manists. The
influence of the new learning in Germany was marked by comparative
freedom from frivolities, skepticism and immoralities. There was a
critical and enlightened study of classical literature and a reverent
and rational study of the Bible. The literary treasures of antiquity
were made to minister to religion. The Reformation also gave fresh
impulses to all the schools and institutions of learning. The school
teacher and preacher of the gospel joined hands in the common work of
education.

The universities, however, under the control of the schoolmen,
retrograded and decayed because they chose to remain mediaeval. They
refused to become the educational agencies of the times, and so failed
to be at the head of a great intellectual movement. They could not be
induced to assimilate the new studies and make themselves the organ of
the Renaissance and the Reformation. The rapid growth of positive and
experimental science, however, was fatal to scholasticism. The narrow
scholastic spirit was exemplified by Cremonini, who is called the last
of the schoolmen, and who was professor at Padua in 1631.

This countryman of Galileo, after the discovery of Jupiter's
satellites, judging that this discovery contradicted Aristotle, would
never consent to look through a telescope again. One could not have a
better incident to end the career of the scholastic philosophy.

The Jesuits adopted a more liberal spirit and method. They established
and controlled a large number of universities and schools, and made
them the great channels of the movement of the counter-Reformation.
Their educational activity gained for them a great reputation for
teaching and a large patronage. In 1710, they had 612 colleges, 157
normal schools, 24 universities and 200 missions. They were inspired
not so much by the value they placed on culture for its own sake, as
to promote the authority of the old religion and prevent heresy.

The powerful initial impulse given to the cause of education by means
of the humanists and the reformers in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries began to flag in the seventeenth century, when the
Protestant Church, like the Catholic, became cold and petrified. The
universities were regarded as appendages of the church, and classical
training largely lost its hold in Europe.

The condition of contemporary institutions for superior instruction in
the old world is full of promise. The importance of building up great
universi