scientific inquiry and investigation ceased to exist. The notable
scientific advances of the Greeks, their literature and philosophy, and
particularly their genius for free inquiry and investigation, no longer
influenced a world dominated by an institution preparing its children only
for life in a world to come. Not until the world could shake off this
mediaeval attitude toward scientific inquiry and make possible honest
doubt was any real intellectual progress possible. In a rough, general way
the turn in the tide came about the beginning of the twelfth century, and
for the next five centuries the Church was increasingly busy trying, like
King Canute of old, to stop the waves of free inquiry and scientific doubt
from rising higher against the bulwarks it had erected.

THE MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. The educational system which the Church
had developed by 1200 continued unchanged in its essential features until
after the great awakening known as the Revival of Learning, or
Renaissance. This system we have just sketched. For instruction in the
elements of learning we have the inner and outer monastery and convent
schools, and, in connection with the churches, song schools, and chantry
or stipendary schools. In these last we have the beginnings of the parish
school for instruction in the elements of learning and the fundamentals of
faith for the children of the faithful. In the monasteries, convents, and
in connection with the cathedral churches we have the secondary
instruction fairly well organized with the _Trivium_ and the _Quadrivium_
as the basis. At the close of the period under consideration in this
chapter a few privately endowed grammar schools were just beginning to be
founded to supplement the work of the cathedral schools (RS. 141-143). In
some of the inner monastery schools and a few of the cathedral schools we
also have the beginnings of higher instruction, with theology as the one
professional subject and the one learned career.