68 PHILOSOPHIC SCIENCES. 



their champions. The triumph of nominalism completed the discomfiture 

 of scholasticism, which was no longer so popular in the Universities, and 

 which was gradually being confined to the cloisters. It may be added that 

 the struggle between the rival schools was much abated by the discovery of 

 printing ; for, owing to this invention, which was called divine, the works of 

 ancient philosophy, which had been used as texts for the oral teaching of the 

 professors, became multiplied amongst the friends of science. These printed 

 books, making their way everywhere, were calculated to take the place of the 

 lessons which students had previously come to learn at the Universities famous 

 for. the ability of their masters of dialectics. As M. Haureau very justly 

 observes, " Before the invention of printing, students learnt the lessons of 

 science from one master, and nearly always became his partisans : to quit one 

 school for another required no common degree of courage. But afterwards 

 students were enabled, before making their choice, to weigh the merits of ten 

 masters at -a time." These masters were the books issued from the presses in 

 every country of Europe (Fig. 51). 



The philosophy of the Renaissance was just coming into existence when the 

 fugitive Greeks, after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, imported 

 into Italy manuscripts containing the works of Plato and of philosophers of 

 the Alexandrian school. These works, which it was believed had been lost, 

 and of which only a vague recollection had been preserved by tradition, were 

 welcomed in the middle of the fifteenth century with even more respect and 

 enthusiasm than the books of Aristotle had been in the twelfth century. 

 The comparison of ancient philosophy with the scholasticism of the more 

 modern schools was not to the advantage of the latter, which seemed too 

 narrow, too obscure, and too servile. The writings of Plato gave a better 

 idea of the opinions of Heraclitus and Pythagoras, and opened new vistas to 

 many minds which were eager to shake off all bon<}s, and to emerge from the 

 paths in which theology had been guiding them for the last four or five 

 centuries (Fig. 50). 



This period of philosophical renovation began by a sharp discussion 

 between two Grecian philosophers of Constantinople, Gemistes Plethoii and 

 Theodoros de Gaza : the first a fanatical partisan of the Alexandrian school 

 of Plotinus, the second a faithful votary of Aristotle. The old scholasticism 

 was dead ; the chairs which it formerly had at Florence and the great cities 

 of Italy were tenanted by the new doctors, who expounded the principles of 



