THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN DANTE’S DEBT TO ARISTOTLE By JONATHAN WRIGHT, M.D.

PLEASANTVILLE, N. Y.

ALTHOUGH a recent Italian reviewer culture, knowledge, science and refinement in Scientia admits that the throughout the whole continent of Europe. A—civilization of Europe had its So strong and so universal was the religious Ax. rejuvenescence, in the first stages, prejudice, especially following the crusades from the darkness of the Middle Ages given for many hundred years, that this historical it by Islam, he thinks this is grossly exag- fact was obscured and ignored by the gerated and an unjust view as to the Italian historians of Europe. The reaction against Renaissance. This complaint from a patriot this perverse lack of candor by Christian is perhaps to be viewed with lenity, but that writers may be said to have begun before the Italian Renaissance, properly defined, rather than after the first publication, in was a somewhat later and more complicated 1852, of Renan’s essay on Averrhoes.1 The result of the infiltration of oriental thought, nephew then sat on the throne of France, some three or four hundred years earlier, but it was the great Napoleon who had car- can scarcely be denied. As to the germina- ried the eagles and scientists of France to tion of philosophy and science in the Egypt fifty years before. There the latter Dugento and Trecento, the pre-Renaissance opened their eyes not only to the fancy that of learning, there certainly can be no doubt. forty centuries looked down on them from At the time of the birth of Dante, at least the tops of the pyramids, but to the fact by the time of the death of Saint Thomas that somewhat less than a thousand years (1274), not directly due to criticisms and after the fall of Rome, the science, the comments that arose among ecclesiastics literature and the culture of the Arabs had both Christian and Mohammedan, it was taken the place of the Roman and the Greek, true, nevertheless, that the philosophical at Alexandria. It cannot be doubted that they thought of the pre-Renaissance was greatly reflected on its introduction at that time stimulated. In this the name of Ibn Roschid into their own country, but it was Renan or Averrhoes, as we know him, is preemin- who made it clear to the world. By the time ent. Through Averrhoes and the opposition (1258) the Mongols had shattered the in intellectual problems which he excited power of the Arabs in their homeland and in Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus and had sacked and burned Bagdad, the great their followers, calling for a mental activity awakening in Europe was under way, with hitherto strange to the Middle Ages, this which the Nestorians and the Jews had at philosophical thought came into promi- their very start inoculated the fierce fol- nence. Through these men, Averrhoes, the lowers of the prophet. Arabian, primarily stirred up a European It seems to have needed the brilliant antagonism and Aristotle came into his own exaggerations of Draper in 18642 to bring again. the fact fully home to the consciousness of It has long been known to all those whose the writers of European history for Renan’s learning was sufficiently large to interest far more temperate and evenly balanced them in the history of thought that it was 1 Renan, E. Averrhoes et 1’Averrhoisme. Essai the Arab conquest of the southern fringe historique. Caiman-Levy, Paris, 1884. of Italy and of the better part of Spain for 2 Draper, J. W. History of the Intellectual Develop- eight hundred years which began and spread ment of Europe. Bell & Daldy, Lond., 1864, 2 vols. and better authenticated research had to to conquer the infidel in battle, the priest- wait thirty years for its republication and hood tried to convert them by gentler means expansion. By that time Draper’s work and and this opened another path to Arabian the work which it stimulated had made the influence when these cowled men returned era of Arabian science familiar, at least, to home unsuccessful, but even before this the academic circles. Since then Berthelot, and eastern tales had drifted in. There was in our day Holmyard and Sudhoff are only a extant in the eleventh century a manu- few among many, who have illuminated the script which was translated from the San- subject. It is not possible to go into this skrit into what was then modern Greek; here, but as a Consequence, perhaps, a this was a collection of Hindu tales about Catholic priest in Spain has brought forward animals that talked like men, which before a topic less familiar to scientific men, yet this had played a considerable part in in its implications quite as important and Persian and Arabian literature for hundreds still more impressive than our present com- of years before it came to the attention of mon knowledge of the role of Arabian science Europeans who could read. These stories in the history of thought. It serves better in in the thirteenth century were translated forcing on our minds the realization of how first into Hebrew and then into Latin to Arabian influence penetrated and permeated make them