No More Learning

Among those who once called Roscelin master was he who called no
man master for long. The stormy and romantic career of Peter Abelard


## p. 797 (#843) ############################################

The position of Abelard
797
has won for him a kind of immortality not conceded to philosophy alone.
By his side, to claim a share in that immortality, stands the partner in his
calamities and his joys:
Poeta, volentieri
Parlerei a quei due che insieme vanno.
With all his weakness, his vanity, his almost wanton pugnacity, there
must have been in Abelard some quality of greatness, something that
forbade men to gaze on him with indifference and pass by on the other
side. He had at least the virtuosity of genius; he was born to fascinate
or to repel. Wherever his tent was pitched, at Paris or on the borders
of the wilderness, thither, as an old chronicler has it, paene de tota Latini-
tate viri litterati confluebant. In vain was he driven into exile; for where
the master was there was the school.
Much the same gift of attraction and repulsion has been transmitted,
it would seem, with Abelard's writings, to perplex the judgment of modern
historians, and to fashion estimates of his worth non solum diversa verum
etiam adversa, as once he said himself of the utterances of the saints.
Unfair detraction is too apt to provoke extravagant eulogy; for to main-
tain that we have in Abelard the greatest mind of the Middle Ages is
surely extravagant. A great teacher he certainly was, a shrewd and fearless
critic, a mighty champion of dialectic, the mistress, as he declared, of all
philosophical studies. But when we look for inspiration, for profundity
of insight, for constructive power and masterly comprehension, we find
but little to justify comparison of Abelard with John the Scot or Anselm
or Thomas Aquinas. His passion for dialectic was even a sign of his
limitations, the more conspicuous as we come to understand by closer
scrutiny that he never wholly succeeded in raising dialectic to the level
at which it ceases to be an ingenious art of words. His theory of universals,
which agrees neither with Roscelin's nor with contemporary realism, it
will be convenient to postpone until we have occasion to look at John of
Salisbury's review of the subject. Even apart from that vexatious question,
Abelard exhibits clearly the disadvantages of imperfect acquaintance with
Aristotle, and also the restricted scope of Aristotle's reputation. The title
of Peripateticus Palatinus (i. e. of Palais), bestowed by the common voice
on Abelard himself, is fully interpreted by his own repeated identification
of Peripatetics with dialecticians. Peripateticorum, id est, dialecticorum
princeps is his description of Aristotle, and of Aristotle he knew no more
than the labours of Boethius had conveyed to the Latins six hundred
years ago. We find, accordingly, in Abelard (as in other medieval writers)
a curious gap between his logical or dialectical opinions and the general
character of his philosophy. It is not so much a question of positive in-
consistency as of failure to see any reason why a professed Peripatetic
should not also be an ardent follower of Plato. For, as Platonism was
then understood, Abelard may certainly be called a Platonist. Immensely
CH. XXIII.


## p. 798 (#844) ############################################

798 The Condemnation of Abelard. His view of dialectic
influenced by Macrobius, and by what he knew of the Timaeus, he carries
Platonism freely into his Christian theology, and, when he styles Plato
maximus omnium philosophorum, we cannot doubt that he speaks with
conviction. Here, as always before the thirteenth century, the explanation
is that Aristotle, the supreme dialectician, was virtually unknown as a
physicist, a psychologist, or a metaphysician. Plato, on the other hand,
was known, through his admiring reporters, to have scaled all the heights
of speculation, and to have won the approval of many Catholic theologians.
What actually brought Abelard to trial and condemnation was neither
his general advocacy of dialectic, nor his doctrine of universals, nor the
particular method proposed in the Sic et Non. Despite the strong oppo-
sition, of which he tells us, to the free use of argument in the province
of theology, he would never have furnished his enemies with adequate
weapons, had he not been lured by Macrobius into such hazardous sug-
gestions as the identification of the Holy Spirit with the anima mundi,
and had he refrained from speculations on the Person of Christ which
involved him in questions beyond the range of any ancient philosopher.
How far the actual condemnations, at Soissons in 1121 and at Sens in
1140, were due to genuine concern for the faith, and how far to personal
hostility, it is difficult to tell. A man who ridiculed his masters, such as
William of Champeaux and Anselm of Laon, besides imperilling the
reputation of other accredited teachers, such as Alberic of Rheims, could
not hope to tread with impunity even on the borders of heresy. Yet the
case of St Bernard of Clairvaux, the chief instigator of the second prose-
cution, is different. Bernard was a great man, a saint and a mystic, sharply
touched, no doubt, with the defects of his qualities, but neither petty nor
insincere. His own unique position could scarcely be shaken by Abelard;
and just as it is fair to Abelard to believe in the sincerity of his faith, so
is it fair to Bernard to allow that he had considerable reasons for regarding
as a pestilent fellow one who caused trouble always and everywhere, and
who apparently encouraged his pupils to think that the rudiments of
philosophy were enough to reveal to them the secrets of heaven and earth.
But the time has gone by for taking sides in this unhappy quarrel. Our
business is only to enquire what Abelard did, or failed to do, for philosophy
in an age when it was as hard to distinguish philosophy from theology as
to disentangle the State from the Church.
On the whole he must stand or fall by his services to dialectic, the
chosen object of his perpetual enthusiasm. To what lengths he went in
magnifying its importance (even though he inveighs at times against its
abuse) we may gather from his thirteenth epistle, where he argues that
logic, as derived from logos, and thus connected with the verbum Dei, is
pre-eminently the Christian science. Jesus Christ was the Logos incarnate,
and logic was the wisdom promised to the disciples, the os et sapientia
which their enemies would be unable to resist. Christ prepares for them,
says Abelard, an armour of reasons, qua in disputando summi efficiantur


