SOURCE: Gardner, Alice. “Scotus as Optimist” and “Scotus as Subjective Idealist.” In Studies in John the Scot (Erigena): A Philosopher of the Dark Ages, pp. 97-132. London: Henry Frowde, 1900.

[In the following essays, Gardner discusses the roots of Eriugena's optimism and examines his views on existence, thought, and knowledge.]

But yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill.

—Tennyson.

It has already been sufficiently pointed out that the principal ecclesiastical controversies with which the name of Scotus is associated were none of his own seeking, nor were they concerned with problems which he had set himself to solve. The questions whether predestination is single or double, and what is the precise change undergone by the sacramental elements in the process of priestly consecration, would probably never have troubled his mind if they had not been directly presented to him for solution. But there were other difficulties, some of them quite beyond the ordinary mental walk of his ecclesiastical contemporaries, to which he felt himself obliged to devote the full powers of his intellect and many hours of toilsome effort. It was not, as a rule, the greatest of all questions, in an undisguised form, that drew controversial works from the pens of Hincmar, Prudentius, or Florus. To them, for instance, there would not have been much difficulty in trying to conceive how an unchangeable Deity could have brought into existence a mutable world, or how that world should fail to reveal in every part the trace of its divine origin. The plain man knows that if he were in the place of the Almighty, he would very much like to create a universe, and that if, by any slip, some adverse element should have intruded, he would be ready with some device for its expulsion. He may think it a puzzling matter to decide why, in this world, merit often meets with scant reward and vice goes unpunished; but his feeling of justice is satisfied by the assurance that some day all cases will be reheard and many dooms reversed. The ancient problems concerning the one and the many, rest and motion, the material and the spiritual universe, do not torment him. The plainest man, who has any religion at all, is bound to have a teleology and a theodicy of some kind or another, but it is likely to be crude and inconsistent. The philosopher must have his in more subtle form, yet it would be rash to say that he, more than his humble neighbour, has ever attained to consistency.

The difficulty which Scotus felt in approaching the problem as to the final goal of all things, and the way in which it is reached, appears plainly in that part of his dialogue between master and pupil¹ where they pass to the consideration of the uncreated, non-creating, into which all things are finally to be resolved. The master gives warning of the dangerous sea, strewn with wrecks and abounding in unseen dangers, on which they are embarking, and the pupil, who presents throughout the type of the indefatigable inquirer, declares himself ready to venture, and prepared to eat the bread of wisdom in the sweat of his brow. It seems that Scotus considered the whole subject of creation, in relation to its first cause, to the primordial ideas, and to the microcosm man, as quite easy to deal with in comparison with that of the final consummation.

We have already seen how the philosophic standpoint occupied by Scotus involved an optimistic view of the universe generally. For he held that the ground and substance of all things is good—that what we call evil is merely a privation of good, and has no positive existence. This is not what is commonly signified by the term optimism, which may roughly be defined as a belief in the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Some such belief is very earnestly maintained and worked out in detail in various parts of Scotus' writings. But the nature of the ultimate triumph expected must differ with the way in which the difference between good and evil is regarded. If evil is only apparent, the victory of good consists only in the clear manifestation of the good as being alone possessed of reality. This is practically asserted by Scotus when he speaks of the moment of final consummation as the time of the appearance of truth: ‘illa die, hoc est in apparitione veritatis².’

Perhaps it might be possible to reduce all the processes which Scotus traces as leading to the purification and perfection of the whole creation into the manifestation of hidden truth. Even now, according to his fundamental principle, God is all in all, but God is not realized as being all in all except by a few highly privileged souls³. The annihilation of evil, then, from this idealistic standpoint, is nothing but the clearing away of intellectual or spiritual obscurity. Even the eternal punishment of wilful sin seems to lie in the revelation of its futility.

But besides the Christian or theistic need ‘to justify the ways of God to man,’ or the more vaguely human desire to show that this universe is the best possible of universes, Scotus feels the necessity of bringing into his philosophy the old theory of cyclic revolutions. The ideas of moral restitution and of a completed harmony are blended in his mind. The motion and return of the heavenly bodies, the regular recurrence of tides and seasons, the tendency of all things in nature towards some end which is also a beginning, symbolizes or is identical with the strivings of man towards a blessed and eternal life. Even in the arts the same tendency is manifest. Dialectic revolves around being, arithmetic around the monad, geometry around the figure. The resolution of all things into their original elements is the whole process of nature. Applied to man, it signifies the return of his being into God. But since, for man, to participate in God is to live in perpetual contemplation of the Divine glory, and since the substance of all things is eternal, the vision of the beatified universe with which Scotus presents us is not that of a vast sea in which the peculiar qualities of all things are absorbed in a neverending monotony, but of a perfectly harmonious composition in which all creatures live in unity yet without confusion of individual being.

