THE PATH OF EVOLUTION 



men should know the use of words before they could 

 rise to the advancement of thoughts. The classical 

 writers were long forbidden to be read, but Gerbert 

 about 980 explained the works of Virgil, Horace, 

 and of some others, to his pupils. 



The study of the works of Aristotle, of which a 

 few very imperfect copies had been preserved in the 

 various monasteries, furnished a system of dialectics 

 and the proper use of the syllogism that has practi- 

 cally remained without improvement almost to our 

 day. His philosophy, viewed at first with disap- 

 proval, was later tolerated by the church, and finally 

 adopted and fiercely defended by most of the School- 

 men in their disputes with the idealistic platonists. 

 These disputes occupied the thoughts and the time of 

 learned men until the downfall of scholasticism. 



Aristotle possessed one of the greatest intellects 

 that ever existed. A genius that has illuminated the 

 human race; he seems to have ignored nothing that 

 it was possible for the ancients to have known, and 

 transmitted to us all the science of his epoque, whether 

 derived from his predecessors, his contemporaries or 

 through his own labors. Unlike his preceptor, Plato, 

 he attached the highest importance to the experience 

 of the senses. He distinguished with perfect clear- 

 ness between deductive and inductive reasoning; but, 

 notwithstanding his preference for the result of direct 



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