"
To those who deny the validity of one of the primary assumptions of
the disputants--who decline, on the ground of the utter insufficiency
of the evidence, to put faith in the reality of that other world, the
geography and the inhabitants of which are so confidently described in
the so-called[16] Christianity of Catholicism--the long and bitter
contest, which engaged the best intellects for so many centuries, may
seem a terrible illustration of the wasteful way in which the struggle
for existence is carried on in the world of thought, no less than in
that of matter. But there is a more cheerful mode of looking at the
history of scholasticism. It ground and sharpened the dialectic
implements of our race as perhaps nothing but discussions, in the
result of which men thought their eternal, no less than their
temporal, interests were at stake, could have done. When a logical
blunder may ensure combustion, not only in the next world but in this,
the construction of syllogisms acquires a peculiar interest. Moreover,
the schools kept the thinking faculty alive and active, when the
disturbed state of civil life, the mephitic atmosphere engendered by
the dominant ecclesiasticism, and the almost total neglect of natural
knowledge, might well have stifled it. And, finally, it should be
remembered that scholasticism really did thresh out pretty effectually
certain problems which have presented themselves to mankind ever since
they began to think, and which, I suppose, will present themselves so
long as they continue to think.
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