To those who live only in the past, or only in the present, there seems in the discriminations of the comparative historian to be a certain cold-bloodedness. Are not the ears of this critic, so aloof from the murmuring of creed and controversy, are they not deaf to the voices of the spirit which he would interpret to us? A distinguished bishop who was among my hearers, with the fervour and gentle humour so well known in him, rallied me not for celebrating science but for putting religion to rout. Yet in our own day surely the argument is changed, not in form only but in very nature; so changed by the conceptions of evolution, which have entered the mind of churchman and layman alike, that not a few speculative beliefs are changing sides without the knowledge of the disputants; and he who thinks himself a defender of the faith may have joined the revolt. But if we no longer carry the colours of the troops of the past we shall collect our lessons from its strategies; and for one of these lessons a prelate of the King will give thanks with me, that his supremacy has palsied the arm of the inquisitor to strengthen that of the apostle.
An unsystematic reader of a subject finds it out of his power to make due acknowledgment of the help and advantage derived from expert authors. Much of the matter had seeded itself insensibly in his brain in the course of general reading and conversation; much of it again had been obtained more carefully from sources now forgotten. To the following authors I know I am profoundly indebted, as I am to many others to whose names and works I can now give no reference:
Hauréau, La Philosophie Scolastique, Ed. 1872;
Jowett, Dialogues of Plato (vol. III. p. 523);
Jourdain (Amable), Recherches critiques, Paris 1848;
Jourdain (Charles), Excursions historiques, Paris 1888 (and the Philosophie de St Thomas of the same author);
Ampère, Histoire litt. de la France avant le XIIme siècle;
Brucker’s Historia Critica Philosophiæ (English Ed., 1791);
Renan, Averroès, Paris 1866; the Philosophie périp. apud Syros; and the Peuples Sémitiques dans l’histoire de la civilisation, of the same author;
Roger Bacon, Westminster Review, 1864, two Articles (by Thomas Marshall, M.A. Oxon.);