THE TWELVE PRINCIPLES. 671 Will, Virtue, Truth, Glory, Perfection, Justice, and Piety, presup- Their geneposed in all their functions and exercises; of which they cannot ral object. be the authors and producers; to which they, and Philosophy, their mistress, alike do homage; on which she bestows her golden crown, though each of them may have a silver crown. Having this general purpose, it behoves each of the twelve to show how each is related to the other, and to her. We must, we fear, cominit various blunders of sex in speaking of these personages. Raymond describes them generally as ladies, but when he comes to Intellect, he is naturally puzzled. Our puzzle begins sooner. Form should be feminine, and yet there is a very masculine tone The discourse about the speech. In the course of it, she or he says: "I am the of Form. likeness of God, Matter is the unlikeness. It follows that I am more good, great, durable, intelligible, loveable, true, perfect and glorious than Matter; therefore I can act more upon Matter, than Matter can suffer from me. That more dwells in me potentially; it cannot be brought into act by reason of the incapacity for it in Matter." This language may sound disparaging. But when Matter takes up the argument, she sufficiently justifies her own of Matter. dignity and position without claiming what has been denied her. "I," she says, 66 am passively good, great; powerful, virtuous. I am the potency of iron to become a sword; of Grammar, in one who is not a Grammarian. God can act by my nature or above my nature, that his own great power, and infinite virtue, and infinite liberty may be made known." Generation follows of Generaat great length, and with much learning, claiming a high function in tion. vegetable natures, animal natures, and finally in moral virtues. "Justice is a habit (saith Generation), implied in the just doing of the just man, and it is brought by me, first into potency, secondly into act." The like is affirmed of Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, Hope, Charity. Corruption announces herself boldly and eloquently of Corrupas the contradictory of generation, and traces her influence in all tion. the subjects treated of by the previous speaker. Elementation de- of Elementaclares herself to be a natural virtue proceeding from elementary forms as well substantial as accidental. She is constituted of the four substantial elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, together with the four qualities, Warmth, Cold, Moisture, Dryness. Vegetation of Vegetaspeaks of herself as that in virtue of which any plant grows and brings forth. "I have," she says, "an instinct in me whereby each particular rose in a rosary acquires its own special figure, leafage, colour, odour. These come from me as much as the figure, leafage, and colour of painted roses proceed from the intellect of the painter." Sensation then explains with much subtlety her function; of Sensation how it cannot be understood alone in the things seen, heard, tasted, or alone in the sense of hearing, seeing, tasting; how the organ of sense implies a sense to use it; how a common sense is implied in each tion. tion. tion. Of Motion. that which is below the In tellect particular sense; how all its senses imply that which is above themOf Imagina- selves. Imagination shows how she is connected with Sense, how she too is not subject to Sense, how she abstracts from Sense. Motion declares himself to be that virtue by which latent heat passes into actual warmth, by which smoke ascends, water descends, Of Intellect. &c. Intellect observes, in the course of his able apology, "It is my condition to be busy in collecting species, in distinguishing, harmonizing, opposing. By accident, therefore, I may be strongly positive. I may demand belief. There is a time when I am occupied with opinions, and doubts, and am restless. My toil may issue in a true or a false conclusion. If it is true, I am at peace; if it is false, ignorance becomes a habit with me." Intellect observes Science of further, “In two methods I produce science; the first method is above, and of by Sense and Imagination, from inferior things, as in the liberal, that which is mechanical, and moral arts; the other is altogether differentthrough God, and through separate substances (substances unmixed with accidents). Both inferior and superior science I create by applying tests of possibility and impossibility. But these tests I can use more loftily and securely in reference to the superior than to the inferior. I know that God with His goodness and greatness must do well and greatly. I know that He cannot do ill. I confess that God is a higher object than I can take in. His goodness and greatness are intelligible by themselves. Even intrinsic and extrinsic actions are more intelligible in that way than by my exercises, seeing that He is a superior power, I an inferior. But with the inferior science, which comes into existence through the Sense and Imagination, it is not so. For seeing I am spiritual, I am more disposed and prepared to understand the superior than that the Sense and Imagination which partake of corporeity should be sufficient for me." WILL speaks next. There is a fraternal bond between Intellect and Will. They demand the same object; neither can be satisfied without the other. Will produces love, as Intellect produces science by the Sense and Imagination, when dealing with lower things, participant of body in another method, when seeking fellowship with the Divine Will and Reason. Will is subject to the same kind of peril as the Intellect. It may embrace an evil object, and become evil; it may rest in a good object and be satisfied. Moral goodness in man, is the choice of good by the Will; moral evil is the choice of evil by the Will. Will declares itself to be higher and more spiritual than Sense and Imagination; to be at once optative and imperative, inasmuch as it bids the InOf Memory. tellect and Memory desire that which they desire. Memory says it belongs to her by nature to recollect; by accident to forget. She is in a direct relation to Intellect and Will; they work together; their union is the evidence that the soul is immortal. She takes the species that are given to her by the Intellect and Will. How Of Will. essentially goodness is implied in her nature and being appears from this,-If the Intellect and Will bid her recall the name of a man, she is often at a loss; but if she can recover some good deed done by the man, something which takes hold of the heart, then the probability is very great that she shall be able to do their bidding, and to find the title which had been lost. The conclusion Conclusion of Raymond's book is not one in which nothing is concluded. We are assured that he and philosophy, and her twelve Principles actually obtained an audience of the king; that the king, because he was humble, true, and devout, received what they spoke benignantly, and was evidently much moved. He left Raymond and the ladies confident that he would do some useful work. and Mahometans. 