vanity and self conceit, have been deservedly chastised by various authors.[1]
It became especially the fashion among humanists to sneer at the "metaphysical juggleries" and the "barbarous Latin" of the scholastics. It is true, the all absorbing interest in philosophical and theological questions had caused a retrogression in the study of the classical authors. But this loss was counteracted by a considerable gain. At any rate, the sweeping condemnations of the humanists were not justified. Modern scholars begin to see the service rendered to science by scholasticism, and not a few defend the schoolmen against the "arrogant accusations of the humanists" as Professor Paulsen calls them. "We might just as well accept the judgments of socialists on our present conditions as reliable criticisms. It is the task of the historians to judge the past from what it was in and for itself, a task which in most cases means to defend it against that which immediately succeeded. For it is the lot of all historical institutions to be thrown aside with hatred and contempt by that which follows. Will not a time come when the philological and historical, physical and other inquiries of the present appear as dreary and barren, as to us scholastic and speculative philosophy appear?"[2]
Not only Leibnitz, but modern philosophers as Hegel, Edward von Hartmann, and the rationalistic Professor Harnack, have respected the schoolmen as the leaders in a great movement and defended them against their calumniators. Hartmann admits that