If we were in the position of the ‘Discipulus’ there is a question we might desire to ask. Granted that all things move in cycles and return to their original elements, yet their return does not result in a perpetual quiescence, but rather in renewed movement. Following the analogy, when all things are resolved into the primary cause of all, will there be again a fresh departure, a new creation, perhaps another apparent reign of evil, only to be overcome by another procession or incarnation of the creative Logos⁴? But we may imagine the ‘Magister’ replying, with scornful wrath, that we had not yet diverted our minds from temporal and even spacial relations, which have no application in speculations of this kind. Or he might tell us that this was a mystery into which we were not able to penetrate.

Another difficulty might arise from the very fact that time is no more than a condition of our cognition of material things. It may seem to us that as no series—however numerous—of intermediate beings could bridge the distance between creator and created, the infinite one and the finite many, so no number of aeons of perfectly and evidently harmonious order could obliterate the fact that there was ever, even in semblance, an element of discord. If, for one second, any man or demon felt one unsocial instinct or performed one malicious act, that moment would be as destructive of the theory of the ‘best possible universe’ as if the world had lain for ages in the power of the Wicked One. This objection might seem to be met by assigning a purely negative character to evil, but to some of us it may appear that the difficulty is thereby only pushed one step back.

One other interesting point in connexion with sin and its annihilation, as expounded by Scotus, may be pointed out here before we take up the main line of his theory. It is well known that the later Graeco-Romans, who drew from their philosophy maxims for daily practical life, especially the Stoics, such as Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, sought to soften the resentment naturally aroused against unsocial and unreasonable people by insisting on the involuntary character of all wrong-doing. ‘Thou art injuring thyself, my child,’ says Marcus in imagination to a man who is seeking to injure him. For if the worst of men could realize the beauty of goodness, he would, by his innate desire for happiness, seek it alone, and not deprive himself of so great a good. Now Scotus, following the words of St. Augustine, shows how all men, bad and good, desire being, happy being, and perpetual being, and avoid death and pain. If they fall into death and pain, it must be by error, to which he assigns a large, though not the whole share, in human depravity. But though, in a sense, he would make error the source of evil, no one can be stronger than Scotus in asserting that sin comes of self-will, of a turning from the true principle of man to self as goal and centre⁵. There is, perhaps, no contradiction here. Sin may be chiefly due to ignorance, yet that ignorance may be voluntary.

In the part of his treatise De Divisione Naturae, which deals with the restitution of all things, Scotus transcribes, even more freely than in other parts of his writings, copious quotations from the Fathers—chiefly from the Greeks—Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus, Epiphanius, Origen (with whom he is here in intimate sympathy), and others, though in two places where he quotes Ambrose⁶, he seems to show an almost nervous fear of betraying his preference for the Greeks. Augustine, of course, is frequently cited. Yet we constantly feel, especially with the more lengthy quotations, that they are rather employed to illustrate than to support the philosopher's views. Many causes other than philosophic necessity had led the early Christian writers, and those of the fourth century, to dwell on the topic of the Last Judgement, and of the new heaven and new earth wherein righteousness should dwell. And as it is impossible to dwell on such subjects without a plentiful employment of imagery, we may often feel that in transcribing or even expanding their words, Scotus is interpreting them ‘translative.’ This may account for some, though certainly not for all, of the inconsistencies which we find in treatises designed for men who set a high value on authority by one who was endeavouring to weld together material employed by the various authorities of Scripture, patristic tradition, and the principles of the later Greek philosophies.

It is impossible, in examining this part of the doctrine of Scotus, to distinguish clearly between the restoration of the Creation to primitive unity and simplicity and the recovery by fallen human nature of its pristine dignity. But, indeed, his conception of man as the microcosm, as an epitome of that thought of God which constitutes the whole creation, renders any such distinction superfluous. Restitution in the wider sense is comprised in the redemption of mankind and the purification of human souls from sin. If we ask why such restitution is required, what signs there are of imperfection in the universe as we know it, we do not obtain such an answer as a modern thinker might give, in the prevalence of pain among animals, the apparent loss of noble types, and the like. Rather the imperfection is seen in the manifold character of things—since the one is ever superior to the many—and in what is regarded as the merely contingent existence of material things, since substance is superior to accident. ‘We believe,’ he says, ‘that the end of this sensible world will be nothing else than a return into God and into its primordial causes, in which it naturally subsists⁷.’ And again⁸: ‘It (the creation) begins in a sense to be, not in that it subsists in its primordial causes, but in that it begins to appear from temporal causes. For temporal causes I call the qualities and quantities and all else that come to belong as accidents to substances in time by generation. And thus of these substances it is said “there was a time when they were not”; for they did not always appear in their accidents. In like manner they may even now be said to be, and they are, and shall be in truth and for ever. But in so far as they are said to be in their accidents, which come to them from without, they have no real nor perpetual being. Therefore they shall be dissolved into those things from which they were taken, in which in truth and eternally they have their being, when every substance shall be purged from all corruptible accidents, and shall be delivered from all that does not belong to the condition of its proper nature; beautiful in its peculiar native excellences, in its entire simplicity, and, in the good man, adorned with the gifts of grace, being glorified through the contemplation of the eternal blessedness, beyond every nature, even its own, and turned into God Himself, being made God, not by nature, but by grace.’ In this passage Scotus seems unconsciously to slide off from the consideration of the greater to that of the lesser world, and finally to touch on the idea—to which we shall return—that for the chosen among mankind something better even than restoration to primitive purity is in store.