accessible, however, this is a the minds of men of the Dugento in Italy. matter of slender historical interest to the I am referring to the work of Miguel Asin.3 modern ethnologist. Every continent has Dante, as he says, was midway in life’s known the tales told by Aesop and La journey when he set himself to write the Fontaine and Uncle Remus. They may go “Commedia” and that point in the poet’s back to the caveman but they spring spon- life marks the termination of the Dugento. taneously from all primitive men in contact By 1300 the leaven of Islam had made far with primitive nature. Our point of interest more than a beginning of its ultimately is the early entrance into a receptive primi- widespread influence on science and theol- tive Europe of currents of thought and ogy. Averrhoes had stirred the dead bones of forms of expression, which were oriental. scholasticism and ecclesiasticism into a These are the currents of other parts of life they had never known before without the ocean of Arabian influence which encir- acquiring among his own people, or at least cled Europe before Renaissance days with not for long, any paramount influence, but its crescent, but this book of Asin’s turns beyond the Pyrenees St. Thomas Aquinas our attention to something else. Miguel and Albertus Magnus and a hundred lesser Asin y Palacios is a professor of Arabic in men sprang to the defense of what they the University of Madrid. He wrote a book considered the real tenets of the Christian some time ago on the “Mussulman Church. The great Commentator had mis- Eschatology in the Divine Comedy.” Stim- understood or misinterpreted Aristotle or ulated and supported by the Duke of Ber- deliberately lied about him and in science as wick and Alva he has abbreviated and well as in religion the fight was on which was omitted his references and cut out the the most potent factor in the cause of the Arabic and other foreign texts and Mr. spread of Islamic influence. Doubtless long Harold Sunderland has translated it into before this the men of the pre-Renaissance, English and the Duke of Alva has written no doubt the men of the Middle Ages and an introduction and insists the work is of the Dark Ages too, had absorbed Eastern great value not only as an exposition of tales which have nothing to do either with Islamism, but as proving the profound and science or religion. As the crusaders failed unsuspected influence the latter had on the 3 Asin, M. Islam and the Divine Comedy. Tr. by conceptions with which the “Commedia” Harold Sunderland. John Murray, Lond., 1926. has supplied Christianity for five hundred influence on Provencal literature and the Dante’s day allowed him to give the ancient poetry of the troubadours. Dante was philosophers a tolerable quarter in Hell, but much attracted to it, so much so that in the Averrhoes, the “Grand Commentator” did “Purgatorio” he puts eight lines of it in not fare so well and Mahomet had a hot that tongue by the mouth of Arnaut Daniel. corner. Brunetto Latini, who for other and Much of the collateral and circumstantial far viler practices he placed there too, was evidence, which I have only alluded to, our nevertheless Dante’s teacher from whom he Spanish author, Asin, has left to one side might well have learned much of the Span- without even an allusion and on the other ish-Arabian religion and drunk deep thereby hand he does not lay sufficient emphasis on from their legendary literature. the liability that legends, common to Islam It is Asin’s task to let us see how parallel and Christianity, would be pretty sure to are the accounts we get from Dante and arise among primitive people which would from the Islamic Ibn Arabi and other closely resemble one another because of a Arabian authors. After reading all his evi- common origin in the Christian Gospel. dence and considering what he might have Moreover very many poets, in the history of added, which I have above intimated, any literature and religion, had led their heroes assertion that Dante did not at least know and their saints to Hell and even to Heaven the Mussulman’s fantasy, before he gave and brought them back again to tell what all shape to his own, is incredible. This once men wanted to know. When Dante went realized, it becomes impossible for the future himself he had with him as guide Virgil who historian of scientific thought, because of had sent Aeneas to Hades to interview his the implication, to ignore the testimony of father, but Mahomet’s visit to Heaven and the “Commedia,” in any account, of the Hell like that of Dante had their roots in the intellectual development of Europe and it is Book of Revelations and in the visions of something we will not find mentioned in the Apocalypse. either the now old book by Draper or in Jerusalem was the center of the earth for that by Renan. Yet Dante emerges from both by which entry and exit was made to the Middle Ages as the embodiment, and regions of bliss and the confines of torture. the marrow, of its thought and the prophet It was the goal of God’s trip with Mahomet of the Renaissance. The horror of Hell’s and the center of Dante’s “Paradiso” and punishments in both the Christian and the “Purgatorio” when mapped on the earth’s Islamic accounts, about which there are surface from above or below. A brief passage several letters, are so often identical, only in the “Koran” did more for the Moslem one impression can be left on the candid legend and Revelations more for Dante, reader, but this detracts in no way from perhaps, than the “Aeneid,” but he had Dante’s poetical preeminence and his that in mind too and he had no hesitation superiority over the Arabian sources, or in alluding to it in making Virgil say: Christian either, and we are still permitted to hold with Petrarch even as to this Or vo’, che sappi che I’altra fiata che io discesi quaggiu nel basso Inferno . . . theological interest. Though the punish- ments of the Isra are not always so identical No wandering exile in the stormy Italy of with the “Inferno” as to attract notice, Dante’s time, with the Inquisition a ready the relativity of them to the sin of the weapon for one’s foes, however great a poet, guilty body organ or member or brand of would have ventured to avow he borrowed transgression obtains in Mahomet’s Hell as from the Saracen Infidel his idea of either well as in Dante’s. Heaven or Hell. That was a serious pro- In the “Miraj” or ascent to Heaven, the position, but the tolerance for all things last stage is the revelation of the Throne of classical which had begun long before God to Mahomet in a blaze of glory. It is the same as to Dante, the general lines in of Dante is one of the things for the historian both stories being strikingly similar, but in to remember as well. all these similarities the details which come In taking note of the science of Dante in out by a more careful study, than is here order to see how much he as the represen- possible, are by far the most convincing. The tative of his times was imbued with the seven heavens traversed by Mahomet are doctrines of the ancients and how much identical with those Dante names after the their thoughts were the thoughts of his seven planets of the Ptolemaic system, but contemporaries the scientific observer will we need lay no stress on the number seven. often be chiefly attracted to the celestial That has been almost a universally magic physics or, if you will, to the infernal phys- number since Pythagoras. Although, for ics, but if to the former one quickly perceives4 the instance in the “Inferno,” Charon and that God has entrusted the heavenly bodies Minos figure at the entrance of Hell some- to the guidance of the angels. This is follow- what as they do in the Hades of the “Ae- ing the scheme of Plato who makes the neid,” Dante, according to Asin, “merely Supreme Being from behind a cloud of reproduced the Moslem scene in a more mystery deliver them over to the care of artistic form.” demiurgoi and disembodied souls. It was Oriental sensuality, despite Petrarch’s after 1221 but long before the birth of Dante invectives, did not in many of the Islamic that Michael Scot translated the “History accounts prevent something closely resem- of Animals” of Aristotle into Latin and long bling Dante’s purified vision of Beatrice before it the “De Caelo”5 had been trans- appearing. Though the common conception lated, both from the Arabic, and many of of Paradise by the infidels and of the the Arabian works for the Emperor Fred- Islamic Paradise by certain erotic Chris- erick 11. In his great work on astrology Scot tians has always been a sensual one, this remarks that some say the planets are Catholic priest protests against the view moved by angels, but he holds still more that woman was regarded by the highest mystically that they are ruled by the divine minds among the ancient Moslems simply virtues, spiritual and not corporeal and as an agent for satisfying the lust of man’s beyond this little can be said. It seems that animal nature. They also exalted her as Dante must have had this turn of thought Dante did and if they did not raise her to in mind when he wrote6 that though it is the angelic throne of theology and to the impossible for the human understanding to eminence of the highest philosophy as transcend the limits of mortality it is love Dante did, it was because they had no share which moves the heavens. While Frederick in his immortal genius and because, after was having the Arabian works turned into all, they belonged to an earlier era of world Latin at his court in Sicily or Swabia, at Paris culture. However that may be, as I have in 1210 the Pope had forbidden the works said, the historian of western thought and of Aristotle to be used in the University. the progress of science cannot fail to take As has been said, Averrhoes died in 1198 account of this. or perhaps a few years later, but when his We have been made familiar, by Renan and “Commentaries on Aristotle” became Draper, with the influence of Averrhoes known at Paris their perusal could not be and the other Arabs, of Thomas Aquinas long checked by any decree so sweeping, and even of Ibn Arabi or Raymond Lull in promulgated so soon after his death. It was Spain, where Brunetto Latini may