and his illustrious contemporary. Abelard is a Freven man: he has a perfect mania for clearness, precision, and form; his faith is a matter of knowledge; logic is his

god." Hugo is of German origin. His tastes as well as his duties exclude him from the brilliant scenes in which the genius of Abelard unfolds itself. In the solitude of his cell, he devotes himself to study, meditation, and contemplation. He is no less independent than Abelard, but with him it is all a matter of feeling rather than of reflection. He is a skilful dialectician, but opposed to the formalistic rationalism of the School. Although his liberalism differs very much from that of Abelard, he arrives at similar results. Rationalism and mysticism both tend towards monism. Hence mysticism exercises a no less harmful influence upon the dogma than rational criticism, during the Middle Ages; hence, also, mysticism and pantheism are synonymous in France.

Hugo's views, especially as set forth in his work, De sacramentis christianæ fulei, are surprisingly bold. An absolute orthodoxy does not seem to him to be essential to salvation, or even possible. We may, according to him, be thoroughly convinced of the truth of the dogmas without agreeing on their interpretation; unity of faith by no means implies identity of opinions concerning the faith.1 It is impossible to have uniform notions of God, because God transcends all human conception. This is a characteristic trait of mysticism, and essentially distinguishes it from the rationalism of Abelard and Anselm. Although assuming with the latter that the Trinity is simply supreme power (the Father), supreme intelligence (the Son or the Revealer), and supreme goodness (the Holy Ghost), Hugo teaches that the infinite Being is absolutely incomprehensible.

God is not only supra-intelligible; nay, we cannot even De sacramentis, I., p. x., c. 6.

conceive him by analogy. What, indeed, is analogous to God? The earth? The heaven? The spirit? The soul? None of all these is God. You say: I know that these things are not God; but they bear some resemblance to him, and may therefore serve to define him. You might as well show me a body in order to give me an idea of mind. Your example would surely be inappropriate, and yet the distance from mind to body is less than that between God and mind. The most opposite creatures differ less among themselves than the Creator differs from the creature. Hence it is impossible to understand God, who exists only for faith. For Abelard, the pure dialectician, an incomprehensible God is an impossible God; for Hugo, the intuitionist and mystic metaphysician, he is the highest reality.

Hugo was the first, after St. Augustine, to pay serious attention to psychology. He is an earnest champion of animism in this field. Body and soul are, in his opinion, separate substances, without being absolutely opposed to each other; for there is a double bond of union between them the imagination, which is, so to speak, the corporeal element of the soul, and sensibility, which is, as it were, the spiritual element of the body. The soul possesses three fundamental forces: natural force, vital force, and animal force. The natural force has its seat in the liver, where it prepares the blood and the humors which are distributed through the veins over the entire body. It is alternately appetitive, retentive, expulsive, and distributive, and is common to all animals. The vital force, which resides in the heart, manifests itself in the function of respiration. It purifies the blood by means of inhaled air, and causes it to circulate through the arteries. It also produces vital heat.2 The animal or psychic force, which is

1 De sacramentis, I., p. x., c. 2.

2 Hugo has a vague idea of the circulation of the blood and the difference between venous and arterial blood. He also seems to regard the liver as the chief organ for the preparation of the vital fluid.

situated in the brain, produces sensation, movement, and thought. Each of these manifestations of the soul employs a different region of the brain. Sensation is connected with the anterior portion, movement with the posterior portion, and thought with the middle portion of this organ. We have not two different souls: a sensitive soul, the principle of corporeal life, and an intelligent soul, the principle of thought. The soul (anima) and the spirit (animus sive spiritus) are one and the same principle. The spirit is this principle considered in itself and independently of the body: the soul is this same principle in so far as it animates the body.1

There is a genuineness about these lines of the De anima that contrasts with the fruitless quibblings of dualistic spiritualism; and when in the Libri didascalici Hugo of St. Victor traces the successive stages of psychical life from the plant to man, he seems to anticipate evolution and comparative psychology.

