Defense of the Trivium

John of Salisbury: The Metalogicon. Daniel D. McGarry translation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.

 

John of Salisbury’s life spanned most of the twelfth century, and he knew many of the luminaries of that time. Thomas Beckett was a friend and eventual companion in exile. He studied under Peter Abelard in Paris. He is said to have been introduced to Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, by Bernard of Clairvaux. He served as Theobald’s secretary and then under Thomas Beckett. King Henry II exiled him to France, possibly thanks to his association with Beckett. Well respected there, he was eventually appointed to the Episcopate of Chartres by Louis VII, in which office he spent the final four years of his life.

Written during his time at Canterbury in the 1150s, the Metalogicon defends the Trivium against attacks by the “Cornificians.” Cornificius is a name John gives to the leader of this group; his identity no one has figured out. John approves neither of their critique nor of their character, they being among those “who would rather criticize the works of others than look after, order, and reform their own lives.” Proto-Machiavellians, the Cornificians brand “the habit of obedience” as “a stigma of servility,” and “the absence of guilt” as “an admission of impotence.” It might be, then, that they were partisans of the English king against the Catholic clergy, attempting to undermine the moral and intellectual authority of those loyal to the Papacy. John emphasized the connection between the liberal arts and morality, “since I am convinced that all things read or written are useless except so far as they have a good influence on one’s manner of life.” The defense of the liberal arts is in turn a defense of philosophy, which again he carefully associates with morality: “Any pretext of philosophy that does not bear fruit in the cultivation of virtue and the guidance of one’s conduct is futile and false.” Intellectual rectitude is a form of moral rectitude, as there are “three things that cause me to fear”: “ignorance of the truth, misled or wanton statement of falsehood, and the haughty assertion of fact.” Since “humility is guarded when we listen, while pride often insinuates itself when we speak,” he readily confesses himself to be guilty “in all three respects,” asking his readers to pray for him.

He does not ask his readers to pray for “the malicious wrangler,” Cornificius, a man of “inflated arrogance” who, “barring no means in his effort to console himself for his own want of knowledge…has contrived to improve his own reputation by making many others ignoramuses like himself.” Cornificius and his followers are contra natura. Nature has endowed man with reason and speech, while divine grace “fructifies nature.” Love of the good aims at beatitude, perfect happiness, and the Holy Trinity “has so arranged the parts of the universe that each requires the help of the others, and they mutually compensate for their respect deficiencies.” Virtue, strength of character, helps man to acquire beatitude. It is therefore “beyond me” to understand “what is the real aim of one who denies that eloquence should be studied; who asserts that it comes as a natural gift to one who is not mute, just as sight does to one who is not blind, and hearing to one who is not deaf; and who further maintains that although nature’s gift is strengthened by exercise, nothing is to be gained by learning the art [of eloquence], or at least that the benefit accruing is not worth the effort that must be expended.” In this, the Cornificians are decidedly not proto-Machiavellians; Machiavelli did at least demand effort from his followers, if not the kind of effort John of Salisbury has in mind.

How then does eloquence aid philosophy? The love of wisdom that animates philosophy proceeds by reasoning. “Reason would remain utterly barren, or at least would fail to yield a plenteous harvest, if the faculty of speech did not bring to light its feeble conceptions, and communicate the perceptions of the prudent exercise of the human mind.” That is, the effort expended in articulating thoughts, often in argumentation, strengthens thought, clarifies it. Further, thought is not only theoretical but prudential, and prudence is a cardinal moral and political virtue. “It is this delightful and fruitful copulation of reason and speech which has given birth to so many outstanding cities, and has made friends and allies of so many kingdoms, and has unified and knit together in bonds of love so many peoples.” For John, this means preeminently the relations between England and France, unified (if by now somewhat shakily) by the Roman Catholic Church. The traditional Church education in the liberal arts, beginning with the Trivium, must therefore be defended. “One who would eliminate the teaching of eloquence from philosophical studies, begrudges Mercury”—the messenger-god, the god of eloquence—his “possession of Philology”—for John, another word for philosophy—and “wrests from Philology’s arms her beloved Mercury.” Such a man “may seem to attack eloquence alone,” but in fact “he undermines and uproots all liberal studies, assails the whole structure of philosophy, tears to shreds humanity’s social contract, and destroys the means of brotherly charity and reciprocal interchange of services.” Carried much further, this would dehumanize men, who “would degenerate to the condition of brute animals,” their cities seeming “like corrals for livestock rather than communities composed of human beings united by a common bond for the purpose of living in society, serving one another, and cooperating as friends.” By eliminating or severely limiting communication by words, “what instruction could be given in faith and morals, and what agreement and mutual understanding could subsist among men?”

Cornificius himself exhibits what human beings would become, were they to acquiesce his criticisms of rhetoric, a topic to which no less a philosopher than The Philosopher, Aristotle, devoted a substantial book. Cornificius is a man of “bloated gluttony, puffed-up pride, obscene mouth, rapacious greed, irresponsible conduct, loathsome habits (which nauseate all about him), foul lust, dissipated appearance, evil life, and ill repute.” I, John, would reveal his identity, “were it not that I am restrained by reverence for his Christian name,” and so “have thought it better to be lenient with the person, without ceding any quarter to his error.” And while “nothing is more despicable than to attack the character of the proponent of a doctrine simply because his views are not to our liking,” Cornificius evidently gives ample cause to condemn his character quite apart from his views. And those views, it would seem have had a malign effect on this character, if it is not his malign character that has given rise to his views. Ever a man of Aristotelian moderation and Christian charity, John allows that “as far as a Christian may licitly do so, I would despise both the person and his opinion” (emphasis added).

