books are the later in point of time. In fact, while the
former quite overleaps the confines of the middle ages,
Ockham preserves the orderly sequence and continuity
of medieval thought : and more than this, while Marsiglio
in the daring of his speculation stands absolutely alone and
without a successor, Ockham, in virtue of his greater con
formity to the spirit of his day, not to speak of his eminence
as a philosopher, unequalled among contemporaries and
hardly surpassed by Thomas Aquinas or John Duns
Scotus, handed down a light which was never suffered
to be extinguished, and which served as a beacon to
pioneers of reform like Wycliffe and Huss. In politics,
as well as in some points of doctrine, Ockham may be
claimed as a precursor of the German reformers of the
sixteenth century ; but Marsiglio exercised little direct
influence on the movement of thought.[1] The truths
which he brought into view had to be rediscovered,
.without even the knowledge that he had found them
out beforehand, by the political philosophers of modern
times.
Ockham indeed, with a philosophy that directly tended towards rationalism, was by far the more practical speculator than his swifter and bolder fellow-worker. He was more sensible of the difficulty, of the almost hope less intricacy, of the problems that called for solution.[2] As strenuous as any man in contesting the plenitude of power arrogated for the papacy, he was unwilling to transfer it to any other individual or to any body of human beings. The pope was no supreme autocrat; indeed r the emperor was within certain limitations his
- ↑ [This statement requires to be modified. Mr. Sullivan, who underrates the influence of Ockham on later opinion, has shown, ubi supra, pp. 597-604, that there is a continuous strain of testimony to that of Marsiglio down to the period of the reformation and Jater.]
- ↑ The text of Ockham s Dialo- gus, of which a fragment (wanting the last six tractatus of the third part) fills five hundred and sixty of Goidast s closely printed pages, I do not pretend to have read con- secutively through. Dr. Riezler, pp. 258-271, has however selected a sufficient number of passages to illustrate Ockham s general posi- tioii ; and I have sometimes con- tented myself with verifying his citations in the original.
