ABSTRACT
The Old Scholasticism was an outgrowth of the parochial church which the New Scholasticism, a product of the secular university, has been pleased to condemn. The genuinely important questions from which the lesser ones have broken off are obscured; the way is open in either case to the self-aggrandizement and indiscrimination that link the work of the new academy to that of its ecclesiastical forbear. The church of the Middle Ages had a monopoly on intellect and power—and attracted because of this both the creative spirit and the sycophant who thought to make the best of an imporbable world. The university competes now in the natural sciences with the secular world of industry and business. The “ism” named after Alexandria is an alternative to a Renaissance; and one might not choose to be immortalized so. Finally, of course, the decision will not be made by the academic himself.