“But let him snore away till midday, become drunk in his daily carousals, and squander his time by wallowing in carnal excesses which would shame even an Epicurean pig, a much as his heart desire.” Taking the higher ground, “I will confine myself to attacking his opinion, which has ruined many, as not a few believe what he says,” namely, the “host of fools” who “follow him,” that “motley crowd, made up mostly of the lazy and dull, who are trying to seem, rather than to become wise.” Before doing so, however, one must note that “verbose, rather than eloquent,” Cornificius “is continually tossing to the winds verbal leaves that lack the fruit of meaning,” a “hodgepodge of verbiage,” boasting “that he has a shortcut whereby he will make his disciples eloquent without the benefit of any art, and philosophers without the need of any work.” For the eros of philosophy and the Holy Spirit, he would substitute “a spirit of intoxication…under the guise of philosophy.” This, John adds, “is a common and well-known fact in all the monastic orders.” Some disciples of Cornificius go on to become “the same sort of physicians that they had previously been philosophers”—sophists of the body rather than the mind, demanding payment for their services and thus refusing to care for the poor while extracting money from patients desperate with pain. Still others engage in “the trifling concerns of court”—again, for the money. “They deem nothing sordid and inane, save the straits of poverty. Wisdom’s only fruit, for them, is wealth.” Since “the secret and hidden resources of nature” cannot “be charted by one who is utterly ignorant of all philosophy,” such men are rightly disqualified from philosophy, medicine, and politics alike. Or, at least, they should be. Regrettably, like Cornus, the crow, Cornificius “set himself to carping on what he despaired of learning.”

“But enough of this.” “Disregarding the personal faults of Cornificius” (relevant though they are, given the link between learning and virtue), “let us refute his erroneous doctrine.” That doctrine consists of two main points: “there is no point in studying the rules of eloquence,” he argues, “which is a gift which is either conceded or denied to each individual by nature”; “the rules of eloquence confer neither wisdom nor love of wisdom” because “philosophy (or wisdom, its object) is concerned not with words, but with facts.” 

It is true, John concedes, that eloquence as often described does not amount to philosophizing. “A man who is a liar in word and spirit will come to believe the falsehood he peddles.” But that is false eloquence. “He alone is eloquent who fittingly and efficaciously expresses himself as he intends”—he “who can with facility and adequacy verbally express his mental perceptions.” That being so, “I am at a loss to see how anything could be more generally useful,” not only useful for those who philosophize but “more helpful in acquiring wealth, more reliable for winning favor, more suited for gaining fame.” In order of moral rank, virtue and wisdom, which “differ in name rather than in substance,” come first, eloquence second, followed by health, “the good will of one’s associates and an abundance of goods,” acquired not only to satisfy physical desires but “to provide the material instruments of action.” Since “one’s fellows…possess the same human nature,” nothing can be “more universally efficacious and more likely to win distinction” than excellence in exhibiting the distinctively human characteristic: logos—reason and speech. 

The natural gifts we receive at birth can be “canceled or hindered by defects” or “restored or helped by aids.” Prudent care of those gifts “assists nature.” Socrates’ eros, initially directed at the bodies of women, “was subdued and controlled,” channeled into an erotic longing for wisdom. In souls whose nature is “propitious,” industrious cultivation will allow “its fruits [to] be readily harvested”; “if nature is unbenign it should be nursed even more carefully, so that, with the aid of virtue, it may more happily and gloriously grow strong.” But the Cornificians would “do away with logic,” the core of genuine eloquence.

Logic, “the science of verbal expression and reasoning,” being able to say what you mean, and meaning something that is rationally sound, in its broader meaning “includes all instruction relative to words.” Like any art, it “is a system that reason has devised in order to expedite…our ability to do things within our natural capabilities,” “an efficient plan, which avoids nature’s wastefulness and straightens our circuitous wanderings.” While “nature is the mother of all the arts,” “she has given reason as their nurse for their improvement and perfection.” It makes natural ability effective. Reason improves all the arts, including itself; logic is the art whereby the capacity for reason improves itself. Bernard of Chartres, the teacher of one of John’s teachers in Paris, identified three natural intellectual capacities: the ability to flit about, “easily learning but just as quickly forgetting”; the ability to creep along, “mired down to earth,” never progressing; and the ability to walk, the mean between these extremes, the ‘Peripatetic’ way of Aristotle, which “has its feet on the ground so it can firmly stand, and because it can climb, provides prospect of progress, and is admirably suited for philosophizing.” This is “a basis for the arts,” enabling the mind to exercise reason, which “examines and investigates things that make an impression on the senses or intellect.”

Eloquence and dialectical reasoning join with grammar in the Trivium. A complete liberal-arts education adds the Quadrivium, which consists of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The liberal arts are “the first to proffer their services to the natural abilities of those who philosophize.” “Our ancestors…studied them diligently,” learning “to comprehend everything they read,” elevating “their understanding of all things,” not only of books, having been “empowered” to “cut through the knots of all problems possible of solution.” The Trivium teaches “the significance of all words,” while the Quadrivium “unveil[s] the secrets of all nature.” The liberally educated person has achieved self-sufficiency. He does “not need the help of a teacher in order to understand the meaning of books and to find the solutions of questions.” The liberal arts are liberal because they liberate human souls from undue dependency upon the opinions of others. 

