Large amounts of money were not needed to establish a new university. A few thousand guilders or thalers sufficed for the salaries of ten or fifteen professors, a couple of preachers and physicians would undertake the theological and medical lectures, and some old monastery would supply the needed buildings.
After the Reformation the law faculty increased to the place of first importance in Protestant lands, because the Reformation had created a new demand for judges and higher court officials to replace the rule of the clergy. The medical faculty continued to be, as in the mediaeval universities, the smallest of all the faculties and amounted to little before the nineteenth century. [14] The arts faculty, or philosophical as it came to be termed in German lands, offered lectures in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and a general course in philosophy, but the Aristotelian texts and to some extent mediaeval methods in instruction continued to be used until the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Here and there some professor "read" on mathematics, and in Protestant lands on the new astronomy, and the study of botany began as the study of herbs in the medical faculty, [15] but during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries few professors or students were interested in the scientific subjects. By 1675 Bacon's Novum Organum had begun to be taught at both Oxford and Cambridge, and by 1700 the Newtonian physics had begun to displace Aristotle at Oxford. By 1740 it was well established there. At first instruction in the new subjects was offered as an extra and for a fee by men not having professional rank (R. 224), and later the instruction was given full recognition by the university. By 1700 Cambridge had become a center for mathematical study (R. 225), and with the growth in popularity of the Newtonian philosophy, mathematical studies there took the place held by logic in the mediaeval university. Cambridge has ever since remained a center for mathematical and, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, for scientific studies as well. Between 1680 and 1700 the University of Paris was reformed, and the mathematical and philosophical studies of Descartes (p. 394) began to be taught there. The universities of the Netherlands began to teach the new mathematical and scientific studies even earlier.
Aside from the above described Realschule development, the new scientific movement for a time largely passed over German lands, and in consequence the German universities remained unreformed until the eighteenth century. During the seventeenth century they sank to their lowest intellectual level. In 1694, largely in protest against the narrowness of the old universities, the new University of Halle was founded. It received into its faculty certain forward-looking men who had been driven from the old universities, [16] and is generally considered as the first modern university. The new scientific and mathematical subjects and a reformed philosophy were introduced; the instruction in Greek and Latin was reformed; German was made the medium of classroom instruction; and a scientific magazine in German was begun. In 1737 the University of Göttingen became a second center of modern influence, and from these two institutions the new scientific spirit gradually spread to all the Protestant universities of German lands. A century later they were the leading universities of the world.
THE TRANSITION NOW PRACTICALLY COMPLETE. From the time Petrarch made his first "find" at Liège (1333), in the form of two previously unknown orations of Cicero (p. 244), to the publication of the Principia (p. 388) of Newton (1687), is a period of approximately three and a half centuries. During these three and a half centuries a complete transformation of world-life had been effected, and the mediaeval man, with his eyes on the past, had given place to the modern man with his eyes on the future. During these three and a half centuries revolutionary forces had been at work in the world of ideas, and the transition from mediaeval to modern attitudes had been accomplished. From 1333 to 1433 was the century of "literary finds," and during this period the monastic treasures were brought to light and edited and the classical literature of Rome restored. Greek also was restored to the western world, and a reformed Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were given the place of first importance in the new humanistic school. The invention of printing took place in 1423; 1456 witnessed the appearance of the first printed book, and the perfection of the new means for the multiplication of books and the dissemination of ideas. Before 1500 the great era of geographical discovery had been inaugurated; a sea-route to India was found in 1487; and a new continent in 1492. In 1519-22 Magellan's ships rounded the world.
In 1517 Luther issued the challenge, the shock of which was felt in every corner of Christian Europe, and within a half-century much of northern and western Europe had been lost to the original Roman Church. Soon independence in thinking had been extended to the problem of the organization of the universe, and in 1543 Copernicus issued the book that clearly marks the beginning of modern scientific thinking and inquiry. Bacon had done his organizing work by 1620, and Newton's Principia (1687) finally established modern scientific thought and work. Comenius died in 1671, his great organizing work done, and his textbooks, with their many new educational ideas, in use all over Europe. The mediaeval attitude still continued in religion and government, but the world as a whole had left mediaeval attitudes behind it, and was facing the future of modern world organization and life. To the educational organization of this modern world we now turn, though before doing so we shall try to present a cross-section, as it were, of the development in educational theory and practice which had been attained by about the middle of the eighteenth century.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Explain why the scholars of the time were so intent on producing a new race of Roman youths for a revived Latin scholarly world.
2. Show that a reaction against humanism was certain to arise, and why.
3. How do you explain the very small influence exerted on the Latin grammar schools of England by the non-conformist Academies, after they had been absorbed into the existing English non-state system of higher schools?