## p. 799 (#845) ############################################

The Sic et Non
799
logici. And who is ignorant, he adds, that Our Lord Himself convinced
the Jews by frequent disputations? Rarely has the fundamental ambiguity
of the word logos been better illustrated than by this passage, or indeed
by the whole work of Abelard. Natural as it seems to suppose him to be
upholding the sacred cause of reason and the mission of philosophy as a
fearless search for the truth, he is never, at least in his eulogies of dialectic,
more than half way towards that position. Dialectic remains for him the
ars disputandi, by which you sharpen your wits to detect fallacies, and
learn to know a good argument from a bad. Much service, indeed, may
thus be rendered to the cause of truth; for how can truth and falsity be
distinguished by one whom sophistical reasoning may deceive? Neverthe-
less, the gulf between the art of reasoning without fallacy and the real
inquisition of truth is formidable and wide, too wide, one is forced to
admit, for any bridge of Abelard's construction. A fairer criticism would
be that he did not try to span it. He glorified dialectic and believed
that all theological questions should be freely debated. Again, he believed
that Gentile philosophers, if not actually inspired from heaven, should at
least be allowed to bring their treasures of knowledge into the house of
the Lord. But the plea for an unfettered use of dialectic and the plea
for (let us roughly call it) a Platonised theology were very imperfectly
unified in Abelard's mind.
The Sic et Non, Abelard's most famous exposition of method, is
chiefly remarkable for its prologue. Dialectic being the proper solvent of
contradictions, he proposes to apply it to a long list of apparent discrep-
ancies, some of them found in the canonical books of Scripture, others in
the teaching of the Fathers and the Saints. His rules of procedure are
various. We must beware of apocryphal books and sayings; we must note
that the Fathers (Augustine, for instance) sometimes retracted their
earlier views, sometimes quoted opinions not endorsed by themselves,
sometimes adapted or modified their precepts to suit special cases.
Especially must we take into account the diverse meanings of words and
their various usage by different authors. If, however, there remain, after
all these precautions, certain contradictions beyond the help of dialectic,
we must first balance and compare the authorities, and then firmly take
our stand with the best. Not even prophets and apostles were infallible;
much more, then, must errors be expected in the doctrines of ordinary
men. Abelard does not, however, admit that the Scriptures can err.
When we seem to detect absurdities on the sacred pages, we inust attribute
them to bad manuscripts, to faulty interpretations, or to deficiencies in
our own intelligence. Outside the Old and New Testaments, on the
other hand, we have perfect freedom of judgment, and when dialectic
has done its best for the Fathers, we retain our right to dissent from their
doctrine.
The sanity and good sense of these principles has not prevented much
uncertainty as to their ultimate intention. But while it is possible to hold
CH. XXIII.


## p. 800 (#846) ############################################

800
Abelard and authority. Hugh of St Victor
that Abelard's real aim was the destruction of authority, it is more
reasonable to credit him with the true purpose of the dialectician, the
removal of apparent contradictions and the establishment of truth on a
critical basis. For all his love of contention, Abelard was no mere rebel
or anarchist. In his own way he had a sincere respect for authority. He
believed that truth was inherent in the tradition of the Church, but he
did not believe in the promiscuous swallowing of contradictions. We
should do injustice, therefore, to his dialectical acumen, if we supposed
him to have piled up a mass of affirmations and negations with no other
design but to discredit the testimony of the past. Even when his candour
and the excellence of his intentions are freely admitted, it is easy enough,
if we please, to disparage Abelard's performance. The application of his
method to a long array of theological problems is strangely barren of
result. Again and again he simply opposes the sic and the non, without
attempting any critical solution. Here, too, and elsewhere in his writings,
he fails to advance much beyond the verbal or linguistic aspect of the dia-
lectical art. The presentation of opposite views, quite apart from verbal
ambiguities, as complementary to one another, and hence as equally true
or equally false, is somewhat beyond his range. And again, the originality
of his method has been challenged. Bernold of Constance (ob. 1100), lately
resuscitated by Grabmann, seems to have adopted much the same proce-
dure; while the influence of Ivo of Chartres and the canonists has also to
be considered. Equally doubtful is it how far the dialectical method of
subsequent theologians was due to imitation of Abelard, and how far to
the recovery of Aristotle's Topics. On no hypothesis, however, can the
weight of Abelard's contribution to intellectual progress be fairly denied.
His stimulus to slumbering dogmatists was invaluable; his courage in
attacking difficulties was an example to the timorous; in the number
and eminence of his pupils his high distinction of mind is loudly pro-
claimed.
From Abelard it will be convenient to pass to one of his contemporaries,
whose influence, very different in quality, was perhaps equally great.
Hugh of St Victor (c. 1096–1141), the most distinguished of a group of
men attached to the same religious foundation at Paris, is seldom named
without expressions of the deepest respect. So far as he allows himself to
appear in his writings, we cannot fail to get a delightful impression of
his character, if only because he has the rare gift of wearing humility
without affectation, as a kind of natural charm. By temperament he was
a genuine mystic. Principium in lectione, consummatio in meditatione was
his motto, and the nature of our subject perhaps forbids us to disturb his
meditations. Nor will it be possible to examine his theological master-
piece, the De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei. But Hugh was not only a
mystic, nor merely, in the restricted sense, a theologian. In him were
united, says St Bonaventura, the gifts derived from Augustine, from
1 MPL, CLxxvl, 772.


