No More Learning

Roughly similar qualities appear in the work of Macrobius, a writer
who, late in the fifth century, had contrived to remain untouched by the
Christian influence. His detachment from the Church makes it all the
more interesting to discover in him that medievalism of mind so often
rated as a purely Christian product. In him we have already the medieval
Virgil, and along with that strange invention all the baffling mixture of
science and nonsense that was to float about Europe for more than a
thousand
years. How medieval, too, is the deference of Macrobius to the
great names of the past. Neque vero tam immemor mei, he writes, aut ita
male animatus sum, ut ex ingenio meo vel Aristoteli resistam vel adsim
Platoni'. Yet Macrobius is far from contemptible, and the debt of the
Middle Ages to him was immense. To him was due what little was known
of Plotinus (inter philosophiae professores cum Platone princeps)? , the four-
fold classification of the virtues, the threefold gradation of Deus, mens,
and anima, the illumination of all creatures as in an orderly series of
mirrors by the unus fulgor, the descent of the soul to its material habita-
tion, and its yearning for restoration to its eternal home. When Christians
read in Macrobius of the soul's imprisonment in a vesture of clay (indu-
mentum testeum), of its wandering on earth as a pilgrim, of heaven as the
true patria, of philosophy as meditatio mortis, they caught the genuine
accent of religion and welcomed Platonism as a natural ally. Actual
knowledge of the original Plato Macrobius did not greatly increase. Be-
hind the Somnium Scipionis, according to Schedler's recent enquiry, lies
once more the T'imaeus, as interpreted first by Porphyry and handed on
by intermediate writers to Macrobius. If that be so, it helps to account
for the frequent difficulty of deciding, when no names are mentioned,
whether a medieval writer is using Chalcidius, or Macrobius, or sometimes
the De Consolatione of Boethius. The same brand of Platonism, with the
same tincture of new Pythagoreanism, is recognisable in all.
The lines of thought broadly indicated by Plato and Aristotle run
through the Middle Ages. From Plato came the wider inspiration and
the higher call; from Aristotle the perception of difficulties and contra-
dictions, with the demand for dialectical skill. Nowhere, as it happens,
1 Comm. in Somnium Scipionis, 11, 15.
2 Ib. 1, 8.


## p. 791 (#837) ############################################

Importance of dialectic. The tenth century
791
were the defects of medieval knowledge of history more conspicuous than
in this very matter of dialectic. The most learned doctors were unaware
that dialectic had held in Plato's estimation a far higher place than Aris-
totle would allow. They did not know why Aristotle himself had some-
times preferred and sometimes rejected it, nor how far removed was his
trivial use of it as an exercise for students from the profundity of his
dialectical analysis of moral experience. They knew just enough to warrant
the dispute whether dialectic was properly concerned with words or with
things; and enough, unfortunately, to encourage a confusion of the ars
disserendi with the total activity of reason. During the two dark centuries
after the appearance of John the Scot dialectic was, however, the beacon.
We can dimly trace the rise of factions, the growth of the contest between
dialecticians and anti-dialecticians, which was to reach its climax in the
age of Abelard. For the rest, the condition of Europe was unfriendly to
speculation, and the flagrance of moral disorders left no leisure for adven-
tures of the intellect.
The tenth century is singularly barren. Scarcely a name of distinction
is recorded in the annals of philosophy, save that of Gerbert of Aurillac
(ob. 1003), who was raised to the Papacy as Sylvester II. Even Gerbert was
more remarkable for his skill in mathematics, and for his services to humane
education, than for any direct contribution to philosophy. To his pupil
and patron, Otto III, he dedicated a logical text-book with the title
Libellus de rationali et ratione uti, and he may be the author (though the
point is disputed) of a work De Corpore et Sanguine Domini. If so, we
can credit him with a perception of the value of dialectic in harmonising
discrepant utterances of the Fathers. Some have failed, however, to note
that his most striking observation is taken directly from John the Scot.
The art which divides genera into species, and resolves species into genera,
is not (he says) the product of human machinations, but was discovered
by the wise in the very nature of things, where the Author of all the arts
had placed it. This is taken verbatim from the De Divisione Naturae',
where it stands as a comment on the work of the Creator. Gerbert's in-
Auence, however, did not depend exclusively on his books. His distinction
as a teacher is indisputable, and while his personal association was with
the cathedral-school of Rheims, he became, through his pupil Fulbert
(ob. 1028), the indirect founder of the more famous school of Chartres.
(The attribution to Gerbert of a work on the Eucharist is, in any case,
an indication of the subject which did more, perhaps, than any other in
this unproductive period to stimulate curiosity and to awaken controversy
about the use and abuse of dialectic. Already in the ninth century
Paschasius Radbert and Ratramnus had earned some notoriety by their
discussion of the Blessed Sacrament; and now a larger disturbance was
created, some while after Gerbert, by the De Caena Domini of Berengar
of Tours. Devout minds not unnaturally felt a strong distaste for the
1 MPL, cxxII, 749.
CH. XXIII.


