Dual Forms of Cognition in the Middle Ages

A man with a preeminently leading spirit, who at that time already made use of the intellect (in Plato, this was not evident as yet) and who clearly evinced that the older form of spirituality had ceased to exist and that the human being now sought to gain a world-conception through inner intellectual work, this preeminently leading spirit was Aristotle. Aristotle is, as it were, the first man in human evolution who works in a truly intellectual way. In Aristotle, we continually come across statements showing that the recollection of an old wisdom, gained through super-sensible means, is still alive in a traditional form. Aristotle is aware of this older form of wisdom; he alludes to it whenever he speaks of his predecessors, but he can no longer connect his statements with any contents which are really his own inner experience.