84 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



we find the first notable instance of that conflict of 

 ecclesiastical authority with the growing demands of 

 the human reason which became the dominant intel- 

 lectual feature of the coming centuries. But for a 

 time the speculative spirit was exhausted, and the 

 middle of the twelfth century marks the beginning of 

 a pause of fifty years in logical and philosophical 

 dialectic, and the return to a passing interest in 

 classical literature, an interest centred in John of 

 Salisbury and his school at Chartres. 



If the intellectual task of the Dark Ages was to save 



what it could out of the wreck of the ancient learning, 



The that of the first succeeding centuries was 



Schoolmen, to master and absorb what was recovered. 

 As we have seen, the intellectual achievement of 

 the mediaeval period was the welding together of 

 the remains of the ancient classical knowledge and 

 the Christian faith, as interpreted by the early 

 Fathers, in the minds of new races to whom both 

 were foreign. From the eighth century onward we 

 may watch this process at work, and there the 

 constructive period of the Middle Ages may be said 

 to begin. 



By the middle of the twelfth century the dual 

 heritage from the past had been surveyed and mapped 

 out, absorbed and transformed by the Teutonic mind, 

 where it lay awhile, awaiting an opportunity to 

 germinate. Here we have the culmination of mediaeval 

 appreciation of classical literature. None of the more 

 advanced works of Aristotle were known in a complete 

 form ; thus no scientific and unliterary source had 

 come to hand to disturb the literary outlook of those 