## p. 792 (#838) ############################################

792
Lanfranc and Peter Damian
analysis of a mystery, but Berengar was less sensitive. He magnified the
function of dialectic, quia confugere ad eam ad rationem est confugere,
and thus proved himself an imperfect scholar of John the Scot, by whom
he is said to have been inspired. For if John had championed the liberty
of reason, he had also taught that even the angelic intelligences ab in-
troitu mysteriorum suos theologicos pedes, hoc est, intellectuales ingressus
retractant'. The most eminent critic of Berengar's “theological feet" was
Archbishop Lanfranc (1005-1089), himself well reputed in dialectic but
disposed to restrict the art to a subordinate position. Augustine, he allows,
had thought well of it; and, lest he should seem to be afraid of Berengar's
weapons, he will waive his own preference for trusting to the traditions
of the Church where mysteries of the faith are concerned. He accuses
Berengar of parading his skill in disputation, and suggests that a confes-
sion of ignorance is sometimes better than arrogant obstinacy. The tone
of his remonstrance is dignified and sensible. He does not look on dia-
lectic as necessarily hostile to the faith, but thinks it a perilous exercise
for shallow and contentious minds.
Another contemporary name, Peter Damian (ob. 1072), deserves to be
mentioned. Justly famed for his saintly life, Petrus peccator, as he styled
himself, stands in the main for the monastic tendency to think more
highly of practical religion than of intellectual attempts to explain and
justify the faith. He wrote, however, several works of theology, in one of
which, the De Divina Omnipotentia, he discusses the use of philosophy in
“sacred disputations. ” It is here that he introduces the celebrated phrase,
ancilla dominae, to denote the proper relation of dialectic to theology. Less
energy, perhaps, would have been spent in remonstrance against this ap-
parent degradation of reason, if more attention had been paid to the
current usage of terms. Philosophia often means no more than dialectic,
and dialectic no more than a display of captious arguments. That the
Christian position as a whole (the Christian philosophy, in fact) was ir-
rational, Peter Damian and his contemporaries would never have admitted.
The antithesis of ratio and auctoritas was then far less comprehensive
than the final problem, scarcely realised before the age of Aquinas, whether
the independence of philosophy could be reconciled with the Catholic
position. To assign to dialectic a merely ancillary office is not necessarily
obscurantism. It often meant no more than the logical commonplace,
that ratiocinatio presupposes the concession of premises. In a deeper sense,
it meant that experience must precede the attempt to explain it, and that
the testimony of many generations cannot easily be overthrown by a talent
for repartee.
With the illustrious name of Anselm a new chapter begins. As a
pupil of Lanfranc he belongs chronologically (1033–1109) to the eleventh
century, but in mind and spirit must rank as the herald of the sustained
intellectual effort which culminated two centuries later in the systems of
1 MPL, XXII, G68.


## p. 793 (#839) ############################################

The work of Anselm
793
Albertus Magnus and Aquinas. For this reason he has often been saluted
as the true founder of Scholasticism, a title we should bestow with greater
confidence, did any definition of Scholasticism command universal assent.
Unfortunately it is not so. After much pedantic and even acrimonious
discussion we are left uncertain whether "scholastic” and “medieval"
philosophy should be identified or clearly distinguished, whether “scholas-
ticism” is the name of a method or of a result, whether there was one
pre-eminently scholastic problem, and whether one particular solution has
a right to be called scholastic. Thus is medieval philosophy, so fertile in
distinctions, pursued by the shadow of itself. The wisest course, perhaps,
is to stand aside from the controversy. It is agreed that the term scholas-
ticus (applicable either to master or to pupil) meant uncommonly little;
it is agreed also that the great doctors of the thirteenth century may
rightly be called schoolmen. For the rest, it is enough to interpret, as
best one can, the course of events.
To call Anselm an original thinker is not to deny his obligations to
others. In the preface to the Monologium he protests that nothing in his
doctrine is out of harmony with the Catholic Fathers, especially the Blessed
Augustine. The product of his mind is, however, original inasmuch as it
is the outcome of personal experience, the fruit of profound meditation
upon the nature of his faith. “Enter into the cubicle of thy mind; shut
out all things but God and whatsoever may help thee to seek for Him;
then close the door and seek. ” Thus he writes in the first chapter of the
Proslogion, before expounding his proof of God's existence; and none,
perhaps, who are deaf to the exhortation will feel any force in the proof.
Fides quaerens intellectum and nisi credideritis, non intelligetis are the
formulas that meet us everywhere on his pages. Still more clearly does
he express his position in the words of the De Fide Trinitatis: qui non
crediderit, non experietur, et qui non expertus fuerit, non intelliget. The
Church, he means, had not invented new intellectual instruments, but
rather had proclaimed the advent of a new spiritual experience, itself the
condition of understanding the meaning of life. Mere rationalism, on the
other hand, could originate nothing; for reason, as discursive and critical,
depends for its materials on a higher mode of experience. On this point
at least Christianity was at one with Platonism, and Anselm himself is, on
the whole, a kind of Platonist. His Platonism, however, is derived from
Augustine, not, as some have alleged, from John the Scot; for Anselm is
by no means committed to the negative theology of Neo-Platonism, which
is the very essence of the Irish philosopher's teaching. Well as he knows
that the names we apply to the Divine Nature are but shadows and symbols,
he is never possessed by that ecstasy of intellectual asceticism which glories
in the denial of attributes, and pays its last tribute to omniscience by
declaring that God Himself cannot know what He is.
Anselm's argument for the necessary existence of id quo maius cogitari
nequit is no plea for a negative abstraction. Read in connexion with the
CH. XXIII.


