Unlike men of far narrower
minds, but more conformed to the spirit of the times, he founded no
school, and left no disciples to carry out the system which he had
advanced, and which was one day to have its triumph. At the end of the
thirteenth century the scholastic method was far from having run its
career. The minds of men were occupied with problems which it alone
seemed to be able to resolve, and they would not abandon it at the will
of the first innovator. The questions in dispute were embittered by
personal feeling and party animosities. Franciscans and Dominicans were
divided by points of logic not less than by the rules of their
orders.[12] Ignorance and passion alike gave ardor to discussion, and it
was vain to attempt to convince the heated partisans on one side or the
other, that the truths they sought were beyond the reach of human
faculties, and that their dialectics and metaphysics served to bewilder
more than to enlighten the intellect. The disciples of subtile
speculatists like Aquinas, or of fervent mystics like Bonaventura, were
not likely to recognize the worth and importance of the slow processes
of experimental philosophy.
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