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 velsimili- tudinibus ratiocinando ipsam as- truere, pro qua tamen superius dixit, ficlem non habere meritum cui humana ratio praebet experi- mentum. Numquid [a later hand has altered this into Nam quid; Cousin prints Nunquam] hi quos rationibus suis in fide resurrec- tionis aedificare volebat, has eius rationes, secundum ipsius sen- tentiam, refellere poterant, secun- dum quam scilicet astruere dici- tur, nequaquam de fide humanis rationibus disserendum esse, qui nec hoc astruere dictis, ipse pro- prie exhibuit factis ? Qui nee etiam dixit, non esse ratiocinan- dum de fide, nee humana ratione ipsam discuti vel investigari de- here, set non ipsam [these words in italics are omitted by Cousin] apud Deum habere meritum, ad quam non tarn divinae auctori- tatis inducit testimonium, quam humanae rationis cogit argumen- turn ; nee quia Deus id dixerat creditur, sed quia hoc sic esse convincitur, recipitur. Dr. Deutsch (p. 120) has acutely proposed an emendation bringing out sub- stantially the meaning of what is in fact found in the manu- script. [M. G. Robert still quotes Cousin s misleading text : see Les Ecoles et 1 Enseignement de Theologie, p. 184 n. 2.]
