disbeliever in human reason, who has more than once joined hands on
this ground with some who were at best sinners. Bernard was a total
disbeliever in Scholasticism; so was Voltaire. Bernard brought the
society of his time to share his scepticism, but could give the
society no other intellectual amusement to relieve its restlessness.
His crusade failed; his ascetic enthusiasm faded; God came no nearer.
If there was in all France, between 1140 and 1200, a more typical
Englishman of the future Church of England type than John of
Salisbury, he has left no trace; and John wrote a description of
his time which makes a picturesque contrast with the picture
painted by Abélard, his old master, of the century at its beginning.
John weighed Abélard and the schools against Bernard and the
cloister, and coolly concluded that the way to truth led rather
through Citeaux, which brought him to Chartres as Bishop in 1176,
and to a mild scepticism in faith. 'I prefer to doubt' he said,
'rather than rashly define what is hidden.' The battle with the
schools had then resulted only in creating three kinds of sceptics:--
the disbelievers in human reason; the passive agnostics; and the
sceptics proper, who would have been atheists had they dared. The
first class was represented by the School of St. Victor; the second
by John of Salisbury himself; the third, by a class of schoolmen
whom he called Cornificii, as though they made a practice of
inventing horns of dilemma on which to fix their opponents; as, for
example, they asked whether a pig which was led to market was led
by the man or the cord. One asks instantly: What cord?--Whether
Grace, for instance, or Free Will?

"Bishop John used the science he had learned in the school only to
reach the conclusion that, if philosophy were a science at all, its
best practical use was to teach charity--love. Even the early,