nimated
Greek expression, aroused men to think and observe in a similar
untrammeled fashion. The history of science in the sixteenth century
shows that the dawning sciences of physical nature largely borrowed
their points of departure from the new interest in Greek literature.
As Windelband has said, the new science of nature was the daughter of
humanism. The favorite notion of the time was that man was in microcosm
that which the universe was in macrocosm.
This fact raises anew the question of how it was that nature and man
were later separated and a sharp division made between language and
literature and the physical sciences. Four reasons may be suggested. (a)
The old tradition was firmly entrenched in institutions. Politics,
law, and diplomacy remained of necessity branches of authoritative
literature, for the social sciences did not develop until the methods of
the sciences of physics and chemistry, to say nothing of biology, were
much further advanced. The same is largely true of history. Moreover,
the methods used for effective teaching of the languages were well
developed; the inertia of academic custom was on their side. Just as the
new interest in literature, especially Greek, had not been allowed at
first to find lodgment in the scholastically organized universities, so
when it found its way into them it joined hands with the older learning
to minimize the influence of experimental science. The men who taught
were rarely trained in science; the men who were scientifically
competent worked in private laboratories and through the medium of
academies which promoted research, but which were not organized as
teaching bodies. Finally, the aristocratic tradition which looked down
upon material things and upon the senses and the hands was still mighty.
(b) The Protestant revolt brought with it an immense increase of
interest in theological discussion and controversies. The appeal on both
sides was to literary documents. Each side had to train men in ability
to study and expound the records which were relied upon. The demand for
training men who could defend the chosen faith against the other side,
who were able to propagandize and to prevent the encroachments of the
other side, was such that it is not too much to say that by the middle
of the seventeenth century the linguistic training of gymnasia and
universities had been captured by the revived theological interest, and
used as a tool of religious education and
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