Italy. Frederick the Second protected the Arabs, and even aped them; Ghibeline indeed almost signified freethinker. From the Roman de Renard, from the candid Joinville, from Boccaccio, we may infer that the very foundations of the Faith were sapped; and therewith, for good or ill, both moral and political bonds were loosened. But the natural Science which made the second renascence irresistible was absent in the first: the consolidation of the European peoples was not compact enough for a rehandling of the conceptions of religion and morals, too incomplete even for the latitude of opinion which, in nations as in individuals, is apt to slacken swift and consentient action. The toleration and scepticism of the first renascence had causes no deeper than a general enlargement of experience and thought.
To appreciate the influence, covert or overt, of scepticism in the Middle Ages we must clear the meaning of the word. Under the yoke of tribal custom scepticism can hardly arise, there is no place for the half-hearted, as all men feel alike so all think alike: scepticism arises when beliefs are put into formal propositions. Then, as experience and comparison enlarge, we detect scepticism in three forms or degrees: namely, doubt of a particular creed; doubt of all unverified propositions; and doubt of the validity of reason itself, whether in respect of the supernatural only or of all argument. It is remarkable that this last, the most devastating of the forms of scepticism, has come from the ranks of the faithful (Pascal, Hamilton, Mansel), who in resentment of the attacks of reason have turned blindly to rend reason herself. No civil society has been without scepticism; even in ages of most prevalent faith some current of doubt has flowed under the surface. In the Ionian philosophy the place of scepticism was only restricted in so far as many aspects of the subject-matter were not before those thinkers; for instance no Greek philosopher would have separated faith from reason. In the well-known words of Hippocrates, “οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἑτέρου θειότερον οὐδὲ ἀνθρωπινώτερον, ἀλλὰ πάντα θεῖα.” “The Greek boldly set up his academy by the side of the temple.” Even Protagoras never taught the futility of all reason, nor even the inconstancy of sensation which indeed is doctrine rather than scepticism. Neo-platonism had its scepticism in the first two forms, covering even the ground of the modern agnostic. Agnosticism does not deny the existence of the ladder, but asserts that the ladder begins and ends in the clouds; it is consistent therefore with ethical and practical activity. When Abélard said “Dubitando enim ad inquisitionem venimus, inquirendo veritatem percipimus,” if a sceptic, he was no infidel. Even in the thirteenth century it was never doubted that truth is attainable, nor indeed that the Faith contained the truth. The scepticism of that age was rather cautious and controversial than faithless, and in practice divine discontent rather than indifference (ἀταραξία). Pyrrhonism on the other hand leads to slackness of ethics; either to the insouciance of Horace and Montaigne, or to the attitude of the seventeenth century in Padua (Pomponatius) and elsewhere, when the “economy,” ironic or disingenuous, of allotting their several spheres to reason and dogma, if not first invented, became as fashionable as in the pulpits and in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair. “Comme savant j’ignore tout; comme citoyen je crois tout.” The Hypotyposes Pyrrhoniœ of Sextus Empiricus, whose influence in the times of the Renascence was considerable, was not translated till the fourteenth century. The detachment of mind and shrewd wisdom of John of Salisbury foreshadowed Petrarch rather than Hume; and when John discusses what it is given to man to know, asking the frequent question, “Utrum contingat homini scire aliquid?”, we must not fall into the error of importing into his question all it connotes for ourselves. Likewise when James of Douay (in ms. De anima, quoted by Hauréau) roundly says, “Id quod recipitur ab aliquo non recipitur secundum naturam rei receptæ sed secundum naturam recipientis ... sicut recipitur ita patitur.... Sensus judicando de sua passione non decipitur” and so on, he knew no more whither this would lead than John Duns knew that his system must lead to that of Spinoza. That guardians of morals and social cohesion, from Cato to the Westminster Assembly, and from Samuel Johnson to Cardinal Newman, should have distrusted scepticism even as reserve of judgment, or indeed repelled it with fierceness; that priest, presbyter, magistrate and moralist have tolerated irony, or even license, rather than vigilant and radical criticism of doctrine, is intelligible; and within limits springs from a justifiable apprehension. For the gay and indolent sceptic veers to conformity, especially if he mistrust the competence of reason; while the active sceptic endangers the theory of his society, and of the sanctions upon which all moral conduct temporarily depends. Hence the bitter condemnation of Galileo, “Perish all physical science rather than one article of the Faith be lost.” Happily it is true that during times of transition piety and good conduct survive by virtue of “inertia,” that is by tradition, social pressure, custom and sense of fitness; and it is true that in times of transition, as in our own times, halting thought is quickened for a while by plenitude of emotion, and wealth of æsthetic impressions makes amends for poverty of ideas; yet that morals are based on a theory of life is a truth still deeper and more abiding, and this deeper truth it was the function of the “Ages of Faith” to root in the conscience of mankind. “Abeunt studia in mores.” As contrasted with Pyrrhonism, scepticism in its normal sense, while it declares that the conformity of notions with things in themselves cannot be postulated, for lack of an external standpoint of comparison, and while it declines to be confuted by the “regressus ad infinitum,” for, having repudiated first principles it is prepared to be pushed backwards to remoter and remoter causes, is ready nevertheless to yield to assurance as facts are intercalated into inferences, and as inferences thus stiffened by verification are found to consist with each other and with the general context of experience.
