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So Erasmus and the scholars would have all the educated understand the classical authors. But to understand words you must know the things to which the words refer. Thus the Scholars were led to advocate a partial study of things a kind of realism. But we must carefully observe a peculiarity of this scholastic realism which distinguished it from the realism of a later date—the realism of Bacon. The study of things was undertaken not for its own sake, but simply in order to understand books. Perhaps some of us are conscious that this kind of literary realism has not wholly passed away. We may have observed wild flowers, or the changes in tree or cloud, because we find that the best way to understand some favourite author, as Wordsworth or Tennyson. This will help us to understand the realism of the sixteenth century. The writings of great authors have been compared to the plaster globes (“celestial globes” as we call them), which assist us in understanding the configuration of the stars (Guesses at Truth, j. 47). Adopting this simile we may say that the Scholars loved to study the globe for its own sake, and when they looked at stars they did so with the object of understanding the globe. Thus we read of doctors who recommended their pupils to look at actual cases of disease as the best commentary on the works of Hippocrates and Galen. This kind of realism was good as far as it went, but it did not go far. Of course the end in view limited the study, and the Scholars took no interest in things except those which were mentioned in the classics. They had no desire to investigate the material universe and make discoveries for themselves. This is why Galileo could not induce them to look through his telescope; for the ancients had no telescopes, and the Scholars wished to see nothing that had not been seen by their favourite authors. First then we have the Scholars, headed by Erasmus.