Nevertheless, men were so much taken with this custom that in time it spread itself over all Europe and the best part of Africa; so as there were schools publicly erected and maintained, for lectures and disputations, almost in every commonwealth.
There were also schools, anciently, both before and after the time of our Saviour, amongst the Jews; but they were schools of their law. For though they were called “synagogues,” that is to say, congregations of the people; yet, inasmuch as the law was every Sabbath-day read, expounded, and disputed in them, they differed not in nature, but in name only, from public schools; and were not only in Jerusalem, but in every city of the Gentiles where the Jews inhabited. There was such a school at Damascus, whereinto Paul entered to persecute. There were others at Antioch, Iconium, and Thessalonica, whereinto he entered to dispute: and such was the synagogue of the Libertines, Cyrenians, Alexandrians, Cilicians, and those of Asia; that is to say, the school of Libertines, and of Jews that were strangers in Jerusalem; and of this school they were that disputed (Acts 6:9) with St. Stephen.
But what has been the utility of those schools? What science is there at this day acquired by their readings and disputings? That we have of geometry, which is the mother of all natural science, we are not indebted for it to the schools. Plato, that was the best philosopher of the Greeks, forbad entrance into his school to all that were not already in some measure geometricians. There were many that studied that science to the great advantage of mankind: but there is no mention of their schools; nor was there any sect of geometricians; nor did they then pass under the name of philosophers. The natural philosophy of those schools was rather a dream than science, and set forth in senseless and insignificant language; which cannot be avoided by those that will teach philosophy without having first attained great knowledge in geometry. For Nature worketh by motion; the ways and degrees whereof cannot be known, without the knowledge of the proportions and properties of lines and