have not only the intuitive analytical turn of his been indoctrinated, but that Ibn Arabi and 4 Inferno vii , 4. the accounts he and others gave of Maho- 5 Thorndike, L. A History of Magic and Experi- met’s visit to Heaven and Hell may have mental Science. Macmillan Co., N. Y. 1923, 2 vols. had marked influence on the “Commedia” 6 Paradiso 1, 74. mind but his wit and biting sarcasm, Aristotle’s works after his death until always highly prized by the Gauls, which after the Renaissance in Europe had almost ensured them a reception, the tomes of the romantic vicissitudes. We need not wonder, schoolmen never received. He wielded a if what Strabo tells us is true, that com- double edged sword which wounded his mentators have been baffled and critics countrymen as well as the foreigner, his have quarreled over the texts. According to friends as well as his foes. He remarked on the will of Aristotle, as reported by Strabo10 the Semitic prejudice against pork with the he left his books to Theophrastus, and comment, “such an injunction can meet Neleus having attended the lectures of both only the approval of a hog.”7 The career of a inherited from Theophrastus both their sage, exciting quarrels among Christians and libraries. Neleus took the books to Skepsis, cutting the ground of his defenders, Moslem an interior town of the Troad, where his and Jew alike, from under their feet, we may heirs stored them in a damp cellar and the easily understand was a stormy and a mould and the moths wrought havoc with disastrous one for him personally. It was the them. They were, after years, sold to Apelli- war he set up among the Christian ecclesi- kon and he had them recopied and the astics which introduced or rather rooted the damaged places in the text filled in accord- knowledge of Aristotle in the consciousness ing to the fancy and judgment of careless of the Dugento. The ambiguities of the copyists. I do not understand that this Greek text were sufficient, but the Arabian refers only to the books which Aristotle and mutilations were more than sufficient to set Theophrastus wrote but to others also all Christendom by the ears, when it was which they possessed. Neither is it at all found in the comments of the Arabian that sure there were not other copies extant. At the tenets of scientific works no less than any rate the resulting texts of the new edi- those of esoteric contemplation narrowly tion at Rome in the last days of Cicero pressed on the dogmas of the church. Even could not have been above suspicion when the particularities of the life of Aristotle centuries later, this doubt being unresolved, were grotesquely distorted. A good example the Nestorians and the Jews translated may be found of this in Dante’s first great them according to their fancy and judgment commentator, some sixty or seventy years for the Arabians. Averrhoes must have been after his death. Boccaccio must have had a grand commentator indeed to have made what he reported8 of Aristotle from much what he did out of the hodge podge, for he the same sources as Dante, as to his life understood no Greek. and these must have led both the poet and “Not long ago,” says Boccaccio, “I saw the expositor much astray, but one may as all (the works of Aristotle) or the larger part well perceive by the legends of Aristotle of them or the most notable of them written which Mulvaney discusses9 it has needed in the Greek language in a large volume in the long and laborious research of many the possession of my venerated master, modern commentators by means of Messer Francesco Petrarca. It is a fact that historical and archeological facts, which the science of this most famous poet philos- have come to light since the time of Boccac- opher for a long time remained hidden under cio, to weed out a consistent account of a cloud of envious fortune, but in marvelous Aristotle’s life and of the contemporaries fashion preserving for worthy men the with whom he came into contact. science of Plato, nor is it doubtful that but for the coming of Averrhoes it would have 7 Draper, J. W. History of the Intellectual Devel- remained under the same cloud. It was he, opment of Europe. Lond., 1864, 2 vols. 8 Commento di Giovanni Boccaccio sopra la if what I have heard is true, who first dis- Commedia. Firenze, 1895, 2 vols. sipated the cloud and made his light appear 9 Classical Quarterly July-Oct. 1926 34 p. 155. 