3

of PIERRE CHARRON1 (1541-1603), SANCHEZ2 (died at Toulouse, 1632), LAMOTHE-LEVAYER (1586-1672); Stoicism, by JUSTUS LIPSIUS (1547-1606); Epicureanism, by the learned physicist GASSENDI," the opponent of Cartesian intellectualism, (1596–1655). Although these freethinkers, with the exception of Gassendi, whose teachings were again taken up by the eighteenth century, do not contribute directly to the reform of philosophy, they at least exert an indirect influence by discrediting the still powerful metaphysics of the School, by exposing the uselessness of its formulæ and the barrenness of its disputes. Humanists and naturalists, dogmatists and sceptics, Italians and Frenchmen, are united in the common desire for emancipation, reform, and progress. Nature is their watchword; here, as in Greece, the theological age is followed by the era of the physicists.

§ 46. The Religious Reform

Ideas enlighten humanity on its onward march, but the will or the instinctive passions impel it onward. The 1 De la sagesse, Bordeaux, 1601.

2 Tractatus de multum nobili et prima universali scientia, quod nihil scitur, Lyons, 1581; Tractatus philosophici, Rotterdam, 1649; [cf. L. Gerkrath, François Sanchez, Vienna, 1860].

• Cinq dialogues faits à l'imitation des anciens, Mons, 1673; Works, Paris, 1653.

♦ Manuductio ad stoicam philosophiam, etc., Antwerp, 1604.

5 De vita, moribus et doctrina Epicuri, Leyden, 1647; Animadversiones in Diog. L. de vita et phil. Epic., ibid., 1649; Syntagma phil. Epic., The Hague, 1655; Opera, Leyden, 1658; Florence, 1727; [cf. Lange, History of Materialism, I., 3, chap. 3.]

6 [K. Hagen, Deutschlands litterarische und religiöse Verhältnisse im Reformationszeitalter, 3 vols., Frankfurt, 1868; M. Carrière, Die Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit; W. Dilthey, Auffassung und Analyse des Menschen im 15. u. 16. Jahrhundert, Archiv f. Geschichte der Philos., IV. and V.; same author, Das natürliche System der Geisteswissen schaften im 17. Jahrhundert, ibid., IV. - TR.]

Humanists demolished, piece by piece, the system which had been so carefully constructed by the doctors of the Church; but their excessive prudence or their indifference hindered them from attacking the Church herself, towards whom they affected an attitude of respectful submission. Pomponatius, Scaliger, Erasmus, and Montaigne were more liberal than the leaders of the Reformation; but their liberalism is exactly what rendered them indifferent to religion and unfitted them for the grand work of the emancipation of conscience. The Church was so tolerant of pagan antiquity, so fond of classical studies! The Popes themselves were so cultured, so liberal, and so worldly! Yet, the spiritual omnipotence of Rome formed one of the chief obstacles in the way of philosophical reform, and it took a more powerful force to shake the colossus than the love of letters or the taste for free thought. Such a force was the religious conscience of Luther and the Reformers. In the name of the inner power that controlled them and impelled them onward, they attacked, not the philosophical system patronized by the Church, but the Church herself and the principle of her supreme authority.

As we have seen, the medieval Church is both church and school, the depositary of the means of salvation and the dispenser of profane instruction. As long as the people continued in a state of barbarism, the power which she exercised in this double capacity was beneficent, legitimate, and necessary. But after the pupil becomes of age, the best of guardians acts as a hindrance from which he seeks deliverance. The Renaissance had actually destroyed the claim, which the Church advanced, of being the sole and privileged school, but it acknowledged the Church as the highest religious and moral authority. The Reformation finishes the work of the fifteenth century by emanci pating the conscience. The sale of indulgences formed the immediate occasion for the outbreak. This shameful

traffic had been legalized by the Catholic system. Since the Church is God's representative on earth, whatever she commands agrees with God's own will. Hence if she demands money from the faithful and couples with the contribution the promise of the pardon of sins, the faithful can do nothing but submit to her authority. The procedure may perhaps shock the moral sense a little. But what are our individual feelings against the revelation which the Church receives from God? Are God's ways our ways, and is not the divine folly wiser than the wisdom of men? Was not the revealed truth an offence to the children of the age from the very beginning? .. Luther's conscience rebelled against such sophistry. By protesting against these scandalous indulgences he revolted against the dogma sanctioning them, and against the spiritual power which recommended them. For the authority of so evil-minded a church he substitutes the supreme authority of Scripture; against the Catholic principle of meritorious works he opposes the doctrine of justification by faith.

