is proposed; and even then
he stood no chance of being elevated to a professor's chair unless he
had lectured for some time with great _eclat_ Even Albertus Magnus,
fresh with the laurels of Cologne, was compelled to go through a three
years' course as a sub-teacher at Paris before he received his doctor's
cap, and to lecture for some years more as master before his
transcendent abilities were rewarded with a professorship. The dean of
the faculty of theology was chosen by the suffrages of the doctors.

The _Organum_ (philosophy of first principles) of Aristotle was first
publicly taught in 1215. This was certainly in advance of the seven
liberal arts which were studied in the old Cathedral schools,--grammar,
rhetoric, and dialectic (Trivium); and arithmetic, geometry, music, and
astronomy (Quadrivium),--for only the elements of these were taught. But
philosophy and theology, under the teaching of the Scholastic doctors
(_Doctores Scholastici_), taxed severely the intellectual powers. When
they introduced dialectics to support theology a more severe method was
required. "The method consisted in connecting the doctrine to be
expounded with a commentary on some work chosen for the purpose. The
contents were divided and subdivided, until the several propositions of
which it was composed were reached. Then these were interpreted,
questions were raised in reference to them, and the grounds of affirming
or denying were presented. Then the decision was announced, and in case
this was affirmative, the grounds of the negative were confuted."

Aristotle was made use of in order to reduce to scientific form a body
of dogmatic teachings, or to introduce a logical arrangement. Platonism,
embraced by the early Fathers, was a collection of abstractions and
theories, but was deficient in method. It did not furnish the weapons to
assail heresy with effect. But Aristotle was logical and precise and
passionless. He examined the nature of language, and was clear and
accurate in his definitions. His logic was studied with the sole view
of learning to use polemical weapons. For this end the syllogism was
introduced, which descends from the universal to the particular, by
deduction,--connecting the general with the special by means of a middle
term which is common to both. This mode of reasoning is opposite to the
method by induction, which rises to the universal from a comparison of
the single and particular, or, as applied in science, from