Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/139

Rh 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 remarkable because his direct acquaintance with the master was limited to the earlier treatises of the Organon; he had therefore to 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 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 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by this time acquired the same special meaning as sophist had two or three centuries before, though was already being superseded by the more accurate term dialectician.

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