Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/127

Rh another place s William expressly rejects the notion that Eve was created out of Adam's rib, as a crabbed, literal interpretation. How, he asks, are we contrary to the divine Scripture, if concerning that which it states to have been done, we explain the manner in which it was done?

Such independent utterances not unnaturally made William an object of violent dislike to his more cautious or more pious contemporaries. His works are full of complaints of his detractors. He accounts for the opposition he met with, as the venom of envious rivals: ''Because they know not the forces of nature, in order that they may have all men comrades in their ignorance, they suffer not that others should search out anything, and would have us believe like rustics and ask no reason; so that now the word of the prophet should be fulfilled, The priest shall be as the people. But we say that in all things a reason must be sought, and if it fail we must confide the matter, as the divine page declares, to the Holy Spirit and to faith. These envious monks, however, if they perceive any man to be making search, at once cry out that he is a heretic, presuming more on their habit than trusting in their wisdom.'' William takes them to be altogether the same class of teachers who compounded for the slenderness of their knowledge by the pace at which they could carry their pupils through the whole of philosophy. t He is never tired of inveighing against these glib smatterers.

At length, however, as he advanced in years, William