In the middle ages 277

human reality. Scholastic philosophy, being a

pluralistic conception of the world, makes of each

man an autonomous agent, having a body and an

intelligence and a will and a liberty all his own.

Each human individual possesses abilities which

give to him as a representative of the race a purely

personal power of action; and this inequality of

faculties explains the several capacities of various

individuals for artistic or scientific or professional

or public life. The human individual has a right

to personal happiness and is called after death to

enjoy personal blessedness. He is protected

against the state, or the group, by a whole system

of intangible rights.^ Accordingly, the philosophy

of the thirteenth century is opposed to everything

that resembles the subjugation of one man to an-

other. For the same reason, it exhibits a profoimd

dislike for monism and pantheism; it was at great

pains, and this cannot be too strongly emphasized,

to eliminate every pantheistic tendency from its

teaching. Indeed it developed a horror for any

doctrine which fuses in one sole being some or all

beings, — in particular, which makes all men parts

or becomings of a great whole, of one Being, and

which therefore suppresses their individuality.

This doctrine, that the individual alone is sub-

stantial reality, and alone has real value in the uni-

verse, is of course Aristotelian in origin. It is

written on the first page of his Metaphysics, that

1 Cf. chs. IX and X.

278 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

splendid book of common-sense which has nour-

ished the thought of men for two thousand years.

But with their special concern for the natural

equality of human beings, the scholastics went

much further than did Aristotle. While he stated

that men are naturally unlike, and that nature

made freemen of some and slaves of others, the

scholastics regarded slavery and serfdom as con-

ventional, — not as natural. And we may be sure

that if this turn of thought — a turn toward en-

hanced value of the individual — had not been in

accord with the deepest aspirations of the mediaeval

civilization (in the peoples who were its supreme

representatives), it would never have found en-

trance into their marrow, and into their blood.

For, the western minds took only what suited them,

— whether from Aristotle or Plato or Augustine or

Avicenna or Averroes — and they took it because it

suited them.

Nothing is more false than the judgment, which

finds credit among so many historians, that one

must await the Renaissance to see human person-

ality appraised at its true worth. There are few

philosophers who have accentuated the metaphysi-

cal, the psychological, the moral, and the social

value of the individual so much as did the schol-

astics. And just as the thirteenth century is a

century of striking personalities, it is also a cen-

tury of discussions on all the problems which the

question of personality raises.