10 xm, i, 54. and caused it to be valued to such an extent gathered around gold and lead at the time that today scarcely any other philosophy of the ‘Atharva Veda.’” than his is followed.” It was only five years Although Aristotle had been translated after the interdiction in Paris that Innocent into Arabic three centuries before Averrhoes, hi , in 1215, issued less prohibitive instruc- it was mostly done by Syrians. No Mussul- tion to the schools of Paris, permitting the man savant, certainly no Spanish Arab study of the dialectics of Aristotle, but knew Greek and in this Averrhoes knew no forbidding his “Physics” and his “Meta- more than his brother savants, but in him physics” and the commentaries on them. he had what they did not have. He had the These had come in through the Arabians, critical faculty in himself though he had but even they were more or less tolerated nothing of Aristotle to read but the ancient by subsequent popes. versions made from the Syriac by others. The Arabs had started out in the seventh The Greek text was a closed book to him, and eighth centuries with all the learning, or but he regarded its author as divine and as much of it as they were capable of modern scholars have been astonished that carrying, which had been in the possession with all the sources of error to which he was of the Syrians, Nabateans, Harranians and exposed he should have penetrated the Sassanid Persians, according to Renan.11 meaning of the “Stagyrite” so deeply and They had to accept Aristotle as the recog- accurately as he did. The only books of nized authority but they took no lead in Aristotle upon which there remains no doing so. Although Renan insists that commentary of Averrhoes are the “History temperamentally the Arab genius was anti- of Animals” and the “Politics.” Grossteste pathetic to philosophy, yet it was the rather knew as perhaps Roger Bacon did in some singular fate of Averrhoes to gather fame in way enough of the Greek text to realize the land of his racial foes and punishment that the Arabian versions were corrupt and and exile from those who supported most often grossly erroneous and the language of effectively the Moslem power in Spain and the translation very far indeed from the Africa. It was the Arabian flair for astrology Greek conciseness. Under the devastating and alchemy which formed the bridgehead hand of the great Cardinal Ximenes, Arch- of the intellectual onslaught of Arabian bishop of Toledo 80,000 (Renan) Arabian civilization in Europe. Strangely mixed manuscripts are said to have been given to with their astrology were traces of the “De the flames in the open spaces of Grenada and Caelo” of Aristotle, modified by the Ptole- if the old critics were right it was not a loss maic astronomy in the time of Pope Syl- as large as the figures would intimate. vanus 11 (999 a .d .). Their astronomy they As we have seen, only cautiously does may indeed have had from a Greek inheri- Renan admit that the philosophy of the tance, but their chemistry has baffled Arabs in the decades which followed the modern investigators of its origin. It has death of Frederick 11, seems superior to been suggested that the Arabs derived their the European. It is demonstrable however alchemy from a Moslem mission sent as in the works of Averrhoes in the boldness early as 628 a .d . to Pekin, four years before and penetration with which he analyzed the death of Mahomet, but they may have the great problems of peripateticism, many derived it equally well from India, for, as of which are encased in the crystal of Ray12 has pointed out, “It is of interest to Dante’s “Commedia.” Very early, a genera- note the alchemical notions which had tion at least before Dante arrived at the famed middle point of his life, 11 Renan, E. Averroes et I’Averroisme 4 ed., Paris, Levy, 1882. nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, 12 Ray, P. C. History of Hindu Chemistry. Lon- don, 1902, 2 vols. there were schools of philosophy among the Christians who agreed that generation is St. Thomas it is said Dante gets the illus- only a transmutation of substance, a tenet of tration of this principle and gives us a Aristole with which we can also agree, it description of animal generation in the seems to me, better as modern philosophers “Purgatorio,”13 in which the “flower of the than as fundamentalists. Averrhoes, who blood” guarded with the sperm furnishes does not follow this view to its logical seed for the future birth of a new life. conclusion in his commentary on the twelfth There certainly seems no basis in Aristotle book of the “ Metaphysics,” Renan declares, for the conclusion that it involves the says that there were men of his religion also assumption that God created the angels in who create things out of nothing. Aristotle the morning and left them to do the rest. we often find, in this sense, that of trans- It is from Plato’s “Timaeus” such an mutation, declaring for spontaneous genera- inference is possible, but it is a further tion, but here we find the Arab using him example of the Averrhoistic cutting to the against those who believed in the transmu- core of a problem in criticism, which set the tation of the non-living into the living. teeth of the popes and of all the monks in In the ultimate analysis however the evo- Christendom before Dante, on edge. It lutionary philosopher has to grant the probably no less embittered the Moslems, fundamentalist there was a time when that for the Koran too admits this interpretation, took place, at a time perhaps when no which by the way, is a part of the Hundu’s modern biologist had been born to jeer at Brahmanistic criticism. They had long abiogenesis. The account in Genesis is a since seen this conception of a faineant matter of detail we ought to feel at liberty God and bothered no more about it. When to disagree about. Renan