The manifest tendency of the universities toward speculation, though for long within limits approved by the Church, was ultimately to awaken inquiry, investigation, rational thinking, and to bring forth the modern spirit. The preservation and transmission of knowledge was by the university organization transferred from the monastery to the school, from monks to doctors, and from the Church to a body of logically trained men, only nominally members of the _clerici_. Their successors would in time entirely break away from connections with either Church or State, and stand forth as the independent thinkers and scholars in the arts, sciences, professions, and even in Theology. University graduates in Medicine would in time wage a long struggle against bigotry to lay the foundations of modern medicine. Graduates in Law would contend with kings and feudal lords for larger privileges for the as yet lowly common man, and would help to usher in a period of greater political equality. The university schools of Theology were in time to send forth the keenest critics of the practices of the Church. Out of the university cloisters were to come the men--Dante, Petrarch, Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, Calvin, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton--who were to usher in the modern spirit. The universities as a public force. Almost from the first the universities availed themselves of their privileges and proclaimed a bold independence. The freedom from arrest and trial by the civil authorities for petty offenses, or even for murder, and the right to go on a strike if in any way interfered with, were but beginnings in independence in an age when such independence seemed important. These rights were in time given up, [26] and in their place the much more important rights of liberty to study as truth seemed to lead, freedom in teaching as the master saw the truth, and the right to express themselves as an institution on public questions which seemed to concern them, were slowly but definitely taken on in place of the earlier privileges. Virtually a new type of members of society--a new Estate--was evolved, ranking with Church, State, and nobility, and this new Estate soon began to express itself in no uncertain tones on matters which concerned both Church and State. The universities were democratic in organization and became democratic in spirit, representing a heretofore unknown and unexpressed public opinion in western Europe. They did not wait to be asked; they gave their opinions unsolicited. "The authority of the University of Paris," writes one contemporary, "has risen to such a height that it is necessary to satisfy it, no matter on what conditions." The university "wanted to meddle with the government of the Pope, the King, and everything else," writes another. We find Paris intervening repeatedly in both church and state affairs, [27] and representing French nationality before it had come into being, as the so-