Before we pass to consider the manner in which human nature is to be restored, we may notice that Scotus has a notable tenderness for the animal creation, and refuses to accept the authority of those teachers who would deny an immortal soul to beasts. He is inclined to think⁹ that the intelligence and the social qualities of the nobler animals are due to some measure of participation in the divine life, which they cannot eternally lose, and that the contrary opinion has only been preached as a warning to men prone to degrade themselves and become like ‘the brutes that perish.’

To come to man the microcosm, the human trinity, made in the image of God, but fallen from its original glory, we have already seen that Scotus attributes that fall to a self-willed turning away from man's proper nature and first principle of being. In following the story in Genesis, he gives an allegoric interpretation to its several parts, following in general the commentaries of the Fathers, especially Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Monk, though sometimes showing how the authorities differ and which view he personally prefers. It may seem superfluous to say that the Fall is not regarded as an event in time, nor Paradise as a definite locality. Again and again he recurs to the idea, on which Maximus also liked to dwell, that man before the Fall, or man according to his divine nature, was sexless. The division into male and female is a defect in humanity. The story of the forbidden fruit is interpreted as the leading away of the mind (= the man) by sensibility (= the woman), so as to seek pleasure in the things of sense and not in pure wisdom¹⁰. The punishments inflicted have a hidden meaning:—‘In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,’ points to the efforts necessary for attaining knowledge; ‘thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee,’ promises the ultimate subjugation of sense by reason. The labours imposed on the man have a purgatorial end, and ‘thou shalt return’ is spoken in hope. The return is not by way of new creation, but through a cleansing process, such as that which purifies from leprosy. When man can contemplate the Divine Goodness, he attains restoration, for the image remains in his nature even after the Fall¹¹.

It is evident that Scotus is not among those who regard matter as the one cause of evil, but he partly agrees with them in that he regards the preference of the material to the spiritual as being at the root of all mischief, and also holds the absorption of body in spirit as a necessary step towards rectification. Nevertheless he affirms, in his peculiar sense, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, by which he would imply¹² not the perpetuation of what is merely sensible and fictitious, but the resolution of all that has any being at all into purer elements. The ‘death of the saints’ which is ‘precious in the sight of the Lord’ is the absorption of the human soul in the Divine¹³, for the death of the body is the first step towards the liberation of the soul¹⁴.

The means by which the general restitution is effected is, of course, the incarnation, or, more properly, the humanizing of the Logos. The doctrine is set forth in several forms. Christ is to be regarded as a sacrifice which has been effectual for all¹⁵, as a priest and mediator, as the Ark of the Covenant full of sacred treasures. But generally it is as the Logos entering into human nature, and thereby into the nature of all things which have been created in man, and then returning to the Father or First Principle, that He is regarded as bringing about the final union. ‘He went forth from the Father and came into the world, that is, He took upon Him that human nature in which the whole world subsists; for there is nothing in the world that is not comprehended in human nature; and again, He left the world and went to the Father, that is, He exalted that human nature which He had received above all things visible and invisible, above all heavenly powers, above all that can be said or understood, uniting it to His deity, in which He is equal to the Father¹⁶.’

If we ask whether the restoration of human nature carries with it the salvation of every human soul, we cannot obtain a perfectly clear answer, or rather, we obtain answers which seem mutually contradictory. For the doctrine of the eternal punishment of the wicked is even harder to reconcile with the teleological principles of Scotus than is that of a corporeal resurrection. We have already seen, in considering his part in the predestinarian controversy, how Scotus had given great offence in some quarters by practically eliminating the arbitrary and also the material element in the final punishment. Yet, on the other hand, he seems to spoil the harmony of his own system, by admitting as forms, or perhaps illustrations of divinely inflicted penalties, both a tardy and too late repentance and a consuming vexation at the thought of complete failure in life. For if repentance is purgatorial in character, as Scotus seems to admit, and if it is accompanied by acquiescence in a just doom, it falls far short of the notion of eternal torment. And the anger at having failed in evil projects, such as he ascribes to tyrants like Herod, who are reluctantly compelled to serve a good purpose, is surely a species of that malitia which, we are told, is with miseria to be utterly destroyed. There can be little doubt that these suggestions are of an apologetic character, and do not fit into the scheme as a whole. And indeed, elsewhere, Scotus speaks of the parable of Dives and Lazarus as being of the nature of an allegory. What he contemplates, as far as, in these highflown speculations, he can be said to have a clear notion of the looked-for goal, is a perfectly ordered universe, in which no sin or desire to sin remains, and wherein each living being enjoys that proportion of divine wisdom and happiness for which it is fitted. The home is of ‘many mansions.’ All are saved, though not all are deified. Again and again the doctrine is insisted upon that no substance can ever be lost. ‘The thoughts of the wicked’ perish, because they are but vanity. But in their innermost being even the devils are good in that they are, and a suggestion is made, though not followed up, that Origen may be right as to the final conversion of Satan and his ministers.

