Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/16

4 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE of all goodness and beauty, the capacities of our own hearts and minds, the intellectual fruits of mankind throughout the centuries, and the wondrous works of Nature around us ; but remembering always that in humility alone lies true greatness, and that know- ledge and wisdom are alone profitable in so far as our lives are governed by them.' The actual field of his labours was speculative science, and his work in it the reform of ecclesiastical learning. In his system of theology he brought into harmony a variety of conflicting tenets which had hitherto been fiercely battled over in the scholastic camp. For its originality and depth of thought, its clearness of detail, its breadth of conception, and its organic unity, this work may be compared to the great monuments of German Christian architecture of the period. He inaugurated a better understanding of the great masters of ancient scholastics, raised Mysticism from the dark abyss of Pantheism to the more clearly defined conception of ' God and the universe,' and opened the way for a more scientific handling of the whole teaching of Christian faith. But it is in the well-known pamphlet in which he pleads for the casting aside of all religious strife, for the establishment of one common creed, and the gathering together of all mankind under the one Catholic Church of Eome, that the spirit of the Cardinal, at once so truly philosophical and so deeply imbued with genuine Christian love of humanity, re- veals itself most characteristically. In the same spirit of creative activity Nicolaus devoted himself to natural science, more especially to physics and mathematics. He first, nearly a cen-