knowledge of the astronomical traditions of the Orient. The instruction offered in Christian schools was purely dialectical and formal; it trained the mind for discussion, but left it an utter blank. As early as the thirteenth century, the Franciscan monk ROGER BACON,1 a professor at Oxford, recognized the serious imperfections in the system, and conceived the plan of reforming it by the introduction of the sciences. His three works, Opus majus,2 Opus minus, and Opus tertium,3 the fruit of twenty years' investigation, to which he devoted his entire fortune, constitute the most remarkable scientific monument of the Middle Ages. Not only does he call attention to the barrenness of the scholastic logomachies, the necessity of observing nature and of studying the languages, but he recognizes, even more clearly than his namesake of the sixteenth century, the capital importance of mathematical deduction as an auxiliary to the experimental method. Nay, more than that; he enriches science, and especially optics, with new and fruitful theories. But his scientific reforms were premature in the year 1267, which marks the appearance of his Opus majus. His plan was submitted to the court of Rome, but owing to the intrigues of the obscurantist party, it fell flat, and procured for Roger twelve years of confinement. The seed sown by this most clear-sighted thinker of the Middle Ages upon the barren soil of Scholasticism did not spring up until three centuries later.

Albert the Great (§ 38), though not attaining to Bacon's eminence, shows a marked preference for the study of

1 Doctor mirabilis, 1214-1294.

2 Ed. Jebb, London, 1773, folio.

8 In Rogeri Bacon Opera quædam hactenus inedita, ed. J. J. Brewer, London, 1859; Charles, Roger Bacon, sa vie, ses ouvrages, ses doctrines, d'après des textes inédits, Bordeaux, 1861; [K. Werner, Psychologic, Erkenntniss- und Wissenschaftslehre des Roger Baco, Vienna, 1879. TR.].

nature, which he himself, like his age, confused with magic. During the same epoch, Don RAYMOND LULLUS1 of Palma, a curious mixture of theologian and naturalist, missionary and troubadour, endeavored to popularize the science of the Arabians by means of a universal method, which he called ars magna. His teachings, which were recorded in numerous writings, gained for him, during the succeeding centuries, enthusiastic followers, whose chief concern was to discover the philosopher's stone and to make gold. Assisted by such trifles, the human mind gradually returned to the observation of reality, and came to regard nature as an object of study no less important than Aristotle. About 1400, the physician RAYMOND OF SABUNDE, a professor at Toulouse, had the boldness to prefer to books made by human hands the book of nature, which being the work of God is intelligible to all.

The official philosophy, with its barren formalism, its ignorance of reality, and its hopeless indolence, had arrayed against it thought chafing under the yoke of the ecclesiastical Aristotle and yearning for progress and freedom, and natural science, which foreshadowed its future grandeur in the rudimentary form of magic. Finally, it also gave offence to religious feeling and mystical piety because of its inability to supply the soul with substantial nourishment and to inspire the Christian life with an ardent love for goodness. Mysticism had for centuries been the ally of Scholastic speculation; in Scotus Erigena, the sages of St. Victor, and St. Bonaventura, it tempered the cold reasonings of the School with its glowing warmth, and descended upon their barren logic like

1 1234-1315. Raymundi Lulli Opera, Strasburg, 1598; Opera omnia, ed. Salzinger, Mayence, 1721 ff.

2 Died 1436. Raimundi liber naturæ sive creaturarum (theologia naturalis), Strasburg, 1496; Paris, 1509; Sulzbach, 1852; Kleiber, De Raimundi vita et scriptis, Berlin, 1856.

a refreshing dew. It widened the narrow circle of an intolerant orthodoxy by emphasizing the fides qua creditur instead of the fides quae creditur, by laying greater stress upon faith itself as a subjective phenomenon and the animating principle of the soul, than upon the object of faith. But the more deeply Scholasticism became absorbed in formal disputes and childish discussions, the more distaste ful and antagonistic it became to the religious spirit which longed for a life in God and was stifled by the categories of Aristotle.

