Scholasticism in the widest sense thus extends from the 9th to the end of the 14th or the beginning of the 15th century—from Erigena to Occam and his followers. The belated Scholastics who lingered beyond the last-mentioned date served only as marks for the obloquy heaped upon the schools by the men of the new time. But, although every systematic account of Scholasticism finds it necessary to begin with Erigena, that philosopher is of the spiritual kindred of the Neoplatonists and Christian mystics rather than of the typical Scholastic doctors. In a few obscure writings of the 9th century we find the beginnings of discussion upon the logical questions which afterwards proved of such absorbing interest; but these are followed by the intellectual interregnum of the 10th century. The activity of Scholasticism is therefore mainly confined within the limits of the 11th and the 14th centuries. It is clearly divisible (by circumstances to be presently explained) into two well-marked periods,—the first extending to the end of the 12th century and embracing as its chief names Roscellinus, Anselm, William of Champeaux, and Abelard, while the second extended from the beginning of the 13th century to the Renaissance and the general distraction of men’s thoughts from the problems and methods of Scholasticism. In this second period the names of Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus represent (in the 13th century and the first years of the 14th century) the culmination of Scholastic thought and its consolidation into system.

It is a remark of Prantl's that there is no such thing as philosophy in the Middle Ages; there are only logic and theology. If pressed literally the remark is hypercritical, for it overlooks two facts,—in the first place that the main objects of theology and philosophy are identical, though the method of treatment is different, and in the second place that logical discussion commonly leads up to metaphysical problems, and that this was pre-eminently the case with the logic of the Schoolmen. But the saying draws attention in a forcible way to the two great influences which shaped mediaeval thought—on the one side the traditions of ancient logic, on the other the system of Christian theology. Scholasticism opens with a discussion of certain points in the Aristotelian logic; it speedily begins to apply its logical distinctions to the doctrines of the church; and when it attains its full stature in St Thomas it has, with the exception of certain mysteries, rationalized or Aristotelianized the whole churchly system. Or we might say with equal truth that the philosophy of St Thomas is Aristotle Christianized. It is, moreover, the attitude of the Schoolmen to these two influences that yields the general characteristic of the period. Their attitude throughout is that of interpreters rather than of those conducting an independent investigation. And though they are at the same time the acutest of critics, and offer the most ingenious developments of the original thesis, they never step outside the charmed circle of the system they have inherited. They appear to contemplate the universe of nature and man not at first hand with their own eyes but in the glass of Aristotelian formulae. Their chief works are in the shape of commentaries upon the writings of “the philosopher.” Their problems and solutions alike spring from the master’s dicta—from the need of reconciling these with one another and with the conclusions of Christian theology.

The fact that the channels of thought during the Middle Ages were determined in this way by the external influence of a twofold tradition is usually expressed by saying that reason in the Middle Age is subject to authority. It has not the free play which characterizes its activity in Greece and in the philosophy of modern times. Its conclusions are predetermined, and the initiative of the individual thinker is almost confined, therefore, to formal details in the treatment of his thesis. From the side of the church this characteristic of the period is expressed in the saying that reason has its proper station as the hand- maid of faith (ancilla fidei). But it is only fair to add that this principle of the subordination of the reason wears a different aspect according to the century and writer referred to. In Scotus Erigena, at the beginning of the Scholastic era, there is no such subordination contemplated, because philosophy and theology in his work are in implicit unity. According to his memorable expression, “Conficitur inde veram esse philosophiam veram religionem, conversimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam” (De Divisione Naturae, i. 1). Reason in its own strength and with its own instruments evolves a system of the universe which coincides, according to Erigena, with the teaching of Scripture. For Erigena, therefore, the speculative reason is the supreme arbiter (as he himself indeed expressly asserts); and in accordance with its results the utterances of Scripture and of the church have not infrequently to be subjected to an allegorical or mystical interpretation. But this is only to say again in so many words that Erigena is more of a Neoplatonist than a Scholastic. In regard to the Scholastics proper, Cousin suggested in respect of this point a threefold chronological division,—at the outset the absolute subordination of philosophy to theology, then the period of their alliance, and finally the beginning of their separation. In other words, we note philosophy gradually extending its claims. Dialectic is, to begin with, a merely secular art, and only by degrees are its terms and distinctions applied to the subject-matter of theology. The early results of the application, in the hands of Berengarius and Roscellinus, did not seem favourable to Christian orthodoxy. Hence the strength with which a champion of the faith like Anselm insists on the subordination of reason. To Bernard of Clairvaux and many other conservative churchmen the application of dialectic to the things of faith at all appears as dangerous as it is impious. At a later date, in the systems of the great Schoolmen, the rights of reason are fully established and amply acknowledged. The relation of reason and faith remains, it is true, an external one, and certain doctrines—an increasing number as time goes on—are withdrawn from the sphere of reason. But with these exceptions the two march side by side; they establish by different means the same results. For the conflicts which accompanied the first intrusion of philosophy into the theological domain more profound and cautious thinkers with a far ampler apparatus of knowledge had substituted a harmony. “The constant effort of Scholasticism to be at once philosophy and theology” seemed at last satisfactorily realized. But this harmony proved more apparent than real, for the further progress of Scholastic thought consisted in a withdrawal of doctrine after doctrine from the possibility of rational proof and their relegation to the sphere of faith. Indeed, no sooner was the harmony apparently established by Aquinas than Duns Scotus began this negative criticism, which is carried much farther by William of Occam. But this is equivalent to a confession that Scholasticism had failed in its task, which was to rationalize the doctrines of the church. The two authorities refused to be reconciled. The Aristotelian form refused to fit a matter for which it was never intended; the matter of Christian theology refused to be forced into an alien form. The Scholastic philosophy speedily ceased therefore to possess a raison d'être, and the spread of the sceptical doctrine of a twofold truth proclaims the destruction of the fabric erected by mediaeval thought. The end of the period was thus brought about by the internal decay of its method and principles quite as much as by the variety of external causes which contributed to transfer men’s interests to other subjects.

