This is known as the Paris work, and occupies one of his folio volumes.

He left Paris in 1308 for Cologne. It is uncertain on what mission he went thither, in obedience to the rescript of Gonsalvi, the general of the order. It was certainly in the interest of the Franciscans, and probably to meet the growing fanaticism of the Beguines and the Apostolic Brothers, who then swarmed at Cologne. We encounter a significant feature of the discipline of the Minorite Order when we read of the unhesitating obedience with which Scotus obeyed the commands of his chief. The letter was handed him as he was taking recreation in the vicinity of Paris, with his pupils around him; but he girded himself for his journey without returning to his convent. In answer to the suggestion that he should return to Paris and bid adieu to his friends, he answered, "The general father orders me to go to Cologne, not to the convent in order to salute the brethren."

At Cologne he expounded the Sentences of Lombard, defended the Thesis of the Immaculate Conception, and fought the heretical sects with all his powers.

But the end was near. Before the year 1308 had passed away he died suddenly, at the age of thirty-four. He was buried in the Franciscan Convent, at the entrance of the sacristy, near the altar of the Three Kings.

The report has gone forth, and it has really great probability, that he was committed to the tomb in an epileptic fit. When consciousness returned, finding himself in darkness, and abandoned to his terrible fate, he tore the flesh from his hands and dashed his head against the walls of his tomb. According to the declaration of more than one writer, he was found as thus described, stretched out on the pavement of his tomb. His foes declared that he must thus have expiated some terrible crime unknown to the world. His friends put quite another face upon the matter. He had long been subject to the falling sickness, at which times he was unconscious for many hours. Having been so short a time in Cologne among stran gers, and his disciples having found him one day stiff and cold, as in death, they mourned over him as really dead, and accordingly placed him in the tomb. His friends say still further that these trances, to which he was subject, were the issue of

his holy life, for in these ecstasies his soul took flight to the skies and basked in the mysteries of God.

The curse of Shakspeare upon the man who should move his bones might well have been adopted by Scotus, for his remains were disinterred five times in 400 years.

These traditions of his sanctity are not necessarily inconsistent with the impetuosity of the man, which is betrayed everywhere in his writings. It seems difficult, however, to conceive of him as playing the quietistic rôle or wrapt in ecstatic visions. Yet experiences of his are related similar to that of Catharine of Sienna, who wore on her finger the espousal ring given her by the Holy Child.

Certainly he clung to his vow of poverty and exemplified humility even in dress and bearings. A Latin verse speaks of · him as

"Quem vestis vilis, pes nudus,

Et chorda coronant."

When on his way to Cologne a crowd went forth to greet him, the magistrates of the city among them. They met a man, clad in the gray robe of the Franciscans, old and tattered. His naked feet and his low estate moved their pity and called forth alms. What was their surprise to discover that they had fallen in with the world-renowned Duns! It casts a light upon the university life of those days to read of his encounter with one of his great contemporaries. One day at Paris, amid the crowd of his auditors, he remarked a man of unprepossessing appearance, and covered with rags. He did not seem to be en rapport with the discourse of the master. He muttered his disapproval of the argument, and at a crucial point of the discussion shook his head in absolute denial. Scotus noticed this, and sought to humiliate him by a simple question in grammar. So singling him out, he proposed this: Dominus, quæ pars? that is, What part of speech is Dominus? Instantly came back the retort, Dominus non est pars, sed to tum. The master saw by this that here was a diamond in the rough, and after his lecture he invited the stranger to converse with him on the divine mysteries. The results of this conversation were afterward embodied in the treatise, Dominus, quæ pars? for the stranger was no less a man than Raymond Lull.

Duns is said often to have tried his hand at argument with the common people, of which we have one instance at least. One day in England he encountered in a field a peasant sowing barley. Angry at being obliged to labor he vomited forth frightful oaths, while the great scholar called his attention to the ten commandments. In vain, for the rustic replied, "You lose your time in talking to me. The will of God will come. to pass, since he knows from eternity what will become of me. Well, then, if he has resolved to save me or to damn me, it matters not what I do, for I shall go to the place appointed, be it heaven or be it hell." Scotus now turned the tables upon him by this retort: "If God has, as you believe, imposed from all eternity such a necessity upon things, why do you trouble yourself to sow grain in your field? If God has determined that this barley shall grow here, whether you sow it or not, it will nevertheless grow. If, on the contrary, he has determined that it shall not grow, whatever you may do, it will never sprout from the earth." Whether this story be true or not, it is certainly in the spirit of Duns Scotus. As the Italian proverb has it, "If it is not true, it is well invented."

