Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. x. Scholastic Doctrine of Predestination. 259
such a perception as the mind acquires by the long-sus
tained stationary attitude of reflexion upon itself. There
must be a pause, a cessation from active speculation and
inference, from argument, from words, while the reason
looks within, and observes itself. The passive attitude re
quired for this simple act of sight, more difficult really
than all active arguing, requires a lull and a calm, an in
terruption of the busy operations of the mind, a voluntary
suspension of the motion of that whole machinery of active
thought, which is generally going on in intellectual minds,
and constitutes their normal state. But the schoolman
was always busy, always arguing, always in the thick of
words, always constructing upon assumption, and pushing
on to conclusion after conclusion. He could not afford
the time to stop to examine fairly a single assumption on
which he went. He had not the patience to pause, and
look within. He had other work always to do, as he
thought more important. A passive attitude was intoler
able to a mind accustomed exclusively to busy construc
tion ; and thought internal and without words to one, to
whom words were the great machinery by which he thought.
Put him to such a task, and he would feel like a workman
without his accustomed tools, or like a man of practical
talent and energy shut up in a dark room and told to think.
The consequence was, that it was a chance whether his
assumptions were true or false. When he thought
as a
man and with mankind at large, they were right ; when
he thought as a philosopher they were too often mistaken,
extreme and unqualified when they should have been limited,
and absolute when they should have been with a condition
and reserve.
CHAPTER X.
SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION.
THE last chapter explained
the scholastic theory of the
physical predetermination of the will, or the subordination of
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