culous questions.[36] Schwickerath remarks,[37] "It can not and
need not be denied that the education imparted by the mediaeval
scholastics was in many regards defective. It was at once too dogmatic
and disputatious. Literary studies were comparatively neglected;
frequently too much importance was attached to purely dialectical
subtleties.... The defects of scholasticism became especially manifest
in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when much time
and energy were wasted in discussing useless refinements of thought."
That it did a great deal of good will appear from the following
summary:--

=Summary of the Benefits of Scholasticism.=--1. It attempted to
harmonize philosophy with Christianity, and may be called the first
Christian philosophy.

2. It sought to base learning on reason and investigation, rather than
on authority. In this we find the first impulse of that movement which
later led to the founding of science.

3. Many universities were established through the scholastic influence,
notably, Paris, Heidelberg, Bologna, Prague, and Vienna.

4. While it failed to establish them, it at least recognized the
desirableness of a universal language for schools, and a universal
church for man.

5. Although, with the exception of the universities which it founded,
its direct work in education cannot be said to have been permanent, yet
it imparted fresh vigor to educational endeavors.

6. Schwegler says,[38] "It ... introduced to the world another principle
than that of the old Church, the principle of the thinking spirit, the
self-consciousness of the reason, or at least prepared the way for the
victory of this principle. Even the deformities and unfavorable side of
scholasticism, the many absurd questions upon which the scholastics
divided, even their thousandfold unnecessary and accidental
distinctions, their inquisitiveness and subtleties, all sprang from a
rational principle, and grew out of a spirit of investigation, which
could only utter itself in this way under the all-powerful
ecclesiastical spirit of the time."

FOOTNOTES:

[32] "History of Pedagogy," p. 71.

[33] "History of Philosophy," p. 186.

[34] _Ibid._, p. 185.

[35] _Ibid._, p. 186.

[36] See K. Schmidt, "Geschichte der Paedagogik," Vol. II, p. 265, for
subjects of these discussions.

[37] "Jesuit Education," p. 46.

[38] "History of Philosophy," p. 189.

CHAPTER XX

CHARLEMAGNE

=Literature.=--_Ferris