§ 36. The Progress of Free Thought

The disciple of Hugo, the Scotchman RICHARD,2 Prior of St. Victor, outlines a system of religious philosophy in his De trinitate that breathes the same spirit of free investigation as the writings of his master. This may be seen from the following characteristic lines: "I have often. read," he says, "that there is but one God, that this God is one as to substance, three as to persons; that the divine 1 De anima, II., 4: Unus idemque spiritus ad seipsum dicitur spiritus, et ad corpus anima. Spiritus est in quantum est ratione prædita substantia; anima in quantum est vita corporis. . . . Non duæ animæ, sensualis et rationalis, sed una eademque anima et in semet ipsa vivit per intellectum et corpus sensificat per sensum.

2 Died 1174. Opera, Venice, 1506; Paris, 1518; [Migne, vol. 194; J. G. V. Engelhardt, Richard von St. Victor und Johannes Ruysbroek. Erlangen, 1838. — TR.Į.

persons are distinguished from each other by a characteristic property; that these three persons are not three gods, but one only God. We frequently hear and read such statements, but I do not remember ever having read how they are proved. There is an abundance of authorities on these questions, but an extreme dearth of arguments, proofs, and reasons. Hence, the problem is to find a firm, immovable, and certain basis on which to erect the system."1

Richard finds such a basis for the dogma of the Trinity in the idea of divine love, which necessarily creates an object for itself. But this proof he does not regard as sufficient. While his De trinitate is conceived in the spirit of Abelard, his De contemplatione openly espouses Hugo's views. Richard abandons the attempt to reach God by the reasoning powers, and substitutes feeling for reflection. He distinguishes six stages in the mystical ascension of the soul towards God. In the higher stages the soul is expanded, raised above itself, delivered from itself (dilatatio, sublevatio, alienatio, excessus). However, whether you call him a mystic or a rationalist, Richard teaches a kind of Neo-Platonic emanation and the identity of nature and of grace.

ALANUS OF LISLE,2 though an orthodox churchman, tries to construct a system of dogmatics by means of a strictly mathematical method, and concludes that everything is in God and God in everything.

ROBERT OF MELUN 3 distinguishes a serious symptom! -between eventus qui secundum rerum naturam contingunt, et eventus qui contingunt secundum Dei potentiam quæ supra

1 I., ch. 5-6.

2 Alanus ab insulis, professor at Paris, died 1203. Opera, ed. by Visch, Antwerp, 1653; [vol. 120, Migne].

8 Died 1173. Summa theologia (Hauréau, in the work cited, I., pp. 332 ff.).

rerum naturam est. He is, however, truly devoted to the Church and its doctrines, defending it against the heresies which begin to threaten it. There are people, he says, who deny the miraculous conception of Christ on the ground that such a phenomenon would be contrary to the natural course of events. But is not God, the author of nature, above nature, and has he not the power to change the regular course of nature? How are these doubters going to explain the origin of Adam and Eve? Just as the protoplasts could originate without an earthly mother, Jesus was able to come into the world without a human father.

In addition to these attempts at Christian philosophy we have the Eight Books of Sentences by the Englishman. ROBERT PULLEYN, and the Four Books of Sentences by Peter of Novaro, or the Lombard (Magister sententiarum).2 PETER THE LOMBARD'S work, the success of which soon eclipsed Pulleyn's, forms a complete system of dogmatics. It considers a whole host of questions which betray the barrenness of Scholastic discussions, but which also show what progress has been made by thought in its opposition to the guardianship of the Church: How can we reconcile divine prescience with free creation? (If God foresaw that he would create, then he had to create, and creation is not an act of freedom. If God did not foresee it, what becomes of his omniscience?) Where was God before creation? (He could not have been in heaven, for heaven too was created.) Could God have made things better than he has made them? Where were the angels before the creation of heaven? Can angels sin? Have they a body? In what form do God and the angels appear to men? How do de

1 Died about 1154.

2 Died 1164, Bishop of Paris. Libri quatuor sententiarum (Venice, 1477; Bâle, 1516, etc. Migne, vol. 192); [F. Protois, Pierre Lombard etc., Paris, 1881. — TR.].