BOOK VI. STORYOF These panegyricized masters, like all the other men of learning whom we have noticed, excited the cuTERARY riosity of their contemporaries to extensive disquiGLAND. sitions, and contributed to form the intellect of the ages that succeeded them; and, limited to these beneficial results, we may justly sanction their ancient reputation. There is indeed something very serviceable to the mind, in the mode of Thomas Aquinas. He first proposes the question he has to consider; then, with all the candour of Dr. Paley, he fairly and fully states two arguments against it. He subjoins to these his own reasons for the opinion he supports; and, having thus placed both sides of the subject before the reader's attention, he draws his conclusion, and adds some remarks in refutation of the opposing arguments. On this plan he steadily proceeds through all the innumerable ramifications of his moral, metaphysical, political and religious work.66 That this popular art made no one wiser, and that the questions most commonly discussed by it were useless to every class of society, was perceived so early as to be remarked by our reasonable John of Salisbury. Even Becket was admonished by him 67 tion. Nothing but the extremes of total belief or total disbelief of the 66 See his Summa, passim.-Of this celebrated man I state with plea- 67 Metalogicus, 1. 2. c. 6. to avoid them ing around h ridiculous, ex beating the a lips.00 69 In a prece give a just ide Aristotle; but which his wo that a new sty he corrected, and that an in has become sophist at de laborious, obs philosophy, information h ters and thro perceive him disputation knowlege. notwithstand the mind to one true the 68 Becket Ep. entiam auget ad Le Sage's descri Mapes. Nos On nous devoit phes.--We may from an unput that I should tu que reprehensi Cotton. Lib. T VOL. IV. 68 XII. to avoid them. And the sportive Mapes, ever look- CHAP. OF THE SCHOLAS- In a preceding chapter we have endeavored to give a just idea of the true merit and real utility of Aristotle; but now that he has achieved all the good which his works were calculated to produce, and that a new style of mind, without the blemishes which he corrected, has become the character of Europe; and that an indestructible treasure of real knowlege has become our common patrimony, which sets the sophist at defiance, we feel his logical works to be laborious, obscure and difficult effusions of ancient philosophy, and no longer useful. Our scientific information has crowded upon us from other quarters and thro other methods, and therefore we now perceive him to be a teacher of a system of verbal disputation distinct from the acquisition of real knowlege. Experience has decided that his method, notwithstanding its great ingenuity, has never led the mind to one beneficial discovery, or established one true theory. Tho intended to end the reign of 68 Becket Ep. 1. 1. p. 47. He says, Scholaris exercitatio interdum scientiam auget ad tumorem. 69 Est Aristoteles verberans aëra- See before. Le Sage's description of his logical students is a good commentary on Mapes. Nos yeux etoient pleins de fureur et nos bouches ecumantes. On nous devoit plutot prendre pour des possedés que pour des philosophes. We may learn how Mapes was estimated by his contemporaries, from an unpublished work of Giraldus. He says of him; "It is time that I should turn ad sales saporifero sapientiæ sale conditos, urbanasque reprehensiones Oxonien. Archidi. W. Mapi.'"-Lib. de distinc. MS. Cotton. Lib. Tib. B. 13. VOL. IV. I 1 BOOK error, and it has suppressed many, yet in its turn it became the means of eternal controversy, re-proLITERARY ducing some of the evils it was meant to destroy. It was soon found to be a moveable mechanism of words, whose active powers no use can exhaust, no HISTORY OF 70 hostility defeat. This specious quality suited and interested our ancestors; and we must admit that they were for a time benefited by its adoption. They had no knowlege to make a better use of, and they were surrounded by a superstition becoming tyrannical, perhaps insensibly to itself, whose tendency was to paralyze their faculties, and to extinguish judgment in slavish credulity. In this state the Aristotelian logic was a weapon of the busy mind, always hewing the fetters that were ever forging to confine it." Tho it exercised itself on words, the exercise was freedom, the activity was health, because it educated men to think and argue; and argument was victory against political theology." As Providence took care that true knowlege should pour in at the same period, Aristotle, pursued by experimental philosophy, became a master always tending to make 70 Hugo St Victor, who died 1140, in classing philosophy under three heads, Logica, Ethica, and Theorica, while he allots to his theorica, physics and mathematics, very sensibly ascribes to logic only wordsLogica de vocibus; ethica de moribus; theorica de rebus tractat.' In Spec. Eccl. ap. Bib. Mag. vol. 10. p. 1363. 