second is the spread of Greek scholarship and Greek manuscripts
westward, which was consequent on the Latin occupation of Constantinople
in 1204. It was respited by the opportunity which was afforded it of
fresh draughts from the Aristotle of a less partial and purer tradition,
and we have, accordingly, a golden age of revived Scholasticism
beginning in the 13th century, admitting now within itself more
differences than before. It is to the schoolmen of the two centuries
preceding the Turkish capture of Constantinople that the controversial
refinements usually associated with the name of Scholasticism are
attributable. The _Analytics_ of Aristotle now entered quite definitely
into the logical thought of Scholasticism and we have the contrast of a
_logica vetus_ and _logica nova_. That other matters, the _parva
logicalia_ and Mnemonics adapted from Psellus and possibly of Stoic
origin, entered too did not outweigh this advantage. Confrontation with
the historical Aristotle may have brought but little comfort to the
orthodox system, but it was a stimulus to dialectical activity within
the schools. It provoked the distinction of what was true _secundum
fidem_ and what was true _secundum rationem_ among even sincere
champions of orthodoxy, and their opponents accepted with a smile so
admirable a mask for that thinking for themselves to which the revival
of hope of progress had spurred them. The pioneers of the Renaissance
owe something of their strength to their training in the developments
which the system that they overthrew underwent during this period. The
respite, however, was short. The flight of Byzantine scholarship
westward in the 15th century revealed, and finally, that the philosophic
content of the Scholastic teaching was as alien from Aristotle as from
the spirit of the contemporary revolt of science, with its cry for a new
medicine, a new nautical astronomy and the like. The doom of the
Scholastic Aristotle was nevertheless not the rehabilitation of the
Greek Aristotle. Between him and the tide of feeling at the Renaissance
lay the whole achievement of Arab science. That impatience of authority
to which we owe the Renaissance, the Reformation and the birth of
Nationalism, is not stilled by the downfall of Aristotle as the _nomen
appellativum_ of the schools. The appeal is to experience, somewhat
vaguely defined, as against all authority, to the book of nature and no
other. At last the world undertakes to enlarge the circle of its ideas.
C. THE RENAISSANCE
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