Nevertheless,men were so much taken with this custom,that in time it spread itself over all Europe,and the best part of Africa;so as there were schools,publicly erected and maintained,for lectures and disputations,almost in every Commonwealth.
There were also schools,anciently,both before and after the time of our Saviour,amongst the Jews:but they were schools of their law.For though they were called synagogues,that is to say,congregations of the people;yet,inasmuch as the law was every Sabbath day read,expounded,and disputed in them,they differed not in nature,but in name only,from public schools;and were not only in Jerusalem,but in every city of the Gentiles where the Jews inhabited.
There was such a school at Damascus,whereinto Paul entered,to persecute.There were others at Antioch,Iconium and Thessalonica,whereinto he entered,to dispute.And such was the synagogue of the Libertines,Cyrenians,Alexandrians,Cilicians,and those of Asia;that is to say,the school of Libertines,and of Jews,that were strangers in Jerusalem:and of this school they were that disputed with St.Stephen.
But what has been the utility of those schools?What science is there at this day acquired by their readings and disputings?That we have of geometry,which is the mother of all natural science,we are not indebted for it to the schools.Plato,that was the best philosopher of the Greeks,forbade entrance into his school to all that were not already in some measure geometricians.There were many that studied that science to the great advantage of mankind:but there is no mention of their schools;nor was there any sect of geometricians;nor did they then pass under the name of philosophers.The natural philosophy of those schools was rather a dream than science,and set forth in senseless and insignificant language,which cannot be avoided by those that will teach philosophy without having first attained great knowledge in geometry.For nature worketh by motion;the ways and degrees whereof cannot be known without the knowledge of the proportions and properties of lines and figures.Their moral philosophy is but a deion of their own passions.For the rule of manners,without civil government,is the law of nature;and in it,the law civil,that determineth what is honest and dishonest;what is just and unjust;and generally what is good and evil.Whereas they make the rules of good and bad by their own liking and disliking;by which means,in so great diversity of taste,there is nothing generally agreed on;but every one doth,as far as he dares,whatsoever seemeth good in his own eyes,to the subversion of Commonwealth.Their logic,which should be the method of reasoning,is nothing else but captions of words,and inventions how to puzzle such as should go about to pose them.To conclude,there is nothing so absurd that the old philosophers (as Cicero saith,who was one of them)have not some of them maintained.
And I believe that scarce anything can be more absurdly said in natural philosophy than that which now is called Aristotle's Metaphysics;nor more repugnant to government than much of that he hath said in his Politics,nor more ignorantly,than a great part of his Ethics.
The school of the Jews was originally a school of the law of Moses,who commanded that at the end of every seventh year,at the Feast of the Tabernacles,it should be read to all the people,that they might hear and learn it.Therefore the reading of the law (which was in use after the Captivity)every Sabbath day ought to have had no other end but the acquainting of the people with the Commandments which they were to obey,and to expound unto them the writings of the prophets.But it is manifest,by the many reprehensions of them by our Saviour,that they corrupted the text of the law with their false commentaries,and vain traditions;and so little understood the prophets that they did neither acknowledge Christ,nor the works he did,of which the prophets prophesied.So that by their lectures and disputations in their synagogues,they turned the doctrine of their law into a fantastical kind of philosophy,concerning the incomprehensible nature of God and of spirits;which they compounded of the vain philosophy and theology of the Grecians,mingled with their own fancies,drawn from the obscurer places of the Scripture,and which might most easily be wrested to their purpose;and from the fabulous traditions of their ancestors.
That which is now called a University is a joining together,and an incorporation under one government,of many public schools in one and the same town or city,in which the principal schools were ordained for the three professions;that is to say,of the Roman religion,of the Roman law,and of the art of medicine.And for the study of philosophy it hath no otherwise place than as a handmaid to the Roman religion:and since the authority of Aristotle is only current there,that study is not properly philosophy (the nature whereof dependeth not on authors),but Aristotelity.And for geometry,till of very late times it had no place at all,as being subservient to nothing but rigid truth.And if any man by the ingenuity of his own nature had attained to any degree of perfection therein,he was commonly thought a magician,and his art diabolical.