upon a corruption in the text, and secondly upon a mistake in punctuation.[1] Still a difference there is in Abailard's discussion of the matter which it seems to me can be most naturally explained on psychological grounds. Abailard was first and foremost a critic; the love of opposition was his normal stimulus to production; and the fact that the object of his attack held one view, led him inevitably to emphasise the contrary. We find him the hostile critic of both his masters in dialectics, Roscelin and William of Champeaux. When he became a monk of Saint Denis he was not long in discovering the accredited legend of that house to be unhistorical. And so in his theological writings, when in the earlier treatises he was addressing himself to the rationalism of Roscelin, he took pains to exalt the dignity of authority; but when many years later he found himself confronted by the rising forces of mysticism, as represented by saint Bernard and his school, Abailard took up the challenge and fought the battle of reason. Yet the difference between the earlier and the later works is more a difference of tone than of substance. In the one he attacks those who make reason the standard of faith, in the other he attacks those who rely exclusively upon authority. Consequently, in
- ↑ The manuscript at Balliol College, Oxford, ccxcvi. f. 29 a, from which Cousin printed his text, ii. 78, runs as follow: Novimus quippe ipsum beatum Gregorium saepius in scriptis suis eos qui de resurrectione dubitant, congruis rerum exemplis vel similitudinibus ratiocinando ipsam astruere, pro qua tamen superius dixit, fidem non habere meritum cui humana ratio praebet experimentum. Numquid [a later hand has altered this into Nam quid; Cousin prints Nunquam] hi quos rationibus suis in fide resurrectionis aedificare volebat, has eius rationes, secundum ipsius sententiam, refellere poterant, secundum quam scilicet astruere dicitur, nequaquam de fide humanis rationibus disserendum esse, qui nec hoc astruere dictis, ipse proprie exhibuit factis? Qui nec etiam dixit, non esse ratiocinandum de fide, nec humana ratione ipsam discuti vel investigari debere, set non ipsam [these words in italics are omitted by Cousin] apud Deum habere meritum, ad quam non tam divinae auctoritatis inducit testimonium, quam humanae rationis cogit argumentum; nec quia Deus id dixerat creditur, sed quia hoc sic esse convincitur, recipitur. Dr. Deutsch (p. 120) has acutely proposed an emendation bringing out substantially the meaning of what is in fact found in the manuscript. [M. G. Robert still quotes Cousin's misleading text: see Les Écoles et l'Enseignement de Théologie, p. 184 n. 2.]
