In the middle ages 55

nize with the predominant virtues of the feudal

spirit. And this brings us to our third point, and

indeed the most interesting one, concerning the re-

flection of the civilization in the philosophy : name-

ly, the harmony of the feudal sense of personal

worth with the philosophical doctrine of the reality

of the individual .

The feudal man was athirst for independence,

his relations with his overlord being determined by

free contract; moreover, by a kind of contagion,

the desire for a similar independence spread to the

townspeople and to the rustic population. This

natural disposition took on a Christian tone by vir-

tue of the Church teaching concerning the value of

the individual life, — the individual soul bought at a

price. It was according to this humanitarian prin-

ciple that Peter the Venerable called the serfs his

brothers and sisters.^*

Roman civil law and canon law and feudal law^ —

the three Tbrms of jurisprudence which developed

so rapidly from the eleventh century onward — had

come to remarkable agreement regarding the ex-

istence of natural right; and in the name of this

right, based on human nature, they had proclaimed

the equality of all men. With this beginning, they

came to regard all differences of rank as conven-

tional; and slavery and serfdom were declared to

be contrary to natural law. If, however, the three

forms of law recognized the legitimacy of serfdom,

14 See above, p. 26,

5Q PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

it was because of the special conditions of the time.

Serfdom was considered a social necessity. Under

the influence of Christianity, all three systems of

law sought to mitigate serfdom; and this was espe-

cially true of the civil lawyers and the canonists,

who put into effect a series of measures for the

benefit of the serf, which guaranteed the indissolu-

bility of his marriage, assured him his right of

sanctuarj^ encouraged his emancipation, and pre-

scribed rules in regard to his ordination and his

entry into a monastery. These ideas made head-

way, — slow, to be sure, but steady — toward that

state of society wherein the serf could be set free

with the liberty which is due all human beings. ^^

Now the scholastic philosophy of the twelfth

century based these juridical declarations upon

metaphysical f oimdations ; and they came, after the

many centuries of discussion, to this important con-

clusion — a conclusion no longer doubted — that the

only existing reality is individual reality. Indi-

viduals alone exist; and only individuals ever could

exist. The thesis was general in its application.

Whether man or animal or plant or chemical body

or what not, a being must exist as an individual,

incommunicable, and undivided in itself. Simi-

larly, everything that affects an existing being is

15 For the conceptions of natural right and of serfdom among

the feudal theorists of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see Carlyle,

A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, vol. Ill, Part

II, ch. I; among the civil lawyers, ibid., vol. II, Part I, ch. IV,*

among the c.inonists, ibid., vol. II, Part II, ch. V.