71 How sensible the zealous friends of the Romish sytem were of this, we may infer from Peter, the abbot Cellensis, who flourished about 1180. In his Mystica expositio, dedicated to our John of Salisbury, he says, The Aristotelian grove is not to be planted near the altar, lest we should darken the sacraments of faith, by endless and superfluous disquisitions, which are useful only to the subversion of their hearers.' Bib. Mag. vol. 9. p. 919. 72 The emphatic words of St Bernard shew the eagerness with which the new style of reasoning was received, and its important effects. "Their books fly; their darkness invades cities and castles; they pass from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another. A new gospel is fabricated for peoples and states; a new faith is proposed; a very different foundation is laid, for that, which was anciently established.' Abel, Epist. p. 273. XII. OF THE LOSOPHY. scholars wiser than himself. His tuition certainly CHAP. generated vivacity and acuteness of intellect; and mind, thus excited, fastening afterwards on better HISTORY knowlege, perceived the inanity of its former pre- SCHOLAS ceptor, and emancipated itself from his shackles by TIC PHI the very vigor which he had created. Persons were perpetually deserting the logical schools, to cultivate more satisfactory knowlege;73 and logic, thus combined and governed by physical science, operated at last only to improve the judgment, to create a spirit of criticism, and to naturalize an independence and an activity of inquiry, which has contributed powerfully to strengthen and enlarge the British intellect. lastic logic. The schoolmen were certainly in a continual exer- Defects of cise of disputing mind, but their logic was not applied the schoto discover unknown truth; it was emulously used merely to discuss the truth or falsehood of any asserted or stated proposition. Their chief aim was to distinguish themselves; and therefore their great delight was to impugn and to overthrow; or, if themselves assailed, to defend what they chose to espouse, with never-yielding pertinacity. They did not inquire what was true in nature, but what must be true or false, according to their logical system. Hence they put all thought and nature into the fetters of their peculiar argumentation, and would reason and contemplate them only thro the Aristotelian categories. They looked for the predicaments in all things; and not for natural properties and effects. They sought, as the means and perfection of their art, to reduce all facts and things into brief definitions and propositions; which, once made, were all that 73 See Friar Bacon, in his Opus Magus. HISTORY OF BOOK was considered. Every syllogism consisted of a major VI. definition, to which a minor was attached; and from LITERARY these, a short conclusion was drawn, which became a specific proposition-the settled object of resistance and attack. All their knowlege was thus broken and separated into little fortified towns of dogmatical assertions, which must either be assaulted by the same kind of artillery, or be admitted to stand triumphant and impregnable. The benefit of the art was, that it taught men to be exact in the selection of the most unobjectionable words, and to use the fewest and most precise, by which the meaning could be expressed, that they might be less open to the attacks of their adversary. They accustomed themselves to reason severely and strictly on the expressions to which they reduced their arguments, and to confine their opponents to the same exactitude. These habits introduced great mental force, activity, closeness and concentration; and destroyed the reign of rhetoric and style. But it necessarily produced three connected evils, which seem to be inseparable from all artificial logic; 1. It is always reducing and contracting truths, and their numerous relations, to petty verbal definitions, which blind and chain the mind, and keep the great facts of the subject out of sight. II. It takes the mind from considering the real truths and properties of things, and leads it to the exclusive contemplation of the words which the disputants use; and thus it converts discussion into un serviceable argument of terms. III. Hence it creates a narrow verbal mind, acutein battles of words, but mistaking logic for truth, |