280. Scholastic Philosophy and Civilization. -- Western medieval civilization proclaimed the supremacy of the Catholic Faith. Just as religious sentiment pervaded and inspired its political institutions, its art and literature, the public and private life of its citizens, so too was all its knowledge regulated by the root principle of the convergence of all the profane sciences towards theology. But this principle, so far from interfering with the autonomy of the sciences, only reduced them to proper order. It accounts for the organization of schools for the people, for the established code of chivalry, for the manner of growth of the universities, for their ecclesiastical character, for the relations between masters and pupils and the gradation of the faculties. We have already seen the place occupied by philosophy in this intellectual world.

But did scholasticism influence the other factors of medieval civilization? Works like those of Dante are an eloquent proof of its empire over the general culture of the time; and its influence has also been traced not merely in painting and sculpture, but even in the current popular forms of speech.^{1} These latter investigations, however, belonging as they do to the domain of sociology, are still only in their infancy.

{1} See, e.g., WILLMANN, Gesch. d. Idealismus, ii., p. 330. From ZINGERLE'S Deutsche Sprichwörter d. Mittelalters (Vienna. 1864) he gathers expressions indicative of the scholastic ideology. E.g., "Erfahren macht KIug; Erfahrung ist der Narren Vernunft".