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 pagan literature were preserved, the subjects taught were mainly such as formed a direct preparation for the calling of the priest or the monk. Towards the end of this period, new studies began to press for recognition, partly through the stimulus given to Europe by contact with the more civilised East, a result to which the Crusades contributed. The practical studies of Medicine and of Law became more extended. The rudiments of physical science, and some branches of Mathematics, came more clearly into view. At the beginning of the twelfth century, the study of Dialectic, based on parts of the Aristotelian Logic, received a notable impulse. Its claim rested not only on its intrinsic value as a mental discipline, but upon its assumed relation to Theology. A belief was diffused, which some famous controversies of the time had strengthened, that spiritual truth could not be rightly apprehended except through certain forms of reasoning. This conception was the basis of what was afterwards known as the scholastic philosophy. Scholasticism began by dealing with certain problems of the Aristotelian Logic (or what passed for such), and then applied its processes to Theology. The task which it ultimately undertook was that of reconciling the doctrines of the Church with human reason. This explains why, in the middle age, Dialectic was regarded as the paramount science, the highest which could engage man's intellect; since it was not only the handmaid of Theology, but in a certain sense the key to it.