The consummation of all things involves, however, for man, or rather for chosen spirits among men, something far exceeding the blamelessness of the first Paradise. For though, in many passages, it is made clear that final restoration is to comprise the return of all things into God, there is a special sense in which holy men, after the discipline of life, are to be deified and brought to perpetual contemplation of the highest theophany, or perhaps, even above it. In a chapter near the end of the treatise De Divisione Naturae, we have the steps of the ascent summarized by way of recapitulation. There are three steps in the progress by which effects generally are brought back to their causes, four by which restored humanity is brought into perfect unity, three more by which the perfected and unified soul is brought into the incomprehensible light¹⁷. First is the change of all bodies capable of sensual perception into their spiritual causes¹⁸. Next comes the restoration of human nature to its primitive condition, by the divine mercy, through the saving work of Christ. Thirdly comes the sevenfold way by which the divinely-chosen are to reach their ultimate goal. There are four processes of unification of a lower kind: the changes of earthly body into vital motion; of vital motion into sense; of sense into reason, and of reason into soul. The three higher changes are of soul into knowledge of all things posterior to God; of knowledge into wisdom, or close contemplation of the truth; finally the absorption of the purified souls thus identified with purest intellect, into the obscurities of impenetrable light, wherein lie hidden the causes of all things. The octave is then complete, and the consummation attained which was signified by the resurrection of the Lord on the eighth day.

The final absorption of soul, apparently of all consciousness, in the Supreme Unity, has struck many writers as being originally an Indian, or at least an Oriental conception. There is, however, no reason to suppose that Scotus borrowed, even indirectly, from Indian sages, and possibly their Nirvana, however differently interpreted from different points of view, would be found dissimilar in many respects from his. It certainly cannot be confused with annihilation, rather is it to be regarded as an entering into real existence. It should be taken, perhaps, in consistency, to involve the elimination of all personal qualities and individual life. But in all his works, Scotus guards against the assumption that any confusion of separate existences is implied in the ultimate union of all things. It is harmony, not monotony, that seems to him the starting-point and the goal of creation. The seventh step seems to go further than any ever taken, in the Dionysian system, by the most exalted member of the divine hierarchy; since contemplation, and that not directly of the divine, but of a theophany, is the occupation of the first order, and if there is an advance beyond the contemplative life into that which is ‘dark from excess of light,’ man must have risen immeasurably above all other creatures. Probably Scotus would not have admitted such a conclusion. In any case, with the enraptured description of the apotheosis of the glorified soul, the ‘Magister’ ends what he calls the recapitulation of this work—a description in which his readers can by no means concur—without listening to any more questions from his pupil. He only adds, by way of apology, that his task has been a very difficult one, that in this dusky life human studies must always be imperfect, that truth is ever liable to be misunderstood, and that all we can do is to wait. ‘Let each one make the most of his own view, until that light shall come which turns into darkness the light of those who deal falsely in wisdom and turns to light the darkness of those who discern things rightly¹⁹.’

.....

Cogito, ergo sum.

—Descartes.

Dum ergo dico intelligo me esse … et me esse, et posse intelligere me esse, et intelligere me esse demonstro.

Scotus, De Divisione Naturae, i. 48.

Even those who make but a slight acquaintance with the literature relating to John the Scot become impressed with the fact that in so far as he is generally regarded by students and historians of philosophy with respect and interest, it is because of the analogy that may often be traced between his views and those of quite modern thinkers.²⁰ We have already seen how in some ways he figures as a link in the chain between Greek philosophy and mediaeval thought. We have seen how the necessities of his position forced him to take up a decided attitude in some of the great theological controversies of his day. To follow his doctrines down into later times, and see how far they anticipate the principles of transcendentalists or of sceptics belonging to our own times, has been a fascinating task to some writers²¹. But as no one would suppose Scotus to have directly influenced any modern school, that task may seem rather a field for speculative ingenuity and for practical reflection than an essential part of an historical sketch. The philosophic disputes of the centuries which immediately succeeded that of Scotus might well come within the field of any student of the man and his times, but even here it is not easy to see exactly how far his influence extended. For in metaphysics as in theology, he was strangely misunderstood and accused of spreading doctrines exactly opposite in tenor to those which he was incessantly proclaiming.

