In spite of all opposition, the education of men thus underwent a gradual transformation in cultivated countries. Instead of maintaining their former attitude of grave reserve, hardly distinguishable from bashfulness, and of regarding everybody, especially persons well on in years, with a distant respect; instead, notably, of showing in their intercourse with women all the shades of respect from profound reverence to profound courtesy, the majority of these young men made their entrance into life without embarrassment and with the most charming manners. They put off the armour of social etiquette, they were docile, pleasant, graceful in bearing, proficient in the art of pleasing. A multitude of books on “civility,” an excellent specimen of which came from the pen of Erasmus, instructed them in the science of good-breeding, formerly somewhat neglected. Moreover, as education is always the great objective of men who desire to exercise a serious influence on thought, they vied with one another in propounding theories and advocating each his own system in regard to the direction of youth, a task which engrossed such men as Cordier,[70] Sadoleto,[71] Vivès,[72] Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, to mention only the chief. We need not follow here their far-reaching discussions, which are but the development of the struggle entered upon between the idealistic and the matter-of-fact spirits. On the extreme frontier of the two realms Zwingle, established so to speak as a mainguard, defends the German tactics. Without denying the amenities of aestheticism, he declares for an education of cloistral severity, for curricula of the exact sciences and logic, and prefers Hebraists or erudite Hellenists to elegant Latinists. Erasmus, on the contrary, marks out the Roman frontier. He considers that any effort to direct the intelligence of children into one rigid channel only has the effect of drying it up. He appreciates neither the exhibition of truth in its skeleton state, the system which flourished in the schools of the Middle Ages, nor the pure apprenticeship to utilitarianism to which Zwingle inclines. The sentiment of the beautiful, in his view, offers an immense advantage in life—that of sustaining and consoling the spirit; in education there is no other process for widening, refining, elevating the faculties.[73] The new movement has his entire approval. Indeed, he is ready to go very far. Instead of banishing all thoughts of women from their minds, he is surprisingly ready to explain to young men that there are two loves, a good and a bad, and to set them such subjects for composition as the question “ought a man to marry or not?” Hütten[74] pokes great fun at the coy professors who so carefully expurgate the mythology, who would fain drape the Muses and turn them into angels, or who compare Diana to the Virgin Mother.