able among the many proposals of his day which sought
to frame a logical theory free from the revolutionary
tendencies of Roscelin’s nominalism, and yet better
adapted than the elder realism to the more subtil and
critical habits of thought to which men were now training
themselves. This was virtually a return to the position of
Aristotle, and in Abailard s case it is all the more remark
able because his direct acquaintance with the master was
limited to the earlier treatises of the Organon;[1] he had there
fore to n discover, to divine, for himself the issues to which
Aristotle tended. From Abailard s time, probably through
his immediate influence, the authority of the Greek logician
grew uninterruptedly until the decline of the middle ages,
and there is a strong presumption that o it was to the
active encouragement of his pupil John of Salisbury that
western Europe was indebted for a translation of the rest
of the Organon. Within a century it possessed almost the
whole of Aristotle in a Latin shape. Accordingly it is
not surprising that Abailard s permanent reputation was
founded upon his dialectical eminence. The P title of
Peripatetic, by which he is regularly styled in John of
Salisbury s writings, indicates this distinction, for the
name had by this time acquired the same special meaning
as (i sophist had two or three centuries before, though
was already being superseded by the more accurate term
dialectician. [2]
But Abailard was not contented with his reputation; he would not have his faculties circumscribed in a single field. He had an immense energy of mind, a restless ambition to dominate other minds ; and in his age supremacy was only attainable by adding a mastery of theology
- ↑ How many of them is dis- puted. Schaarschmidt, pp. 70, 120 (cf. p. 305), says nothing be- yond the Categories and the De interpretatione, with the Isagoge of Porphyry : Dr. von Prantlhow- ever, vol. 2. 100-104, shows that Abailard s knowledge extended to the Prior Analytics. [Cf. A. Hofmeister, Studien iiber Otto von Freising, in the Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft fur altere Deutsche Geschichtskunde, 37. 656-664; 1912.]
- ↑ Peripateticis, quos nunc dialecticos appellamus : Abael. Theol. Christ, iii. 1, Opp. 2. 448.
