2. THE RESULTS OF SCHOLASTICISM.—Notwithstanding all, Scholasticism was not without its positively good results. Though standing wholly in the service of the Church, it had, nevertheless, grown out of a scientific impulse, and so naturally awakened a free spirit of inquiry and a sense for knowledge. It made the objects of faith the objects of thought, it raised men from the sphere of unconditional faith to the sphere of doubt, of investigation and of knowledge, and by its very effort to demonstrate the principles of theology it established, though against its knowledge and design, the authority of reason. It thus introduced to the world another principle than that of the old Church, the principle of the thinking spirit, the self-consciousness of the reason, or at least prepared the way for the victory of this principle. Even the deformities and unfavorable side of Scholasticism, the many absurd questions upon which the Scholastics divided, even their thousandfold unnecessary and accidental distinctions, their inquisitiveness and subtleties, all sprang from a rational principle, and grew out of a spirit of investigation, which could only utter itself in this way under the all powerful ecclesiastical spirit of the time. Only when it was surpassed by the advancing spirit of the age, did Scholasticism, falsifying its original meaning, make common cause and interest with the old ecclesiasticism, and turned itself as the most violent opposer against the improvements of the new period.