In antiquity all this was natural enough. The genius of antiquity was so utterly identified with the conditions of its political life, and religion was so integral an element in the foundations of the ancient State, that the ancient mind was quite incapable of divesting itself of these convictions, and so getting out of its integument. The spirit of antiquity must stand or fall with its particular political conventions, and, in the event, it fell with them.
Such being the spirit of those times, it follows that any scientific doctrine which carried a denial of any element of the foundations of the State was in effect an attack upon the nation's life and must necessarily be dealt with as such.
All this changes when the ancient world passes away and the Germanic peoples come upon the scene. These latter are peoples gifted with a capacity to change their integument. By virtue of that faculty for development that belongs to the guiding principle of their life, viz.: the principle of the subjective spirit,—by virtue of this, these latter are possessed of a flexibility which enables them to live through the most widely varied metamorphoses. These peoples have passed through many and extreme transformations, and, instead of meeting their death and dissolution in the process, they have by force of it ever emerged on a higher plane of development and into a richer unfolding of life.[49]
The means by which these peoples are able to prepare the way for and to achieve these transmutations through which they constantly emerge to that fuller life, the rudiments of which are inborn in them, is the principle of an unrestrained freedom of scientific research and teaching.
Hence it comes that this instinct of free thought among these peoples reaches expression very early, much earlier than the modern learned world commonly suspects. "We are mistakenly in the habit of thinking of free scientific inquiry as a fruitage of modern times. But among these peoples that instinct is an ancient one which asserts that free inquiry must be bound neither by the authority of a person nor by a human ordinance; that, on the contrary, it is a power in itself, resting immediately upon its own divine right, superior to and antedating all human institutions whatever.
"Quasi lignum vitae," says Pope Alexander IV. in a constitution addressed to the University of Paris in 1256, "Quasi lignum vitae in Paradiso Dei, et quasi lucerna fulgoris in Domo Domini, est in Sancta Ecclesia Parisiensis Studii disciplina." "As the tree of life in God's Paradise and the lamp of glory in the house of God, such in the Holy Church is the place of the Parisian corporation of learning." To appreciate the import of these words of the holy father, it should be borne in mind that in the Middle Ages all things whatever lived only by virtue of a corporate existence, so that learning existed only as incorporated in a university.
It would be a serious mistake to believe that the universities of the Middle Ages rested that prerogative of scientific censure—censura doctrinatis—to which they laid claim in such a comprehensive way, upon these and other like papal or imperial and royal decrees of establishment. Petrus Alliacensis, a man whom the University of Paris elected as its magnus magister in 1381, and who afterward wore the archiepiscopal and also the cardinal's hat, tells us that not ex jure humano, not from human legislation, but ex jure divino, from divine law, does science derive its competence to exercise the censura; and the privileges and charters granted by popes, emperors and kings are nothing more than the acts of recognition of this prerogative of science that comes to it ex jure divino, or, as an alternative expression has it, ex jure naturali, by the law of nature. And in this, Petrus Alliacensis is substantially borne out by all the later scholastics.
Gentlemen, we are in the habit of giving ourselves airs and of looking down on the Middle Ages as a time of darkness and barbarism. But in so doing we are frequently in the wrong, and in no respect are we more thoroughly in the wrong than in passing such an opinion upon the position of science in the Middle Ages. Frequent and most solemn are the cases in which recognition is made of the right of science to raise her voice without all regard to king and pope, and even against king and pope.
We have recently witnessed a conflict between the government and the house of deputies as to the meeting of expenditures not granted by the house. An impression has been diligently spread abroad through the country that this is an unheard of piece of boldness and a subversive assumption of power on the part of the house of deputies, and indeed there have not been wanting deputies who have been astonished at their own daring, and have taken some pride in it.
But, on the other hand, Gentlemen, in February, 1412, the University of Paris, which was in no way intrusted with an oversight or a control of this country's fiscal affairs, took occasion to address a memorial to the King of France, Charles VI., as it said: "pour la chose publique du votre royaume"—on the public concerns of the realm. And in this memorial the university subjects the fiscal administration of the country, together with other branches of the administration, to a drastic criticism, and passes a verdict of unqualified condemnation upon it. This rémonstrance of the University of Paris rises to a degree of boldness, both in its demands and in its tone, that is quite foreign to anything which our house of deputies has done or might be expected to do. It points out that the revenues have not been expended for the purposes for which they were levied—"on appert clairement, que les dictes finances ne sont point employées à choses dessus dictes," etc.—and it closes this its review with the peremptory demand: "_Item, et il fault savoir, où est cette finance,"—"Now, we have a right to know what has become of these funds." It describes the king's fiscal administration, including the highest officials, the finance ministers, gouverneurs and treasurers, as a gang of lawless miscreants, a band of rogues conspiring together for the ruin of the country. It upbraids the king himself with having packed the parliament of Paris, and so having corrupted the administration of justice. It points out to him that his predecessors carried on the government by means of much smaller revenues: "au quel temps estoit le royaume bien gouverné, autrement que maintenant"—"when the country was well governed, as is not the case today." The rémonstrance goes on to picture the burdens which rest upon the poor, and to demand that these burdens be lightened by means of a forced loan levied upon the rich. And the rémonstrance closes with the declaration that all this, which it has set forth is, in spite of its length, but a very adequate presentation of the matter, in so much that it would require several days to describe all the misgovernment the country suffered.