In the middle ages 189

goodness destined for man, — that alone which phi-

losophy considers — would be a "happiness of ab-

stractions," a goodness founded on abstract knowl-

edge of the laws and the being of the sensible world,

a knowledge and love of the Creator in His works/^

The supremacy of reason appears also in meta-

physics, where it explains the fundamental order

of things, which rests entirely on Divine Reason.

It manifests itself in the immutability of natural as

well as moral law, which God could not change,

without contradicting Eternal Reason, that is to

say, without destroying Himself. No will, not

even the will of God, can change the nature of

truth ; and truth can no more contradict truth than

a circle can be quadrate.

Finally, this same supremacy of reason is appar-

ent in their whole theory of the state, where gov-

ernment is conceived as being properly a govern-

ment of insight; from whose laws everything arbi-

trary ought to be excluded; where the elective sys-

tem is justified because it favours the exercise of

reason.

12 Compare the following excerpt from an unedited text of the

thirteenth century (as in Grabmann, "Forschungen uber die latein-

ischen Aristoteles-Uebersetzenigen d, XIII Jhr.," p. 76 in Baiim-

ktr''s-Beitrdge, 1916, XVII, 5-6) : "Cum omne desiderii com-

pos et maxime creatura rationalis appetat suam perfectionera, sum-

ma vero et finalis perfectio hominis sit in cognitione unius intellec-

tualis veri et in amore unius incommutabilis boni, quod est nosse

et amare suum creatorem, et medium praecipue inducens ad cog-

noscendum et amandum creatorem sit cognitio consideratione operum

creatoris, etc."

12*" "See Ch. XL

190 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

V

But this clear-cut intellectualism and love of pre-

cision, appears also in other forms of culture of the

thirteenth century. It inspires even the smallest

detail of that doctrinal structure elaborated by the

doctors of theology, giving to each element of be-

lief an apologetic and rational interpretation. It

is found in the works of canonists, who reason out

the ecclesiastical law, just as jurists reason out the

Roman law. Intellectualism is found also in the

explanation of rites and sjaiibols, the manifold

meanings of which such a man as William of Mende

endeavoured to unfold in his Rationale Divinorum.

It is further found in the Roman de la Rose of the

poet Jean de Meung, where Reason is personified

and fills the poem with long discourses, as she filled

with her dictates the lives of mediaeval men.^^

The same intellectualism and the same clearness

appears also in the Gothic architecture and sculp-

13 It is, then, not surprising that Dante, educated in scholastic

circles, wrote these words in his De Monarchia (lib. 1): "Reason is

to the individual what the father is to the family, or what the mayor

is to the city. It is master. In all matters reason makes its voice

heard." The Banquet, or Convito, addresses itself to those who

hunger for knowledge, and contemplates making all humanity par-

ticipate in knowledge, — that "good desired of all," that supreme

form of happiness. In the Divine Comedy Dante exalts the man who

sacrifices his life in the promotion of knowledge. Virgil represents

human knowledge, which the soul must acquire in its plentitude be-

fore being admitted to the divine mysteries. And in the Paradiso,

each of the elect enjoys to the full that beatitude "which he can