its interpretation, created philosophic doctrines exactly as the
philosophers of antiquity invented them apart from religion, to which they
were either hostile or indifferent.

SCHOLASTICISM: SCOTUS ERIGENA.--The orthodox philosophy of the
Middle Ages was the scholastic. Scholasticism consisted in amassing and in
making known scientific facts and matters of knowledge of which it was
useful for a well-bred man not to be ignorant and for this purpose
encyclopaedias were constructed; on the other hand, it consisted not
precisely in the reconciliation of faith with reason, not precisely and far
less in the submission of faith to the criticism of reason, but in making
faith sensible to reason, as had been the office of the Fathers of the
Church, more especially St. Augustine.

Scotus Erigena, a Scotsman attached to the Palatine Academy of Charles the
Bald, lived in the eleventh century. He was extremely learned. His
philosophy was Platonic, or rather the bent of his mind was Platonic. God
is the absolute Being; He is unnamable, since any name is a delimitation of
the being; He _is_ absolutely and infinitely. As the creator of all
and uncreated, He is the cause _per se_; as the goal to which all
things tend, He is the supreme end. The human soul is of impenetrable
essence like God Himself; accordingly, it is God in us. We have fallen
through the body and, whilst in the flesh, we can, by virtue and more
especially by the virtue of penitence, raise ourselves to the height of the
angels. The world is the continuous creation of God. It must not be said
that God created the world, but that He creates it; for if He ceased from
sustaining it, the world would no longer exist. God is perpetual creation
and perpetual attraction. He draws all beings to Himself, and in the end He
will have them all in Himself. There is predestination to perfection in
everything.