s,
his subtlety in threading the labyrinths of metaphysical speculations
which, in the west of Europe, had been utterly disregarded. But it is
another question whether he can be reckoned an original writer; those
who have attended most to his treatise De Divisione Naturae, the most
abstruse of his works, consider it as the development of an oriental
philosophy, acquired during his residence in Greece, and nearly
coinciding with some of the later Platonism of the Alexandrian school,
but with a more unequivocal tendency to pantheism. This manifests itself
in some extracts which have latterly been made from the treatise De
Divisione Naturae; but though Scotus had not the reputation of
unblemished orthodoxy, the drift of his philosophy was not understood in
that barbarous period. He might, indeed, have excited censure by his
intrepid preference of reason to authority. "Authority," he says,
"springs from reason, not reason from authority--true reason needs not
be confirmed by any authority." La veritable importance historique, says
Ampere, de Scot Erigene n'est donc pas dans ses opinions; celles-ci
n'ont d'autre interet que leur date et le lieu ou elles apparaissent.
Sans doute, il est piquant et bizarre de voir ces opinions orientales et
alexandrines surgir au IXe siecle, a Paris, a la cour de Charles le
Chauve; mais ce qui n'est pas seulement piquant et bizarre, ce qui
interesse le developpement de l'esprit humain, c'est que la question ait
ete posee, des lors, si nettement entre l'autorite et la raison, et si
energiquement resolue en faveur de la seconde. En un mot, par ses idees,
Scot Erigene est encore un philosophe de l'antiquite Grecque; et par
l'independance hautement accusee de son point de vue philosophique, il
est deja un devancier de la philosophie moderne. Hist. Litt. iii. 146.

Silvester II. died in 1003. Whether he first brought the Arabic
numeration into Europe, as has been commonly said, seems uncertain; it
was at least not much practised for some centuries after his death.

[517] Charlemagne had a library at Aix-la-Chapelle, which he directed to
be sold at his death for the benefit of the poor. His son Louis is said
to have collected some books. But this rather confirms, on the whole, my
supposition that, in some periods, no royal or private libraries
existed, since there were not always princes or nobles with the spirit
of Charlemagne, or even Louis the Debonair.

"We possess a catalogue," says M. Ampere