Adventures of ideas / by Alfred North Whitehead.

  • Alfred North Whitehead
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Adventures of ideas / by Alfred North Whitehead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    90/412 page 74
    especially exemplified in the guilds of the Middle Ages; and that period was characterized by a remarkable growth of civilized genius. The meaning that—in England at least—was then assigned to the word ‘liberty’ illustrates the projection of the new social structure upon the older form of customary determination. For a ‘liberty’ did not then mean a general freedom, but a special licence to a particular group to organize itself within a special field of action. For this reason ‘ liberties5 were sometimes a general nuisance. Of course the Catholic Church was the great ‘liberty’ which first confronted the Roman Empire, and then dominated mediaeval life. In its early stages it is seen in its proper theoretical relation to other autonomous societies. For ex¬ ample, in the pagan Empire its legal status seems to have been analogous to that of the pagan burial societies; although the status of the Church property before the age of Con¬ stantine has not yet been finally elucidated by scholars. But in the Middle Ages the Church so towered above other institutions that it out-rivalled the State itself. Accordingly its analogy to secular guilds and to other professional in¬ stitutions such as universities was obscured by its greatness. The Catholic Church had another characteristic of priceless value. It was, so far as concerned Europe, universal, that is to say, Catholic. Until the approach of the Renaissance there were no European nations in the modern sense. But the Church transcended all governmental boundaries, all racial divisions and all geographic divisions. It was a standing challenge to any form of communal despotism, a universal ‘liberty’. Section VI. From the beginning of the sixteenth cen¬ tury this first form of institutional civilization, with its feudalism, its guilds, its universities, its Catholic Church, was in full decay. The new middle classes, whether scholars
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3