If in the Middle Ages these various attitudes of mind were not fully distinguished, yet scepticism was moving variably towards the demand for verification on which all natural science is based; and the reaction was not long delayed. In the thirteenth century the culture of Omeyad and Abasid caliphs failed; by the end of the century philosophy was denounced and its books were burned; the generous and learned Frederick dashed himself in vain against the Papacy; Clement, the protector of Bacon, was dead, and during the two following centuries, in Spain at any rate, freedom of thought was crushed out by the Church. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the very name of Averroes—of “the mad dog who barked against the Christ,” the “Averroem impium καὶ τρὶς κατάρατον” of Erasmus—began to signify loose life as well as free thought. Of this resentment there had been no trace in Albert or St Thomas; but Imola had begun to wonder why Dante had treated so well Averroes who, if the Great Commentator, was yet the father of infidels. The Dominicans controlled the fine arts, and for them,—at Pisa, at Siena, in the Spanish Chapel,—Orcagna, Gaddi, Spinello Aretino, Simone Memmi abased the Empire, Averroes, and the new learning far more intolerantly than Dante had done; and exalted the Pope, with his handmaids Theology, Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. In Santa Maria Novella, Memmi represents the triumph of the Dominicans in theology, Gaddi in philosophy; St Thomas and the Dominicans march triumphant over Arius, Sabellius, Averroes, and Savonarola. Thus in the Middle Ages Averroes appeared in two forms—first as the Great Commentator, later as the blasphemer and father of infidels of the Campo Santo and of Santa Maria Novella. In the fifteenth century the Council of Constance forbad the laity to teach, under a penalty of forty days’ excommunication. In the sixteenth, in Granada, Ximenes burnt, it is said, 80,000 books of Arab philosophy, as Torquemada did for Hebrew in Seville; medical works, however, such as the Colliget[60] of Averroes, and his Commentary on Galen, were spared.
With the greater renascence the second period of Scholasticism, and indeed the Middle Ages themselves are closed. With the fall of Constantinople the stream of learning, driven eastwards in the first period of the Middle Ages, set westward again. Exiled grammarians now found their shelter under the protection of the “literate tyrants” of Italy, and with their spoil of manuscripts enriched the libraries of Rome and Venice. The Universities of Bologna and Padua from their foundation became notable for independence of thought; and, on the revival of learning, for their peripatetic teaching as opposed to the platonism of Florence, where, however, a spirit of accurate learning was nurtured in the deciphering and verification of texts. The political and commercial ambition of Venice, the Holland of Italy, of which State Padua was the learned quarter, and the inflow of liberal thinkers from other nations, kept her aloof from the fury of the Catholic reaction of the sixteenth century, which ruined Paris; thus in North-east Italy the spirit of modern science awoke sooner than in England or in France, and inquisitive students, both home and foreign, were attracted rather to Padua and to Bologna than, as in earlier times, to Paris.
In so far as Scholasticism may be described as a temporary reconciliation of Aristotle—that is, of natural and secular methods—with the Faith, this end had been attained, if at all, by St Thomas; in St Thomas Scholasticism culminated. But no such artificial truce could abide; and the issue of the chief scholastic controversy was to be determined by one greater than St Thomas. The pilgrim to Ockham, sitting in its church beneath the seven lancets of its twelfth century window, may be solitary also in his memory of one of the greatest of Englishmen, who saw that light six long centuries ago; yet a child rather of our age than of his own. As Abélard had closed the gates upon the neo-platonist tradition of Alexandria, so Ockham closed them against realism in all its forms; and the Church cursed them both. In his own person the occupation of professorial chairs by Franciscans came to an end; Paris and the Thomists could not consistently oppose nominalism; Duns the Northumbrian had inflated realism into a monstrous phantasm, and speculative reason had to submit to the yoke of verification. Yet what could nominalism do for theology, or for clerical schools? The Franciscans for the most part had turned to mysticism, and thenceforth the man of science and the devotee were to work apart. Furthermore, by Ockham philosophy gained a new meaning, or lost all meaning. Before Locke, Voltaire, and Kant, Ockham demonstrated that faculties were not substances; and differentiated logic, psychology, and natural science[61].
