energy of the soldier who had sharpened and burnished them for battle. Long afterwards, Erasmus expressed what the fourteenth century had already begun to feel, when, asking how Christendom was to set about converting Turks, he said—"Shall we put into their hands an Occam, a Durandus, a Scotus, a Gabriel, or an Alvarus? What will they think of us, when they hear of our perplexed subtleties about Instants, Formalities, Quiddities, and Relations?" Considered merely as an instrument of mental discipline, the scholastic philosophy had done good work for the age in which it arose; it has left, indeed, an abiding mark on the language and the thought of Europe; but it was now passing into a system of lifeless formulas and mechanical exercises. Thus the Universities were losing—slowly but surely—that which had once been their sovereign attraction. And at the same time they were denied an outlet for new activities. Wyclif's gallant struggle at Oxford was defeated. His death in 1384 marks a turning-point. Religious freedom was suppressed, but at the cost of intellectual life. The crusade against Lollardism introduced an age of torpor and sterility at the Universities. Indeed, the Latin philosophy was gradually silencing itself. And a decided divorce between the Universities and the nation was now setting in. The laity felt less interest in the paralysed studies of the academic schools, which were tending to become little more than clerical seminaries. The numbers of the students were dwindling. Already the study of Medicine was
