The view held in the dark ages of the natural and the supernatural and of their relative proportions in the outlook on life, was precisely the reverse of that held by intelligent men in modern times. For us the material universe has taken on the aspect of order; within its limits phenomena seem to follow definite modes of behavior, upon the evidence of which a body of scientific knowledge has been built up. Indeed at times in certain branches of science there has been danger of a dogmatism akin to, if the reverse of, that which prevailed in medieval times with reference to the supernatural. On the other hand, the certainty that once existed in regard to the supernatural world has faded away; no means of investigating it that commands confidence has been devised, and any idea held in regard to it is believed to be void of truth if inconsistent with the conclusions reached by science. In all these respects the attitude of Isidore and his time is exactly opposite to ours. To him the supernatural world was the demonstrable and ordered one. Its phenomena, or what were supposed to be such, were accepted as valid, while no importance was attached to evidence offered by the senses as to the material. It may even be said that the supernatural universe bulked far larger in the mind of the medieval thinker than does the natural in that of the modern, and it was fortified by an immeasurably stronger and more uncritical dogmatism.
It is evident, therefore, that if we compare the dogmatic world-view of the medieval thinker with the more tentative one of the modern scientist, allowance must be made for the fact that they take hold of the universe at opposite ends. Their plans are so fundamentally different that it is hard to express the meaning of one in terms of the other.
Isidore’s method of apprehending the supernatural world can hardly be called mysticism. With mysticism we associate intuition and exalted feeling, and the examples that have been given of Isidore’s thinking in terms of allegory and number, show that he thought of the supernatural in the same prosaic and literal way as he did of the natural; there was no break for him between them, nor was there any change of intellectual atmosphere when he crossed the line. So the higher sense at least of the term ‘mystic’ must be denied him. His share in the mysticism of his age, which he accepted unquestioningly, was not a positive one; he exhibits rather the negative side of mysticism, the intellectual haziness, slothfulness and self-delusion by which it was so often accompanied in medieval times.