But if, as I have said, the way for Harvey and the other pioneers of natural knowledge was thus prepared for them, it was still, even in the seventeenth century, dark, rough and perilous. As in all times of transition, still the weight of defunct systems rolled inertly along; and while the new forces seemed to slumber stresses were accumulating. In Oxford and Cambridge the influence of Linacre, and even of Caius[62], seems to have been rather humanist than scientific[63]; in Oxford the text rather than the inspiration of Aristotle prevailed, while in Cambridge the platonist school, of which the charming Henry More was the leader, full of inspiration as it was, soon evaporated into mysticism, or obscurantism. Bacon and Harvey seem to have left Cambridge—for Paris and Padua respectively—as Locke left Oxford[64], under some discouragement. Of Paris the great days were over; it was in Padua that medicine, long degraded or disguised, was now to prove her lineage as the mother of natural science, and the truth of the saying of Hippocrates that to know the nature of man one must know the nature of all things. But on Harvey’s arrival, Padua, which had become the first school of Medicine in Europe, as was Bologna of Imperial Law[65], was settling down upon the lees of the once noble school of Averroes: a discipline which, by its original strength, by its freedom of thought, and by the ascendency of its professors, had withstood in the thirteenth century the direct condemnation of the brilliant fourth Lateran Council; and in the sixteenth the thunders of Trent. Padua adopted Averroism, in the fourteenth century, because of its medical contents; in the two following centuries this system was emptied of heart and life, but pattered and mumbled by pretentious pedants in North-east Italy it prevailed till the seventeenth, when after a reign of three centuries it was succeeded by the Cartesian. Of its phases in the sixteenth century Patrizzi said, “Ingens ab his philosophorum numerus ac successio manavit quæ in Aven Rois hypothesibus habitavit.... Inde dubitationum ac quæstionum sexcentorum milium numerus manavit” (Disc. Peripat. Vol. I. Venet. 1571; quoted by Renan, Averroès). The name of Averroes, “perfectus et gloriosissimus physicus, veritatis amicus et defensor intrepidus,” became the shibboleth of philosophers who held the different nature of the heavenly bodies against the “moderns” who alleged the identity of matter in sky and earth, and the doctrine of the universal against the individual soul.
Yet, in spite of Petrarch’s gibes, Averroism in its spring had nursed Padua with the milk of natural science. Even in its decay—for all teaching of philosophy, as a separate study, must decay—the triumph of the Faith was premature; like Jansenism, the School of Averroes, effete as it became, held the ground for a more dangerous invasion, for Leonardo, Telesio, Bruno, Gilbert, Sarpi, Campanella, Galileo, and Harvey; for the pioneers of truth, not as consistency with tradition, not as an alchemical search for real essences, nor indeed as wisdom only; but as the verification of premises. This fuse Paracelsus fixed to the shell which burst upon the Faith, upon Scholasticism, upon Galenism, and even upon humanism, “So Christus spricht ‘Perscrutamini scripturas’; warum soll ich nicht sagen ‘Perscrutamini naturas rerum’?” The Credo ut intelligam of Augustine and Anselm of Canterbury; the Intelligo ut credam of Aquinas belonged to the past; and men began to cry “c’est Dieu qui nous veut hérétiques.” A criticism based upon a larger sense of the relativity of knowledge, and, in the sixteenth century, a new scepticism[66], which pierced even into the Vatican, as to the very possibility of knowledge of the nature of being, were preparing the way for new conceptions: but in ethics meanwhile men were falling either into the carelessness of the scoffer or into the anti-nomianism of the mystic. The brilliant futilities of the medieval dialectic had led to weariness of spirit. After vain and vexatious jugglings with the dry tissues of unchastened ratiocination, simplicity and even ignorance brought their solace.
As from Florence humanism invaded English letters, so the Averroistic physician of Padua became known, even in Chaucer’s day, as a man of secular rather than of Scriptural learning. In Padua, while Galileo was teaching Euclid for a pittance, chairs of Averroistic philosophy were filled by highly paid professors, whose “rotuli” or portfolios, many of which now rest in the dust of the libraries of North Italy, were handed down from one to another in deadly routine. Virtually, however, the Averroistic tradition ended with a contemporary Paduan professor, Cremonini, lifted into fame by Harvey’s refutation in the De motu cordis, and by his own repudiation of the satellites of Jupiter, bodies for which Aristotle had made no provision. The coarseness and pedantry of the Averroistic freethinkers, whose scepticism lacked the elegance and sprightliness of the French, and their bastard language—mongrel of Greek and Arabic—revolted the humanists also: “Nihil indoctius, nihil insulsius, frigidius.” “Unum te obsecro,” Petrarch had said two hundred years before (in his invectives against doctors, whom he classed with astrologers, as afterwards indeed did Harvey more or less), “ut ab omni consilio mearum rerum tui isti Arabes arceantur atque exsulent.” “De medicis non modo nil sperandum sed valde etiam metuendum[67].” The doctors in their turn did not hide their disdain for poets. Whether justly or unjustly, the Doctors of Medicine were classed with astrologers and alchemists; the latter of whom Harvey repudiated frankly, not altogether avoiding a contempt for chemistry itself. Clad in fine raiment, with rings on their fingers and golden spurs on their heels, they rode tall horses, and gave themselves pompous airs. The humanist would rather pose as a believer than as an underbred infidel; the Averroist protected the license of his doctrines and manners by subterfuge and ironic evasion: and humanist and Averroist alike stood by at the burning of Bruno[68].