## p. 801 (#847) ############################################

Hugh's account of Logic
801
Gregory the Great, and from Dionysius the Areopagite. In reasoning, in
preaching, in contemplation he was equally proficient; to which we may
add that in his Didascalicon he has left us a valuable document on the
nature of philosophy, its divisions and ultimate goal. This book betrays,
in the first place, a wide and generous appetite for knowledge. Omnia
disce, he urges; videbis postea nihil esse superfluum. Coarctata scientia
iucunda non est'. His own diligence as a schoolboy he paints in pleasing
colours; and already, perhaps, he was noting the weakness of teachers who
would not stick to their subject, but wandered away into variations too
weighty for their theme. Non omnia dicenda sunt quae dicere possumus,
ne minus utiliter dicantur ea quae
dicere debemus? .
Classification and definition of subjects within the whole field of
knowledge form the main purpose of the Didascalicon. The fourfold
partition into theorica, practica, mechanica, and logica is remarkable for
the inclusion of mechanica (divided into seven arts and crafts), but is not,
in that respect, original. Grabmann has found the same division in an
unpublished work by Radulphus Ardens, who is last heard of in 1101. So
much, in fact, is common to the two writers that it is difficult to believe
in their complete independence. An even greater debt to Boethius must
be acknowledged. From him Hugh borrows the threefold division,
anciently though wrongly ascribed to Plato, upon which mechanica is
grafted; and from him, in the main, come the subdivisions of theorica and
practica, with their reminiscences of Aristotle, as well as of other sources
familiar to Boethius. Much of the detail we must be content to pass over,
but it is worth while to look rather narrowly at Hugh's conception of
logic, which is not the less interesting because here too the authority of
Boethius is preponderant.
Hugh of St Victor remarks and lays bare the historic ambiguity
which, after perplexing so many medieval logicians, has not yet ceased to
haunt their modern successors. The Greek logos, he says, means either
sermo or ratio; whence logic may be called sermotionalis sive rationalis
scientia? Sermotionalis is the wider term, because it includes grammar,
as well as dialectic and rhetoric, among the species of the genus. Logic
covers, in fact, the entire field of sermones, and by sermones is meant the
mutuae locutiones of mankind, which existed long before they were
governed by any science or art. Not only logic, but all sciences, as Hugh
observes, existed in practice before they were reduced to rule. In the
order of time logic arose later than the other parts of philosophy, but in
the order of studies it should precede them. Just because it does not deal
with res, it is indispensable to those who would enquire de rerum natura.
Without its aid they will be likely to go astray, by assuming that results
established in sermonum decursu must always hold good in the nature of
things. Now all this is taken, often word for word, from Boethiust. It
1 MPL, CLxxVI, 801.
2 Ib. clxxvi, 770.
3 lb. clxxvi, 749.
* Cf. Boethius, In Isagogen Porphyrii Commenta. Editio secunda, 1, 2.
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. XXIII.
51


## p. 802 (#848) ############################################

802
The influence of Boethius
expresses, too, the most general and persistent conception of logic in the
Middle Ages; and whenever we, with our modern ideas, are tempted to
wander away in the direction of metaphysics and the wider theory of
knowledge, we begin to lose touch with an age that thought of logic as
sermotionalis, as a study rather of words and speech than of things.
How, then, does the logician deal with sermones? Not as the
rhetorician, whose business is persuasion, nor as the grammarian, who is
interested in the structure and inflexion of words. The object of his study
is what Hugh calls intellectus, a term to be clearly distinguished from
voces. Words as voces are only sounds of the particular kind produced in
human speech and analysed by the grammarian. Intellectus are much
more than this. The worst translation of the word would be “concepts”;
the best, perhaps, is “meanings. ” Thus when Hugh is explaining the
inter-relation of mathematics, logic, and physics, he remarks that only
physics de rebus agit, ceterae omnes de intellectibus rerum': a statement to
be explained with reference to the power of abstraction possessed by the
human mind, and illustrated, though not precisely in the same way, by
both logic and mathematics. The mathematician can examine the line
and the surface by ignoring one or two dimensions; the logician can
attend only to the fact of likeness, neglecting the properties of things in
their concreteness. And thus it is, says Hugh, that the logician comes to
consider genera and species. No discussion of the familiar controversy is
offered in this context; we can only assume that, if Hugh had chosen to
proceed further, he would have continued to follow Boethius. In that
case he would have paid no heed to Nominalism, a heresy unknown to
Boethius, and probably would have declined to discuss the metaphysics of
Plato. He would only have defended the right of the intellect to discern
what he calls intellectus, and would have refused to condemn the mathe-
matical line or the logical genus as figments, merely because they were not
concrete things such as the physicist examines.
More personal, and perhaps more interesting, than the account of
logic are Hugh's general appreciation of philosophy and his usage of the
term theologia. Even here it is not easy to shake off Boethius; for in some
passages of the Didascalicon “theology" bears only the meaning derived
by Boethius from an assortment of Greek philosophers, without reference
to Christian doctrine. There is also a strange and difficult allusion to John
the Scot, whom Hugh describes as “theologian of our times” (i. e. , of the
Christian era), but classes with Linus among the Greeks and with Varro
among the Latins? . Nor, again, is philosophia a name without ambiguity.
It may denote a complete and almost religious devotion to the pursuit of
knowledge, involving renunciation of the world. Omnis mundus philoso-
phantibus exsilium est, Hugh writes in one place, and adds that he himself
had known this exile from his youth ups. At other times, however, he
seems to disparage philosophy, as when he declares that, in comparison
1 MPL, CLXXVI, 768. 2 Ib. CLXXVII, 765. 3 Ib. CLXXVII, 778.


