II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 67 



many centuries, may seem a terrible illustration 

 of the wasteful way in which the struggle for ex- 

 istence is carried on in the world of thought, no 

 less than in that of matter. But there is a more 

 cheerful mode of looking at the history of scholas- 

 ticism. It ground and sharpened the dialectic 

 implements of our race as perhaps nothing but 

 discussions, in the result of which men thought 

 their eternal, no less than their temporal, interests 

 were at stake, could have done. When a logical 

 blunder may ensure combustion, not only in the 

 next world but in this, the construction of syllo- 

 gisms acquires a peculiar interest. Moreover, the 

 schools kept the thinking faculty alive and active, 

 when the disturbed state of civil life, the mephitic 

 atmosphere engendered by the dominant ecclesi- 

 asticism, and the almost total neglect of natural 

 knowledge, might well have stifled it. And, 

 finally, it should be remembered that scholasticism 

 really did thresh out pretty effectually certain 

 problems which have presented themselves to 

 mankind ever since they began to think, and 

 which, I suppose, will present themselves so long 

 as they continue to think. Consider, for example, 

 the controversy of the Realists and the Nominal- 

 ists, which was carried on with varying fortunes, 

 and under various names, from the time of Scotus 

 Erigena to the end of the scholastic period. Has 

 it now a merely antiquarian interest ? Has 

 Nominalism, in any of its modifications, so com- 



