disputations served a useful purpose in awakening intellectual vigor and
logical keenness. They were very popular until into the sixteenth century,
when new subject-matter and new ways of thinking offered new opportunities
for the exercise of the intellect.

[Illustration: FIG. 66. A UNIVERSITY DISPUTATION
(From Fick's _Auf Deutschland's Hoehen Schulen_)]

In teaching equipment there was almost nothing at first, and but little
for centuries to come. Laboratories, workshops, _gymnasia_, good buildings
and classrooms--all alike were equally unknown. Time schedules of lectures
(Rs. 122, 123) came in but slowly, in such matters each professor being a
free lance. Nor were there any libraries at first, though in time these
developed. For a long time books were both expensive and scarce (Rs. 78,
119, 120). After the invention of printing (first book printed in 1456),
university libraries increased rapidly and soon became the chief feature
of the university equipment. Figure 65 shows the library of the University
of Leyden, in Holland, thirty-five years after its foundation, and about
one hundred and fifty years after the beginnings of printing. It shows a
rather large increase in the size of book collections [25] after the
introduction of printing, and a good library organization.

[ILLUSTRATION: FIG 67. A UNIVERSITY LECTURE AND LECTURE ROOM
(From a woodcut printed at Strassburg, 1608)]

VALUE OF THE TRAINING GIVEN. Measured in terms of modern standards the
instruction was undoubtedly poor, unnecessarily drawn out, and the
educational value low. We could now teach as much information, and in a
better manner, in but a fraction of the time then required. Viewed also by
the standards of instruction in the higher schools of Greece and Rome the