## p. 803 (#849) ############################################

Allegory and dialectic
803
with the Scriptures, the books of the philosophers are but a white-washed
wall of mud, gay with the tinsel of eloquence and the specious pretence
of truth. The superiority of Scripture is shewn by the richer and more
numerous senses hidden under its surface. As an allegorist, Hugh of St
Victor is not extravagant; for at least he insists on the need of under-
standing the literal or historical sense as the foundation of all other
meanings. Yet by allegory he understands something more complicated
than diversity of meanings in words. Not only words but things have an
inner significance. The philosopher, he says, solam vocum novit signifi-
cationem, sed excellentior valde est rerum significatio quam vocum". The
higher way, he proceeds to explain, lies through vox to intellectus, through
intellectus to res, and thence through the inward and unspoken ratio or
verbum to the knowledge of truth. Whether Hugh's various judgments
can be reconciled is very questionable, but his constant advocacy of all
human knowledge forbids us to suppose that he ever desires to condemn
philosophy as verbal trifling. His point is that the meaning of the world
disclosed by philosophy falls short of the mystical insight which pierces
the veil of phenomena and passes through “history” to the revelation of
God.
Hugh's praise of allegory is important, finally, as marking the point
of his opposition to Abelard, and his reasons for rejecting the method of
the Sic et Non. Though Abelard is never mentioned in the Didascalicon,
there is one probable and one almost certain allusion to him. The first is
the rebuke to those who “wrinkle up their nose” in scorn at the teachers
of divinity, as though the subject were too simple to require the aid of
instructed masters. The second and more important is the chapter in
which allegorical interpretation is proposed as the true way of removing
apparent contradictions in Scripture. The surface of the divine page
offers many discrepancies; spiritualis autem intelligentia nullam admittit
repugnantiam, in qua diversa multa, adversa nulla esse possunt. The
reference to Abelard in the last words can hardly be mistaken. Strange
as it may seem to us now, the allegorising of Scripture was for many
centuries the only kind of “higher criticism” known to the Church. Hugh
of St Victor still believes in it, because he is a mystic; Abelard prefers to
substitute dialectic, because he is a logician. Yet the contrast between
the two men must not be exaggerated. Both believe in the infallibility
of Scripture when rightly interpreted; and, as Hugh has a genuine
enthusiasm for mundane philosophy, so Abelard in his turn is far from
repudiating the principle that all other kinds of knowledge are subservient
to the scientia divina.
The rapid convergence of the Peripatetic and Victorine streams is
illustrated in the Summa Sententiarum long ascribed to Hugh of St Victor
himself, and in the more famous Libri Sententiarum IV of Peter the
Lombard, who came from Italy to Paris about 1139, was advanced to the
IMPL, CLxxvi, 790.
? Ib. clxxvi, 802.
CH. XXIII.
51-2


## p. 804 (#850) ############################################

804
Peter the Lombard
bishopric of that city in 1159, and died not later than 1164. Literature
of the Sententia type was by no means the invention of him who secured
the title of Magister Sententiarum. Much the same meaning of Sententia
can be traced back at least as far as Isidore of Seville, and more recently
there had been great development of the method by Abelard's masters or
opponents, Anselm of Laon, William of Champeaux, and Alberic of
Rheims, as well as by the canonist Irnerius (or Guarnerius), who composed,
early in the twelfth century, a book of Sentences compiled from Augustine
and other authorities. Broadly speaking, the collections of Sententiae form
a stage between the ancient Florilegia or Catenae and the systematic
Summae of the thirteenth century. The massing of authoritative state-
ments with a view to establishing truth by consensus of witnesses led
gradually to two results, the formation of an orderly scheme for the ex-
position of theology and the emergence of antitheses demanding the
skill of the dialectician. Peter the Lombard was no original genius; we
cannot even be sure that he was a man of exceptional learning; for, after
the manner of the Middle Ages, he borrowed freely and without acknow-
ledgment from the Decretum of Gratian, from Abelard and Hugh of St
Victor, and from any other convenient treasury of sources. Nevertheless,
he outran all competitors in his own kind of compilation, and finally
established himself as the very text of theological education, upon which
innumerable masters and students were to furnish the commentary. For
the development of philosophy his chief importance lies in his frank
submission to the influence of Abelard, whose lectures he probably had
heard. The result was that the pupil, rather than the master, was respon-
sible for the triumph of the dialectical method in later theology.
The triumph was not achieved, however, without a struggle, prolonged
for more than fifty years after Peter the Lombard's death. Certain pro-
positions in his Christology were easily open to attack, and were, in fact,
so questionable that regular exponents of his treatise afterwards made
a practice of omitting them. But the main opposition sprang from anti-
dialecticians of the Victorine School.
Shortly before the Third Lateran
Council of 1179 Walter of St Victor wrote a violent pamphlet Contra
quattuor labyrinthos Franciae: the four offenders being Abelard, Peter
the Lombard, Gilbert de la Porrée, and Peter of Poitiers, an ardent
follower of the Lombard, who had published his own five books of Sen-
tentiae before 1175. Other sources of hostility to the Master were the
unknown writer of the Liber de vera Philosophia and the celebrated mystic,
Joachim of Flora (ob. 1202). But Joachim himself was too suspect to bring
home a charge of heresy against another, and the end of the matter, so
far as the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 could end it, was the condem-
nation of Joachim and the official recognition of Peter the Lombard. A
considerable step was thus taken towards the conciliation of ratio and
auctoritas, even though ratio still meant little more than the free use of
dialectic, and auctoritas was still but vaguely defined.


