he had to fight a hard battle with the Aristotelians, who were armed with official power, and not slow to use it in the way of persecution; his books were often condemned to be suppressed, and finally he was a martyr to the cause which he had chosen. Being a Huguenot, he was assassinated by his Aristotelian enemies during the massacre of St Bartholomew (1572 A.D.) The arguments of Ramus seem nowadays to have no weight against the ‘Organon’ of Aristotle, but they are valid against that perverted use of the ‘Organon’ which constituted the Scholastic method. It was quite necessary that the spell which Aristotle had so long exercised over the world should be broken and Ramus did good service in somewhat rudely assailing it.
If the first great attack upon Aristotle proceeded from a spirit of revolt within the logic-schools, the second was a direct manifestation of the results of the Renaissance, and consisted in bringing learning and criticism to bear upon the works of Aristotle. This was done by Patrizzi, or Patricius, who brought out his ‘Discussiones Peripateticæ’ at Bâle in 1571. Patricius possessed a combination of character which is fortunately not often seen,—being extremely learned and very able, but, at the same time, ill-conditioned, egotistical, and wrong-headed. Preferring in his own mind a sort of Neo-Platonic philosophy to the Peripatetic system, he set himself to work in the book just mentioned to pull Aristotle to pieces. The first section of the ‘Discussiones’ treated of the life and morals of the Stagirite, and raked together against him all the per-