113. Raymond may well terminate a sketch of Middle Age Boethius and Philosophy which Boethius commenced. The same lady who Raymond. visited the Roman statesman in his cell met the Spanish devotee Relation of as he was musing in his meadow. She came to the first as a guide Philosophy to Theology. and judge; to the other, as a mourner and a petitioner for help. She was cheering the one against the injuries of kings; the other she was conjuring to ask the aid of a king for her protection. The first she pointed to the letter on her vest, which told her of a higher Teacher to which she could lead him, and of which as yet he was ignorant. To the latter she complained that her ministries to that higher Teacher had been interrupted and that they had been changed into rivals. The comparison is curious, and suggests many thoughts of what has been passing in the busy interval between the 5th century and the 14th. Other portions of Raymond's work and life lead to the same reflection. The struggle Christians of Christian and Saracen has been the struggle of the Middle Ages. From the hour when Mahomet returned from his exile, a monarch and a conqueror, to the hour in which Louis IX. breathed out his noble soul on the African coast, it had been a battle for life and death, with actual swords and spears. The best and holiest men, recluses who lived only for the unseen world, like Bernard of Clairvaux-righteous Kings who cared for the well-being of their subjects, and would not willingly spill their blood, like St. Louis,-yet felt that wars for the Sepulchre were the bonds of Christian faith and fellowship; the securities against the indifference which would cause all moral energies to rust. That day was past. The Divine sentence had gone forth against the bravest of all these enterprises, undertaken by the best and most single-minded of all the champions that had worn the Cross. The clergy and the people of the 13th century who, in a former age, The new would have cried with all their hearts, "God wills it," had begun, in audible murmurs, loud sometimes as well as deep, to declare that the religious wars had become a pretext to Popes for irreligious and dishonest extortion. And now came forth our Lully, warfare The Pope and the King. Louis IX., and Philip the Fair The Divina Dante's treatment of Popes and their enemies. dicant Orders. to avouch that a divine art, taught him in the hills, and monasteries, for learning Arabic, and, what is more than both, a bold proclamation by a man of that which he believes and for which he is ready to die, will conquer the Saracens better than the hosts of the West. It is a great change-the sign that other changes have taken place or are at hand. 114. One of them which has been hinted at, we might be less prepared for. How comes Philip the Fair, the overthrower and enemy of Popes, to be the champion whom Raymond and Philosophy seek in their deep distress? Of old, religious men fled from those whom they called civil Tyrants, to the Spiritual Rulers. By the one they expected that all thoughts concerning the invisible would be scorned; the others were the natural protectors of intellectual force as opposed to material, especially when that intellectual force, as in Raymond's treatise, renders such willing and eager homage to Faith. Philip certainly was no paragon of monarchs; in nearly every respect he was the very reverse of that predecessor, who was canonized, and deserved to be canonized. Philosophy was not happy in her choice of a patron. But experience had taught her votaries that, whatever was earnest and strong, might possibly find sympathy from those who were doing the work of the world, but could expect only rebuffs, indifference, or positive obstructions from the chair which some held to be the chair of St. Peter, and by some of Simon Magus. Raymond did not turn to Philip till he had tried the Popes. 115. There was another far grander spirit than Raymond's which was passing at the same time through a very similar crisis. Dante Alighieri was changed from a Guelph into a Ghibelline. Dante Alighieri, the most earnest Theologian of his time, found the persecuted Manfred in Purgatory, and some Popes in one of the hopeless circles of the world below. Yet no one more thoroughly But Of the Men- honoured the founders of the Mendicant Orders. The Dominican Aquinas in the Paradiso, celebrates the praises of St. Francis. He himself proved his claim to be the Angelic Doctor by untying, there as here, the most complicated knots of the intellect. the poet who listened with delight to these solutions is the poet of Florence and of Italy; the transcendental Metaphysician never for an instant forgets the sorrows of the actual world in which His patriot- he is living; the student sustains the patriot. Drenched in the ism and love school lore, it is still the vulgar eloquence-the speech of the people that is dear to him. Virgil is his Master, because Virgil was a Mantuan, and sang of Italy. And neither Theology, Politics, nor the study of ancient Song, crushes the life of the individual man. Fervent human love was the commencement to the poet of a new life. Through the little child of nine years old he rises to the contemplation of the Divine charity, which governs all things in heaven, and subdues earth to itself. choosing his of it. and the 116. Wise men of our own day have said that Dante embodies Reasons for the spirit of the Mediaval time, and is a prophet of the time which time to make followed. We testify our assent to that remark by accepting his an epoch. poem, coeval as it is with the great judgment of the Papacy under Indications Boniface, with the practical termination of the religious wars, and with the rise of a native literature, not only in the south but the north-as a better epoch from which to commence the new age of European thought, than the German Reformation of the 16th century. That we do not think less of that mighty event than those do who suppose that it winds up the scholastic period, we trust we shall be able to show hereafter. But its real importance for philosophy as well as humanity we think is The North imperfectly appreciated, when it is looked upon as a new starting South point in the history of either. There is a danger also lest our northern and Teutonic sympathies, which ought to be very strong, which cannot be too strong if they do not lead us to forget that God is the King of the whole earth, may make us unmindful of the grand place which Italy has occupied, and we trust is one day again to occupy, in the annals of mankind. We have no disposition to set Thomas of Aquino above Albert the Suabian, The natural or Roger Bacon of Ilchester; still less have we any disposition universal. to exalt the 14th century above the 16th. But the Florentine poet may be taken as a hopeful augury that better things are in reserve for the 19th century than for either;-that in place of the false universalism which he felt inwardly to be an incubus upon his country and upon mankind-a true universal society— such as he longed for on earth, and had the vision of in heaven,— may yet include England, Germany, and Italy within its circle. and the Printed at the Aniversity Press by |