## p. 805 (#851) ############################################

John of Damascus. John of Salisbury
805
Incidentally we may note that Walter of St Victor's attack was
directed also against the work of John of Damascus (ob. 750), known to
the Latins as the De Fide Orthodoxa, and newly translated from the
Greek (as the result of a visit to Constantinople) by Burgundio of Pisa.
In the Lombard's Sentences only some twenty-six citations of the “St
Thomas of the East" have been discovered, and these are all taken from
a section of the third book, relating to the Incarnation. As it came to be
more fully known, the vogue of the De Fide Orthodoxa steadily increased,
not least because the author's sympathy with Aristotelianism recom-
mended him to the great doctors of the thirteenth century and supported
their practice.
The intellectual condition of the twelfth century is nowhere so perfectly
reflected as in the writings of John of Salisbury, the vir plebeius et indoctus
who rose to be secretary to three Archbishops of Canterbury (including
Becket), the intimate friend of Hadrian IV, the associate and critic of all
the great teachers of the age, before he died, as Bishop of Chartres, in
1180. Traveller, scholar, gentleman, good Christian, and good man of
the world, he has left behind him in the agreeable latinity of the Policra-
ticus and the Metalogicus an impression of medieval life more illuminating
than fifty treatises on logic, and more significant of what philosophy
then really meant. In particular we owe to John of Salisbury a large
part of our acquaintance with the school of Chartres, the most brilliant
example of the old cathedral-school, now about to be superseded by the
studium generale, or University. To say that he personally belonged to
this school would, however, be inaccurate. He spent some years there
and venerated its masters, but he learned also of Abelard, Robert of Melun,
Alberic of Rheims, and many others outside the precincts of Chartres; nor
is there anything in his works to prove his formal adherence to the
characteristic tenets of the school. What makes his testimony so invalu-
able is just his gift of intellectual detachment and his distaste for the fury
of the partisan. In politics, that is to say, in his estimate of the spiritual
and the temporal power, it is otherwise; for his hierarchical opinions are
definite and strong. Nor is he ever restrained by love of compromise from
expressing the frankest of judgments on controversies of the day, much
less from lively denunciation of Philistines and fools. Yet, as he passes
from one seat of learning to another, he combines an honest respect for
the teachers with the privilege of smiling at the school. Thus, for example,
does he return after many years to Mount St Geneviève, to see how his
friends are faring, and finds them still, as he says, at the same old
ques-
tions, with not one little propositiuncula annexed to the familiar stock in
trade. With the same aloofness, he admires Abelard, but laughs at his
theory of universals; he reveres Bernard, the senex Carnotensis, but keeps
clear of the Platonised ideas, and is aware that the master's hope of recon-
ciling Plato and Aristotle is vain.
With justice, then, did John of Salisbury profess himself an Academic;
CH. XXIII.


## p. 806 (#852) ############################################

806
John of Salisbury and philosophy
by which, it is well to add, he did not mean a Platonist. He knew that
the Sceptics had captured the Academy, and attributes the rise of Scep-
ticism to the Aristotelian criticism of Plato. He did not understand the
return of the Platonists to their ancient home, and when he names Plotinus,
Iamblichus, and Porphyry as the most distinguished of the Academics, he
betrays the
gaps in his knowledge of history. About his own position,
however, he is perfectly clear. What he professes is the “ Academic or
Sceptical Philosophy," as Hume called it, not the Platonism of Chalcidius
and Macrobius, or of his own contemporaries and friends. His Academ-
icism does not mean extravagant distrust of reason, but chiefly a spirit of
tolerant criticism, distaste for dogmatic obstinacy, and disinclination to
swear allegiance in verba magistri. Had his bent been for mathematics,
he might almost have anticipated the great saying of Pascal, that a man
should be three things, a good mathematician, a good sceptic, and a
humble follower of Jesus Christ.
Thanks largely to his cool and sceptical temper, we can readily learn
from John of Salisbury what an utter misconception of the Middle Ages
it is to confound the history of philosophy with the history of logic, or
to oppose philosophy to the life of religion. As is shewn by the very title
of his longest work, Policratici, sive de nugis Curialium et vestigiis Philoso-
phorum Libri VIII, the world is roughly divided for him into the foolish
and the wise. On the one side is the life of the courtier, a life devoted to
hunting and gambling, or to laughing at actors and buffoons; on the other
is the call to the higher life of the mind. The alternatives are plain and
mutually repellent; qui curialium ineptias induit, et philosophi vel boni
viri officium pollicetur, Hermaphroditus est'. All who respond to the
serious call are philosophers, and therefore John of Salisbury's friends.
And what is philosophy? Not the product of copia litterarum, but the
choice of an arduous way. In its ancient sense, philosophy, as he says,
pulsat ad ostium; and when the door of wisdom is opened, the soul is
illumined with the “light of things," and the name of philosophy vanishes
away. But that illumination is for the future. Philosophy in this world
is the viaticum of the few who content themselves with following a road
that leads to no worldly advantage. As to where and how the true road
is to be found, John himself is not doubtful. The philosopher, as Plato
had taught, is cultor Dei, and the end of all philosophy is the enlargement
of charity. But in this respect no Christian is inferior to Plato; the rule
of Christ surpasses the wisdom of antiquity; the vita claustralium outdoes
the practice of all the schools.
Philosophia quid est nisi fons, via, duxque salutis,
Lux animae, vitae regula, grata quies?
So he asks in the Entheticus, and adds in the sad doggerel of that discur-
sive poem:
Non valet absque fide sincere philosophari?
1 Policraticus, v, 10.
? Entheticus, 277-278 and 319.


