PHILOSOPHY
36
PHILOSOPHY
of the lack of an adequately comprehensive expla-
nation" [" Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Philos. u. Leben-
sanschanung" (Leipzi»c, 1903). p. 157]. Tliis same
thought inspired Leo XIII when he placed the paral-
lel and harmoaious teaching of philosophy and of the
sciences on the programme of the Institute of Phi-
losophy created by him in the University of Louvain
(see Neo-Schol.\sticism).
On their side, the scientists have been coming to the same conclusions ever since they rose to a syn- thetic view of that matter which is the object of their study. So it was with Pasteur, so with Xewton. Ostwald, professor of chemistry at Leipzig, has under- taken to publish the " Annalen der Xaturphilosophie ", a review "devoted to the cultivation of the territory which is common to philosophy and the sciences". A great many men of science, too, are engaged in philosophy without knowing it: in their con- stant discussions of "Mechanism", "Evolutionism", "Transformism", they are using terms which imply a philosophical theorj- of matter.
If philosophy is the explanation as a whole of that world which the particular sciences investigate in detail, it follows that the latter find their culmination in the former, and that as the sciences are so will philosophy be. It is true that objections are put forward against this way of uniting philosophy and the sciences. Common obser^'ation, it is said, is enough support for philosophy. This is a mistake: philoso- phy cannot ignore whole departments of knowledge which are inaccessible to ordinary experience; biology, for example, has shed a new light on the philosophic study of man. Others again adduce the extent and the growth of the sciences to show that scientific philosophy must ever remain an unattain- able ideal; the practical solution of this difficulty concerns the teaching of philosophy (see section XI).
IX. Philosopht .vnd Religiox. — ReUgion pre- sents to man, with authority, the solution of many problems which also concern philosophy. Such are the questions of the nature of God. of His relations with the visible world, of man's origin and destiny. Xow religion, which precedes philosophy in the social life, naturally obliges it to take into consideration the points of reUgious doctrine. Hence the close connexion of philosophy with religion in the early stages of civilization, a fact strikingly apparent in Indian philosophy, which, not only at its beginning, but throughout its development, was intimately bound up with the doctrine of the sacred books (see above). The Greeks, at lea.st during the most important periods of their history, were much less subject to the influences of pagan religions; in fact, they combined with extreme scrupulosity in what concerned cere- monial usage a wide liberty in regard to dogma. Greek thought soon took its independent flight; Socrates ridicules the gods in whom the common people believed; Plato does not banish religious ideas from his philosophy; but Aristotle keeps them en- tirely apart, his God is the Actus purus, with a mean- ing exclusively philosophic, the prime mover of the universal mechanism. The Stoics point out that all things obey an irresistible fatality and that the wise man fears no gods. And if Epicurus teaches cosmic determinism and denies all finality, it is only to con- clude that man can lay aside all fear of divine inter- vention in mundane affairs. The question takes a new aspect when the influences of the Oriental and Jewish religions are brought to bear on Greek philosophy by neo-Pythagorism, the Jewish the- ology (end of the first century), and, above all, neo- Platonism (third century B. c). A yearning for religion was stirring in the world, and philosophy became enamoured of everj- religious doctrine. Plotinus (third centurj- after Christ), who must always remain the most perfect type of the
neo-Platonic mentaUty, makes philosophy identical
with religion, assigning as its highest aim the union
of the soul with God by mystical ways. This mystical need of the supernatural issues in the most bizarre lucubrations from Plotinus's successors, e. g. Jambli- cus (d. about a. d. 330), who, on a foundation of neo- Platonism, erected an international pantheon for all the divinities whose names are known.
It has often been remarked that Christianity, with its monotheistic dogma and its serene, purifying morality, came in the fulness of time and appeased the inward unrest with which souls were afflicted at the end of the Roman world. Though Christ did not make Himself the head of a philosophical school, the religion which He founded supplies solutions for a group of problems which philosophy solves by other methods (e. g. the immortality of the soul). The first Christian pliilosophers, the Fathers of the Church, were imbued with Greek ideas and took over from the circumambient neo-Platonism the commingling of philosophy and religion. With them philosophy is incidental and secondary, employed only to meet polemic needs, and to support dogma; their philosophy is religious. In this Clement of Alexan- dria and Origen are one with St. Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The early Middle Ages continued the same traditions, and the first philosophers may be said to have re- ceived neo-Platonic influences through the channel of the Fathers. John Scotus Eriugena (ninth cen- tury), the most remarkable mind of this first period, writes that "true religion is true philosophy and, conversely, true philosophy is true religion" (De div. pra?d., I, I). But as the era advances a process of dissociation sets in, to end in the complete separa- tion between the two sciences of Scholastic theology or the study of dogma, based fundamentally on Holy Scripture, and Scholastic philosophy, based on jjurely rational investigation. To understand the successive stages of this differentiation, which was not completed until the middle of the thirteenth century, we must draw attention to certain historical facts of capital importance.
(1) The origin of several philosophical problems, in the early ^iiddle Ages, must be sought within the domain of theology, in the sense that the philosophical discussions arose in reference to theological questions. The discussion, e. g. of transubstantiation (Beren- garius of Tours), raised the problem of substance and of change, or becoming. (2) Theology being regarded as a superior and sacred science, the whole pedagogic and didactic organization of the period tended to confirm this superiority (see section XI). (3) The enthusiasm for dialectics, which reached its maximum in the eleventh century, brought into fashion certain purely verbal methods of reasoning bordering on the sophistical. Anselm of Besata (Anselmus Peripateticus) is the type of this kind of reasoner. X^ow the dialecticians, in discussing theo- logical subjects, claimed absolute validity for their methods, and they ended in such heresies as Gott- schalk's on predestination, Berengarius's on tran- substantiation, and Roscelin's Tritheism. Beren- garius's motto was: "Per omnia ad dialecticam confugere". There followed an excessive reaction on the ijart of timorous theologians, practical men before all things, who charged dialectics with the sins of the dialecticians. This antagonistic movement coin- cided with an attempt to reform religious life. At the head of the group was Peter Damian (1(X)7- 72), the adversary of the hberal arts; he was the author of the saying that philosophy is the handmaid of theology. From this saying it has been concluded that the Middle Ages in general put philosophy under tutelage, whereas the maxim was current only among a narrow circle of reactionary theologians. Side by side with Peter Damian in Italy, were Manegold
