“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 “ἐγὼ γὰρ νέος ὢν Θαυμαστῶς ὡς ἐπεθύμησα ταύτης τῆς σοφίας ἣν δὴ καλοῦσι περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίαν κ.τ.λ.”
[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.