The patristic system of dogma with the antique philosophy, set the forms of mediaeval expression, fixed the distinctive qualities of mediaeval thought, furnished its topics, and even necessitated its problems--in two ways: First, through the specific substance which passed over and filled the mediaeval productions; and secondly, simply by reason of the existence of such a vast authoritative body of antique and patristic opinion, knowledge, dogma, which the Middle Ages had to accept and master, and beyond which the substance of mediaeval thinking was hardly destined to advance. The first way is obvious enough, inasmuch as patristic and antique matter palpably make the substance of mediaeval theology and philosophy. The second is less obvious, but equally important. This mass of dogma, knowledge, and opinion, existed finished and complete. Men imperfectly equipped to comprehend it were brought to it by the conviction that it was necessary to their salvation, and then gradually by the persuasion also that it offered the only means of intellectual progress. The struggle to master such a volume of knowledge issuing from a more creative past, gave rise to novel problems, or promoted old ones to a novel prominence. The problem of universals was taken directly from the antique dialectic. It played a monstrous rôle in the twelfth century because it was in very essence a fundamental problem of cognition, of knowing, and so pressed upon men who were driven by the need to master continually unfolding continents of thought.[422] This is an instance of a problem transmitted from the past, but blown up to extraordinary importance by mediaeval intellectual conditions. So throughout the whole scholastic range, attitude and method alike are fixed by the fact that scholasticism was primarily an appropriation of transmitted propositions. In considering the characteristics of mediaeval thought, it is well to bear in mind these diverse ways in which its antecedents made it what it was: through their substance transmitted to it; through the receptive attitude forced upon men by existing accumulations of authoritative doctrine, and the method entailed upon mediaeval thought by its scholastic rather than originative character. Also one will not omit to notice which elements came from the action of the patristic body of antecedents, rather than from the antique group, and _vice versa_.