weary of self-examination to enter on the contemplation of
the external world. Herein they found a field offering to them endless
occupation, and capable of worthily exercising their acuteness.
[Sidenote: The mutiny against theology commences among the monks.] But
it was not possible for them to take the first step without offending
against the decisions established by authority. The alternative was
stealthy proceeding or open mutiny; but before mutiny there occurs a
period of private suggestion and another of more extensive discussion.
[Sidenote: Persecution of Gotschalk,] It was thus that the German monk
Gotschalk, in the ninth century, occupied himself in the profound
problem of predestination, enduring the scourge and death in prison for
the sake of his opinion. The presence of the Saracens in Spain offered
an incessant provocation to the restless intellect of the West, now
rapidly expanding, to indulge itself in such forbidden exercises.
Arabian philosophy, unseen and silently, was diffusing itself throughout
France and Europe, and churchmen could sometimes contemplate a refuge
from their enemies among the infidel. In his extremity, Abelard himself
looked forward to a retreat among the Saracens--a protection from
ecclesiastical persecution.

[Sidenote: who sets up reason against authority.] In the conflict with
Gotschalk on the matter of predestination was already foreshadowed the
attempt to set up reason against authority. John Erigena, who was
employed by Hincmar, the Archbishop of Rheims, on that occasion, had
already made a pilgrimage to the birthplaces of Plato and Aristotle,
A.D. 825, and indulged the hope of uniting philosophy and religion in
the manner proposed by the ecclesiastics who were studying in Spain.

[Sidenote: John Erigena falls into Pantheism.] From Eastern sources John
Erigena had learned the doctrines of the eternity of matter, and even of
the creation, with which, indeed, he confounded the Deity himself. He
was, therefore, a Pantheist; accepting the Oriental ideas of emanation
and absorption not only as respects the soul of man, but likewise all
material things. In his work "On the Nature of Things," his doctrine is,
"That, as all things were originally contained in God, and proceeded
from him into the different classes by which they are now distinguished,
so shall they finally return to him and be absorbed in the source from
which they came; in other words, that as, before the world was cre