MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY: OR, A TREATISE OF MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY FROM The Fifth to the Fourteenth Century. BY MUSLOD NS:0 DISTRUZI FREDERICK DENISON MAURICEM A PROFESSOR OF CASUISTRY AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. TO A. J. SCOTT, ESQ., PRINCIPAL OF OWEN'S COLLEGE, MANCHESTER. MY DEAR SCOTT, Though this treatise is a manual for the use of students, not a book which can have much interest for scholars, you will perceive that it has cost the compiler of it some time. I hope the time has been honestly bestowed, and that I may help a few young men, who know the names of the great mediaval doctors, to believe that they were not doctors merely that their thoughts, even when they appear to us most grotesque, had some connection with human life and human history. A very eminent writer, whose judgment on the art of the Middle Ages is entitled to the highest respect, has lately expressed unbounded contempt for the subjects which are discussed in this volume. I do not think he can speak more bitterly than I have spoken, here and elsewhere, of metaphysical and even of moral questions, when they are left to the schools, still more when they become the gossip of withdrawing rooms. I do not think he can be more tormented than I am by the words "objective" and "subjective," as they are used in our day. I do not think he can be more earnest than I am in protesting against the importation of philosophical formulas from Germany, which may have a sound meaning there, but which will generally conceal the absence of one amongst us. But because I agree with him so far, I consider that he is taking a very unsafe course indeed when he treats the questions which occupied the most earnest minds, at the time when Gothic cathedrals were conceived and raised-when art was, we are told, in its purest form-as if they were of no worth to beings to whom God has given not only eyes, but also thought and speech. As long as men have these gifts they must be moralists and metaphysicians. Those who sneer most at the names, will assume the characters in their discussions upon their own proper topics. If artists do not wholly abandon the human face |