With Thomas Aquinas 'anti Duns Scotus scholasticism culminated. After their time, various causes co-operated to bring about its decline and fall. The mystical theology (see MYSTICISM) gradually developed its natural antagonism to speculations resting on a basis of formal logic, and not appealing to the human heart and spirit. Such men as St. Bernard (q.v.) of Clairraux, and the monks of St. "Victor at Paris, in the 12th e., together with Bonaventnra in the 13th, were unconsciously hostile to the dominant style of thought; while in the 14th and 15th centuries Tauler. Thomas al Gerson, Nicholas of Clemangis, and others, deliberately set themselyes against it. The very nature of the scholastic thought was inimical to its own perpetuity. The hyper-logical. hair-splitting course which it followed produced rival systems, and results discordant with the doctrines of that theology which it undertook to support, until it finally laid down the astounding proposition, that a thing might be philoscphically.true and theologically false, and rice rerwt. The quarrels of the two great. orders—the Domi nicans and the Franciscans—each of which took part with its metaphysical chief; the former being, called Thomists (from,Aquinas), and the latter, Scotists(from Duns Scotus), materially injured the common cause of scholasticism; and the revival of nominalism under William of (q.v.), i:s most distinguished advocate, powerfully contributed to the same result; but it was not till after the revival of letters had done its work of enliettening the judgment and purifying the taste of Europe, that scholasticism Nvas visibly hi danger. The reformation shook the system to its foundations—Luther him
self leading the assault with the strength and valor or a camr-de-lion ; but still, so tena ciously did it cling to the semblanim of life, that in the universities it held its footing till the I t.lt c., and even later. In fact, in some Romau Catholic states, such as Spain, it is still alm•st the 'only kind of philosophy going. The two great iutellectual reformers whase wr:tings mark the transition from the medixval to the modern mode of thought, are lord Bacon (q.v.) and Descaites (q.v.), who may be said to have administered the death-blow to scholasticism. The literature of this phase of speculation is enormous, dnd few critics have ventured far into its cobwebbed regions. For example, the printed writings of Albertus Maemus, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, amount to 51 folio volumes: but however elad we may be that the reign of scholasticism is over, and how ever thankful to men like Lnurentins Valle, Erasmus, Rudolf Agricola, and Mimes, who rid ILd its ancient and time-honored flag with the sharp shot of their wit and logic, we ought never to that in ages when the conditions of scientific knowledge or refined tastedid not exist, these old monkish dialecticians kept aline the philosophical faculty in Europe by the vivacity and restless ingenuity with which they prosecuted their fantastic speculations.