The first art of the Trivium is grammar. Like all arts, “grammar imitates nature.” And so, for example, a noun (a person, place, or thing) “does not admit of degrees of comparison”; a dog is a dog, not a different sort of cat. There can be different species of dogs and cats, but each species, each subspecies, is what it is. Nouns follow nature, that way. They help us to ‘grasp’ the natural thing they denote.

Further, “since our intellect is, as it were, the soul’s ear, as well as its hand, it derives absolutely no conception from words whose absurdity precludes understanding.” It means nothing to say, “a categorical horse.” But since “not everything false is absurd”—if I tell you I own a square circle, you cannot know what I mean—but if I say that circles are squares, I am either mistaken or lying—we need logic to separate true from false statements. The kind of logic the Trivium features is dialectical logic. Dialectic does not have the rigor of demonstrative (or apodictic) logic, most often seen in mathematics. Demonstrative logic proceeds from incontrovertible premises, self-evident definitions. Dialectic proceeds from probabilities. it does not estimate “utility or goodness,” either; that is the task of political science, which “treats of degrees of justice, utility, and goodness.” Grammar is more modest than logic, since the sentence “Man is rational” is no less grammatical than “Man does not exist.” The logician, whose is out to “determine truth and falsity,” begins with grammar, is limited by grammar, but goes beyond grammar, because as a logician he checks the premises of his argument against what is. If the premise of my argument is, ‘all humans are white,’ and you can produce a non-white human, my argument collapses. If the premise of my argument is, ‘all humans are categorical,’ the grammarian “jumps up to condemn this as absurd,” telling the philosopher that he is positing an unmeaning claim. Poets, too, “must never forsake the footsteps of nature.” It, too, “belongs to grammar, which is its mother and the nurse of its study.” Admittedly, neither poetry nor grammar is entirely natural, and each owes most of its content to man, its author and inventor,” but “nevertheless nature successfully asserts some authority in both.” A poetry that drifts away from grammar “will be dropped from the roll of liberal studies.”

“Nature is rich and bountiful, and liberally provides human indigence with her untold wealth, with the result that the properties of things overflow into words as our reason endeavors to make words cognate to things discussed.” Here is where the conventional, the customary element of language comes in. Custom is “the supreme arbiter of speech” in the sense that when we see a cat we may convey what we see to others and indeed to ourselves by the word ‘cat,’ but not if we are French; then we will say or think ‘chat.‘ Yet custom too needs not to contradict nature. If it does, it cannot endure and, while it endures, it will do human beings no good.

Why? Because in terms of the relation of custom to words, proper “speaking is the articulate and literate verbal expression of our thoughts”; it “shuns the pitfalls of solecisms and barbarisms.” To do so, the student needs to learn the art of grammar, learn to detect grammatical errors, and understand figures of speech. This matters because “the art [of grammar] is, as it were, a public highway, on which all have the right to journey, walk, and act, immune from criticism or molestation. To use faulty grammar always means that one is forsaking the proper thoroughfare.”

The art of grammar and the detection of grammatical errors are fairly straightforward. Figures of speech (“metaphors, metonymy, synecdoche, and the like”) can easily confuse the hearer and are “the exclusive privilege of the very learned.” One must always “take care to avoid crude figures that are hard to interpret” because “what is primarily desirable in language is lucid clarity and easy comprehensibility.” Otherwise, sophistry will likely ensue, “envelop[ing] the mind in a fog of fallacies.” Almost always, a speaker should “make straight the way for understanding.” 

“Grammar prepares the mind to understand everything that can be taught in words,” as such great men as Cicero, Quintilian, Caesar, and Martianus affirm. With characteristic sophistry, Cornificius “invokes the authority of Seneca to defend his erroneous contentions.” Seneca teaches, rightly, that “liberal studies do not make a person good.” John remarks “that the same holds true of other studies”; alluding to 1 Corinthians, he writes that “knowledge puffeth up” and that “it is charity alone that makes one good.” Nonetheless, will not alone sufficient to form good character, grammar “contributes” to such formation. Without it, you could not read Homer, and poetry is the cradle of philosophy. “The chief aids to philosophical inquiry and the practice of virtue are reading, learning”—by which he means grasping the doctrinal content of what you read—followed by “meditation and assiduous application,” that is, practicing what good principles have been set forth in the book. Meditation is necessary because it “reaches out farther to what is unknown,” what isn’t in the book, to “the hidden recesses of questions.” With the knowledge gained by reading, learning, and meditation, you can find the right goals of action. “It is accordingly evident that grammar, which is the basis and root of scientific knowledge, implants, as it were, the seed [of virtue] until it becomes solid virtue, and it grows in manifold respects until it fructifies in good works, wherefore men are called and actually are ‘good.'” John hastens to say that grace is still needed to impart “the faculty of writing and speaking correctly to those to whom it is given.” As to the books best read, “of all branches of learning, that which confers the greatest beauty is Ethics, the most excellent part of philosophy, without which the latter would not even deserve its name.”

“Subject both to nature and the will of man,” grammar provides the gateway to both philosophy, especially dialectical logic, and the formation of civil laws, which themselves “derive their force from human constitution while what is deemed expedient for the common welfare is considered equivalent to natural justice.” Yet Cornificius, “beating against a solid wall like a blind man, rashly brings to trial, and still more brazenly accuses logic.” The purpose of logic is “to ascertain the truth,” and in civil life it is indispensable to bringing the mind to prudence, the capacity for practical reasoning. Prudence is the first of the four cardinal classical virtues; while it “consists entirely in insight into the truth, together with a certain skill investigating the latter,” justice “embraces the truth” thus discovered, fortitude “defends it,” and temperance or moderation makes sure that none of these virtues ventures into foolish actions. “Thus it is indubitable that prudence is the root of all the virtues,” and “he who dreams of teaching philosophy without logic, is, in effect, presuming to eliminate the reasons of things from the quest for wisdom, inasmuch as logic presides over these reasons.” 

