Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/158

140 upon a corruption in the text, and secondly upon a mistake in punctuation. 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