In the middle ages 129

In short, one finds the same classification in all

the writers of the period, — in Robert Grosseteste,

Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Siger of Brabant,

Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon and others; their

knowledge is all run into the same mould. Dante

refers to this classification at the beginning of his

treatise De Monarchia. It exists not only in the

program of studies at the University of Paris, but

it is found also at Oxford and at Cambridge; —

moreover, it is the basis of private instruction. I

have found it also in a treatise as yet unedited, the

speculum divinorum et quorumdam naturalium

which was written toward the end of the thirteenth

century, by Henry Bate of Malines, for the use of

Count Gui of Hainaut, whose instruction he had

undertaken; it is one of the few pedagogical treat-

ises of that century written for the use of a lay

prince.*^ This classification constitutes the frame-

work for the various doctrines; and, indeed, such

divergent philosophical systems as those of Tho-

mism and Averroism, for example, are readily in-

cluded within it, — much as plants essentially differ-

ent may grow in the same soil. It is, so to speak,

the atmosphere in which all the systems are im-

mersed, the common mental life which hovers over

systems and parts of systems. It was not the habit

in those days for one set of thinkers designedly to

destroy the presuppositions built up by another

45 See my study: "Henri Bate de Malines" (Bulletin de L'Acad4-

mie royale de Belgique, 1907).

130 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

set; they lacked that spirit of negation which later

became so characteristic of modern philosophers.

This cosniopglitan tendency in evaluating was

also the result of the remarkably widespread agree-

ment with the one dominant philosophy, — that is,

the scholastic philosophy. This great system had

its rise at Paris, the "cosmopolis of philosophy,"

and there, after a crisis in its development, it at-

tained its full growth and displayed the plentitude

of its power. The existence of this common centre

of learning, especially of speculative thought, con-

tributed in a large measure to safeguard for a cen-

tury and a half the unity of doctrine. From Paris

this philosophy spread in great waves to Oxford

and Cambridge, to Italy, to Germany, to Spain

and everywhere. Borne on the wings of French in-

fluence, it became international. It reunited the

numerous host of those who were loyal to philoso-

phy, and so it can lay claim to the greatest names, —

in England, Alexander of Hales and Duns Scotus,

in Italy, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, the

Flemish Henri of Ghent, and the Spanish Lully,

each of whom gave it his own interpretation and

marked it with his own personality. Th us, t he en-

tire West accepted the same explanation oT^ the

'^orld, the same idea of life. Of course the same

was true for theology, both speculative and mysti-

cal. Such unit}^ of thought has seldom existed in

the history of mankind. It occurred in the third

century of our era, — at the time of the glory of the