THE BOOK-MEN. 475 



siduously had tbey multiplied copies of precious manuscripts and of 

 their own works. Zealously had they striven to find laymen willing 

 to purchase and study those works and listen to their instructions. 

 At last they persuaded Charlemagne to establish a school in Paris, and 

 Alfred to found a university at Oxford, in order to educate aspirants 

 for the priesthood and form doctors of theology. Nothing was 

 thought of but to cultivate the kind and extent of learning: then exist- 

 ing. It was natural to procure for these schools copies of all the 

 books then to be found. Few, indeed, were these as brief sketches 

 of Latin grammar, a few Latin vocabularies, a meager treatise on 

 arithmetic and geometry, and a stray copy of the philosophical work 

 by Porphyry, and another by Boetius. The rest was all Christian 

 theology and philosophy, such as the works of St. Augustine and other 

 fathers, besides the Bible and the canons of the Church. The savant 

 chosen for Paris was the monk Alcuin, and the scholar selected for 

 Oxford was another monk, Grimbaldus. 



The deed was done. A school was established. Men were offered 

 a great opportunity of becoming book-worms, and consequently to 

 think and theorize. The result was inevitable. To meditate, they 

 had to exercise their reasoning faculty, while they studied the philos- 

 ophy they found in the few books they had, and pondered over theol- 

 ogy, theology and ancient philosophy as harmonized with dogma. 



One of the teachers who succeeded Alcuin was a doctor of philos- 

 ophy named John Scotus Erigenus, an Irishman by birth. He wrote 

 philosophical treatises in which a new question was raised. This 

 question was, whether an abstract term or a word, such, for instance, 

 as the word " humanity" represented a real being ; an essence in 

 nature ; a real and single thing existing independent of any indi- 

 vidual. Not whether there were many individual men included by a 

 process of thought under a general name, but whether that general 

 name " humanity " was not the name of a reality, antecedent in crea- 

 tion and in time to the existence of any individual antecedent to 

 Adam himself. 



Yain as this question would seem, it raised a great debate among 

 the clerks and doctors. Soon parties were formed among them, pro 

 and con. The one party got the name of Realists, the other that 

 of Nominalists. Minds became excited, curiosity was aroused. In 

 order to prove one opinion or the other, information was sought in 

 every direction. Every scrap which could be found of Plato's and 

 Aristotle's works was rescued from oblivion, and quoted as authority 

 by one or the other side. Other ancient books were disinterred. The 

 savants began to investigate natural phenomena, and, above all, to 

 closely scrutinize man himself, physically and intellectually. 



Though the question in debate might appear at this day quite 

 frivolous and easily answered, yet in those times it was necessary as a 

 first step in the progress of getting rid of the fundamental errors and 