While Plato founded logic (he puts the first statement of the principle of non-contradiction into the mouth of Socrates in the Republic), Aristotle elaborated its corollary rules. There are several kinds of logic. Demonstrative or apodictic logic deduces conclusions from the fundamental principles of the sciences; “it rejoices in necessity.” Probable logic founds its deductions on opinion, preferably the opinions of the wise. Dialectic and rhetoric are subdivisions of probable logic, and both offer deductions that are likely, not necessarily so. Sophistry, however, “merely wears the disguise of probability or necessity,” having “no care at all for facts” and aiming only at “los[ing] its adversary in a fog of delusions.”

Dialectic being the kind of logic studied as part of the Trivium, John focuses his defense of logic on it. While grammar concerns the right way of saying things, dialectic concerns the substance of what is said. “A word’s force consists in its meaning,” animating the word “as the soul animates the body.” Like all kinds of logic, dialectic issues in judgment—in this case, judgment founded on probable truth. Christianity is right to teach that “the only sure road to truth is humility,” and dialectical logic teaches humility about the truths it discovers, as its practitioner must admit that he has arrived at truths that remain uncertain. Having so arrived, he will not engage in immoderate disputation, oversubtlety, or loquacity. Real eloquence derives from this practical wisdom. “In the hand of a pigmy or dwarf, the sword of Hercules is worthless.” To avoid this, not only must one not be an intellectual pigmy or a moral dwarf, making dialectic an end in itself, “walking ’round about and surveying itself, ransacking its own depths and secrets, limiting itself to things that are of no use whatsoever in a domestic or military, commercial or religion, civil or ecclesiastical way, and that are appropriate only in school.” Glancing again at the Cornificians, he asks (rhetorically) “What moral philosopher does not fairly bubble over with laws of ethics, so long as these remain merely verbal? But it is a far different matter to exemplify these things in his own life.” Without “the other disciplines,” you “cannot possess the riches that are promised and provided by dialectic.” Dialectic originates “as a consequence of other studies,” which “it subsequently organizes and vivifies” if it is not “deterred by the noxious impediments of inertia and ignorance.” It is prior to those studies (e.g., the Quadrivium) in the sense that, having originated in the need those studies have of it, it now must precede them in the course of study itself. It is “the common servant” of all other philosophic studies, whether natural or moral.

Dialectic proceeds by syllogism, aiming at convincing an opponent. The wider the knowledge of probabilities the dialectician possesses, the more convincing his arguments are likely to be. It proceeds to inquire into (for example) “whether one of two contradictory propositions must always be true.” However, one must not trivialize the Trivium: “Those who dispute with each other about whether or not goats have wool are not really discussing dialectal problems.” And avoid the opposite extreme, the tendency to invest very small things with remarkable significance, to “have the impression that every letter of the alphabet is pregnant with the secrets of Minerva.” Many supposed dialecticians “seem to be wrangling over words,” merely. The thesis of a genuinely dialectical argument is “an opinion of some learned authority,” especially if that opinion “is not commonly accepted.” The serious use of dialectical reasoning may be seen in Aristotle, especially in his discussion of genera and species—that is, of classifications requiring the mind to distinguish between what is and what is not a particular kind of thing, the exercise of the principle of non-contradiction regarding things.

Aristotle cautions his readers that “genera and species do not exist, but are only understood.” By this, he means they are abstracted from “particular things”; the particulars actually exist but the genera and species exist as commonalities among the particulars. The “abstracting intellect…simply contemplates the form, without considering the matter, even though in fact the former cannot exist apart from the matter.” The intellect “comes into sharper relief in proportion as it considers simpler things in themselves, namely, apart from composition with other things.” Reason discerns genera and species, “mental representations of actual, natural things, intellectual images of the mutual likenesses of real things.” John is no neo-Platonist. He does not claim that there are ‘ideas’ detached from individual things. Form always exists “through the matter, while conversely the matter is determined,” given shape, “by the form.” He concurs with Aristotle, who argues that “universals are only understood, and there is no actual thing that is universal.” On the other hand, “those who declare that genera and species are merely sounds or word concepts” have “strayed far afield from Aristotle’s teaching.” 

The study of Aristotelian logic predominated in John’s own intellectual formation, and he devotes most of the final two sections of his book to summary of and commentary on Aristotle’s treatises on the various aspects of logic: the Categories, Of Interpretation, the Topics, the Posterior Analytics, and Sophistical Refutations. In so doing, he aims at presenting each treatise “in such a way as to make the comprehension of its contents as easy as possible.” Definitions of “pertinent” terms and “the differences between words, as they occur,” are critical to such presentation. Just as important is the ‘attitude’ of the interpreter to the work he interprets. “That which is written should be studied with sympathetic mildness, and not tortured on the rack, like a helpless prisoner, until it renders what it never received.” Begin with “the evident literal meaning of what is written, until he obtains a fuller and surer grasp of the truth by further reading or by divine revelation.” And if he finds a passage impossible to understand, “let him not be therewith deterred” but instead continue to other books and even other writers, “as authors mutually explain one another, and all things help in turn to explain other things.” “There is little or nothing that lies concealed from one who is well read.”

