This is why Galileo could not induce them to look through his telescope; for the ancients had no telescopes, and the Scholars wished to see nothing that had not been seen by their favourite authors. First then we have the Scholars, headed by Erasmus. § 6. Next we find a party less numerous and for a time less influential, who did care about things for the sake of the things themselves; but carried away by the literary current of their age, they sought to learn about them not directly, but only by reading. Here again we have a kind of realism which is not yet extinct. Some years ago I was assured by a Graduate of the University of London who had passed in chemistry, that, as far as he knew, he had never seen a chemical in his life: he had got all his knowledge from books. While such a thing is possible among us, we need not wonder if those who in the sixteenth century prized the knowledge of things, allowed books to come between the learner and the object of his study, if they regarded Nature as a far-off country of which we could know nothing but what great authors reported to us. As this party, unlike the Scholars, did not delight in literature as such, but simply as a means of acquiring knowledge, literary form was not valued by them, and they preferred Euclid to Sophocles, Columella to Virgil. Seeking to learn about things, not immediately, but through words, they have received from Raumer a name they are likely to keep—Verbal Realists. In the sixteenth century the greatest of the Verbal Realists also gave a hint of Realism proper; for he was no less a man than Rabelais. § 7. Lastly we come to those who, as it turned out, were to have more influence in the schoolroom than the Scholars and the Verbal Realists combined. I do not know that these have had any name given them, but for distinction sake we may call them _Stylists_. In studying literature the Scholars cared both for form and substance, the Verbal Realists for substance only, and the Stylists for form only. The Stylists gave up their lives, not, like the scholars, to gain a thorough understanding of the ancient writings and of the old world, but to an attempted reproduction of the ancient languages and of the classical literary form. § 8. In marking these tendencies at the Renascence, we must remember that though distinguished by their tendencies, these Scholars, Verbal Realists, and Stylists, were not divided into clearly defined parties. Categories like these no doubt assist us in gaining precision of thought, but we must not gain precision at the expense of accuracy. The tendencies we have been considering did not act in precisely opposite directions, and all were to some extent affected by them. But one tendency was predominant in one man and another in another; and this justifies us in calling Sturm a Stylist, Erasmus a Scholar, and Rabelais a Verbal Realist.