But, although the relation of reason to an external authority thus constitutes the badge of mediaeval thought, it would be in the last degree unjust to look upon Scholasticism as philosophically barren, and to speak as if reason, after an interregnum of a thousand years, resumed its rights at the Renaissance. Such language was excusable in the men of the Renaissance, fighting the battle of classic form and beauty and of the manysidedness of life against the barbarous terminology and the monastic ideals of the schools, or in the protagonists of modern science protesting against the complete absorption of human talent by metaphysics—an absorption never witnessed to the same extent before or since. The new is never just to the old; we do not expect it to be so. It belongs to a later and calmer judgment to recognize how the old contained in itself the germs of the new; and a closer study of history is invariably found to diminish the abruptness of the picturesque new beginnings which furnish forth our current divisions of epochs and periods. In the schools and universities of the Middle Age the intellect of the semi-barbarous European peoples had been trained for the work of the modern world. It had advanced from a childish rudeness to an appreciation of the subtlest logical and metaphysical distinctions. The debt which modern philosophy owes to the Schoolmen for this formal training has been amply acknowledged even by a writer like J. S. Mill. But we may go further and say that, in spite of their initial acceptance of authority, the Scholastics are not the antagonists of reason; on the contrary they fight its battles. As has often been pointed out, the attempt to establish by argument the authority of faith is in reality the unconscious establishment of the authority of reason. Reason, if admitted at all, must ultimately claim the whole man. Anselm’s motto, Credo ut intelligam, marks well the distance that has been traversed since Tertullian’s Credo quia absurdum esc The claim of reason has been recognized to manipulate the data of faith, at first blindly and immediately received, and to weld them into a system such as will satisfy its own needs. Scholasticism that has outlived its day may be justly identified with obscurantism, but not so the systems of those who, by their mighty intellectual force alone, once held all the minds of Europe in willing subjection. The scholastic systems, it is true, are not the free products of speculation; in the main they are summae theologiae, or they are modified versions of Aristotle. But each system is a fresh recognition of the rights of reason, and Scholasticism as a whole may be justly regarded as the history of the growth and gradual emancipation of reason which was completed in the movements of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Indeed, the widening of human interests which then took place is not without its prelude in the systems of the second period of Scholasticism. The complementary sciences of theology and philosophy remain, of course, the central and dominating interest; but Albertus Magnus was keenly interested in natural science, and a system like that of Aquinas is as wide as Aristotle’s in its range, and holds no part of nature to lie outside its inquiries.