The great danger in trying to realize the standpoint in logic and metaphysics of a man who lived not only in a distant age, but in an age which seems, in a sense, off the path of continuous human progress, is lest we should read the present into the past, and attribute to the words of an ancient sage meanings which did not belong to them till a millenium later. Still, the essential problems are there, and it is impossible not to feel a rush of sympathy towards those who have thought our thoughts, or something like them, long before. If the analogy between Scotus and Hegel is only evident to a few select minds, the resemblance to Descartes—as in the words printed at the head of this chapter—must strike the most casual reader. Yet we can hardly fail, on further inspection, to see that the meaning of Scotus and that of Descartes are not identical.

Still if, without drawing a close comparison between Scotus and any particular philosopher of modern times, we collect our general impressions from a perusal of his writings, we find much that, without any violence or perversion, seems to lend itself to modern modes of thought and expression. We read of an unknown God and an unknown self, the existence of which is postulated in every thought and act, yet respecting which nothing can be asserted. We have a phenomenal world, which has reality in so far, and only so far, as it is the object of cognition by intelligence. We see recognized a principle of relativity in all knowledge, which ever and anon checks us in saying ‘this is so,’ to make us add ‘or so it is to me.’ But we are only safe, in our attempt to sketch, however roughly, the views of Scotus as to the mind in relation to a world of actual or possible experience, if we keep as closely as possible to his own words and to definite citations from his works.²²

Now there is a curious passage near the beginning of De Divisione Naturae²³ which seems to be taken by commentators as a theory of cognition. He has begun his dialogue by giving a very wide interpretation to Nature, so as to make it include things which are not as well as things which are. He then goes on to discuss the difference between the existent and the non-existent. It is to be noticed that he seems to include in ‘Nature’ that only which has at least potential or phenomenal existence. At first sight he may seem to be clearing the ground by getting rid of Non-being altogether, but this is evidently not the case, as some of the highest objects of thought are included under those of which existence cannot be predicated. Neither is he giving us a cross-classification to be used alternately with that into creating-uncreated, creating-created, created-non-creating, and uncreated-non-creating. For there is no homogeneity in his new principles of distinction. It is not five classes, but five modes of regarding things, with respect to being and non-being, that he is giving us. These sections are therefore much cited by those who treat Scotus from the metaphysical point of view. They do not seem, however, to constitute an important part of the treatise, and are not, I think, ever referred to again.

In the first place, we distinguish as being all that can be an object of corporeal sensation or of intellectual perception. This would exclude on the one hand God, who cannot be comprehended by mind or sense, and to whom, following Dionysius, we assign superesse; and on the other hand, any absence or privation of discernible qualities (such as blindness, or, he would probably add, sin), unless we consider them as somehow included in those things of which they are the privations or opposites.

The second distinction is harder to grasp. It is based on the arrangement of all things in a hierarchical order (for which we are again referred to Dionysius) according to their participation in the universal life, from the highest spiritual intelligence to the lowest degree of nutritive and productive activity. If we define any of these ranks which come in consecutive order, we deny with regard to the superior what we affirm of the inferior, and vice versa. For example, if we distinguish a man from an angel, it is by making definitions of each and affirming in each case of the one what we deny of the other. Thus at the very top, and again at the very bottom of the scale, we come to the end of the region of being, since what is affirmed or denied of the order cannot be denied or affirmed of a higher order in the one case, of a lower order in the other. Now the higher can comprehend the lower and also itself, but the lower cannot comprehend the higher. The comprehension of self as one of a series, differing alike from those above and those below, seems to be taken as equivalent to self-consciousness. The capability of being defined in a particular way seems to imply a condition of being in which any creature is contained within intelligible limits. We shall return to Scotus' conception of definition, or locus, later on. Meantime, we may take this mode as a distinction between cognized and cognizable on the one hand, and neither-cognized-nor-cognizable on the other, and observe how thought and being are never dissociated in his mind.

The third mode of distinction is between the actually and evidently existing and that of which the being is as yet only potential—as all men were potentially created in Adam, and the plant exists potentially in the seed.

The fourth way is that of philosophers who attribute real existence to that which is intellectually discernible, immutable, and incorruptible, and deny the actual being of what is material and subject to change and decay.

The fifth is a theological distinction. Any creature which, like man, has fallen away from the divine type in which it was created, has, in a sense, lost its being, though restoration of the type and of essential being have, for man, been made possible.

Though these distinctions are not entirely free from obscurity, they seem generally to be consistent with the principle that we are to acknowledge, as having some measure of existence, all that of which, with or without the medium of the senses, the mind can take cognizance. And we also seem to have, though not so clearly stated here as elsewhere, the identification of real existence with self-consciousness. The views here set forth would not enable us to call Scotus a subjective idealist unless we could proceed to show that he considers all that we call the world of things as not only existing for the mind, but as being actually in the mind, and having no kind of being except in relation to mind.