The Categories teaches elementary logic, focusing on the meaning of words. Aristotle shows how a word can have multiple meanings and so require scrutiny with respect to what a given speaker or writer means by it. This “certainly both helps us to avoid being misled by fallacious reasoning and empowers us to deceive others by the same.” Definitions of words must fit the nature of the things denoted by them, showing “what things are universal and what ones singular, what ones substances and what ones accidents.” To know the truth about any thing, we first need to know if it actually exists, and then know what it is, what kind of thing it is, its size, “its relation to other things, where and when it exists, what it does, and what it undergoes.” And finally, we need to know why it is the way it is, although this knowledge belongs fully only to God. “The great efficacy of the categories with regard to the works of nature melts away when confronted with the divine essence,” since the works of nature are limited and God is not. Still, knowledge of the categories “is very useful,” inasmuch as human beings live among natural objects, and these are knowable. For its part, Of Interpretation investigates how to determine whether a statement is true or false. While the Categories deals with the elements of sentences, whereas Of Interpretation deals with the sentences themselves. 

While those two books introduce logic, the Topics, along with the Posterior Analytics and the Sophistical Refutations, give “the body of the art.” Of these, the Topics is the most important, “especially for those whose aim is probability,” the dialecticians. “The Topics is the first book which explains reasons,” teaching “argumentation from commonplaces,” which is what “topics” are. Clear definitions of words and accurate interpretations of sentences underlie any rational discourse whatsoever, and the Topics “lucidly teaches the art of defining,” which requires no equivocation and no indefiniteness, as “it is an absolute impossibility for anything to exist without its own specific differentiation”—that is, the characteristic or constellation of characteristics that distinguish it from other things. It is true, of course, that “what is substantial is frequently uncertain,” and therefore cannot be defined as precisely as we would like, at least for now. There was a time when “men thought that it was impossible to cut diamonds,” but since the discovery of an effective technique of doing so, we now know it’s easy. Also, individual things cannot so much be defined as described, since each is unique. John concedes that “it is easier to do something than to do it well; and virtue always involves difficulty.” 

The matter of definable genera and species on one side, describable but not definable individuals on the other side, leads to the problem of “identity and diversity,” definitions referring to the first, diversity to the second. “Things are said to be ‘different’ and ‘the same’ in several different senses.” This animal is not only a cat, it is also Felix, an observation involving no logical contradiction. “A knowledge of genus, property, and accident, as well as of definitions, is necessary for both proof and refutation in questions of identity and diversity.” “The determination as to what is necessary and what probable lies concealed in nature’s bosom, and nature alone knows her own forces.” Nature must then be “carefully observed” and “thoroughly examined.” Nothing “helps more to provide a knowledge of topics, to beget fuller understanding of the truth, to teach and to persuade, and to develop a happy faculty of dealing with every kind of subject” than the investigation of nature. In logic as in all areas of knowledge, Aristotle directs his readers to nature. 

To undertake this investigation rationally, one must understand reasoning. “All experts make ready their instruments before they attempt to accomplish anything by means of their art, lest their particular competence by nullified by the lack of suitable implementation.” This is what the several books on logic do. And since “showing off one’s art always invites suspicion,” it is better to discuss controverted topics with “an unassuming manner.” Pace Cornificius, but “excessive verbosity is the greatest wastrel of all,” exceeding even yourself in its profligacy. Here again, prudence should govern, as “we should deal with a learned man in one way, but with an illiterate person in another.” Syllogisms make sense to a learned man, but others need the more down-to-earth argumentation by induction. And waste no time arguing about the inarguable “Many subjects do not admit of disputation,” such as those that “transcend human reasoning, and are consecrated entirely to faith,” as well as those that “appear unworthy of the attention of the questioner and answerer, and serve only to demonstrate that those disputing about them have either lost their minds, or never did have any sense.” Rather, “to grasp the truth as it actually is, belongs to divine and angelic perfection, to which one approaches more closely in proportion as he more earnestly seeks, ardently loves, accurately investigates, and happily contemplates reality.”

His friend Thomas Beckett has “requested” that John next turn to the Posterior Analytics, which “examines reasoning” itself. While it is true that “the principles of all branches of learning are interwoven, and each requires the aid of the others in order to achieve its own perfection,” analysis breaks down topics into components that simplify the task of understanding them. John warns that the Analytics itself, however, is a difficult book to interpret, a “confusing” book, in part “because of its intricately involved examples,” its “meticulous exactness and brevity”—all features bespeaking Aristotle’s intention “to prevent its examples being anywhere subjected to refutation.” Do not read this book too closely, as its “subtle intricacies” will bog you down. 

The Analytics contains discussions of both inductive and deductive reasoning, leading again to a consideration of nature, although John pointedly remarks that “I have never known anyone who became a master at recognizing natures as a consequence of this chapter.” Overall, the book emphasizes demonstrative rather than probabilistic proofs. By John’s time, demonstrative proof, “the most demanding of all forms of reasoning,” has “practically fallen into disuse,” except among mathematicians and, among them, the geometers. It was his excellence in presenting the science of demonstrative proof that Aristotle won the title of “The Philosopher.” He had “forg[ed] a crucible for analysis” that earned him his advancement to “the authoritative position of teacher.” 

