MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 
75 
began 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, Patricias 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- 
gnate, 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 154*2, 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- 
