quæ fida possit esse quæve sus putation. Until we have a science of logic and know how to bring everything to its rules and tests, he has no hope that we shall arrive pecta rerum at any safe or satisfactory conclusions respecting the laws of the incorrupta world. Here again we perceive the teacher of one important branch of human knowledge, forging chains which the physical test inveniri. student would afterwards have the most sore labour to break in pieces. fides, ex ratiocina tione non po Books on the 19. The books of Boethius on the writitngs of Aristotle himself were more important in his judgment than those which preceded them, as conducting his pupil into a more advanced stage of the science. To us they are chiefly valuable, as marking out a track of thought in which men were intended for a long time to run, as furnishing a Latin nomenclature for the logician, as carrying out into detail the principles which we have already shown to be characteristic of the mind of the writer, as attesting his indefatigable diligence, as proving how much it was the end of that diligence to supply his countrymen with a regular and systematic course of His treatise instruction. That instruction would have been imperfect, according to the notions of either Greeks or Romans, if rhetoric had not come in as the sister, at all events the handmaid, to logic. The commentaries on Cicero's Topics were intended to complete the Boethian circle of studies. on Rhetoric. Supposed De Trinitate, sonis et Naturis duabus. 20. We say to complete, because it seems very difficult to resist treatises. the decree of modern criticism which pronounces the theological and De Per- treatises of Boethius to be spurious. There are many reasons, we conceive, besides those which have been derived from the internal evidence of the treatises themselves, for adopting this opinion, greatly as it is at variance with an old belief or tradition. First, the entire absence of anything like a definite recognition of Christianity in works like those we have commented upon, so far as they are of a truly formal or scientific character, might be accounted for. But that, in marking out the different departments of human thought so carefully as Boethius has done, and in hinting at theology as one and the highest of these branches, no word should Reasons for be used to indicate that it was the subject of a revelation or in rejecting whom that revelation had been made to man, must needs seem them. almost incredible in one who believed at all, much less who believed with the kind of earnestness which we must attribute, in every question that really interested him, to Boethius. Secondly, it would be painful, and would lower our opinion of the man, to think that he could have written essays on the Trinity and on the two natures of Christ, merely as theses or exercises of his logical faculty. Thirdly, it was almost a matter of course that, if he left treatises so complete in themselves as those on Geometry, Arithmetic, Music, Logic, and Astronomy, some doctor of the Middle Ages would see the necessity of filling up the great blank that was left, and producing lectures on Divinity as nearly as possible in harmony with those which had been bequeathed by the Roman Senator. Fourthly, the faith in the genuineness of these treatises was inseparable in the Middle Ages from the notion that Boethius died a martyr to Catholicism and Orthodoxy. It is clear that he did die a martyr in a very noble cause, the cause of Roman liberty and justice. But there is nothing whatever in the history of his sufferings which can warrant, or even suggest, the suspicion that the Arianism of Theodoric was the cause of them. about his of mind in the Ostro 21. On the other hand, we are by no means disposed to adopt Question the opinion which has been proclaimed by many German scholars, Christianity. (amongst others by the latest editor of the Consolations,) that Boethius was a heathen. There is not the least evidence, in his writings, of attachment to the forms of the old religion: all external evidence would lead us to conclude that he adopted the established creed. Our readers may fancy, that in this century, there was no middle term between vehement conviction on one side or the other. They will have seen much in our account of the progress of philosophy in Greece to justify such an opinion. But they must beware of applying conclusions which they have rightly drawn respecting the Eastern world, to the West; respecting the Platonical school, to the Aristotelian. Men living at a period when the old imperial traditions were perishing, when the new Gothic world was commencing-surrounded by proofs that Roman law and life Possible state which had been so allied to the worship of the old gods had not Roman citl passed away with proofs as decisive that the religion which zens under sustained them had passed away-may very naturally have gothic sway. endeavoured to hold fast by that which they felt to be an heirloom for all future ages, without