"We find, however," he proceeds, "some time before the reformation, evident signs of an endeavor on the part of a few writers to rise to a purer conception of the soul." And he goes on to attribute this to "the pantheistic writings that flowed from the school of Averrhoes;" and to ascribe to the Cartesian philosophy "the final downfall of the materialistic hypothesis." Vol. i. pp. 373-378.
It is not too much to say that the whole of this is entirely unsupported by evidence. Anyone who likes to glance over the Coimbricenses De Animâ, the beginning of the second book of the Sentences, the questions De Animâ in the Summa of St. Thomas, the recapitulation of the scholastic theology on that subject in the third volume of Suarez, or the very earliest treatises De Angelis, will see that, far from there being merely "a few writers" who maintained the spirituality of the soul, the notion of immateriality was as well defined in the dominant scholastic philosophy as ever it was by Descartes; whose doctrine that the essence of the soul is thought, was clearly stated by the scholastics in the sense that intellection can only belong to the spiritual, and not to the material and the extended. [Footnote 13] The manner in which the Scholastics explained the punishment of a spiritual being by a material fire affords us a test-question on this subject. Did their "intense realization" of this doctrine lead them to infer the materiality of the soul? Certainly not. On the contrary; because all thoroughly realized the spirituality of the soul, all felt this difficulty regarding the manner of its punishment; but, although there was sufficient diversity among them as to its explanation, not one had recourse to the materialistic hypothesis.
[Footnote 13: See St. Thomas Contra Gentiles, 1.2, c. 49, 50, 51, 65, cf. 66, where an immense number of arguments, in great part, of course, drawn from the philosophy of the day, is heaped up to prove the spirituality of the soul.]
Nor is Mr. Lecky correct in stating that the Arabian philosophy had a spiritualizing influence on philosophy and theology. That philosophy eminently favored the "multiplicatio entium sine necessitate," than which nothing is more unspiritualizing. Some of those who held it expounded the doctrine of matter and form in a manner dangerous to the spirituality of the soul. [Footnote 14] They held the perilous doctrine of emanation, and it would be quite a mistake to suppose that the description of error which they taught had any conformity of spirit with the poetical and sentimental pantheistic theories of the present day.
[Footnote 14: See St. Thomas, Op. de Angelis, cap 5.]
It is chiefly from the character of the then religious art, which (of course) represented spiritual subjects by material symbols, that Mr. Lecky argues that the middle ages materialized all spiritual conceptions. Thus, in a note to p. 232, vol. 1., he speaks thus:
"The strong desire natural to the middle ages to give a palpable form to the mystery of the Incarnation, was shown curiously in the notion of a conception by the ear. In a hymn, ascribed to St. Thomas à Becket, occur the lines:—
"Ave Virgo, Mater Christi,
Quae per aurem concepisti,
Gabriele nuntio."
And in an old glass window, now I believe in one of the museums of Paris, the Holy Ghost is represented hovering over the Virgin in the form of a dove, while a ray of light passes from his beak to her ear, along which ray an infant Christ is descending."—Langlois, Peinture sur Verre, p. 157.