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The Universities and the Nation
Decay of Scholasticism.
The first great fact which meets us here is the incipient decay of the scholastic philosophy. It declined, not because any formidable rival had appeared in the field of intellectual interests, but because the age was slowly coming to perceive that scholasticism had failed in the sublime task which had inspired the dreams of its youthful ambition. It had not succeeded in reconciling the doctrines of the Church with human reason. The extraordinary enthusiasm and devotion which it had so long commanded sprang from the belief that, in the domain of knowledge, this philosophy was a sort of counterpart to the Holy Roman Empire in the sphere of government, and that, as the Emperor was in the old phrase the "advocate" of the Church, so the cultivation of the intellect reached its climax in those studies where the Dialectic bequeathed by Greece became the secular arm of Theology. But theologians from one point of view, and logicians from another, came to see that the alliance had broken down; semi-mysticism on the one part, inchoate scepticism on the other, became the refuge of disappointment. And, when the scholastic philosophy was once separated from its loftiest purpose, what was it? An armoury of slowly rusting weapons, which could no more do service in the greatest of the causes for which they had been elaborated. The weary guardians of the armoury might shift the places of those weapons on the dusty walls, and make some show of keeping them decently keen and bright; but they could not feel the joyous