We have pointed out that Scotus taught the doctrine of an unknown God and of an unknown self, both of which are in a sense objects of human consciousness, though neither is circumscribed by human intelligence. Let us notice here that he does not acknowledge a third unknown in Matter existing apart from Mind. The ‘nothing’ out of which, according to the Fathers, all things have been made, is only to be taken as meaning negation or privation of being²⁴. Formless matter is not perceptible by sense or intelligence, and the forms by which it becomes apparent are themselves incorporeal in nature. The four elements, by the admixture of which all bodies are created, proceed from the primordial causes which have their being in the Word or Wisdom of God²⁵. Or again, what we call matter or body is recognized and differentiated by means of a concourse of accidents, and the accidents which make up the categories, as well as the categories themselves, which are accidents of οὐσία, are incorporeal and intelligible. Therefore in any interpretation or description of the sensible world, we have not to do with anything beyond the limits of pure mind. This may help to explain how Scotus, as well as the Greek Fathers, could speak of the change of body into soul. They did not hold the grotesque notion that really existing bodies might be transmuted into really existing souls. The change was only from one form of mind into another, or perhaps from the mode in which things had been regarded into another mode.

The ascription of all reality in the external world to mind is hardly intelligible unless we mean to say that, for us at least, the external world is resolved into modes of our own consciousness, that is, of the consciousness of each individual creature possessing consciousness. Scotus seems to leave the question unanswered whether the world exists for or in the particular or the universal intelligence; whether, that is, we are right in applying to the individual mind what is said concerning mind in general. Would he allow a plurality of universes, seeing that each mind, by taking cognizance of things, confers on these things somewhat of its own reality? He would probably have excluded any such conception by insisting, as he so often does, on the essential unity of all mind, and the unity of that human nature which, as we have already seen, he regarded as a notion in the mind of God. The pupil²⁶ in his dialogue finds some difficulty in reconciling the latter statement with the assumption of self-consciousness as the essential element in human nature, and that difficulty will probably occur to modern readers. Without attempting to explain it away, we may illustrate it by comparing it with another part of Scotus' philosophy. We have already cited his words as to the realization of God by man: ‘As many as the souls of the faithful, so many are the theophanies²⁷.’ This principle would seem not only to make all religion subjective, but to establish a kind of polytheism. Yet we know that his belief in a plurality of theophanies did not prevent Scotus from being a monotheist; and similarly the manifold appearances of the external world to the varieties of human consciousness do not seem to contradict the supposition of one world to which cohesion and harmony are given by the action of the human intellect. His views seem to be in the main derived from Dionysius. From him the words are quoted²⁸: ‘Cognitio eorum quae sunt ea quae sunt est.’ Perhaps the old idea of Protagoras: ‘Man, the measure of all things,’ had vaguely floated down to him, and become combined with the conception of man who has been made in the image of God, and therefore is endued with creative intellectual power.

We may observe here that it is the notions or conceptions of things, not things themselves existing independently of mind, that make up the universe which the human mind ordains and unites that it may use it as a dwelling-place. The word notion was coming to have its modern meaning²⁹, and the way was being paved for a compromise between the Realists and Nominalists, whose controversies had not yet begun. But to this point we shall have to return later.

However much obscurity, then, we may find in the ontology of Scotus, a few points stand out clearly, and allow us to call him a subjective idealist—and this quite independently of any theory we may have as to his anticipation of the ‘Ding an sich,’ or of the distinction between ‘Seyn und Daseyn.’ Things in general exist only as belonging to the mind which cognizes them, and that mind supplies to them the attributes by which they are distinguished from one another, or are made to fall into genera and species. Time and space are conditions in the mind of the thinker or observer, not properties of the things conceived or observed. The power of the mind thus to order its universe of phenomena is due, in some inexplicable way, to its having its own existence in what it may call (though accurate denomination is impossible here) the Highest Intellect—to its being made in the image of God. This implies a threefold existence of man—the human trinity—as being, power, and activity; and therein his self-consciousness consists. For he is conscious that he has being, that he has power to recognize his being, and that he actually does recognize it. The world to which he gives intellectual unity is not formed according to his own will, but by the operation of the primordial causes or prototypes, which are to be thought of as volition and reason at the same time; and which, being of divine origin and character, communicate life and being to all creation, man himself included. The whole creation is a revelation of God to those minds that desire to contemplate Him but can only do so indirectly. ‘But these things may be thought upon more nobly and truly than they can be expressed in language, and more nobly and truly understood than they can be thought upon, for more noble and more true are they in reality than in our understanding³⁰.’

Bearing in mind these general principles, especially the close connexion of thought and being, which seems generally to amount to a complete identification, let us attend to a few utterances of Scotus on the subject of knowledge, and of the way in which man can obtain it.