The Subtle Doctor left behind him twelve folio volumes, edited in 1639, mainly by Luke Wadding. His works are rare, there being no copy of them in Boston, to my knowledge, and one must needs make a pilgrimage to Cambridge to find them in the library of Harvard University. Besides these published works he left numerous commentaries on the Scriptures. He wrote on most of the books of the New Testament and on some of the Old. Besides, he left an ecclesiastical work on the Perfection of States, and some books on alchemy. Were all his works published, they would, it is likely, reach the number which Thomas wrote-seventeen volumes folio-and he lived fifteen years longer than his great antagonist, dying in the year in which Scotus was born. What amazing fertility of thought and what boundless capacity for work is shown in such a library left by a young man of thirty-four years of age!

If we seek now to give a general view of the work of Duns, we shall see that his industry was guided by a philosophic interest rather than a theologic. Of course the latter is not ignored, and he seeks to keep within Church lines. Had he not made theology his main business he would not have been

a Scholastic. The industry of Scholasticism is directed to a vindication of the doctrine of the Church, and philosophy is used for this purpose. But philosophy is the maid of theology, the Hagar who may be banished into the wilderness if need be, whose work is ancillary ever. Show, if possible, the harmony of faith and reason, but if there be any parallax, philosophy must step aside.

Now the work of Duns Scotus was mainly philosophic. He fixed his attention upon the system of vindication rather than the doctrine itself. The philosophic forms which had gathered around theology, properly so called, gave scope for his criticism and a wide field for his subtilty, making him appear, as Wadding says, like a new Edipus. He philosophized upon the scholastic philosophy rather than upon the scholastic theology. Erdmann and others have called attention to this. Albert and Thomas reflected on doctrine; Duns reflects upon this reflection, sifts the reasoning of his predecessors, and drives a coach and four through their lacunæ. In Thomas, scholasticism reached its consummate flower, the ideal which Albert never attained. Scotus summons scholasticism to see what she has done, and picks out the artificial petals of the lily of the Angelic Doctor. The chasm then between theology and philosophy still yawned before Scotus, for the substructions of the bridge which St. Thomas had constructed were not laid in the nature of things. Scotus, then, forms the transition between the old and the new, between mediævalism and modern thought. He builded wiser than he knew, for from him has started the better philosophy, whose hour struck with Descartes. Walter Burleigh and William of Occam were without doubt among his hearers. Occam is the watershed from which begins the flow of modern philosophy. He is the outcome of Scotus, of the same Franciscan Order. Besides, the Formalists, as they were called who were of the school of Scotus, by natural and easy transition passed into the Nominalists, of whom Occam was chief. William was no such extravagant Nominalist as Roscellin, to whom Universals were words, and nothing more, but stands quite on the platform of that sober nominalism which marks modern philosophy. Roscellin was a Nominalist of the school of Hobbes and Bain, while Occam has great affinities with Leibnitz and Lotze. To see the full outcome of

Scotus we need often to pass down to Occam, and even to Nicholas of Cusa and Bruno.

The actual result of Scotus' work is in most respects nearer the truth than that of Aquinas. He really breaks with scholasticism, and yet hesitates to draw the ultimate consequences. He stands on the brink of a great discovery, and yet shrinks back from the promulgation. Hence the contradictions to be found in his system. No exposition of scholastic doctrine is complete which stops with St. Thomas. It must also present the view of Scotus. Generally, when the latter takes issue with the former he is right, enlarging the scope of medieval doctrine and emancipating thought. Scotus' errors lie close to his grandest thoughts. He is the knight-errant of freedom in both God and man. There has never been a more uncompromising statement of freedom than Scotus makes, and yet the modern advocates of the doctrine seem strangely ignorant of his work. But in this field lie also his errors. In almost every case his deficiencies grow out of a one-sided apprehension of divine and human freedom.

Let us now pass on to special applications of Scotus' doctrine, whereby may be seen the truth of these general assertions:

1. Consider the transformations undergone by the scholastic doctrine of matter and form under the hand of Scotus. The scholastics inherited the traditions of Aristotle. All their thinking was concerned with the charmed rubrics of form and matter, of actuality and potentiality. The lowest stage of being, or first matter, was considered as wholly destitute of form, and the highest, or God, was destitute of matter, for he was purus actus. All between these extremes was compounded of matter and form. But really matter without form cannot exist, for Thomas says: "First matter does not exist in the nature of things by itself, since it is not being actually but potentially." So also, true to the peripatetic thought, he says, "Form is that by which the agent acts."

Not so Scotus. He denies that matter is a mere potence, which, apart from form, has no actual being. Rather must we ascribe to it a being apart from form. Though always in juxtaposition with form, it has its being as matter not from form, but from the divine creation. Matter, even as the principle of