In the middle ages 177

densed in the terse sayings of popular speech. In-

deed, these influences are so far reaching and so di-

verse that no student of history or of pohtical and

social science or of art or of literature in the Mid-

dle Ages can safely ignore the philosophy of that

period.

But however important and interesting these in-

fluences (the dynamic relations) may be, they are

not more significant for our proper understanding

of the scholastic philosophy than is the harmonious

equilibrium (the static relations) considered in the

preceding chapters. And hence, to comprehend

fully and to estimate that philosophy aright we

must proceed to consider what belongs to it in its

own constitution. To that end we shall enter into

its doctrinal content.

It will be impossible of course to consider all of

the manifold and extensive doctrinal realms which

scholastic philosophy covers. We shall therefore

limit ourselves to those doctrinal realms which are

now?") is a scholastic term; it means 'realities' and not 'subtilities'

(common glossary). Again Hamlet (Act I, sc. v) speaks of "table

of my memory" and

"All forms, all pressures past

That youth and observation copied there."

This is an allusion to the "formae et species impressae." And again,

he is using scholastic thought when he says:

"Sense sure you have,

Else could you not have motion." (Act III, sc. iv)

recalling the doctrine that movement presupposes sense-perception.

That "godlike" reason differentiates man from beast (Act. IV, sc. iv)

is also scholastic doctrine.

178 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

most intimately connected with the civilization.

Namely, intellectualism because it permeates the

entire life of the century, although it belongs prop-

erly to psychology (Chapter VIII) ; metaphysics,

because it is the foundation of the whole scholastic

philosophy (Chapter IX) ; social philosophy be-

cause it is intimately bound up with the political

and religious life ( Chapters X and XI ) ; and,

finally, the conception of human progress, because

for them as for all energetic humanity it is the

mainspring of life (Chapter XII).

CHAPTEH, EIGHT

Intellectualism

i. Intellectualism in ideology. ii. In epistemology. iii.

In psychology (free volition), iv. More generally (psychol-

ogy, logic, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics), v. In other forms

of culture.

Intellectualism is a doctrine which places all the

nobility, all the intensity, the whole value of psychi-

cal life in the act of knowing. No philosophy is

more "intellectualistic" than mediaeval scholasti-

cism. It is a doctrine of light. Long before Des-

cartes, — but from another point of view — Thomas

Aquinas and Duns Scotus emphasized the impor-

tance of clear intellectual insight. The scholastic

conception of clear knowledge is not only promi-

nent in their psychology; it also penetrates all the

other departments of their philosophy, so that intel-

lectualism is at the same time a doctrine and a

method.

Considered in its ideological aspect, scholastic in-

tellectualism is a brilliant form of idealism,^ and

1 With the term, idealism, I refer to the ideological conception

which establishes a diflference in kind between sense perception and

intellectual knowledge.

179

180 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

places the philosophers of the Middle Ages in the

family of Plato, Plotinus, Descartes, Leibnitz, and

Kant. This will appear from a simple example. I

look at two black horses drawing a carriage. All

that my senses perceive in these external data re-

ceives a particular dress, which is temporal and spa-

tial." But I possess another power of representing

to myself the real. The intellect draws out of this

sensible content the ideas of motion, of muscular

force, of horse, of life, of being. It does away with

the concrete conditions which, in the sensible per-

ception, bind the real to a particular state; it "ab-

stracts" the "quod quid est/' the what of a thing.

One might multiply examples at will; but they

would only bring out the more clearly that we have

abstract ideas without number, — ideas, for ex-

ample, of qualities and forms and quantities and

action and passions and so on. Indeed one pos-

sesses a very treasure of these abstract ideas; they

are as manifold as the kinds of reality implied in

the complex data of sense perception, — out of

which the abstract idea is always drawn. Nihil est

in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu. For,

in the scholastic view, to abstract is the law of the

intellect; its function of abstraction is as normal

as is the bodily process of digestion. The moment

the intellect enters into contact with reality, it re-

acts upon that reality,- — its food, as it were — by as-

2 Sensus non est cognoscitivus nisi particularium. Thonnas Aqui-

nas, Summa Contra Oentiles, lib. II, cap. LXVI.