[Sidenote: It systematized Church doctrines, and liberated philosophy from theology.]
=Its Value and Influence.=--As a whole, the work of scholastic education has been underestimated. It has been urged that it ruined all spiritual realities by its extreme systemization of religion, that it dealt with mere abstractions, and that it indulged in over-subtle distinctions and verbal quibbles. But the scholastic arguments were not as purposeless or absurd as they seem. For example, the celebrated inquiry of Aquinas as to the number of angels that could stand on the point of a needle is simply an attempt to present the nature of the Infinite in concrete form. It is the characteristic of reasoning beings to analyze, compare, abstract, and classify, and while scholasticism may have carried its abstractions, hair-splittings, and scientific terminology to an extreme, it performed a great service for knowledge. It found a confused mass of traditional and irrational doctrines and practices, made them systematic, rational, and scientific, and greatly assisted accuracy in thinking. The discussions of the schoolmen resulted in liberating philosophy from theology, and, without intending it perhaps, scholastic education aided the cause of human reason against dogmatism and absolute authority. It greatly stimulated intellectual interests, produced the most acute and subtle minds of the age, and helped to prepare the way for the Renaissance.
[Illustration: Fig. 9.--The temple of wisdom.
An allegorical representation of the mediæval course of study reproduced from the _Margarita Philosophica_ of Gregorius Reisch, Freiburg, 1504. Donatus (elementary grammar) on the first floor; Priscian (advanced grammar) on second; Aristotle (logic), Cicero (rhetoric), and Boethius (arithmetic) on the third; Pythagoras (music), Euclid (geometry), and Ptolemy (astronomy) on the fourth; Pliny (natural history) and Seneca (ethics) on the fifth; and Peter the Lombard (theology) on top.]
Graves, _During the Transition_ (Macmillan, 1910), chap. VI; Monroe, _Text-book_ (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 292-313. For a good account of all _The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages_ (Hodder, London, 1881), see the work of Townsend, W. J.; for the beginnings of scholasticism, Mullinger, J. B., _The University of Cambridge_ (Longmans, Green, 1888), vol. I, pp. 47-64; for the life and influence of Abelard, Compayré, G., _Abelard_ (Scribner, 1893), chap. I; McCabe, J., _Abelard_ (Putnam, 1901); and Rashdall, H., _The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_ (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1895), vol. I, chap. II.