Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Evangelical Church Conference" to "Fairbairn, Sir William" / Volume 10, Slice 1

by Various

The Fathers.—The speculations of the fathers respecting the origin and course of the world seek to combine Christian ideas of the Deity with doctrines of Greek philosophy. The common idea of the origin of things is that of an absolute creation of matter and mind alike. The course of human history is regarded by those writers who are most concerned to refute Judaism as a progressive divine education. Among the Gnostics we meet with the hypothesis of emanation, as, for example, in the curious cosmic theory of Valentinus.

Middle Ages—Early Schoolmen.—In the speculative writings of the middle ages, including those of the schoolmen, we find no progress towards a more accurate and scientific view of nature. The cosmology of this period consists for the most part of the Aristotelian teleological view of nature combined with the Christian idea of the Deity and His relation to the world. In certain writers, however, there appears a more elaborate transformation of the doctrine of creation into a system of emanation. According to John Scotus Erigena, the nothing out of which the world is created is the divine essence. Creation is the act by which God passes through the primordial causes, or universal ideas, into the region of particular things (processio), in order finally to return to himself (reversio). The transition from the universal to the particular is of course conceived as a descent or degradation. A similar doctrine of emanation is to be found in the writings of Bernhard of Chartres, who conceives the process of the unfolding of the world as a movement in a circle from the most general to the individual, and from this back to the most general. This movement is said to go forth from God to the animated heaven, stars, visible world and man, which represent decreasing degrees of cognition.

Arab Philosophers.—Elaborate doctrines of emanation, largely based on Neoplatonic ideas, are also propounded by some of the Arabic philosophers, as by Fārābī and Avicenna. The leading thought is that of a descending series of intelligences, each emanating from its predecessor, and having its appropriate region in the universe.

Jewish Philosophy.—In the Jewish speculations of the middle ages may be found curious forms of the doctrine of emanations uniting the Biblical idea of creation with elements drawn from the Persians and the Greeks. In the later and developed form of the Kabbala, the origin of the world is represented as a gradually descending emanation of the lower out of the higher. Among the philosophic Jews, the Spanish Avicebron, in his Fons Vitae, expounds a curious doctrine of emanation. Here the divine will is viewed as an efflux from the divine wisdom, as the intermediate link between God, the first substance, and all things, and as the fountain out of which all forms emanate. At the same time all forms, including the higher intelligible ones, are said to have their existence only in matter. Matter is the one universal substance, body and mind being merely specifications of this. Thus Avicebron approaches, as Salomon Munk observes,[6] a pantheistic conception of the world, though he distinctly denies both matter and form to God.

Later Scholastics.—Passing now to the later schoolmen, a bare mention must be made of Thomas Aquinas, who elaborately argues for the absolute creation of the world out of nothing, and of Albertus Magnus, who reasons against the Aristotelian idea of the past eternity of the world. More importance attaches to Duns Scotus, who brings prominently forward the idea of a progressive development in nature by means of a process of determination. The original substance of the world is the materia primo-prima, which is the immediate creation of the Deity. This serves Duns Scotus as the most universal basis of existence, all angels having material bodies. This matter is differentiated into particular things (which are not privations but perfections) through the addition of an individualizing principle (haecceitas) to the universal (quidditas). The whole world is represented by the figure of a tree, of which the seeds and roots are the first indeterminate matter, the leaves the accidents, the twigs and branches corruptible creatures, the blossoms the rational soul, and the fruit pure spirits or angels. It is also described as a bifurcation of two twigs, mental and bodily creation out of a common root. One might almost say that Duns Scotus recognizes the principle of a gradual physical evolution, only that he chooses to represent the mechanism by which the process is brought about by means of quaint scholastic fictions.

Revival of Learning.—The period of the revival of learning, which was also that of a renewed study of nature, is marked by a considerable amount of speculation respecting the origin of the universe. In some of these we see a return to Greek theories, though the influence of physical discoveries, more especially those of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, is distinctly traceable.

Telesio.—An example of a return to early Greek speculation is to be met with in Bernardino Telesio. By this writer the world is explained as a product of three principles—dead matter, and two active forces, heat and cold. Terrestrial things arise through a confluence of heat, which issues from the heavens, and cold, which comes from the earth. Both principles have sensibility, and thus all products of their collision are sentient, that is, feel pleasure and pain. The superiority of animals to plants and metals in the possession of special organs of sense is connected with the greater complexity and heterogeneity of their structure.

Giordano Bruno.—In the system of Giordano Bruno, who sought to construct a philosophy of nature on the basis of new scientific ideas, more particularly the doctrine of Copernicus, we find the outlines of a theory of cosmic evolution conceived as an essentially vital process. Matter and form are here identified, and the evolution of the world is presented as the unfolding of the world-spirit to its perfect forms according to the plastic substratum (matter) which is but one of its sides. This process of change is conceived as a transformation, in appearance only, of the real unchanging substance (matter and form). All parts of matter are capable of developing into all forms; thus the materials of the table and chair may under proper circumstances be developed to the life of the plant or of the animal. The elementary parts of existence are the minima, or monads, which are at once material and mental. On their material side they are not absolutely unextended, but spherical. Bruno looked on our solar system as but one out of an infinite number of worlds. His theory of evolution is essentially pantheistic, and he does not employ his hypothesis of monads in order to work out a more mechanical conception.

Campanella.—A word must be given to one of Bruno’s contemporary compatriots, namely Campanella, who gave poetic expression to that system of universal vitalism which Bruno developed. He argues, from the principle quicquid est in effectibus esse et in causis, that the elements and the whole world have sensation, and thus he appears to derive the organic part of nature out of the so-called “inorganic.”

Boehme.—Another writer of this transition period deserves a passing reference here, namely, Jacob Boehme the mystic, who by his conception of a process of inner diremption as the essential character of all mind, and so of God, prepared the way for later German theories of the origin of the world as the self-differentiation and self-externalization of the absolute spirit.