“But who is equal to this discipline?” Perhaps the great polymath, Aristotle, but since a demonstrative proof requires unassailable first principles as its premises, and since few men master more than one field in which they know enough “to infer conclusions based on the necessity of incontrovertible truths,” the comprehensive use of demonstration is exceedingly rare, less and less possible as each field of knowledge advances. Still, “it is the inherent nature of science to strive for demonstration,” so the attempt must be made, increasingly within each field and not overall. The promising fact is that there are certain “universal concepts of the mind, and then things that are known per se,” which form the basis for demonstrative logic; every human being at least potentially can comprehend such proofs. “What is more immediate to sense experience is better known to us, whereas what is more remote from it, as with the universal, is better known in itself and of its [own] nature.” That is, since “universal concepts derive their credibility from the fact that they are inductively inferred from particular things,” we “come to know abstractions by induction.” As Aristotle writes, “unless we have sense experience, we cannot make inductions.” It is “bodily sensation,” the “primary power or initial operation of our conscious soul,” that “constitutes the basis for all the arts, and forms the initial knowledge which both clears and makes ready the way for first principles.” Sense experience is an innate power of the soul that perceives things and discriminates among them. “No or very little knowledge can exist independently of it,” memory is a “treasury” of sensations. Sense experience is extrinsic to the mind, which analyzes that experience.

Imagination is “the offspring of sensation…nourished and fostered by memory” and capable of visualizing the future. It is not necessarily a reliable guide to the future, however, or to conduct in the present. “Numbered among imagination’s offspring is carnal lust, a poisonous pest, extremely opposed to the project of philosophizing.” Imagination does not obey the principle of non-contradiction, since our pleasurable expectations run into disappointing realities. The result is Goethe’s Werther, who Aristotle anticipates two millennia in advance: “If the sadness and sorrow grow so violent that they disorder and upset the soul, anger flares from the friction.” Imagination therefore needs to “develop caution, whereby it comes to shun whatever is noxious, such as images that encourage melancholy, anger, and lust, or their daughters, envy, hate, calumny, carnal wantonness, and vanity”—in a word, Cornificianism. But then again, “if our imagination becomes overly cautious, it risks becoming timid, whereas if it grows too incautious, it is in peril of becoming foolhardy.”

Sensation and imagination make “judgments”—e.g., warm/cold, black/white. These opinions may or may not be accurate, reliable, since “often as senses are duped,” as when we see a stick in the water, whose parts seem disconnected. “Sensation deceives the untutored.” The cure for such deception is the experience that leads to prudence, which aims at “the investigation, perception, and skillful utilization of truth,” looking to the future in a rational, not merely imagined way, thereby “form[ing] providence.” Prudence recalls past events, appraises what is present, begetting discernment by “tak[ng] full cognizance of everything” to the degree possible. That is, sensation and imagination yield opinion, which is subject to prudential reasoning that can then lead to scientific knowledge. Extract the stick from the water to see its real shape. Ergo, “sensation is the progenitor of science,” the origin of human knowledge. Notice that Aristotle, with John following, comes close to the modern scientific method. Prudence brings experience, preserved by memory; the word ‘experiment’ means a kind of experience. In modern science, the ‘memories’ are the results of previous experiments/experiences. Memories, John writes, result in “an experimental proof.” 

For a Christian, faith complicates the picture. Aristotle, John reports, defines faith as “exceedingly strong opinion.” It is “most necessary in human affairs, as well as in religion” because “without faith, no contracts could be concluded, nor could any business be transacted.” And, of course, “without faith, where would be the basis of the divine reward of human merit?” Lying “between opinion and science, faith “strongly affirms the certainty of something” without having “arrived at this certainty by science.” If true, religious faith leads to sophia, wisdom in the highest sense originating from a spiritual source, not a temporal-sensible source. The ancients, living before the Christian revelation, “conceived of Prudence and Truth as sisters.” Since prudence born of sense experience alone is fallible, it seeks the “sure and reliable” estimate of reason; “prudence therefore begets Philology” or philosophy. However, “it is easier to love reason than to possess it,” which “is the lot of the few.” Only with “intensified effort” can the soul see “with greater clarity,” hold its opinion “with greater security,” and judge “with greater accuracy.” What is more, “the very things concerning which reason alone judges, and whose essence is distinct from the nature of sensible and individual things, are likewise called ‘reasons.'” Some reasons achieve certainty only through the supreme Logos. “That God is God, that the Father has a Son, and that the Holy Sirit has the same substance as both [Father and Son], are not merely statements” but eternal truths “firmly founded in the divine judgment,” not in the judgment of every human being. There are also humanly accessible “everlasting” if not eternal truths, such as mathematical ratios (the word itself meaning reasons), inhering in the nature of created things and therefore infinite in their perpetuity if not eternal as the God who ordained created things. 

Human beings, alone among created things, partake of some portion of the Logos. They are capable of reason, which is both a power and an activity of that power. “God, breathing life into man, willed that he partake of the divine reason”; only man “contemplates divine truths.” Accordingly, reason “transcends all sense perception, and judges concerning spiritual as well as material realities,” “ris[ing] to the contemplation of heavenly things.” In this, the ‘ancient,’ Seneca concurs with the Hebrew Bible, “although his opinion was not really exactly the same,” since his conception of the “Divine Spirit” was actually naturalistic. This being so, it is nevertheless true that in both the ‘ancient’ and the Hebrew senses, “our reason is ennobled by its divine origin, and powerful with a divine activity.” This is why “philosophy agrees that the cultivation of reason should be our primary concern,” as “reason curbs unruly impulses and brings everything into conformity with the norms of goodness.” Obeying the divine mind, “one will move through his allotted span of life making happy progress,” with reason “watch[ing] out for both our body and soul,” serving “as a moderator to bring them into cooperation” in accordance with their natures. “Reason, although divine, is, as it were, set into motion by the winnowing fan of sensory perceptions and acts of the imagination,” begetting prudence, begetting philosophy.