Since the intelligence of man is³¹ man, and the things which he knows exist in his intelligence, the communication of knowledge from one man to another is neither more nor less than the absorption of one mind, to a certain limited extent, by the other. ‘Whoever, as I have said, entirely [?pure] understands, becomes that which he understands. … We, while we discuss together, alternately become one another. For if I understand what you understand I become your understanding, and in a certain unspeakable way I am made into you. Similarly, when you entirely understand what I clearly understand you become my understanding, and from two understandings there arises one, by reason of that which we both sincerely and without hesitation understand³².’ If this passage were taken to prove that Scotus had no clear notion of the profound isolation of every human being regarded as a conscious self, it would save us from the trouble of looking for any marks of clear and deep thought in any part of his system. But the stress which he always lays on self-consciousness would lead us to think that in this place he was not confused, but sensible of that profoundest of all enigmas, the practically realized intercommunion of two beings, each of which is a cosmos to itself, and knows of nothing outside.

Knowledge, then, is a kind of mental assimilation, and the modes by which knowledge is built up are the same as those by which the universe is created. Analysis and resolution are logical processes, yet they are also the means by which the several parts of creation are brought down from the Supreme Unity into multiplicity, and finally restored to that Unity as their final end. Dialectic is the greatest of the liberal arts, but as it deals with being, genera, and species, it was founded by God when He said: ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind³³.’ Definition again, while it shows the locus (in a nonspacial sense) of things and explains what they are, is also taken to be the boundary and circumscription of the thing. God cannot be defined because He cannot be circumscribed. The higher nature can always comprehend the lower; thus the capability of defining, which in one sense is an art belonging to the ενέργεια (=operatio) of the soul, and akin to dialectic, may from another point of view be regarded as the power of ascending in the spiritual scale, so as to obtain a wider and ever wider range over which the faculty may be exercised³⁴.

Thinking is, of course, to Scotus, the highest occupation of man, unless we exclude from its sphere the contemplation of the unthinkable. What creation is to God, that is thought to man. Scotus takes as lawful and necessary means to the attainment and ordering of knowledge all that tradition had handed down—the seven liberal arts and the four logical methods—though, as we have seen, he gave to some of these a peculiar significance. We have already dwelt on the fact that he did not believe in the possibility of coming, by the use of any kind of argumentation, to definite theological knowledge. All that can be directly stated about the Divinity must be negative. Yet a fruitful suggestion is made that while we cannot say how it is that some beings are eternal and others are made, we can say on what principle we may call them either eternal or made³⁵. This would resolve the science of theology into the study of human thoughts about the Divine, and would probably include the determination as to which symbols might be used, in theological language, without too much violence to truth. Free as is his use of scriptural and patristic statements, he is not here entirely subjective, but would interpret according to the ‘fourfold division of wisdom’—practical, physical, theological, and logical³⁶.

Yet beyond all knowledge, properly so-called, is the realm of faith, and here, as in the case of more strictly cognizable things, the object of contemplation must actually come within the human mind, and be assimilated, before its being can be realized³⁷. ‘God is also said to come into being in the souls of the faithful, since either by faith and virtue He is conceived in them, or in a certain fashion, by faith, begins to be understood. For, in my judgement, faith is nothing else than a certain principle from which the recognition of the Creator arises in a reasonable nature.’ We seem to have here the doctrine of the Incarnation, presented from an entirely subjective and individual standpoint³⁸.

We have endeavoured to focus together sundry passages from the works of Scotus—many of which we had already cited—so that they might throw some light on his views as to the great mysteries of existence, thought, and knowledge. The result has not been a quite coherent picture, but possibly those who think it worth while to familiarize themselves with the thoughts that teemed in the mind of this earnest thinker will gradually find more and more links by which the various parts of his cosmology and theology are bound together. If, after much study, they still find him obscure, they would do well to see whether the darkness is due—if we may use a favourite expression of Dionysius and of Scotus himself—to absence or to excess of light. In either case they must acknowledge that, whether self-consistent or not, he is always abundantly suggestive.

But whether we of the nineteenth century are capable or not of comprehending his philosophic attitude, it certainly was puzzling to the men of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The further posthumous charges of heresy and the successive condemnations which went far towards depriving us of his writings altogether will be considered in our concluding chapter. Here it seems desirable to say a few words as to the bearing of his works on the question of Universals, which began to be agitated some time after his death.

