I
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MEDÆVAL THOUGHT Bygone Beliefs | ||
1. I
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MEDÆVAL THOUGHT
IN the earliest days of his upward evolution man was satisfied with a very crude explanation of natural phenomena—that to which the name "animism" has been given. In this stage of mental development all the various forces of Nature are personified: the rushing torrent, the devastating fire, the wind rustling the forest leaves—in the mind of the animistic savage all these are personalities, spirits, like himself, but animated by motives more or less antagonistic to him.
I suppose that no possible exception could be taken to the statement that modern science renders animism impossible. But let us inquire in exactly what sense this is true. It is not true that science robs natural phenomena of their spiritual significance. The mistake is often made of supposing that science explains, or endeavours to explain, phenomena. But that is the business of philosophy. The task science attempts is the simpler one of the correlation of natural phenomena, and in this effort leaves the ultimate problems of metaphysics untouched. A universe, however, whose phenomena are not only
The latter alternative means that the Cosmos is inexplicable, which not only man's growing experience, but the fact that man and the universe form essentially a unity, forbid us to believe. The term "anthropomorphic" is too easily applied to philosophical systems, as if it constituted a criticism of their validity. For if it be true, as all must admit, that the unknown can only be explained in terms of the known, then the universe must either be explained in terms of man—i.e. in terms of will or desire—or remain incomprehensible. That is to say, a philosophy must either be anthropomorphic, or no philosophy at all.
Thus a metaphysical scrutiny of the results of modern science leads us to a belief in God. But man felt the need of unity, and crude animism, though a step in the right direction, failed to satisfy his thought, long before the days of modern science. The spirits of animism, however, were not discarded, but were modified, co-ordinated, and worked into a system as servants of the Most High. Polytheism may mark a stage in this process; or, perhaps, it was a result of mental degeneracy.
What I may term systematised as distinguished from crude animism persisted throughout the Middle Ages. The work of systematisation had already been
The most obvious example of a mediæval animistic belief is that in "elementals"—the spirits which personify the primordial forces of Nature, and are symbolised by the four elements, immanent in which they were supposed to exist, and through which they were held to manifest their powers. And astrology, it must be remembered, is essentially a systematised
It has been said that the theological and philosophical
atmosphere of the Middle Ages was "scholastic,"
not mystical. No doubt "mysticism," as a
mode of life aiming at the realisation of the presence
of God, is as distinct from scholasticism as empiricism
is from rationalism, or "tough-minded" philosophy
(to use JAMES' happy phrase) is from "tender-minded". But no philosophy can be absolutely and
purely deductive. It must start from certain empirically
determined facts. A man might be an extreme
empiricist in religion (i.e. a mystic), and yet might
attempt to deduce all other forms of knowledge from
the results of his religious experiences, never caring
to gather experience in any other realm. Hence the
breach between mysticism and scholasticism is not
really so wide as may appear at first sight. Indeed,
scholasticism officially recognised three branches of
theology, of which the mystical was one. I think
that mysticism and scholasticism both had a profound
influence on the mediæval mind, sometimes
acting as opposing forces, sometimes operating harmoniously
with one another. As Professor WINDELBAND
puts it: "We no longer onesidedly characterise
Plate 2
[Description: FIG. 2. Frontispiece to GLANVIL'S Saducismus Triumphatus (3rd edition, 1700),
illustrating Superstitions concerning Witchcraft, etc.]
Alchemy, with its four Aristotelian or scholastic elements and its three mystical principles—sulphur, mercury, salt,—must be cited as the outstanding product of the combined influence of mysticism and scholasticism: of mysticism, which postulated the unity of the Cosmos, and hence taught that everything natural is the expressive image and type of some supernatural reality; of scholasticism, which taught men to rely upon deduction and to restrict experimentation to the smallest possible limits.
The mind naturally proceeds from the known, or from what is supposed to be known, to the unknown. Indeed, as I have already indicated, it must so proceed if truth is to be gained. Now what did the men of the Middle Ages regard as falling into the category of the known? Why, surely, the truths of revealed religion, whether accepted upon authority or upon the evidence of their own experience. The realm of spiritual and moral reality: there, they felt, they were on firm ground. Nature was a realm unknown; but they had analogy to guide, or, rather, misguide them. Nevertheless if, as we know, it misguided, this was not, I think, because the mystical doctrine of the correspondence between the spiritual and the natural is unsound, but because these ancient seekers into Nature's secrets knew so little, and so frequently misapplied what they did know. So alchemical
I want, in conclusion to these brief introductory remarks, to say a few words concerning phallicism in connection with my topic. For some "tender-minded"[4] and, to my thought, obscure, reason the subject is tabooed. Even the British Museum does not include works on phallicism in its catalogue, and special permission has to be obtained to consult them. Yet the subject is of vast importance as concerns the origin and development of religion and philosophy, and the extent of phallic worship may be gathered from the widespread occurrence of obelisks and similar objects amongst ancient relics. Our own maypole dances may be instanced as one survival of the ancient worship of the male generative principle.
What could be more easy to understand than that, when man first questioned as to the creation of the earth, he should suppose it to have been generated by some process analogous to that which he saw held in the case of man? How else could he account for its origin, if knowledge must proceed from the known to the unknown? No one questions at all that the worship of the human generative organs as symbols of the dual generative principle of Nature degenerated into orgies of the most frightful character, but the view of Nature which thus degenerated
These remnants are very marked in alchemy. The metals, as I have suggested, are there regarded as types of man; hence they are produced from seed, through the combination of male and female principles— mercury and sulphur, which on the spiritual plane are intelligence and love. The same is true of that Stone which is perfect Man. As BERNARD of TRÉVISAN (1406-1490) wrote in the fifteenth century: "This Stone then is compounded of a Body and Spirit, or of a volatile and fixed Substance, and that is therefore done, because nothing in the World can be generated and brought to light without these two Substances, to wit, a Male and Female: From whence it appeareth, that although these two Substances are not of one and the same species, yet one Stone cloth thence arise, and although they appear and are said to be two Substances, yet in truth it is but one, to wit, Argent-vive."[5] No doubt this sounds fantastic; but with all their seeming intellectual follies these old thinkers were no fools. The fact of sex is the most fundamental fact of the universe, and is a spiritual and physical as well as a physiological fact. I shall deal with the subject as concerns the speculations of the alchemists in some detail in a later excursion.
These writings were first heard of in the early part of the sixth century, and were probably the work of a Syrian monk of that date, who fathered them on to DIONYSIUS the Areopagite as a pious fraud. See Dean INGE'S Christian Mysticism (1899), pp. 104—122, and VAUGHAN'S Hours with the Mystics (7th ed., 1895), vol. i. pp. 111-124. The books have been translated into English by the Rev. JOHN PARKER (2 vols. 1897-1899), who believes in the genuineness of their alleged authorship.
Professor WILHELM WINDELBAND, Ph.D.: "Present-Day Mysticism," The Quest, vol. iv. (1913), P. 205.
I
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MEDÆVAL THOUGHT Bygone Beliefs | ||