## p. 794 (#840) ############################################

794
The ontological argument
Monologium it is seen as an attempt to clothe the One, which alone par-
ticipates in nothing, but is what it is, with the attributes of an individual
spirit, unbounded by space and time, yet present everywhere and always,
without parts and qualities, yet containing in very essence life, salvation,
beatitude, and all possible perfections. Nearest to God, and best able to
serve as a mirror of His image, is mens (another link with Neo-Platonism);
and since mens is the innermost nature of man, to “enter into the cubicle
of the mind,” shutting out all lower manifestations of being, is the true
way of access. The formal weakness of the argument was at once detected
by the monk Gaunilo; whose objection, however, that the transition from
what exists only in intellectu to what exists also in re cannot thus be
effected, leaves Anselm quite unperturbed. The pretence that the same
argument might prove the existence of the most perfect island he declares
to be a misapprehension of the point. If his argument can be applied to
anything but the Supreme Being, he is ready to make Gaunilo a present
of the island, and to promise that it shall never vanish away.
The "ontological" argument, however, was always viewed with suspi-
cion. In this, as in some other respects, Anselm did not precisely anticipate
the position of later scholastics. Even his fides quaerens intellectum does
not accurately express the method of those who afterwards made a more
exact distinction between truths demonstrable by reason and truths
revealed only to faith. Tentative steps in that direction were taken by
Anselm, but he went farther than his successors in attempting, for example,
to arrive by reasoning at the doctrine of the Trinity; an image of which,
following an Augustinian tradition, he discovers in the human soul.
Anselm, in fact, was not directly interested in the question whether it
was possible to concede to philosophy a province where certain problems
could be solved by reason alone. He perceived the distinction (as he shews
in the Cur Deus homo) between seeking reasons because you do not believe,
and seeking them because you do; but it was the latter case that chiefly
inspired his arguments, and so made him, in a certain sense, more ration-
alistic than those who afterwards defined their concessions to reason.
A fuller account of Anselm would refer to his theories of sense-percep-
tion, judgment, the freedom of the will, and other psychological matters.
But these are of less importance in the history of his own time than his
controversy with Roscelin, about whose doctrines, as it happens, Anselm is
our best source of information. To call the controversy important is not
for a moment to allow that the single theme of Nominalism and Realism
is the clue to medieval philosophy. On the contrary, Roscelin is important
because he succeeded, perhaps for the first and last time, in disturbing
the ecclesiastical arena by manufacturing a heresy out of this topic of the
schools. In his famous Isagoge, or Introduction to the Organon of
Aristotle, Porphyry prepared the medieval battleground by a brief and
cautious statement which it may be worth while to quote in the Latin of
Boethius. Mox de generibus et speciebus illud quidem, sive subsistant sive