thinks that Aver- the modern scientist identifies his God with rhoes slurs this dilemma over, but he lays the immutable Law of Nature he is up emphasis upon an assertion he finds, perhaps against the same disconcerting point of here in the “Metaphysics,” made by Aris- view. The scientist escapes it no more easily totle, that God does not concern Himself than the theologian, but he has emphasized with the special but with the general. This it of late in making us realize there is a is apt to find expression more frequently universal physical law which governs the from minds of insufficient caliber to deal intraatomic orbits as well, alike with the even with details and we may well believe heavenly. Dean Inge is right, science holds much of Aristotle’s thought was twisted out no alluring prospects to the conventional into sentiments, agreeable to the minds of church. Dante in his exposition of Free Will critics, to take this form, for no one ante- and Predestination, the ancients with their dated Aristotle or has excelled him in the goddess Necessity make very thin ice to pains he gives to objective details in skate over, but Dante patches out Aristotle biology. From Strabo to Buffon however we with the glamour of his genius in a way that find mere man frequently boasting he makes us forget the path Averrhoes hewed resembles God in that. Aristotle when he to the center of the question which ended comes to deal with the beginnings of life in nowhere. does wrap it up in vagaries of general It needed no great nicety or precision in philosophy like that of transmutation, which the acceptation of the text of Aristotle, to in this case is an evasion, and which Aver- which Vincent of Beauvais is said by rhoes slurs over. What is life remains the Thorndike to have pretended, to make the enigma of science. It was Aristotle who learned even of his day (1250) understand gave birth to the observation which modern that the conflict is irrepressible in the terms evolutionary science has taken up as one of faith and reason as then understood and of its own. God is wasteful of the individual as even now advanced. The immutable Law life, but careful of the species. Through 13 xxv, 37 seq. of Nature is a conception fundamentally at In contradistinction to the clear cut but variance with that of an ever watchful highly poetical and idealistic conception of Providence. Why watch? It was the very Dante I may be permitted to translate dust and turmoil the corruption of texts Renan’s view of the Aristotelian difficulties raised in the pre-Renaissance, which hid which beset the Averrhoistic disputants: the crux of the real question to which No doubt in translating into modern language Averrhoes cut his way. His contemporaries the theory of intellect exposed in the third book gabbled about scholia and erasures, but he of the “de Anima” and in freeing it from the saw the general problem above the details too substantial forms of the Aristotelian style, of the text. He was the Grand Commen- we arrive at a theory of consciousness analogous tator, and a lonely figure he was. Though enough to that which received the assent of the Dante repeatedly broaches the question of philosophic thought at the beginning of the Free Will and Predestination and makes it ninteenth century. We need only interpret no clearer than his predecessors and suc- Aristotle to the effect that two things are neces- cessors he cuts loose from Aristotle’s diffi- sary for the intellectual act, first, an impression culties as to the immortality of the soul and received from without by the thinking subject develops the Neoplatonic Pythagorean con- and second, the reaction of the thinking subject to the sensation received. Sensation gives the ception of it as I have attempted to show matter of the thought, the “nous” or pure elsewhere.14 Renan, like most commentators reason gives the form. appreciates the fact that in the third book of the “De Anima” Aristotle has not This appeals to us at once as near our own expressed himself clearly on the subject. intellectual boundaries, but the question Averrhoes took the very natural view, it for the medieval mind was far from simple seems to me from this discourse of Aristotle, and far nearer the subtleties of the ancient that the individual soul perishes with the thought. individual body. The entelecheia is a teleo- In short the peripatetic theory of the intellect, logical agent, but it does not extend its such as it came out of the analyses of the com- business beyond the body. It was this, I mentators is made up of five theorems: suppose, won Averrhoes a warm place in First. There is a distinction of two intellects, Dante’s “Inferno,”15 not however with the active and the passive. Mahomet16 in a very uncomfortable situa- Second. There is the incorruptibility of one tion, but in the best of heathen society with and the corruptibility of the other. “those who know.” He had it from Aristotle Third. The active intellect conceived as out- who stood there at the head of the family of side of man, like the Sun of Intelligences. philosophy, among them Anaxagoras upon Fourth. The unity of