The spirit behind the Revival of Learning was a protest against this mediaeval attitude, and the protest was vigorous and successful. The Revival of Learning was a clear break with mediaeval traditions and with mediaeval authority. It restored to the world the ideals of earlier education--self-culture, and preparation for usefulness and success in the world here. In Italy, France, Germany, and England the movement, too, met with the most thorough approval from modern men--merchants, court officials, and scholars who were ready to break with the mediaeval type of thinking. The court and other types of secondary schools now established were popular with the higher classes in society, and this aristocratic stamp the humanistic schools and courses have ever since retained. These schools restored to the world the practical education of the days of Cicero, and preparation for intelligent service in the Church, State, and the larger business life became one of their important purposes. Supported as they were by the ruling classes, the new schools were close to the most progressive forces in the national life of the different countries. They represented an unmistakable reaction against the world of the mediaeval monk and the Scholastic, and their early success was in large part because of this. MODIFICATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL CURRICULUM. The mediaeval curriculum, as we have seen (chap. VII), was based on instruction in the Seven Liberal Arts. Grammar at first was the great subject, but later Dialectic became the master science. Knowledge was regarded as an organic whole, capable of being stated in a brief encyclopaedia, and each man could learn it all. With the rise of university instruction some new knowledge was added, chiefly from Moslem sources, and the old knowledge was minutely re-ground. With the revival of the ancient learning there came, within a little more than a century, an enormous increase in the world's sum of knowledge, and the invention of printing came just in time to multiply and scatter this new knowledge throughout western Europe. To all the old subjects a new wealth of detail was added which made teaching encyclopaedias impossible. New purposes in education now came to prevail, and the great mediaeval teaching curriculum was changed in content and in relative importance.