some given moment, but progressive and cumulative. At once, speaking
philosophically, the intellectual method of the West and the intuitive
method of the East came together and fused in a new thing, each element
limiting, and at the same time fortifying the other, while the opposed
obscurities of the past were irradiated by the revealing and creative
spirit of Christ. So came the beginnings of that definitive Christian
philosophy which was to proceed from Syria, Anatolia and Constantinople,
through Alexandria to St. Augustine, and was to find its fullest
expression during the Middle Ages and by means of Duns Scotus, Albertus
Magnus, Hugh of St. Victor and St. Thomas Aquinas.

It is an interesting fact, though apart from my present consideration,
that this philosophical fusion was paralleled in the same places and at
the same time, by an aesthetic fusion that brought into existence the
first great and consistent art of Christianity. This question is
admirably dealt with in Lisle March Phillipps' "Form and Colour."

This great Christian philosophy which lay behind all the civilization of
the Middle Ages, was positive, comprehensive and new. It demonstrated
divine purpose working consciously through all things with a result in
perfect coherency; it gave history a new meaning as revealing reality
and as a thing forever present and never past, and above all it
elucidated the nature of both matter and spirit and made clear their
operation through the doctrine of sacramentalism.

In the century that saw the consummation of this great philosophical
system--as well as that of the civilization which was its expositor in
material form--there came a separation and a divergence. The balanced
unity was broken, and on the one hand the tendency was increasingly
towards the exaggerated mysticism that had characterized the Eastern