## p. 807 (#853) ############################################

John and the controversy about Universals
807
Armed with this firm conviction, John goes forth to the defence and
criticism of logic. By logic he understands, in the first instance, very much
what we found in Hugh of St Victor. He notes the same quality of sermo
and ratio as translations of logos, and insists, like Hugh, on the close alli-
ance of logic with eloquence and grammar; not indeed because he deems
logic a science of words, but because he has learned from Bernard of
Chartres and William of Conches to believe in humane education as the
first safeguard against arid disputes. In his championship of logic he has,
in fact, to steer a difficult course between the scurrilous mockers, personified
under the pseudonym of Cornificius, and the so-called puri philosophi', who
identify philosophy with logic and disdain every other branch of know-
ledge. No modern critic of the Middle Ages has exposed so remorselessly
the ipeptitude of wrangling about trifles, the emptiness of logic divorced
from natural and moral science. As an introduction to further studies
logic is excellent; in isolation it is exsanguis et sterilis? The teachers
grow old in the exercises of boys; the boys (hesterni pueri, magistri
hodierni) escape to-day from the rod, and to-morrow assume the gown
and mount the cathedra. The world is crowded with half-educated
wiseacres, the schools with Peripatetics whose Peripateticism consists only
in walking about.
After these caustic criticisms it is no surprise to find that John of
Salisbury puts the whole controversy about universals into its proper
and subordinate place. Far from being the sum of philosophy, this
fashionable topic of the schools serves chiefly to provoke the emulous
ingenuity of lecturers, no one of whom is content to agree with his
predecessors or to remain within the bounds proposed by Boethius.
John's own solution and the many varieties of Realism we have no space
to examine. His main anxiety is to prevent the reduction of any part of
philosophy to a conflict of words. For this reason he dislikes any verbalist
theory of universals, and speaks with some contempt of Roscelin and
Abelard. His distinction between the two is that Roscelin had talked of
voces, Abelard of sermones“, a term not adequately explained in the
Metalogicus, but further illustrated by a parallel passage in the Policra-
ticus, where an evident allusion to Roscelin is followed by a mention of
those qui indifferenter nomina pro rebus vel res pro nominibus posuerunt'.
If, then, sermones are not simply voces but nomina, it would seem that
Abelard rather than Roscelin was the true nominalist. Whatever the
exact import of Abelard's view, John declines to take it seriously, but
offers to excuse its author on the ground that an elementary book like the
Categories had perhaps to be taught in an elementary manner®. In no case
is there room for the opinion that Abelard was a conceptualist. That
opinion (which arose partly from the wrong attribution to Abelard of a
treatise De Generibus et Speciebus) is sufficiently refuted by John himself,
i Metalogicus, 11, 6. 2 Ib. 11, 20.
3 16. 1, 25.
4 1b. II, 17.
6 Policraticus, vii, 12. 6 Metalogicus, ii, 1.
CH. XXIII.


## p. 808 (#854) ############################################

808
The new Aristotelian logic
>
when he passes immediately from Roscelin and Abelard to a third non-
realist theory, in which the universal is called a notio or intellectus et
simplex animi conceptio. Here, if anywhere, we must look for Concep-
tualism, and not in the doctine of Abelard.
From John of Salisbury, lastly, we receive our first clear impression of
the “new logic," already known in some measure to his senior contempor-
aries, Otto of Freising, Thierry of Chartres, and Adam du Petit Pont.
The translation of the Organon by James of Venice is assigned to the
year 1128, some thirty years before the Metalogicus was written; but John
himself used another version, probably by Henry Aristippus of Catania,
distinguished also as a translator of Plato. The effect of recovering the
Analytics, the Topics, and the Sophistici Elenchi may be considered in two
relations, to the general conception of logic and to the reputation of
Aristotle. Hitherto, as we have often had occasion to remark, logic, in
the character of dialectic, had hovered on the borderland between reason-
ing and discourse, while Aristotle had been simply the great dialectician.
But now it began to be understood that the traditional Aristotelian books
were but elementary prefaces to the dialectical treatises, and that the
whole of dialectic must fall into a minor position, as compared with the
ars demonstrandi or method of science. “The philosopher," says John of
Salisbury, “who uses demonstration has his business with truth, the dia-
lectician with opinion, the sophist with the bare appearance of probability. "ı
The Posterior Analytics, evidently, were found very difficult, and John
speaks of them with the most cautious respect. The art of demonstration,
he says, has fallen into almost complete disuse. It survives only in mathe-
matics, especially in geometry; sed et huius disciplinae non est celebris usus
apud nos, nisi forte in tractu Ibero vel confinio Africae? Mathematics, in
other words, were studied only by the Arabs or their neighbours.
The revolution in logic, we should gather from John of Salisbury,
magnified the reputation of Aristotle without radically altering its
character. As urbs stands for Rome and poeta for Virgil, so the name of
philosophus is reserved by common consent for Aristotle'. On the authority
of Burgundio of Pisa, John adds in another place that Aristotle's pre-
scriptive right to the name was based on his skill in demonstration, the
art most highly esteemed by the Peripatetics*. It would be wrong, how-
ever, to infer from this anticipation of the title so freely employed in the
thirteenth century that Aristotle had already usurped the throne of Plato.
John's personal estimate of “the philosopher” reflects his attitude towards
logic in general. Refusing to treat any utterance of Aristotle's as sacro-
sanctum, he accuses him (with how much knowledge? ) of many errors in
natural and moral philosophys. Even in logic he does not count him in-
fallible, but notes his deficiencies, and believes it possible for modern
teachers to improve on his handling of some parts of the subject. John,
1 Metalogicus, 11, 5
3 Policraticus, vii, 6.
4 Metalogicus, iv, 7.
5 lb. iv, 27.
2 lb, iv, 6.