Some mystics, like ST. BERNARD1 and Walter of St. Victor, inveigh against logic because they consider it dangerous to the dogmas of the Church. Others, who are less scrupulous in this respect, but equally anxious to possess God, are carried away by the ardor of their religious sentiments to the extreme conclusions of pantheistic speculation. According to them, dialectics is a labyrinth in which the soul, instead of reaching God, is farther and farther removed from him, and finally loses him altogether. Feeling, they believe, brings us directly into communion with God; with one bound we overcome the obstacles of discursive thought and are carried to the centre of things and the source of being, where self-consciousness is merged in the consciousness of God. According to some, feeling alone will transport the soul by enchantment to the summit of existence and the source of life. So ECKHART,2 the Dominican provincial of Cologne and a typical pantheistic mystic. Others, though seeking to be united with God, do not expect to reach their goal except after long and wearisome trials; hence, to the love of God they add the love of goodness and moral struggle as indispensable con

1 1091-1158.

2 Died about 1300. [Bach, Meister Eckhart, etc, Vienna, 1864; Lasson, Meister Eckhart, der Mystiker, Berlin, 1868]; Ch. Jundt, Essai sur le mysticisme speculatif de maître Eckhart, Strasburg, 1871.

ditions of the Christian nirvana to which they aspire.

To

this class belong JOHN TAULER,1 a Dominican preacher of Cologne and Strasburg, JOHN WESSEL, and THOMAS À KEMPIS, the supposed author of the Imitation of Christ; all of these are indebted for the new element in their teachings to the wholly Pelagian influence of nominalism. This influence is still more pronounced in the Frenchman JOHN GERSON, the chancellor, and Nicolas of Clemanges,5 the rector, of the University of Paris, whose mysticism is nothing but moral asceticism, and differs essentially from its German namesake. But beneath these different forms lurks one and the same anti-scholastic tendency, one and the same spirit of reform.

§ 43. The Revival of Letters

Corresponding to each of the elements of progress just mentioned, we notice a group of highly important historical facts, which give a decided impetus to these tendencies. Free thought eagerly seizes upon the literary masterpieces of antiquity, which are made known by Greek emigrants, and which the timely invention of printing helps to render accessible to all. The scientific spirit of the age and its naturalistic bent, admirably assisted by the inven tion of the compass and the telescope, triumphs in the discovery of America and of the Solar System. The contemplation of these new and infinite worlds arouses feelings of enthusiasm and confidence which become more and more dangerous to Scholasticism and the authoritative

1 Died 1361. [Editions of Tauler's sermons, Leipsic, 1498; Bâle, 1521 f.; Cologne, 1543. Modern edition, Frankfurt a. M., 1826 and 1864.- TR.]

2 Died 1489.

3 Died 1471.

4 Died 1429. [Opera, Cologne, 1483 ff.] See C. Schmidt, Essai sur Jean Gerson, Strasburg, 1839.

5 Died 1440.

system of the Church. At the same time, the religious spirit receives encouragement from the great reform movement of the sixteenth century, inaugurated by the literary awakening in the fifteenth.

Under the auspices of the Byzantine government, which survived the ruin of the ancient world, the Hellenic peninsula preserved, in antiquated and pedantic form, the literary and philosophical traditions of antiquity, its taste for classical learning, and its love for the great philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. Here the writings of these thinkers were studied in the original at a time when Greek was not only a dead language but absolutely unknown in the Occident. A kind of worship grew up around them, and the more impossible it seemed to surpass them, the greater admiration they inspired. As long as such stars and their satellites shone in the heavens of Byzantium and Athens, the taste for learned studies and free speculation could not disappear from Grecian soil, and even the theological pedantry of the Emperors could not destroy it. In the main, therefore, the Orient exerted a wholesome and liberalizing influence on the Occident.

In a certain sense, this influence goes back to the period of the Crusades. By an "irony of fate," not unfrequent in history, the Catholic Church failed to reap the expected fruits of these expeditions. The Orient had been invaded in the name of the Roman faith, and the Crusaders brought back nothing but heresies. The futile efforts made by the Western Church, during the first half of the fifteenth century, to bring about a reconciliation with the Eastern Church resulted similarly. The influence of the Greek Orient was beneficial to the Occident, but injurious to the hierarchical tendencies of Catholicism. Some centuries before, the Calabrians, Barlaam and Leontius Pilatus, and, after them, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio had cultivated a taste for Greek literature in Italy; but the Orient did