the active intellect. whose “nous” the “De Anima” is largely Fifth. The identity of the active intellect based, but why in the latter we get no with the last mundane intelligences. Iiason with the world soul of Anaxagoras As may be seen this scheme starts off in an has never been made clear from the con- appealing way, but the modern reader fails tradictory theses Aristotle is credited with. to find the place where he should capitalize This ambiguity evidently did not lend itself the intellects into a divine essence and to the active constructive poetical faculty Renan makes the commentators responsible of Dante, whose whole structure of the for this confusion, but Aristotle himself in “Paradiso” rests upon the active participa- criticizing Plato denies that immortality tion of the Divine Intelligence, symbolized can have any Iiason with mortality however or indeed actually identified with Light. elsewhere he assumes that it has such Iiason. 14 The Open Court. May, 1927. Suffice it to say this was no sort of a 15 Inferno iv, 144. complex for a poet like Dante to trim his 16 Inferno 28-31 seq. wings for. He swings clear of it into the ethereal brilliance of Pythagorean idealism them on the index while cardinals held stock and indeed at the time the followers of in the very profitable output when the new Aristotle did not pay much attention to this trade of printing sprang up. It was near by, third book of the “De Anima.” For them at Padua especially, that Averrhoes reigned, the soul was the echo of the organism of the but all this was long after Dante’s day and body, but Alexander of Aphrodisias had Petrarch was “the first modern man.” made much of it in the decay of the last When the Greek texts came into Italy after stage of Greek philosophy and with this the fall of Constantinople another day had the Arabs were inoculated. Modern critics dawned and when, in 1497, Nicholas Leoni- are now suggesting the trouble in Aristotle cus Thomaeus took the chair at Padua to hangs about the word he uses for separate teach Aristotle from the Greek, Cardinal and separable. Certainly Aristotle looked Bembo celebrated the occasion in verse, but on birth and death, on coming to be and still the discussion goes on about the texts passing away, as mere change rather than of Aristotle. separation, but into that quagmire we do Two hundred years before this Dante had not have to venture, for Dante threw him- had to depend on the Arabians and the self as a Dominican, and he could do no criticisms of St. Thomas for his cosmology, less as a Christian, bodily into the camp of and there were some even then who took Aquinas, the champion of the Church as to unquestioningly the cosmology of Aver- the immortality of the soul and of much rhoes. Dante accepted, however arrived at, else, but ever the tireless and victorious, the cosmology of Ptolemy where it did not so far as Christianity was concerned, oppo- interfere with his theology. Though he, as a nent of Averrhoes. The Franciscans at good Dominican, rejected or was silent as to Paris, like Alexander of Hales and John of the heresies of Averrhoes, the first sentence Rochelle, supported him at their peril. In of the “Convivio” quotes the first sentence this wordy contest the new ideas fermented of Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” all men are which introduced the Renaissance and by nature desirous of knowledge, and he despite the denunciations of the victorious surmises it is because providence has Dominicans, the upshot of it was that within arranged it so that each step gained in a generation or two the pagan Aristotle and knowledge tends to the perfection of man the infidel Averrhoes were universally which in the last analysis tells for his felicity. regarded as grave authorities on the subject This is the doctrine, Socrates taught Plato of the Christian theories of the soul until and from him doubtless Aristotle had it, but the Renaissance swung away from them to a it has found doubters in our day since the sort of bastard Platonism which took little great war. Dante’s worst aberration was the account of Christian doctrine. aberration of his day. It can scarcely be Averrhoism in the time of Petrarch was denied that though he consigned17 Bonatti, the fashion in Venice and Petrarch declares the great astrologer, who had flourished that when he was there in his old age they before him, to Hell, he had more than a half tried to convert him to it. According to belief in the mummeries of astrology. We Renan it only elicited from him a book on fail to realize in our study of the history of his own and other people’s ignorance. medicine how much astrology occupied the They adore Aristotle without understanding thoughts and furnished the theories for him. They reject Christ. They seek the light by medical men at this time. In the “Con- turning their backs to the sun. Ye gods, they vivio”18 we get the drift of Dante’s thought walk the streets arguing about beasts like to it through physical laws which he dimly beasts. sees. It is astonishing that a mind like But Venice was where the books were 17 Inferno xx, 118. printed