## p. 809 (#855) ############################################

The School of Chartres. Gilbert de la Porrée
809
indeed, is at all times a champion of the moderni. He sympathises with
Abelard's difficulty in getting a hearing for any doctrine not sanctioned
by antiquity, and insists that respect for old authors should not hamper
the critical exercise of reason. On the other hand, he does maintain that
Aristotle is peerless in logic, and defends the study of the Categories and
the Sophistici Elenchi against unintelligent critics, among whom he men-
tions some followers of Robert of Melun! On the whole, Aristotle
remains where he was, the prince of logicians, without as yet any claim to
wider dominion. Down to the end of the twelfth century or even later,
none but the “pure philosophers” were disposed to exalt the pupil above
the master. The rest of the world would have endorsed the verdict of the
Policraticus, where John describes Plato, with all deference to the Aris-
totelians, as totius philosophiae princeps? .
The Platonism for which the school of Chartres was conspicuous meant,
apparently, not much more than the traditional Platonism of the Timaeus,
with its sundry exponents. The Phaedo and the Meno, which had been
translated by Henry Aristippus of Catania (ob. 1162), produced no
immediate effect on the interpretation of Plato. The Chartres account of
universals, for example, identified them with the Platonic ideas, and
understood idea in the sense of exemplar aeternum, a sense traditional in
the Latin interpretation of the Timaeus, but certainly not derived from
the Phaedo. And again, when followers of Bernard of Chartres, such as
William of Conches, strayed on to dangerous theological ground, they
were inclined to imitate Abelard in Platonising the Trinity and in
identifying the Holy Spirit with the anima mundi. Perhaps it was the
reminiscence of Abelard, as well as the widespread influence of Chartres,
that caused fresh anxiety to ecclesiastical authority. The most famous
disturbance connected with any scholar of Chartres was the trial of Gilbert
de la Porrée (ob. 1154), the learned and venerable Bishop of Poitiers, him-
self sufficiently distinguished to rank as the founder of a school. The story
of the trial, which took place at Rheims in 1148, is related by Otto of
Freising and by John of Salisbury in his Historia Pontificalis. John was
present throughout the proceedings, as were also Peter the Lombard,
Robert of Melun, and other prominent divines, some to support St Bernard
(once more the chief prosecutor), others to aid in the defence of the bishop.
On this occasion Bernard fell short of victory. His followers refused to
confess the defeat, but Gilbert returned safely to his diocese and was
immune from all further attacks.
Apart from this political incident, the fame of Gilbert rests chiefly
on his exposition of the theology of Boethius, and on his Liber de Sex
Principiis, a logical text-book more highly esteemed than any other com-
posed in the Middle Ages. For the most part Gilbert sticks to the “old
logic,” though there is some evidence of his acquaintance with the “new. ”
He refers in one place to the Analytics, and his commentary on the De
1 Metalogicus, iv, 24.
2 Policraticus, 1, 6.
CH. XXIII.


## p. 810 (#856) ############################################

810
Intellectual progress in the twelfth century
Trinitate of Boethius perhaps implies more knowledge of Aristotle than
could well be derived from the more elementary treatises. His treatment
of time and space has even been thought to involve some reference to the
Physics, but that is improbable. So again, his theory of universals, which
he called formae nativae, does not agree with the ordinary Platonism. A
forma nativa is an exemplum inherent in created things, related to the
exemplar in the Creator's mind as eidos to idea'. The origin of such a view
might well be Aristotelian, but the evidence is not clear.
Passing over with regret many other names associated more or less
closely with the teaching of Chartres, we have space only to raise the
general question, whether in the course of the twelfth century much ad-
vance was made towards a wider conception of philosophical problems. A
certain restlessness and a certain feeling of expansion, greatly assisted by
the enlargement of logic, there undoubtedly is. At the beginning of the
century Adelard of Bath was wandering from country to country and realising
the advantage of visiting different schools. In Spain he learnt enough
Arabic to make a translation of Euclid, and to acquire some notion of
the uses of mathematics for the purposes of scientific measurement. His
general outlook, however, is reminiscent of what John of Salisbury im-
putes to Bernard of Chartres. At the close of the same century, Alan of
Lille (Alanus de Insulis), who survived till 1203, is far from suspecting
the immediate advent of a great intellectual revolution. He deserves to
be remembered, if only for his saying: sed quia auctoritas cereum habet
nasum, id est, in diversum potest flecti, rationibus roborandum est. In his
own age he won the title of doctor universalis by his manifold learning;
in modern times his taste for a rigid, quasi-mathematical method has
suggested a comparison with Spinoza. Yet his appetite for novelty was
not striking. The first of the Latins to cite the Liber de Causis, he is but
little affected by the peculiar qualities of that work. The new logic, far
from arousing his enthusiasm, seems rather to have persuaded him that
Aristotle loved to wrap himself in majestic obscurity. Thus, without dis-
paraging his work, which deserves a much fuller account, we may fairly
infer from his case that in the last hours of the twelfth century it was
possible for a man of the highest reputation to enjoy no premonition of
the great movement of thought which the coming century was immediately
to witness.
If only by weight of materials, the thirteenth century stands apart
from those through which we have rapidly travelled. The briefest cata-
logue of names such as Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Thomas
Aquinas, Bonaventura, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, is enough to banish
the thought of any detailed analysis. The only practicable course will be
to sketch the line of development and the general character of the problems
with which these and other authors, only less famous, were engaged.
Nearly eight centuries had passed since Boethius presented Aristotle to
1 John of Salisbury, Metalogicus, 11, 17.
2 MPL, cox, 333.