There is still another feature of the human mind that is indispensable to wisdom. The “intuitive understanding,” for which the Greek word is nous, “actually understands what reason investigates.” Reason, proceeding from the principle of non-contradiction, discards falsehoods, serving as a higher-level winnowing fan, separating not false sensations from true but false thoughts from true. Nous “treasures up the preparatory gains of reason into wisdom.” It is, then, the higher-level equivalent of memory, the treasury of experience. “Besides comprehending what is human,” intuitive understanding “also contemplates the divine causes behind all reasons within the natural powers of its perception,” although there remain divine truths “more or less fully known to us” only “according to the decree of divine dispensation,” divine revelation. Such understanding, “according to Plato, ‘is possessed only by God and a few select individuals,” the philosophers. Wisdom proceeds from intuitive understanding. “I believe that wisdom,” sophia, “derives its name from the fact that good men have a discerning taste for the things of God,” as seen in the writings of the Early Church Fathers, who “associated knowledge with action and wisdom with contemplation.” The Biblical prophets themselves “testify that even fear, which is ‘the beginning of wisdom,’ is a result of the sensory experience or mental image of pain.” Fear of actual or future divine punishment brings human beings to refrain from offending God and to practice piety and to exercise obedience to His commands. Thus, “one acquires knowledge, which relates to action,” and repeated actions bring not fear but courage in ‘this life’ among the things on earth. Such is “rational submission,” in contrast to submission to the passions and to the passionate, the tyrannical. Intuitive understanding “concerns itself with divine truths, and the relish, love and observance of the latter constitutes true wisdom. 

While “certain lesser philosophers,” who reason “from the fact that from sense perceptions our mind proceeds to scientific knowledge, argue that we can have knowledge only of those things that are perceived by our senses,” this claim would be “lethal” to philosophy. The thinking soul is invisible and indivisible, therefore “imperishable.” One should always think and act as an imperishable being, not as one who will evanesce without personal consequence.

From Aristotelian logic, John now turns to Aristotle’s account of the appearance of logic in Sophistical Refutations. “I would be reluctant to say that any other study could be more beneficial to the young,” who are in urgent need of identifying sophistry under its many masks. Further, “if one lacks [a knowledge of] sophistical logic, in vain does he claim to be a philosopher.” Careful study can make sophistry “serve as the handmaid of truth and wisdom”; “otherwise, it will “play the adulteress, who betrays her blinded lovers by exposing them to errors and leading them to the precipice.” He does not mean an intellectual precipice, only. “An erroneous life is more pernicious than faulty speech.” Sad to say, “there is hardly anyone, who, in his actual way of living, does not take after the sophists,” making a show of being better he is. Concealing one’s defects from others “is to become a sophist in one’s way of life.” It is to be a Cornificius.

Predictably, Cornificius disparages Aristotle’s books on logic. John continues to disparage Cornificius, turn, a man “even more contemptible than Bromius, the buffoon of the gods.” Bromius is one of the names of Dionysus, god of wine and madness, the dying-and-rising god who mimics Christ, amounting to an Anti-Christ. “Since logic has such tremendous power, anyone who charges that it is foolish to study this [art] thereby shows himself to be a fool of fools.” Just as Bromius is the buffoon of the gods, Cornificius is “the clown of philosophers”; “he yaps at what he cannot attain.” 

What should a rational person do, when pestered by such a man? If his argument amounts to mere quibbling over words, “refuse to argue any further with him” and tell him he is wasting his time. More impressively, however, sophists will attempt to trap their prey into a self-refutation, a fallacy, a paradox, a solecism, or confusion exhibited verbally by babbling. They often accomplish these things by inducing you to admit a false premise; if so, “bring the discussion back to a reexamination of what was previously conceded.” If you see that the conclusion reached is a mixture of truth and falsehood, then “accept what is intelligible, but reject what cannot be explained.” And “finally, if the mode in given instances utterly defies human comprehension, we should not worry about seeking scientific knowledge of it.” Even sound logic, “by itself,” is “practically useless,” as the modern scientists would remark, centuries later. The young, especially, incline toward “the impudence of sophistry.” “The temerity of adolescence should be restrained,” and it is “the duty of those who have the title and function of teachers to see to this.” “Facetious folly, noisy [volubility], empty loquacity, and puerile silliness, should all be set aside, as soon as the first soft beard begins to appear on one’s face.” Mercury, the god of eloquence, must wed Philology in order for the young man’s soul to attain “three things most desirable”: genuine goodness, unadulterated truth, and sound, trustworthy reasoning. John cautions that human nature at its core wants these things, but cannot acquire them unaided. We need divine grace. Prudence “elicits this affection” for divine things, fear of God being the beginning of wisdom; love of God in turn leads to Wisdom, Sophia, resulting from the contemplation of divine things. 

Previously, John had identified philology with philosophy. He now refines his definition. Philology—literally, love of logos—precedes “its two sisters, philosophy and philocaly, which is love of beauty. “Philology comes first, inasmuch as it discloses the nature, power, and counsels of each of the others,” laboring “to attain certitude” and thus “exercis[ing] great caution to avoid error.” Philosophy and philocaly go beyond this winnowing function by conferring actual virtues on a human soul. That is, by the exercise of logic, of reason, we achieve knowledge that “can be called ratum, established. Ratio yields ratum. It is true that only God possesses “true reason,” but human beings can make progress by considering what a thing is, how it differs from, or is similar to other things, and “whether it has, or can have contraries.” God possesses “original reason,” which “embraces the nature, development, and ultimate end of all things,” but his human creatures partake of this “spiritual force that examines the natures of things and acquires a knowledge, not only of material entities, but also of concepts perceptible by the intellect alone.”