The principle proclaimed by Luther, and soon after by Zwingli, Calvin, and Farel, quickly penetrated and powerfully influenced all spheres of human action. As soon as it was acknowledged as a truth that salvation comes through faith alone and not by works, the dispensations conferred by the Church lost their value. If grace is everything and merit nothing, then, it must be confessed, God cannot be thankful to us for renouncing family, society, and the joys and duties of life. Even Luther, who is by no means a lover of philosophy, but who has a very lively appreciation of nature, really advances the humanitarian and modern cause by repudiating, in principle at least, the dualism of the spiritual and the temporal, of priests and laymen, of heaven and earth. Melancthon, who is both a disciple of the Renaissance and a champion of the Refor

mation, plainly recognizes the community of interests existing between the literary and the religious revival. The two currents ultimately meet in Ulrich Zwingli, 1 who was both an earnest Christian and a profound thinker, and whose theology is an energetic protest against the antithesis of a godless nature and a God antagonistic to

nature.

§ 47. Scholasticism and Theosophy in the Protestant Coun

tries. Jacob Böhme

Zwingli's progressive tendencies, however, made little headway, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, against the doctrinary zeal of the theologians of the North. The authority of the Church and of the Pope was superseded, among the Protestants, by the symbolism of the Reformation. It was impossible to pass immediately from the rule of authority to absolute freedom. The religious conscience, which had been violently agitated by a sudden revolution, needed a capable guide in place of the one just lost. Theology, again, could not, in its struggle with Catholicism, do without an external, visible, and standard authority in matters of science and religion. Hence the Reformation produced no immediate change in philosophy. In spite of the efforts of NICOLAS TAURELLUS,2 of Mömpelgard (15471606) and PIERRE DE LA RAMÉE or Ramus,3 (1515-1572),

1 Works, ed. Schuler and Schulthess, 8 vols., Zurich, 1828-42; [E. Zeller, Das theologische System Zwinglis, Tübingen, 1853; Dilthey, A. f. G. d. Ph. VI.]

2 Philosophia triumphus, Bâle, 1573; Alpes casa (against Cæsalpinus), Frankfort, 1597; Synopsis Arist. Metaphys., Hanover, 1596; De mundo, Amberg, 1603; Uranologia, ib., 1603; De rerum æternitate, Marburg, 1604. See F. X. Schmidt aus Schwarzenberg, Nicolas Taurellus, der erste deutsche Philosoph, 2d ed., Erlangen, 1864.

• Scholarum phys. libri VIII., Paris, 1565; Schol. metaphys. libri XIV., Paris, 1566. See the monographs of Ch. Waddington (Paris, 1848) and Ch. Demaze (Paris, 1864).

who bitterly opposed the routine methods and the system of Aristotle, as then understood, the Universities continued to teach traditional Peripateticism in the form adapted by Melancthon to the needs of the Protestant dogma.

The anti-scholastic opposition of Reuchlin, Agrippa, and Paracelsus was continued by the Saxon pastor VALENTINE WEIGEL, (1533-1593), the two VAN HELMONTS, the Englishman ROBERT FLUDD, (died 1637), who, like a true Protestant, bases his cosmology on Genesis, the learned COMENIUS,5 (died 1671), whose trinity of matter, light, and spirit calls to mind the three stages of being in Plotinus and the three Peripatetic principles of matter, movement, and action; finally, by JACOB BÖHME the theosophist o Görlitz (1575-1624).

G

Böhme was born of poor parents and apprenticed to a shoemaker at an early age. He received absolutely no instruction, and knew only the Bible and the writings of Weigel. But these sufficed to develop the latent capaci

1 Ethica doctrinæ elementa, 1538. [See Dilthey, A. f. G. d. Ph. VI.] 1 гvwbi σeavtóv, nosce te ipsum, 1618, etc. [See the works of J. Opel (Leipsic, 1864), and A. Israel (Zschopau, 1889).]

• J. Bapt. Helmont (died 1644). Opera, Amsterdam, 1648; [Germ. ed. 1683]. F. Merc. Helmont (died 1699). Seder olam s. ordo sæculorum, hoc est historica enarratio doctrinæ philosophicæ per unum in quo sunt omnia, 1693. [See Rixner and Siber].

▲ Historia macro- et microcosmi metaphysica, physica et technica, Oppenheim, 1617; Philos. Mosaica, Guda, 1638.

• Synopsis physices ad lumen divinum reformatæ, Leipsic, 1638. [Cf. J. Kvacsala, Ueber J. A. Comenius Philosophie, Leipsic, 1886.]

• [Coll. Works, ed. by Schiebler, 2d ed., 1861 ff.; English transl. by William Law, 2 vols. 4°, 1864; French transl. of several writings, by L. C. St. Martin, Paris, 1800. Cf. v. Baader, Vorlesungen über Böhme's Theologumena (Works, vol. III., pp. 357-436; also vol. XIII.); H. A. Fechner, Jacob Böhme, sein Leben und seine Schriften, Görlitz, 1853; A. Peip, Jacob Böhme der deutsche Philosoph, Leipsic, 1860; also Car rière (cited before) and Windelband, Geschichte der neueren Philoso phie, vol. I, § 19-Tr.]