which kept the popes busy putting 1811, XIV. Dante’s should entertain even the similitude the “Timaeus” to which modern scholars of such nonsense, even though his environ- have not all been able to acquiesce. Though ment was steeped in it. It is interesting to it seems presumptuous for these modern note in his remarks on the Milky Way, critics to quarrel with Aristotle about such which Pythagoras is credited with imagining a thing, as he had opportunity of personal is the footprints of souls departing to their converse with Plato to convince him, Aris- homes in the sky, that he finds difficulty in totle gets very much involved and Dante finding out what Aristotle thought, for in has some reason to grope and disclaim his one translation it is given one way and in ability to compete with the “glorious another another way. The new one says the philosopher” in exposition of the heavenly Milky Way is a vapor and the old transla- phenomena, but he ventures far enough to tion says it is a number of fixed stars. The say: old translation, it is thought, was one of the The heavens continually revolve around this Latin translations of the Arabian version center (of the earth and sea) as we can observe. and the other is the one furnished by St. In this gyration necessarily there must be two Thomas and made directly from the Greek. fixed poles and a circle equally distant from That, if from the “Meteorologica”19 is them, which turns most swiftly. Of these two certainly Aristotle’s meaning as we now poles one is plainly revealed to all the world, have the text, but he reports the opinion of that is the northern one. The other is hidden, as Anaxagoras to the effect that the Milky it were, from all the known parts of the earth, Way is made up of innumerable small stars. that is the south pole ... If a stone should I believe modern astronomy now says both fall from our pole it would fall out in the ocean opinions have their justification. However at a point on the surface of that sea where, Dante20 has from Albertus Magnus his were it a man, the star would always be over his knowledge of Democritus and Anaxagoras head and I believe that from Rome to that and we may surmise he has the information point going in a straight line is a distance of about 2600 miles more or less. as to Aristotle’s opinion from the same source and Thorndike21 expresses strong From there to a corresponding latitude in doubt if Aquinas ever translated anything the southern hemisphere is 7500 miles more from the Greek, though he may have had or less, but here Dante becomes obscure something to do with getting the work done though it appears to me by this kind of cal- by others. culation he makes the circuit of the earth Dante was familiar with the idea ascribed about 25,000 miles. If this is so and it is of to Pythagoras by Aristotle that the earth Ptolemaic derivation it is surprisingly close, and its antichthon are stars fixed opposite but he declares himself guided by the one another in a sphere that revolves around opinions of Astrologers (which we can a central fire from west to east22 but he says translate astronomers if desirable) and Plato in the “Timaeus” wrote that the Albertus Magnus and the testimony of the earth with the sea was the center of every- ninth book of Lucan. He ought to have thing, but turned around its own axis. This learned something from Marco Polo, who was contradicted “by that glorious philoso- had seen the Southern Cross, but just how pher to whom nature opened all her secrets.” that stone would obey the law of gravitation As a matter of fact Aristotle, in the “De it is hard to say. Caelo,”23 gives a meaning to the passage in There is probably not much of this trace- 19 338b, 22 seq. able to Aristotle, but elsewhere in the 2011, xiv, 36. “Convivio”24 he refers to his conviction 21 n, 599. that so divine was the nature of Aristotle’s 22 Convivio in, v, 17. 23 293b, 30. 24 iv, vi, 86. mind he and his followers, the peripatetics, When Aristotle once became immersed quite eclipsed the glories of the Academy in in the astronomy of Eudoxus and Calippus moral philosophy. In an earlier passage25 he found his Unmoved Mover unadapted to he attempts to give an allegorical or sym- the mechanics of this world, but in the bolic moral meaning to the facts of astro- vagaries of the later so-called philosophers nomic physics which he appears to think of the Middle Ages and in the genius of originated with Aristotle. Dante’s imagination was found a reception By the pole, which we see, is meant the sen- which the men of Aristotle’s own time did sible things, of which, taking them as a whole, not render his cosmology. He became so Physics treats and by the pole which we do not involved in the intricacies of it that accord- see, is meant the immaterial things, which are ing to Jaeger26 it broke his heart to find he not sensible and of which Metaphysics treats could not make it conform to observable and this heaven has a great similitude with one facts, but that did not bother Dante, he made science and the other. the “Metaphysics” support the “Physics.” 25 n, xiv, 56. 26 Aristoteles, 1923.