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ism in the age of

CHAP. and darkened by the kindred sect of PlatoI. nicians. 11 But between these periods of obscuration, there was an interval of distinguished Aristotel- brightness. The writings of Aristotle, having been carried to Rome, by Sylla, the Dictator, Augustus. acquired in the age of Cicero, and maintained through that of Augustus, a similar regard from Romans qualified to appreciate them, which they had enjoyed among Greeks in the reign of Alexander. By the study of them at Rome, men of the finest genius, and the soundest judgment, enlarged their views, improved their taste, and sharpened their natural acuteness. From the corrupt state in which they were edited, part of those works, indeed, could not be understood without more painful contention of mind than men of the world, and in the higher ranks of society, are usually willing to exert on matters of mere speculation. But much also, remained, clear, copious, and easily accessible, concerning the affairs of human life, and the practical business of the world. This failed not to make its due impression on congenial minds, and established a sort of perennial philosophy, altered, however, considerably from the original, by transmission from one tongue to another, and from one writer to another, on the subjects of morals, politics, jurisprudence, and criticism.

The great corrupters of Greek philosophy, as I have shown in another work, were the Platonicians, or Eclectics, who began with the third

Communicated through the medi

11 See Supplement to the New Analysis of Aristotle's Works, pp. 132, et seq. 3d edit.

I.

um of the

to Con

ofthe East.

century in Alexandria, and who flourished in CHAP. that city, in Athens, and in Rome, for three hundred and fifty years, till their schools were silenced by the Emperor Justinian, in the middle Eclectics of the sixth century. The abolition of their stantinoschools did not destroy the credit of many emi- ple, Bagdad, nent members of the sect itself, whose wildest other cities visions were eagerly adopted by the credulous Greeks of Constantinople, and by them frequently combined with the spurious Christianity long prevalent in that licentious yet gloomy capital. From Constantinople, they passed to Bagdad13, where, in the ninth century, under the Caliph Almanon and his successors, many Greek books of science were translated into Arabic, chiefly by Greeks themselves, particularly the physician Honain, with the assistance of his sons and disciples.14

Every thing relative to morals or to taste, was The Phyequally abhorrent from the religion and from Metaphythe policy of the Moslems. But from the ninth sies commented by century to the thirteenth, the abstract sciences thelearned among the of the Greeks were cultivated in the great cities Moslems. professing the Mahometan faith, both in Asia and in Europe. The physics and metaphysics of Aristotle attracted their especial regard, and were interpreted and commented by Alpharabius, Avicenna, and Averroes, the three successive luminaries of the three learned ages of

sics and

12 Michael Psellus affords a striking example of this mixture in his book, Περι ενέργειας δαιμονων.

15 Giannone Historia del Regno de Napoli, vol. ii. p. 93. Edit. Venet.

14 D'Herbelot Biblioth. Orientale. Article, Honain.

I.

The sci

CHAP. the Saracens. These Arabic versions, fraught with many follies, speedily found their way into Europe, where they met and mixed with the ence com- monkish learning of the West, with which they were well calculated to amalgamate, since both, as far as concerns philosophy, were derived from the same polluted eclectic source.

bined with monkish

learning.

The Scholastics to

Aristotle

tion and practice.

In the thirteenth century, the heavy heterotally devi- geneous mass, brightened by occasional sparks of ated from false subtilty, assumed a Latin dress in the ponin specula- derous tomes of Albertus Magnus the German, Thomas Aquinas the Italian, and Duns Scotus, whose name was once deemed an ornament to his country. These, and other distinguished scholastics, had the name of the Stagirite perpetually in their mouths, while they greatly mistook his speculative tenets, and equally neglected his practical admonitions. It was his counsel, with which his example conformed, never to intermix

the concerns of philosophy with those of the Theywere popular religion. 15 But the scholastics unilong the bulwark of versally regarded philosophy as a mere handmaid the Roman to vulgar superstition; and their main drift was

Catholic church.

Their authority

to uphold the dominion of the Pope, and the belief of those erroneous doctrines, on which it had been erected. For the space of nearly four centuries, a mistaken Aristotelism was thus rendered the bulwark of the Roman Catholic faith, and the Stagirite's name was preposterously employed in defence of the two things which he most abominated, - superstition and tyranny.

The first general assault made on the scholas15 Metaph. ii. 4. et passim.

tics, happened at the revival of letters in the CHAP.

fifteenth century. In the middle of that century,

I.

Constantinople, after being long threatened, was feebly atfinally taken by the Turks. The danger and tacked by . distress of that imperial city filled Europe with tonists in Greeks, craving public protection and private the fir bounty; but whether they appeared as ambas- century. sadors, or as needy exiles, always ready to perform the functions of professors 16 in any of the great schools of the West. In Rome and Florence, and other Italian cities, Manuel Chrysaloras, the Cardinal Bessarion, and the venerated master of both, Gemistus Pletho, are celebrated for the introduction of a new and more liberal philosophy", instead of the Aristotelism which had long reigned in Christendom. The new doctrines were embraced by many of the great and learned, and by none more zealously than by Cosmo de Medici, who founded in Florence the Platonic academy, the first literary institution in modern Europe, not erected under the auspices of the Church. But the same delusions which had deceived the old age and dotage of the declining empire of Rome, again seduced the childhood and imbecility of newly-revived Italy. Of the boasted Platonic academy, Marsilius Ficinus continued, during four generations of the Medici, to be the ornament, or rather the oracle; but his works, and those of his contemporaries,

Greek Pla

fif

16 Hodius de Græcis illustribus, pp. 25. et seq.

17 Tiraboschi Histor. Litterar. vol. vi. p. 259. and Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo.

I.

CHAP. afford abundant proof, that this new sect is little entitled to the encomiums that have been lavished on it. Adverse, indeed, to the Popish superstition, but thereby rendered hostile to Christianity itself13, the thoughts of these Italian Platonists perpetually turn on the reveries of Pythagorean members or Platonic ideas; and their writings, like those of their Greek masters, are deformed by the mystical powers of words or sounds, by sympathies and antipathies, by the dreams of astrology and the dogmas of theurgy19: a mistaken Aristotelism had been enlisted in the service of the Church; a more fanciful Platonism was now arrayed against it.

The Reformers in

These light skirmishers made but a feeble imreligion pression on the sacred edifice, and on the schoconfound- lastic divinity by which it was upheld. Both

edAristotle with the School di

were destined to be assailed speedily by more efficacious arms. With the light of the Gospel, the champions of reformation dispelled the pestilent exhalations, and disparted the gorgeous but cloud-built castles, with which the schoolmen had surrounded a fortress of adamant. For the genuine philosophy of Aristotle remained entire, unhurt, and alike concealed from the combatants on either side. The reformers, engaged in an infinitely greater undertaking, were not concerned in distinguish

vines.

18 Leo Allatius de Georgiis apud Fabricium Biblioth. Græc. tom. x. p. 751.

19 Vid. Marsilium Ficinum de Vita cœlitus comparand. The chapters de virtute verborum ad beneficium celeste captandum, are worthy of Plotinus himself.

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