attempting to reproduce what had no hold upon the present, and yet without pronouncing whether it was good or evil in the past. A monarch like Theodoric who regarded catholics with jealousy and yet had no affection for paganism, would be likely to encourage men of this class. He would not understand their affection for the old classical world, but their equilibrium of mind and their willingness to treat Arians and Orthodox merely as common citizens of the Republic, would be acceptable to him. They, on their parts, would be confirmed in the position they had taken up, by the apparent uncertainties and the evident disagreements of the Christians. Dogmatism would not have offended Boethius. He was a dogmatist by The Philonature, by principle, by education. But he would certainly be shy of Boethiuskept scandalized by any looseness of opinions, by the absence of the him aloof logical precision which he demanded of every thinker, by the ology. indefiniteness and infiniteness which he pronounced to be the great enemies of science. These motives, especially the last, had comparatively little influence upon Proclus and the philosophers of Vol. I. 2 F from The Why the question is Important for our subject. The book Athens. They were students of the infinite. They believed indeed that very distinct and definite forms discovered themselves to the meditative and abstracted man in the region which lay beyond the measures and rules of the human intellect; but they were much more disposed to complain of the Christian church, for excluding the imagination, than for giving it too wide a scope. They were, as we have so often had occasion to remark, primarily theological. Hence, if they did not accept Christianity, they must come into a direct polemic with it. The Aristotelian laid down his data on Logic, applied these to the physical universe, admitted a metaphysical world beyond that, believed in a certain divine region which the theoretic man might behold and dwell in. But these last were the mere complements of a system which could exist without them, unless some great moral necessity, which neither Aristotle nor Porphyry, nor for a long time Boethius, seems to have felt, should force them first into the thoughts of ordinary men, and thence into the schools. 22. We are afraid we shall seem to our readers to dwell unnecessarily upon these differences between the two countries, two ages, two methods of thought. But the clearness of our future sketch so much depends upon the acknowledgment of them, that we would rather incur the charge of any amount of repetition than pass by the facts upon which the proof of these differences rests. The question concerning the Christianity of Boethius is important, on this ground especially. It is often supposed that the theology of the Middle Ages, such as we have exhibited it, in connection with the name of Gregory the Great, had not only a very close connection with the logic and the philosophy of the Middle Ages, (which it notoriously had, and which we have already said must be confessed by every one who would engage faithfully in the study of either), but that they grew up together, that they were from the first inseparable, that the theology determined the course which the dialectical studies took, imparting to them its own dogmatical and authoritative character. This opinion we believe to be wholly untenable. It has gained strength from the notion that Boethius being the parent of the Latin dialectics and philosophy, was also a theologian, and took pains to give his philosophy a theological and Christian character. The plain statement which we have made of what he actually did, is the refutation of this theory. have shown, we trust, that there is not a single element in his scientific teaching which is not derived from teachers of the old world, or from teachers who were adverse rather than friendly to Christianity. We 23. Notwithstanding this evidence, we are far from disposed to tione Philo- quarrel with our great Saxon king, or with the teachers whom he followed, for discovering a Christian element in the book which re sophica cords the experience of our statesman's prison houses, nay, for pronouncing it a distinctly Christian work. It must be acknowledged at once, that they had no warrant for taking this course from any phrases which occur in the book, that they put an interpretation upon it which the text does not authorize and which Boethius himself would have hesitated to endorse. An argument even might be drawn, and has been drawn, from this treatise, which is more decidedly adverse to the Christianity of Boethius than any of his other works supply. The man who does not directly allude to the Gospel and Him who is the subject of it, when he is speaking of that which supported him in suffering and in the prospect of death, might seem to afford the clearest evidence of his habitual state of mind, one which no other could equal or contradict. Undoubtedly this presumption does not only look, but is very strong. We can only explain why we do not yield to it, by giving an abstract of the Consolations. 