tudious was the new scholastic philosophy.
The love of contention, especially with such arms as the art of
dialectics supplies to an acute understanding, is natural enough to
mankind. That of speculating upon the mysterious questions of
metaphysics and theology is not less so. These disputes and
speculations, however, appear to have excited little interest till,
after the middle of the eleventh century, Roscelin, a professor of
logic, revived the old question of the Grecian schools respecting
universal ideas, the reality of which he denied. This kindled a spirit
of metaphysical discussion, which Lanfranc and Anselm, successively
archbishops of Canterbury, kept alive; and in the next century Abelard
and Peter Lombard, especially the latter, completed the scholastic
system of philosophizing. The logic of Aristotle seems to have been
partly known in the eleventh century, although that of Augustin was
perhaps in higher estimation;[839] in the twelfth it obtained more
decisive influence. His metaphysics, to which the logic might be
considered as preparatory, were introduced through translations from the
Arabic, and perhaps also from the Greek, early in the ensuing
century.[840] This work, condemned at first by the decrees of popes and
councils on account of its supposed tendency to atheism, acquired by
degrees an influence, to which even popes and councils were obliged to
yield. The Mendicant Friars, established throughout Europe in the
thirteenth century, greatly contributed to promote the Aristotelian
philosophy; and its final reception into the orthodox system of the
church may chiefly be ascribed to Thomas Aquinas, the boast of the
Dominican order, and certainly the most distinguished metaphysician of
the middle ages. His authority silenced all scruple's as to that of
Aristotle, and the two philosophers were treated with equally implicit
deference by the later schoolmen.[841]

This scholastic philosophy, so famous for several ages, has since passed
away and been forgotten. The history of literature, like that of empire,
is full of revolutions. Our public libraries are cemeteries of departed
reputation, and the dust accumulating upon their untouched volumes speaks
as forcibly as the grass that waves over the ruins of Babylon. Few, very
few, for a hundred years past, have broken the repose of the immense works
of the schoolmen. None perhaps in our own country have acquainted
themselves particularly with their contents. Lei