460. Conclusion. -- The Spanish restoration offers a pleasing contrast to the general poverty of scholasticism in countries to which the movement did not extend. It stirred up a deep current of thought, which indicated what great vitality had been breathed into the organic doctrines of scholasticism as soon as these were mastered and utilized by capable and competent men. Amid the general European sterility, the branch that blossomed forth in Spain bore abundant fruit.

Unfortunately, however, the restoration remained local and ephemeral. It failed to take root outside Italy, Spain and Portugal. The convulsions with which the Reformation rent central and northern Europe were an obstacle to its spread. Besides, the tendencies of the age in these northern countries were too varied and too distracting to allow scholasticism to gain the ascendant once again. To do this it would need to get into touch with the spirit of the age, otherwise than on the lines of the new scholastics in Spain. What a pity these latter did not pursue, beyond the domain of natural and social right, the investigations to which the Renaissance was inviting them! They would have been a match for the anti-scholastics of their time. But they failed to take account of, or adapt themselves to, the new lines of thought that were current in their age: this it was that paralyzed the influence of the Spanish movement. Although the revival dominated the sixteenth century and passed well into the seventeenth, it did not display the endurance which might reasonably have been expected from it.

On the other hand, there were groups of scholastics who continued, into the seventeenth century, to compromise scholasticism, by irreparable blundering and errors (§ 7).