History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [228]
Our superiority since the Renaissance is due partly to science and scientific technique, partly to political institutions slowly built up during the Middle Ages. There is no reason, in the nature of things, why this superiority should vcontinue. In the present war, great military strength has been shown by Russia, China, and Japan. All these combine Western technique with Eastern ideology—Byzantine, Confucian, or Shinto. India, if liberated, will contribute another Oriental element. It seems not unlikely that, during the next few centuries, civilization, if it survives, will have greater diversity than it has had since the Renaissance. There is an imperialism of culture which is harder to overcome than the imperialism of power. Long after the Western Empire fell—indeed until the Reformation—all European culture retained a tincture of Roman imperialism. It now has, for us, a West-European imperialistic flavour. I think that, if we are to feel at home in the world after the present war, we shall have to admit Asia to equality in our thoughts, not only politically, but culturally. What changes this will bring about, I do not know, but I am convinced that they will be profound and of the greatest importance.
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8
JOHN THE SCOT
John the Scot, or Johannes Scotus, to which is sometimes added Eriugena or Erigena,1 is the most astonishing person of the ninth century; he would have been less surprising if he had lived in the fifth or the fifteenth century. He was an Irishman, a Neoplatonist, an accomplished Greek scholar, a Pelagian, a pantheist. He spent much of his life under the patronage of Charles the Bald, king of France, and though he was certainly far from orthodox, yet, so far as we know, he escaped persecution. He set reason above faith, and cared nothing for the authority of ecclesiastics; yet his arbitrament was invoked to settle their controversies.
To understand the occurrence of such a man, we must turn our attention first to Irish culture in the centuries following St Patrick. Apart from the extremely painful fact that St Patrick was an Englishman, there are two other scarcely less painful circumstances: first, that there were Christians in Ireland before he went there, second, that, whatever he may have done for Irish Christianity, it was not to him that Irish culture was due. At the time of the invasion of Gaul (says a Gaulish author), first by Attila, then by the Goths, Vandals, and Alaric, 'all the learned men on their side the sea fled, and in the countries beyond sea, namely Ireland, and wherever else they betook themselves, brought to the inhabitants of those regions an enormous advance in learning'.2 If any of these men sought refuge in England, the Angles and Saxons and Jutes must have mopped them up; but those who went to Ireland succeeded, in combination with the missionaries, in transplanting a great
deal of the knowledge and civilization that was disappearing from the Continent. There is good reason to believe that, throughout the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, a knowledge of Greek, as well as a considerable familiarity with Latin classics, survived among the Irish.3 Greek was known in England from the time of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury (669–90), who was himself a Greek, educated at Athens; it may also have become known, in the North, through Irish missionaries. 'During the latter part of the seventh century,' says Montague James, 'it was in Ireland that the thirst for knowledge was keenest, and the work of teaching was most actively