The clear superiority of divine or original reason to human reason raises the question of providence and free will. Aristotle has no place for divine providence, but he does consider the relation of necessity to choice, “maintain[ing] that, although things are, on the one hand, partly necessary, they are also, on the other hand, partly subject to natural changes and to free will.” He does not venture to “presume to state definitely what is true in each and every case, however, and his followers continue to dispute the matter. This is an example of man’s rational imperfection. “Slipping about in a mire of incertitude, man apprehends as much as he can.” For human beings, humility is a virtue, since we have so much to be humble about. The Latin word for truth, verum, derives from the Greek heron, meaning secure, stable, certain, clear. A ‘hero’ should be true, although unfortunately, since wily Odysseus, “the name denotes perfidy.” Rather, we Christians “refer to the transfer of the elect from this world’s inconstancy and emptiness to the glory and security by a catholic word, and call them ‘saints,’ owing to the confirmation they have attained.” To sanction means to confirm, to ‘ratify,’ leading us back to ratum.

The contrary of the security, the stability of truth is emptiness. “What is false is absolutely nothing”; “this both the ancient philosophers and the catholic Fathers have declared.” All is vanity, says the Book of Ecclesiastes, because what is temporal, temporary, is fundamentally empty. Such things “vanish like smoke.” Unlike God, matter, and ideas, although God is eternal, whereas matter and ideas, created things, are only perpetual. As to the speaker of falsehood, the anti-Christ or opposite of God, “something that is false is so called from the fact that only a mind that was empty and void would conceive of such a thing.” “The truth of anything is directly dependent on the degree in which it faithfully reflects the likeness of God.” “In God…reason and truth are one”: “I am the truth.” God’s reason “illuminates itself, and His truth contemplates itself.” But in creation, “truth is one thing, reason another,” since in creation “truth is an image of the divinity, which is sought and found by reason in created things,” aby “a virtue or activity of the mind, whose object is to discern truth.”

Aristotelians intend to “reject all empty illusions, determine objective reality, and seek after, venerate, and live according to the truth of God in every respect.” In so far as they actually do so, “they do not labor in vain.” But they cannot do so, comprehensively. “The many impediments to understanding include invincible ignorance of such things as the mysteries of the Holy Trinity, which reason cannot explain; the frailty of man’s condition; the brevity of human life, the neglect of what is useful and concern with what is unprofitable; the conflict of probable opinions; sin which makes one unworthy of seeing the light; and finally the great multitude and vast expanse of subjects to be investigated.” The “pagan philosophers…suppressed the truth of God by falsehood and became vain in their thoughts through their own fault.” In this, they failed to comply with the command of their own Delphic oracle, who commanded, ‘Know thyself.’ A person who knows himself exhibits not pride but humility. “He is not thrusting himself precipitously and rashly into questions that exceed his comprehension” and takes care to love God and love his neighbors as he loves himself. He who “imagines that he can find God by processes of investigation and argumentative reasoning conducted by the faculties of his own mind…is doubtless making the greatest possible of all mistakes.” If you really know yourself, you will know that “it is absolutely impossible to know what He is.” “Since not only man’s senses, but even his reason frequently err, the law of God has made faith the primary and fundamental prerequisite for understanding of the truth.”

John concludes his book by citing both a secular-political and an ecclesiastical-political illustration of human error. “The present day is more suited to weeping than to writing,” as “what I see about me convinces me that the world is subject to vanity.” Our hopes for peace were ruined in southern France, thanks to a conflict between the French king, Louis VII, and the English king, Henry II. Several years earlier, Louis had annulled his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine on the grounds that she had produced no male heir. She lost no time marrying Henry, then Duke of Normandy, who, upon assuming the English throne, formed the Angevin Empire, with territories on both sides of the Channel. Louis took strong exception to that and war had ensued. “Kings whom we had seen the best of friends have become each other’s implacable enemies.” Now, too, the Catholic Church has lost “our Sovereign Pontiff,” Adrian, whose death “has saddened most our own England, his native country,” and none more than John himself, his close friend. “Even after he became Roman Pontiff, it was his delight to have me eat with him at his very own table.” John had successfully petitioned Adrian to grant Ireland to Henry, arguing that the Donation of Constantine gave authority over all islands to the Church. [1] Quite apart from the sorrow of this loss has been its schismatic consequences, “the worst catastrophe.” The German Emperor Frederick I set up an anti-pope called ‘Victor IV,’ in opposition to the new pope, Alexander III. “Wars have broken out that are worse than civil, for they are sacerdotal and fraternal.” And finally, in these times of misery, John has been appointed to administer the office of Theobold, the venerable Archbishop of Canterbury, who is now “gravely ill.” I cannot, he writes, “adequately describe the torments of my crucifixion,” and can only pray to God that He will, in His mercy, deliver Theobold “from all mental and physical infirmity, so far as He foresees this to be expedient for Himself and for us.” He asks his readers to pray for him. “Let them pray that, dispelling the darkness of ignorance, and uprooting love of empty vanity, He may enlighten me with His knowledge, and make me a zealous investigator, lover, and observer of the truth.”

 

Note

1. The editor hastens to note that there is no such grant of authority in the Donation of Constantine, although Pope Urban II had asserted such a right in 1091.