MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 75 



fregan to abound, through the industry of Albertus 

 Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, John Ma- 

 jor (a native of Haddington), Theodore Gaza, Fran- 

 ciscus, a Jesuit of Cordova, with a swarm of gram- 

 marians and scholastics whom the art of typography 

 had multiplied so abundantly that, towards the close 

 of the sixteenth century, Patricius reckoned their 

 number at 12,000. This cold and unintelligible 

 mass of Gothic and Saracenic dulness is now con- 

 signed to just oblivion. 



It may seem extraordinary that a philosophy thus 

 disfigured by a succession of interpreters often more 

 worthy of ridicule than of admiration, should have 

 so long maintained an absolute ascendency over the 

 minds of men. But the fact is easily explained. 

 During the intellectual slumber of the western world, 

 the human faculties had neither the light of letters 

 to detect false glosses, nor mental energy to eman- 

 cipate reason and conscience from the thraldom of 

 ignorance and superstition. The sway of the Sta- 

 girite, however, was not always untroubled. Launoy 

 enumerates eight different revolutions of his autho- 

 rity in the University of Paris, the oldest and long 

 the most distinguished school in Europe. In the 

 year 1209, his writings were condemned as the pes- 

 tilent sources of heresy, and committed to the 

 flames. In 1542, the same writings were held in 

 such veneration, that whoever denied their ortho- 

 doxy was persecuted as an infidel. Peter Ramus, a 

 Parisian Professor of that age (1551-1572), signa- 



