Dual Forms of Cognition in the Middle Ages

The spiritual life of the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, up to the fifteenth century, with all the experiences connected with that time—starting with the first Fathers of the Church up to Duns Scotus and then Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus—the spiritual life of those centuries and all the experiences connected with that time, arouse our interest not so much in view of the contents which have been transmitted to us, as in view of the thoroughly significant training through which the human beings had to pass, so that their soul-constitution was directed towards intellectualism. In regard to intellectual matters, in regard to the elaboration of conceptual matters, the Christian philosophers have reached the very climax. We may say, on the one hand, that intellectualism was fully born at the end of the fourth century of our era, but we may also say that intellectualism, as a technique, as a technical method of thinking, evolved up to the fifteenth century. That human beings were at all able to grasp this intellectual element, is a fact which took place in the fourth century. But to begin with, intellectualism had to be elaborated inwardly, and what was achieved in this direction, up to the time of high Scholasticism, is truly admirable.