## p. 795 (#841) ############################################

Realism and Nominalism
795
in solis nudis intellectibus posita sint, sive subsistentia corporalia sint an
incorporalia, et utrum separuta a sensibilibus posita et circa haec consistentia,
dicere recusabo. The original difference between Aristotle and Plato was
not properly a controversy about genera and species, but in the Middle
Ages the extreme “realistic” doctrine of universals was identified with
the teaching of Plato. It is, in fact, one of the bewildering accidents of
history that the Platonic “idea" became the basis of medieval “realism,"
whereas the “idealism” of Berkeley and later philosophers has nothing to
do with either Plato or the medieval controversy. For in whatever sense we
attribute “conceptualism” to medieval logicians, it must certainly not be
in a sense that would bring them into line with an idealist philosophy
never clearly formulated before the seventeenth or eighteenth century.
Apart from the unabashed Platonists, the prevailing tendency of
medieval writers was to follow Aristotle or Boethius in holding that
universals could not“subsist” except in association with individual things.
At the same time it was freely allowed that the intellect had the power
of viewing them in abstraction from sensible things, and that the common
element in things, from which we derive the notions of genus and species,
was no mere fiction of the mind. What complicated the dispute between
Platonists and Aristotelians was the appearance of Nominalism; and what
has thrown the whole history of the subject into confusion is the belief,
originating mainly with some distinguished French scholars, that the war
of Nominalists and Realists began in the ninth century and persisted
until the close of the Middle Ages. Since it is impossible here to scrutinise
the evidence, nothing more can be offered than a dogmatic assertion that
this view is untenable. Nominalism was an intellectual firework of the
age of Roscelin and Abelard; for which reason, among others, it is also
an anachronism to talk of Realism in connexion with John the Scot or
other writers of that period. Even when the nominalis secta (as John of
Salisbury was perhaps the first to call it) has been rightly dated, it is no
easy task to define and explain its doctrine. The contention that only
individual things exist in their own right is no more Nominalist than
Aristotelian. Nothing characteristic of the new sect appears until the
whole stress is laid on voces or nomina. If universals are mere flatus vocis,
if their reality is only the physical reality belonging to a percussio aeris,
then indeed we have a doctrine inconsistent alike with the Platonic Realism
and with the tradition of Boethius. Absurd as the doctrine may sound
to modern ears, it was a not unnatural product of the long-established
opinion that logic, in company with grammar and rhetoric, was primarily
concerned with words. Meanwhile the importance of Nominalism for the
twelfth century was that it re-opened the whole question of universals, split
up the camp of the anti-nominalists into factions, and produced all the
varieties of doctrine enumerated by John of Salisbury and other writers.
The logical and metaphysical problems thus brought to light were per-
fectly genuine. Much the same difficulties may be found in modern books
CH. XXIII.


## p. 796 (#842) ############################################

796
Anselm and Roscelin
3
of logic, and the solutions offered do not differ fundamentally from those
current in medieval times.
According to Anselm, Roscelin presented the world with a dilemma.
Either, he argued, the three Persons of the Trinity are one res; in which
case the Father and the Spirit were incarnate together with the Son: or
they are three, like three souls or three angels; in which case only con-
vention forbids us to speak of three Gods. The second alternative, a kind
of Tritheism, Roscelin felt himself driven to prefer by his denial of reality
to universals and his reduction of them to mere flatus vocis. Much in-
genuity has been wasted in arguing that Roscelin's doctrine was not
genuine Nominalism (whatever that may happen to be), and that Anselm
must have misrepresented the case. But where is the evidence? There is
none of importance but Roscelin's letter to Abelard, which contributes
nothing to the point, a few words by Abelard himself, who speaks of
Roscelin's "insane opinion” that voces alone could have parts or species,
and a statement by John of Salisbury, who makes Roscelin the author of
the “exploded opinion,” voces ipsas genera esse et species. What little we
learn from these sources is at least consistent with the assertions of Anselm.
Anselm was no fanatical heresy-hunter, and Roscelin was doubtless sincere
in repudiating heretical intentions. But that is not the point. The
question is whether there is any ground for regarding him as a distressed
and persecuted champion of reason; and the answer, surely, must be that
there is none.
The flatus vocis theory, whether invented by Roscelin or by one John
the Sophist, was clearly a modernism, a heresy in dialectic, with no support
from tradition. To translate it into Conceptualism appears to be wholly
unwarrantable; Anselm treats it rather as a kind of stupid materialism,
and gives not the slightest hint that he and Roscelin are ranged on oppo-
site sides in an old and respectable controversy. He does not even trouble
to define his own view of universals, but leaves us to gather what we may
from scattered passages in his writings. Distressing as this may be to the
historian of logic, the historian of philosophy will find in Anselm's very
silences and omissions fresh reason for rejecting the once common opinion
that medieval thinkers exhausted themselves for centuries in trying to
define the nature of universals. It is scarcely too much to say that Anselm
does not care what they are, so long as the function of reason is not
simply confounded with sensuous perception. Neither things nor ideas
are mere words and breath, but in what sense things and ideas are iden-
tical or distinct he is at no great pains to decide. The term “Nominalism”
was not yet invented, nor the varieties of Realism yet arranged for
classification. Nevertheless, we may still find reason to doubt whether
Nominalism is exactly the right name for the doctrine propounded by
Roscelin.
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.