Now here we are met with an unexpected fact. In a chronicle of the early tenth century, certain well-known teachers—Robert of Paris, Roscelin of Compiègne, and Arnulf of Laon—are mentioned as having taught that the art of dialectic had to do with words, and that in that respect they were followers of John, who ‘eandem artem philosophicam vocalem esse disseruit³⁹.’ Now of course we cannot be secure in identifying this John with our Scotus, and at first sight it would seem quite absurd to do so, since many of the passages we have quoted prove him to have been a realist of realists. We have seen that he regarded dialectic as a divine art, concerned with οὐσία, and if he varies the description of it so as to define it in another place as⁴⁰ ‘The study which investigates the common rational conceptions of the mind,’ we have here no nominalism, but a form of conceptualism. Nevertheless, Scotus lays so much stress on the importance and significance of names, that some historians—notably Prantl—are inclined to range him among the earliest of the Nominalists. Thus he speaks of grammar and logic as being subordinate parts of dialectic, and yet as being concerned with words and expressions rather than with realities⁴¹. Again, in allegorizing the story of Adam giving names to all the beasts of the field⁴², he says: ‘If he did not understand them, how could he rightly name them? For what he called everything, that was its name; that is to say, such is the notion of the living soul⁴³. He goes on to say that the notion of things in the human mind is to be taken as the substance of those things, and that similarly the notion of the universe in the mind of God is to be regarded as the substance of the universe. Here, however, he seems to have broken loose from names altogether, except in so far as they are a necessary part of notions. And elsewhere he says,⁴⁴ ‘Whatsoever we recognize in names, we must needs recognize in the things signified by names.’

It will probably be agreed that if the various doctrines as to Universals, and the long controversy between Realists and Nominalists form the chief element in the Scholastic Philosophy, Scotus is not to be regarded as the first of the Schoolmen. He is free from the imputation of multiplying metaphysical abstractions as well as from that of attaching undue significance to names. As in the other disputes with which we have seen his name mixed up, he has his home in neither party. His ‘soul was like a star, and dwelt apart’; and because he stands apart from his contemporaries and immediate followers, he seems to find his natural place among the free and lofty thinkers of all times.

Notes

1. De Div. Nat. iv. 2.

2. De Div. Nat. v. 32.

3. Ibid., iii. 20.

4. I have known a clever child who asked whether, if the planets were inhabited, a Christ had died in each.

5. De Div. Nat. ii. 25, and De praedestinatione, 6.

6. De Div. Nat. iv. 17; and also v. 8.

7. De Div. Nat. ii. 11.

8. Ibid., iii. 15.

9. De Div. Nat. iii. 39.

10. De Div. Nat. iv. 18 et seq.

11. De Div. Nat. v. 6.

12. Ibid., v. 25.

13. Ibid., v. 21.

14. Ibid., v. 7.

15. De Div. Nat. v. 36, p. 981.

16. Ibid., v. 25.

17. De Div. Nat. v. 39; cf. the fivefold theoria of the rational creation in v. 32, and also v. 8.

18. In v. 8, in the case of human bodies, the dissolution of body into the four elements and its resurrection are made to precede this change.

19. De Div. Nat. v. 40.

20. For Scotus' theory of cognition, and his bearings towards contemporary and later thought, see the books mentioned before, especially Christlieb, the Histoire de la Philosophie Scolastique of Hauréau; the Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande by Prantl, vol. ii; the History of Philosophy by Ueberweg, &c.

21. Notably to Christlieb, who traces analogies between Scotus and Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, &c.

22. If on the metaphysical side Scotus is claimed by the German Transcendentalists, he might, in his religious symbolism, seem to foreshadow the present-day school of liberal French Protestantism, especially as represented by Dr. Sabatier.

23. i. 3-6, with which cf. iii. 2.

24. De Div. Nat. iii. 5.

25. Ibid., 14.

26. De Div. Nat. iv. 7.

27. May I be allowed to cite the words of an idealist who was also a preacher? ‘Talk of God to a thousand ears, each has his own different conception. Each man in this congregation has a God before him at this moment, who is, according to his own attainment in goodness, more or less limited and imperfect.’ F. W. Robertson, Sermons, i. 117.

28. De Div. Nat. ii. 8.

29. See De Div. Nat. iv. 7; p. 768 and elsewhere.

30. De Div. Nat. ii. 35.

31. This view may seem inconsistent with the stress laid by Scotus on the Will and its freedom. Perhaps the power of volition is not ignored but rather implied in that of understanding.

32. De Div. Nat. iv. 9.

33. De Div. Nat. iv. 4.

34. A large part of Book i of De Div. Nat. is devoted to locus. The connexion between the logic of Scotus and that of Boethius may be studied in Prantl, vol. ii.

35. De Div. Nat. iii. 16, p. 670.

36. Ibid., 29.

37. De Div. Nat. i. 71.

38. See p. 83 [Alice Gardner, Studies in John the Scot (Erigena): A Philosopher of the Dark Ages, London, Henry Frowde, 1908].

39. On the questions raised by this passage, see Poole, App. II, and cf. Prantl and Hauréau.

40. De Div. Nat. i. 27.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid. iv. 7.

43. In the Vulgate the reading of Gen. ii. 19 is ‘omne enim (autem apud Scotum) quod vocavit Adam animae viventis ipsum est nomen eius.’

44. De Div. Nat. i. 14.