GELUS POLITIANUS were zealous disciples of the exiles of Byzantium. The love of ancient literature and the dislike for the language of the School extended even to the leaders of the Church. The Cardinal NICOLAS OF Cusa (Kuss 1), who possessed the qualities of a Bruno and a Descartes, had the courage openly to criticise the errors of Scholasticism, and recommended the philosophy of Plato, which he identified with the Pythagorean theory of numbers, as in every way preferable to the reigning system. The wave of classicism even reached the throne of St. Peter; and it is a well-known fact that Leo X. and his secretary Bembo greatly preferred Cicero to the Vulgate. The religion of Virgil and Homer superseded the religion of Christ in the hearts of the high dignitaries of the Church and the secular scholars, poets, and artists; the joyful Olympus was exchanged for the severe Golgotha; Jehovah, Jesus, and Mary became Jupiter, Apollo, and Venus; the saints of the Church were identified with the gods of Greece and Rome, — in a word, the times returned to paganism.

MARSILIUS FICINUS,2 a pupil of the Florentine Academy, continues the struggle begun by Bessarion in behalf of

1 Diocese of Treves. Cusanus, whose real name was Krebs, died in 1464. His Works appeared in three folio volumes, Paris, 1514 [German transl. of his most important writings, by F. A. Scharpff, Freiburg, 1862]. The best known of his treatises, De docta ignorantia, is found in the first volume. The second, which contains his treatises on astronomy and mathematics, makes him the forerunner of Copernicus and of the reform of the calendar. He anticipates Bruno by his doctrine of the absolute unity-God, and Schelling and Hegel by his conception of the coincidence of contradictories. See Richard Falckenberg, Grundzüge der Philosophie des Nicolas von Cusanus, Breslau, 1880.

A Florentine, 1433-1499. Florence and the century of the literary renaissance also produced the great politician and Italian patriot, Nicolo Macchiavelli (1469-1527), the author of Il principe, etc. [works translated by C. E. Detmold, Boston, 1883], whose system is based on the principle that the end justifies the means (separation of politics from morals).

Plato. For him, Platonism is the quintessence of human wisdom, the key to Christianity, and the only efficient neans of rejuvenating and spiritualizing the Catholic doctrine. As the editor, translator, and commentator of Plato and the Alexandrians, Marsilius Ficinus is one of the fathers of modern classical philology as well as of the philosophical Renaissance. An equally distinguished person is the Count John PICO OF MIRANDOLA (1463-1494). Pico recommends Hebrew in addition to the study of the Greek language and literature; believing, as he does, that the Jewish Cabala1 is as important a source of wisdom as Plato and the New Testament. He bequeaths his love of phi lology and his Cabalistic prejudices to his nephew, John Francis Pico of Mirandola, a less talented but more pious man than his uncle, and to the German REUCHLIN, who, upon returning to the Empire, becomes the founder of classical and Hebrew philology in his country, and by combating Hochstraten and the obscurantists paves the way for the spiritual deliverance of his native land.

§ 44. Neo-Platonism. Theosophy. Magic

The mixture of new ideas and old superstitions gives rise to a number of curious theories, partially modelled after Neo-Platonic doctrines, which represent the stages, as it were, by which the philosophical and scientific mind gains its independence. They may be classed under the title theosophy. Theosophy shares theology's belief in the supernatural and philosophy's faith in nature. It forms an intermediate stage, a kind of transition, between theology and pure philosophy. It does not attain to the dignity of modern experimental science; for it rests upon an inner revelation, which is superior to sensible experience and

1 Concerning the Cabala, see Munck, Système de la Kabbale, Paris, 1842; Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe, Paris, 1859.

reasoning. It does not study nature for nature's sake, but in order to discover the traces of the mysterious Being which nature hides as well as reveals. Now, in order to discover it, theosophy needs a key of Sesame, a no less mysterious instrument than the object of its studies. It therefore enters upon a search for secret doctrines, and greedily seizes and utilizes whatever is offered in this line. Hence the enthusiasm which the teachings of the Jewish Cabala and of Neo-Platonism arouse in Pico of Mirandola, who compares them with those of the Bible, and in Reuchlin, who exalts them in his De verbo mirifico1 and his De arte cabalistica.3

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Theosophy is not content with fathoming the great mystery; it does not regard it as enough to know nature; it desires what Francis Bacon afterwards desired: to rule over it, to master it, to control it. And just as it claims to reach a knowledge of things by means of secret doctrines, it boasts of being able to control them by secret arts, by formulæ and mysterious practices. That is to say, it necessarily becomes magic or theurgy. Magic is based upon the Neo-Platonic principle that the world is a hierarchy of divine forces, a system of agencies forming an ascending and descending scale, in which the higher agencies command and the lower ones obey. Hence, in order to govern nature and to change it according to his wishes, the theosophist must be united with the higher forces on which the sublunary sphere depends; and since, according to Aristotle and Ptolemy, the heavenly powers or the sidereal agencies are uch higher forces, astrology plays an impor tant part in the lucubrations of the theosophist.