## p. 811 (#857) ############################################

The new Aristotle at Paris. The translations
811
the Latins, but during the whole of that period less had happened to dis-
turb the intellectual atmosphere than was now to be accomplished in a
single generation by the Aristotelian invasion of Paris. Customary and
right as it is to place the name of Aristotle in the foreground, it would
be idle to pretend that the mere recovery of his writings was enough to ac-
count for all the subsequent events. Without the organisation of studies
in the new universities, and without the intervention of the Friars in
educational and ecclesiastical politics, the story of the thirteenth century
must have been very different. And again, it is difficult to exaggerate
the importance of another fact, the conjunction of the new Aristotle with
an interpretation of him developed by a series of Muslim philosophers,
whose object had not been to keep on terms with Christian orthodoxy,
but to avoid open collision with the Koran. The fragments of Arabian
mathematics and medicine which had drifted from time to time into the
Latin world had brought no anticipation of the tumult immediately
aroused by the commentaries of Avicenna and Averroes. The roughly es-
tablished modus vivendi with Pagan philosophy was of no avail when
there suddenly appeared a new Aristotle, the author of a vast and com-
prehensive system, in which were contained, if the Muslims could be
trusted, many doctrines incompatible with the Christian position. And
most of this was brought about by the enterprise of a Christian, Arch-
bishop Raymond of Toledo, who had instituted, in the second quarter of
the twelfth century, a college of translators under the supervision of
Dominic Gundisalvi, himself the author of a De Divisione Philosophiae
and other philosophical works.
The unparalleled importance of translations in the Middle Ages was
not diminished by the prevalence of a single literary language among the
peoples of the West. Absence of linguistic barriers between the scholars
of different European countries may even have helped to strengthen the
frontiers dividing the larger units of culture denoted as the Arabs, the
Latins, and the Greeks. We cannot, however, pursue that complicated
question, but must be content to glance at the golden age of translators,
which began early in the twelfth century and lasted about a hundred and
fifty years. Visits of Western scholars to Byzantium had produced the
translations of the Organon and of John of Damascus; another centre
was the court of Palermo, where Greek and Arabic learning were united;
but the widest diffusion of Muslim knowledge came from Toledo, and it
is necessary to enquire how far the Latin Aristotelianism was affected by
the mediation of the Arabic language. The story, once lightly bandied
about, that the medieval Aristotle was only a Latin parody of an Arabic
version of a Syrian translation of a Greek original is little more than a
fable. It is true that the Muslims were first introduced to Aristotle by
Syrians, chiefly Nestorian Christians; it is true also that Arabic Aristote-
lianism was coloured to the last by the commentators, such as Alexander
of Aphrodisias, who had influenced the Syrians. But long before there was
CH. XXIII.


## p. 812 (#858) ############################################

812
Translations from Greek and from Arabic
any question of extensive Muslim influence on the Latins, direct trans-
lations of Aristotle from Greek into Arabic had been made in abundance.
The name of "philosophers,” in the Arabic transcription of the word, was
especially applied to those who had studied Greek originals; and among
these “philosophers” were the whole series of writers, beginning with Kindi
in the ninth century, whose names we encounter in the works of the Latin
schoolmen. Strange to say, the most famous of all (at least in Latin esti-
mation), Ibn Rushd or Averroes (ob. 1198), was an exception to the rule.
For it is said that he never thought it worth while to learn Greek. If
that be so, we must suppose that he saw no reason, after three centuries
of Aristotelian scholarship, to doubt the adequacy of the Arabic trans-
lations. It was left for his Latin critics to entertain that doubt.
While the relation of the Latins to the Arabs is, at first sight, analo-
gous to that of the Arabs to the Syrians, further scrutiny of the facts
does not strengthen the analogy. There never was a time when the Latins
depended entirely on translations from the Arabic; there never was a
time when the Muslim inferences from Aristotle were not disputed and
opposed; least of all was there a time when Christians could imitate
Muslims in taking Aristotle as an infallible authority. To adopt that
attitude was, in fact, to be an Averroist; and Averroism, as we shall see,
was a movement destructive of all that Christian philosophers were striving
to establish.
Now that the earlier researches of Jourdain have been supplemented
by Grabmann and other recent scholars, it is possible to speak with some
confidence about the translations of Aristotle used by the Latins. No
simple generalisation can be accurate, for the case of each of Aristotle's
works has to be separately considered. Yet on the whole it is safe to
maintain that translations from the Greek relieved the schoolmen of
undue dependence on the Arabs, and enabled them, thus far at least, to
form an independent judgment on the meaning of Aristotle. To illustrate
the facts from a few of the more important works, we find that the earliest
version of the Metaphysics (containing only Books I-III and a small part
of iv) came to Paris from Byzantium before 1210. Next to arrive (ap-
parently before 1217) was a translation from the Arabic ascribed to
Gerard of Cremona. This, too, was imperfect, for it omitted altogether
Books K, M, and N, and mixed up the first book with the second. With
this, however, the Latins had to content themselves until after 1260, when
a Graeco-Latin version of the first twelve books, probably by William of
Moerbeke, was put into circulation. Upon these twelve books St Thomas
wrote his commentary, the last two being still untranslated when he saw
a Greek manuscript of the whole fourteen in 1270. The history of the
Nicomachean Ethics is rather similar: first a Graeco-Latin version of
three books, disguised as four; then, in 1240, a paraphrase from the
Arabic by Herman the German ; lastly a full translation from the
Greek, often explicitly attributed to Robert Grosseteste (ob. 1253), but


## p. 813 (#859) ############################################

Character of medieval translations. Roger Bacon 813
more probably, in Grabmann's opinion, by William of Moerbeke. Both
the Physics and the De Anima were known first in Graeco-Latin versions,
while the Politics, a book neglected by the Arabs, was derived only from
the Greek. Evidently, then, it would be less than a half-truth to say that
the Latins depended on second-hand translations for access to those works
of Aristotle which most deeply affected their thought. It remains to ask
whether the quality of the translations was such as to debar them from
a sound understanding of the text.
To claim distinction of style for the medieval translations would
indeed be courageous. Their rudeness, however, was perfectly deliberate.
It was not due to inability to write Latin, but to a frank mistrust of
elegance where the sole object was to get an exact reproduction of the
original.