In the middle ages 263

those of today. But they were on the point of be-

coming diversified. The thirteenth century was

hke a central plateau, and the streams which flowed

from it, cut their beds in different directions.

The Thomistic theory of the state represents the

crystallization of the political experiences of the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but it also repre-

sents conformity with the feudal and civil and

canon law, which was making no little progress

during this time. Consequently the three systems

of legislation (feudal, civil, canon) are at one on

so many important points, such as the divine

origin of power, the subordination of the king to

law, the king's character as servitor of justice, the

force of custom, the intervention of the community

in the delegation of power to the prince, and the

participation of the people in government. In the

same way natural law is for the legists and canon-

ists an ideal to which positive (human) legislation

must approach ; and the prescription of the natural

law must be adopted in so far as it is possible in

existing circumstances."^

Finally, the thirteenth century theory of the

state takes up and completes various philosophic

doctrines which had found credit among former

philosophers such as Manegold of Lautenbach, and

29 Cf. Carlyle, op. cit. For the civilian lawyers, vol. II, pp. 27,

49, 75; for the canonists, ibid., pp. 110, 145, cf. VIII, and p. 2'42;

for the feudal lawyers, vol. Ill, pp. 32, 34, 44, 51, 100, 106, 116,

125, 137, 147, 162, and the conclusion.

264 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

John of Salisbury. But it has become a social phi- в– 

losophy, and it dresses all in a synthesis which is

found neither among the feudal theorists nor among

the legists, nor among the canonists, nor among the

philosophers of the preceding centuries. It co-

ordinates all, and attaches the doctrines which it I

establishes to a system of psychology, of morals, of

logic, and of metaphysics. It is a kind of democ-

racy, conceived in moderation, and based upon the

pluralistic conception of the world and of life.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Conception of Human Progress

i. The constant and the permanent, ii. Progress in science,

in morals, in social and political justice, in civilization.

Is there a place in the scholasticism of the thir-

teenth century for a theory of progress? The ques-

tion concerns not only the system of human laws;

it is a general problem, and therefore, it must be

solved according to general principles. Let us ob-

serve briefly how scholasticism succeeded in recon-

ciling the constant and the variable, and in what

degree it admits the possibility of change for the

better.

We have already seen^ what a capital role the

stable and the permanent played in the thirteenth

century conception of the world. Essences are un-

changeable, and by them the natural species are

fixed; they are imitations of the essence of God;

and the degree of imitability does not change.

From this it follows that what constitutes man, his

quiddity as they then said, is everywhere and al-

1 Ch. IX, iv.

265

266 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

ways the same. One is either a man or not a man.

Essentia non suscipit plus vel minus. Similarly,

the first principles of reason — that is to say, the

judgments which express the fundamental relations

of all being, the prerequisites of whatever reality

may come into actual existence — are stable and per-

manent; their necessity and their universality are

absolute. Take, for example, the principle of con-

tradiction: "that which is cannot not be," or the

principle of causality: quidquid movetur ah alio

movetur. The scholastics referred to these princi-

ples as per se notae, knowable of themselves; for,

merely by understanding the subject and predicate

one can grasp the absolute necessity of the relation

which unites them, independently of all experience,

and in consequence independently of all existence.

The first principles of mathematics, although less

general in that they have to do only with quantity,

express in the same way invariable relations.

Nor is it otherwise with the principles of moral

and social order. That good must be done and

wrong avoided, that the state is for the good of

individuals, are principles necessary and fixed; and

we liave seen that there exist rights derived from

nature, which no human legislation can violate.

However, the necessity of these moral and social

principles is of a different kind from that of mathe-

matical propositions, and of the principles of rea-

son. These moral principles imply a condition;

namely, the existence of humanity in its actual