24. The hard Logician with whom we have been conversing Boethius a hitherto, presents himself to us at the commencement of this book poet. as a poet. The contrast does not seem to us one which warrants a doubt about the genuineness of his earlier or later writings. There is a freshness and vitality in the style of Boethius when he is writing upon formal and scientific subjects, which would justify us in thinking that there was poetry in his nature, and that circumstances might call it out some day into verse. A man who could combine so much of speculation with the habits of practical business, must have had a mind of wonderful spring and elasticity. His life had been poetical and harmonious. When its outward activity was suspended, it was not very strange that he should begin to sing. It is with an elegy about his griefs that he commences. Then he proceeds to tell us in prose, how there came in upon his meditations the vision of a Woman of very reverent countenance, The vision. with glowing eyes, penetrating beyond the common power of human eyes, of brilliant complexion, and inexhausted strength, though so full of years, that she could by no means be deemed to belong to that age. Her stature was difficult to describe, for sometimes she appeared to retain it within the common human measure, sometimes she lifted her head so high, that it looked into the very heaven, and was lost to the gaze of the beholder. Her garments were of exquisite workmanship, fashioned, as he afterwards understood, by her own hands. Yet there was a look of antiquity, almost of neglect, about them. On the lower skirt of it he saw inscribed II; on the upper part of it. There seemed letters between them which rose like the steps of a ladder from one to the other. But the garment had been torn, apparently by violence, and some fragments of it carried away. She had books in her right hand, a sceptre in her left. This majestical lady was greatly The complaint. Invocation nature. displeased by the poetical Muses whom she found waiting upon the prisoner's couch. Is it fitting that he, who had studied under the teachers of the Academy and the Porch, should give himself to these Syrens? They must depart at once, that he may submit himself to his true Mistress, who comes, not to soothe him, but to probe and to cure. 25. The visitor, whose name is Philosophy, notwithstanding this harsh commencement, does not disdain herself to speak to him in song; only it is of a grave and inspiring sort, not tender and pathetic. The sufferer craves her compassion, and wonders at her condescension. When he finds that she has come to him, as she did to Anaxagoras and Socrates while they were labouring under false charges and expecting their sentence, he is emboldened to pour out all his griefs into her ear, proclaiming, not untruly but a little boastfully, the good deeds to his country which had deserved another fate, and affirming his innocence of the crimes which spies and sycophants had imputed to him. The thought is oppressive, not for its immediate effects only or chiefly. He has learnt by heart the Pythagorean maxim, "Follow after God;" he has tried to act upon it; and now he is deserted. Has he not a right to suspect that the world is itself given over to chance? Then in really noble verse, he invokes the Framer of this globe to to the god of tell him how it is that sun, and moon, and stars, obey the eternal laws which He has given them; the lesser lights quietly yielding to the greater, the sisterorb increasing ordiminishing her horn according to a fixed ordinance, and paling her fires before her brother's brightness; how it is that night and day succeed each other without disturbance and disorder; that the cold of winter yields, at its predestined time, to the fervour of summer; that the leaves which the north wind carries off, the zephyr renews; that, in short, no one thing in all nature breaks loose from its ancient law, or deserts the work that belongs to its proper place; but that He who governs all things with a fixed purpose, leaves the acts of man to the mercy of slippery fortune, which crushes the innocent with the punishment that is due to the guilty; which enthrones perverse manners on high, and enables the wicked to trample on the necks of the just, so that virtue lies hidden in darkness, that lies and perjuries are profitable to those who practise them, that high kings before whom multitudes tremble, own these as their masters. "Look down," he concludes, on this miserable earth, whosoever thou art that holdest together the bonds of nature. We that are not the worst part of thy great work, are tossed about by every wind and wave of fortune. Mighty Ruler, control these waves, and make the earth firm with that law by which thou rulest the heavens!"' The true cause of lamentation. 26. The divine visitor listens with calmness to this outpouring of grief and indignation, and then begins to compassionate the |