In speaking of the origin of Scholasticism—name and thing—it has been already noted that mediaeval speculation takes its rise in certain logical problems. To be more precise, it is the nature of “universale” which forms the central theme of Scholastic debate. This is the case almost exclusively during the first period, and only to a less extent during the second, where it reappears in a somewhat different form as the difficulty concerning the principle of individuation. Otherwise expressed, the question on which centuries of discussion were thus expended concerns the nature of genera and species and their relation to the individual. On this, Nominalists and Realists take opposite sides; and, exclusively logical as the point may at first sight seem to be, adherence to one side or the other is an accurate indication of philosophic tendency. The two opposing theories express at bottom, in the phraseology of their own time, the radical divergence of pantheism and individualism—the two extremes between which philosophy seems pendulum-wise to oscillate, and which may be said still to await their perfect reconciliation. First, however, we must examine the form which this question assumed to the first mediaeval thinkers, and the source from which they derived it. A single sentence in Porphyry’s Isagoge or “introduction” to the Categories of Aristotle furnished the text of the prolonged discussion. The treatise of Porphyry deals with what are commonly called the predicables, i.e., the notions of genus, species, difference, property, and accident; and he mentions, but declines to discuss, the various theories that have been held as to the ontological import of genera and species. In the Latin translation of Boetius, in which alone the Isagoge was then known, the sentence runs as follows :—“Mox de generibus et speciebus illud quidem sive subsistant, sive in solis nudis intellectibus posita sint, sive subsistentia corporalia sint an incorporalia, et utrum separata a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita et circa haec consistentia, dicere recusabo; altissimum enim negotium est hujusmodi et majoris egens inquisitionis.” The second of these three questions may be safely set aside; the other two indicate with sufficient clearness three possible positions with regard to universals. It may be held that they exist merely as conceptions in our minds (in solis nudis intellectibus) ; this is Nominalism or Conceptualism. It may be held, in opposition to the Nominalistic view, that they have a substantial existence of their own (subsistentia), independent of their existence in our thoughts. But Realism, as this doctrine is named, may be again of two varieties, according as the substantially existent universals are supposed to exist apart from the sensible phenomena (separata a sensibilibus) or only in and with the objects of sense as their essence (in sensibilibus posita et circa haec consistentia). The first form of Realism corresponds to the Platonic theory of the transcendence of the ideas; while the second reproduces the Aristotelian doctrine of the essence as inseparable from the individual thing. But, though he implies an ample previous treatment of the questions by philosophers, Porphyry gives no references to the different systems of which such distinctions are the outcome, nor does he give any hint of his own opinion on the subject, definite enough though that was. He simply sets the discussion aside as too difficult for a preliminary discourse, and not strictly relevant to a purely logical inquiry. Porphyry, the Neoplatonist, the disciple of Plotinus, was an unknown personage to those early students of the Isagoge. The passage possessed for them a mysterious charm, largely due to its isolation and to their ignorance of the historic speculations which suggested it. And accordingly it gave rise to the three great doctrines which divided the mediaeval schools :—Realism of the Platonic type, embodied in the formula universalia ante rem ; Realism of the Aristotelian type, universalia in re; and Nominalism, including Conceptualism, expressed by the phrase universalia post rem, and also claiming to be based upon the Peripatetic doctrine.

To form a proper estimate of the first stage of Scholastic discussion it is requisite above all things to have a clear idea of the appliances then at the disposal of the writers. In other words, what was the extent of their knowledge of ancient philosophy? Thanks to the researches of Jourdain and others, it is possible to answer this question with something like precision. To begin with, we know that till the 13th century the Middle Age was ignorant of Greek, and possessed no philosophical works in their Greek original, while in translations their stock was limited to the Categories and the De Interpretatione of Aristotle in the versions of Boetius, and the Timaeus of Plato in the version of Chalcidius. To these must be added, of course, Boetius’s translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge already referred to. The whole metaphysical, ethical, and physical works of Aristotle were thus unknown, and it was not till the 12th century (after the year 1128) that the Analytics and the Topics became accessible to the logicians of the time. Some general information as to the Platonic doctrines (chiefly in a Neoplatonic garb) was obtainable from the commentary with which Chalcidius (6th cent.) accompanied his translation, from the work of Apuleius (2d cent.) De Dogmate Platonis, and indirectly from the commentary of Macrobius (c. 400) on the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero, and from the writings of St Augustine. As aids to the study of logic, the doctors of this period possessed two commentaries by Boetius on the Isagoge (Ad Porphyrium a Victorino translatum and In Porphyrium a se translatum), two commentaries by the same author on the De Interpretatione and one on the Categories, as well as another, mainly rhetorical, Ad Ciceronis Topica. To these are to be added the following original treatises of Boetius :— Introductio ad Categoricos Syllogismos, De Syllogismo Categorico, De Syllogismo Hypothetico, De Divisione, De Definitione, and De Differentiis Topicis, the last dealing almost exclusively with rhetoric. There were also in circulation two tracts attributed to St Augustine, the first of which, Principia Dialecticae, is probably his, but is mainly grammatical in its import. The other tract, known as Categoriae Decem, and taken at first for a translation of Aristotle’s treatise, is really a rapid summary of it, and certainly does not belong to Augustine. To this list there must be added three works of an encyclopaedic character, which played a great part as text-books in the schools. Of these the oldest and most important was the Satyricon of Marcianus Capella (close of 5th century), a curious medley of prose and allegorical verse, the greater part of which is a treatise on the seven liberal arts, the fourth book dealing with logic. Similar in its contents is the work of Cassiodorus (468-562), De Artibus ac Disciplinis Liberalium Literarum, of which the third work referred to, the Origines of Isidore of Seville (ob. 636), is little more than a reproduction. The above constitutes without exception the whole material which the earlier Middle Age had at its disposal.

The grandly conceived...