Yet, in spite of Petrarch’s gibes, Averroism in its spring had nursed Padua with the milk of natural science. Even in its decay—for all teaching of philosophy, as a separate study, must decay—the triumph of the Faith was premature; like Jansenism, the School of Averroes, effete as it became, held the ground for a more dangerous invasion, for Leonardo, Telesio, Bruno, Gilbert, Sarpi, Campanella, Galileo, and Harvey; for the pioneers of truth, not as consistency with tradition, not as an alchemical search for real essences, nor indeed as wisdom only; but as the verification of premises. This fuse Paracelsus fixed to the shell which burst upon the Faith, upon Scholasticism, upon Galenism, and even upon humanism, “So Christus spricht ‘Perscrutamini scripturas’; warum soll ich nicht sagen ‘Perscrutamini naturas rerum’?” The _Credo ut intelligam_ of Augustine and Anselm of Canterbury; the _Intelligo ut credam_ of Aquinas belonged to the past; and men began to cry “c’est Dieu qui nous veut hérétiques.” A criticism based upon a larger sense of the relativity of knowledge, and, in the sixteenth century, a new scepticism[66], which pierced even into the Vatican, as to the very possibility of knowledge of the nature of being, were preparing the way for new conceptions: but in ethics meanwhile men were falling either into the carelessness of the scoffer or into the anti-nomianism of the mystic. The brilliant futilities of the medieval dialectic had led to weariness of spirit. After vain and vexatious jugglings with the dry tissues of unchastened ratiocination, simplicity and even ignorance brought their solace.