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8 THE SCHOLASTIC CURRICULUM AT CAMBRIDGE
lege (1588) there is renewed insistence on the performance of scho-
lastic exercise by all ". . . in yr own persons . . . Because it is
best for increase of learning, for the greater good of youth, for the
state and benefit of the Coll. . ." 3 In October of 1601, Cecil, an
extraordinarily active chancellor, 4 ordered the Vice-Chancellor to
see to it that ". . . all dueties and exercises of learninge be dili-
gently and duely performed accordinge to the Statutes 8c Orders
of the Universitie . . ." 5
specifying, "(i) In publique Sermons in
S Maries Church. (2) In Lectures and Disputations in publique
Schooles. (3) In diligent frequenting the same." In 1619, King
James himself insisted on the status quo: "We commaund that no
new erected Lectures or Sermons be permitted ... to withdrawe
Scholars from their attendance on the exercises of Learning, Lec-
tures, Disputations, Determinations or Declarations, either publique
or private." 6 These reform decrees, far from showing a departure
from scholastic traditions, demonstrate clearly that the
authorities at Cambridge were to concern themselves not at all in
changing a subscript iota of tradition but solely in improving the
breed scholastic.
A system of thought with an eight-hundred-years-old name
might be expected to have developed a special character. While
historians of philosophy may disagree on the primary character-
istic, all will concede that scholasticism, as received by the seventeenth
century, retained three distinguishing marks: it was dialec-
tical, Aristotelian, and highly systematized.
The dialectical character of scholasticism, that is, its concern
with logic and logical formalities, its disputatiousness, was its
most obvious ~ and, to its critics, most irritating quality. This
dialectical bent was due to the fact that the early schoolmen had
at hand only the De Interpretatione of Aristotle, to which were
added Boethius' translation of the Categoriae in the tenth century,
and in the twelfth century the first book of the Prior Analytics,
the Topics, and the De Sophisticis Elenchis. Thus, until the
end of the twelfth century, the logical tractates were practically
all that were known of the Philosopher's writings. Further, the
struggles between the various strains of early medieval philosophy
over the solution to the problem of the universal idea, the
struggles, namely, between the exaggerated realism of the medieval
Platonists, the nominalism of Occam, and the conceptualism
of William of Champeaux (to which should be added the
attacks of the Scotists upon Aquinas on ontological issues), had
established a tradition of dispute. The typical scholastic was not