This union of Platonism, or rather Pythagoreanism, with theurgy and magic is best exemplified in Reuchlin's disciple, AGRIPPA of Nettesheim, the author of a treatise, 1 Bâle, 1494. 2 Hagenau, 1517. Cf. §§ 25 and 26. Born at Cologne, 1487; died at Grenoble, 1535.

De vanitate scientiarum, directed against scholastic dogmatism; in Jerome CARDANUS,1 a noted physician and mathematician, whose teachings, a singular mixture of astrological superstitions and liberal ideas, are stamped as anti-Christian by the orthodoxy of the period; in the learned Swiss physician Theophrastus of Hohenheim, called PARACELSUS, who shares the belief of Pico, Reuchlin, and Agrippa in the inner light "that is much superior to bestial reason," and their love for the Cabala, whose doctrines his system identifies with those of Christianity. From the Adam cadmon, who is none other than Christ, spring, according to Paracelsus, the soul of the world and the many spirits governed by it, the Sylvans, Undines, Gnomes, and Salamanders, and whoever, through absolute obedience to the divine will, is united with the Adam cadmon and with the heavenly intelligences, is the best physician, and possesses the universal panacea, the philosopher's stone. With a great deal of superstition and a little charlatanism, the precursors of the scientific reformation combine a keen love of nature and a profound aversion to Scholasticism, which their opposition largely assists in overthrowing.

§ 45. Aristotle versus Aristotle, or the Liberal Peripatetics. Stoics. Epicureans. Sceptics

While Pletho and Bessarion were preaching Plato, Gennadius, Georgius of Trebizond, and Theodorus Gaza, ardent

1 Of Pavia, 1501-1576. Opera omnia, Lyons, 1663. Cardanus is remembered in the history of mathematics by his rule for the solution of equations of the third degree (Ars magna sive de regulis algebraicis, published 1543, the date of the appearance of Copernicus's Celestial Revolutions). [Cf. Rixner and Siber, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Physiologie, 7 pts., Sulzbach, 1819-26; 2d ed. 1829.]

1493-1541. Opera, Bâle, 1589; Strasburg, 1616 ff. [Cf. Sigwart, Kleine Schriften, I., pp. 25 ff.; Eucken, Beiträge, etc., pp. 32 ff.]

Peripatetics and adversaries of the Academy of Florence, introduced the learned Italian public to the study of the texts of Aristotle. The better they became acquainted with the words of the great philosopher, the more they recognized the notable differences between the real Aristotle and the Aristotle of Scholasticism; and while Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus attracted the more imaginative minds, the positive thinkers, who were no less hostile to traditional philosophy than the Academicians of Florence, appealed from Aristotle misinterpreted to the authentic Aristotle of the Greek texts. As a result, the Stagirite met with a fate similar to that experienced by Hegel about 1835. The system which had been regarded as the strongest support of the Church was found to disagree with her on several essential points. A liberal Peripatetic school, chiefly composed of laymen, was formed in opposi tion to official Peripateticism. Although maintaining a prudent reserve towards the Church, these liberal Peripatetics assisted in undermining her authoritative system by laying bare, one after another, the heresies of the philosopher whom she shielded with blind tenderness. To convict an author of heresy whom the Church had declared infallible, was to make the Church fallible; was to attack her supreme authority in the field of thought; was to respond to the emancipation of conscience, taking place beyond the mountains, with the emancipation of the intellect.

In his treatise On the Immortality of the Soul, the leader of the new school, PETRUS POMPONATIUS (Pomponazzi), boldly raises the question whether immortality

Tractatus de immortalitate animae, 1513; numerous editions.

* Called the school of Padua, in honor of the city in which Pomponatius taught.

Born at Mantua, 1462; died, 1525; professor at Padua. See on Pomponatius: [F. Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi, Florence, 1868];