In the middle ages 127

had arrived at a state of repose as the end of its

destined course. To them as to the contemporaries

of Augustus, or of Louis XIV, a stabihty ap-

proaching close to perfection seemed to have been

attained. A general feeling of content prevailed,

and this state of complacency continued for a full

hundred years after the middle of the thirteenth

century.

IV

In the light of this tendency toward unity, we

can better understand another aspect of the mediae-

val civilization; an aspect which permeates all de-

partments of their social life, and which appears

also in the two outstanding facts of their philoso-

phical activity already noticed. This other aspect

is: cosmopolitanism, — their tendency to evaluate

by a universal standard.

The classification of knowledge which we have*

referred to*В° is not a matter of some individual con-

ception, as was the effort made by Auguste Comte

or Ampere or Herbert Spencer; on the contrary,

the results are accepted by the general consensus

of learned opinion.

The twelfth century groping has disappeared, —

the attempts of Radulfus Ardens, and even of the

Didascalion of Hugo of St. Victor, and of the

numerous anonymous classifications of that cen-

tury. The treatises of the thirteenth century deal

*o See above ch. IV, v.

128 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

definitely with methodology. Thus, for example,

the de divisione philosophiae,'^^ which Dominicus

Gmidissalinus wrote at Toledo about 1150 under

the influence of Aristotle and the Arabs, pursues

in detail the relation of the sciences to philosophy

and the superposition of the various branches of

philosophy. And the work of Michael Scot, one of

his successors at the Institute of Toledo is inspired

by the ideas of Gundissalinus. Again, there was

the important work of Robert Kilwardby, the de

ortu et divisione pJiilowphiae*^ (written about

1250, and perhaps the most noteworthy introduc-

tion to philosophy produced in the Middle Ages) ;

this work perfects the outline of his master of To-

ledo, and while it introduces certain distinctions, it

adds nothing new, and does not pretend to do so.

Further, the same classification is found in the

compilatio de lihris naturalihus,^^ written by an

anonymous author of the thirteenth century, which

makes a place therein for the works of Aristotle

and of the Arabians; and the plan therein fol-

lowed is in accord with the program of the Univer-

sity of Paris which was published in 1255.**

41 L. Baur, "Gundissalinus, De divisione philosophiae," Baiimker's-

Beitrdge, 1903, IV.

42 1^. Baur, "Die philnso])liische Werke des Robert Grosseteste,

Bischofs von Lincoln," Baiimker's-ZJeiim^e, 1912, IV.

43 M. Grabmann, "Forschungcn iiber die lateinischen Aristoteles-

iibersetzungen des XIII Jahrhunderts," Baiimker's-Betfm^e, 1916,

XVII, h. 5, 6.

44 See further my study: "The Teaching of Philosophy and the

Classificalion of the Sciences in the Thirteenth Century," Philosophi-

cal Review, July, 1918.