held that universals are
not ideals, but that they exist in the things themselves. The formula
given was "_Universalia in re_." This was a step in advance, and laid
something of a foundation for the philosophy of classification in
modern science.

The scholastic philosophers did much to sharpen reason and to develop
the mind, but they failed for want of data. Indeed, this has been the
common failure of man, for in the height of civilization men speculate
without sufficient knowledge. Even in the beginning of scientific
thought, for lack of facts, men spent much of their time in
speculation. The scholastic philosophers were led to consider many
unimportant questions which could not be well settled. They asked the
church authorities why the sacramental wine and bread turned into blood
and flesh, and what was the necessity of the atonement? And in
considering the nature of pure being they asked: "How many angels can
dance at once on the point of a needle?" and "In moving from point to
point, do angels pass through {355} intervening space?" They asked
seriously whether "angels had stomachs," and "if a starving ass were
placed exactly midway between two stacks of hay would he ever move?"
But it must not be inferred that these people were as ridiculous as
they appear, for each question had its serious side. Having no
assistance from science, they fell single-handed upon dogmatism; yet
many times they busied themselves with unprofitable discussions, and
some of them became the advocates of numerous doctrines and dogmas
which had a tendency to confuse knowledge, although in defense of which
wits were sharpened.

Lord Bacon, in a remarkable passage, has characterized the scholastic
philosophers as follows:

"This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign among the
schoolmen, who--having sharp and strong wits and abundance of leisure
and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells
of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle, their dictator) as their persons
were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and having
little history, either of nature or of time--did, out of no great
quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit, spin out unto us
those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For
the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter which is the
contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff
and is limited thereby; but if it work upon its