Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/198

180 wholly outside the field of human reasoning, and by a careful definition of the relation borne by the universe to its Creator, sought to erect an impassable distinction between the two. In thus guarding against the pantheistic issues to which realism was liable, he was obliged to divorce the two spheres of logic and theology which the schools had always been inclined to confuse.

With these, proceeds John, ''I applied myself for the full space of two years, to practice in the commonplaces and rules and other rudimentary elements, which are instilled into the minds of boys and wherein the aforesaid doctors were most able and ready; so that methought I knew all these things as well as my nails and fingers. This at least I had learned, in the lightness of youth to account my knowledge of more worth than it was. I seemed to myself a young scholar, because I was quick in that which I heard. Then returning unto myself and measuring my powers, I advisedly resorted, by the good favour of my preceptors, to the Grammarian of Conches, and heard his teaching by the space of three years; the while teaching much: nor shall I ever regret that time.'' John therefore turned to grammar after dialectic; he had by this time become conscious of an intellectual appetite which would not be satisfied by the formal routine of logical teaching. Alberic and Robert, he says, might have done good work in physical science had they stood as fast upon the tracks of the elders as they rejoiced in their own discoveries. It was their new-fangled system which he wanted to exchange for the less fashionable but more solid study of grammar. He was therefore glad when an opportunity presented itself for him to attend the master whose writings shew him chiefly as a natural philosopher, but whom John distinguishes for his peculiar eminence as a grammarian.

John does not name the place where William of Conches taught, but the minute description which he elsewhere gives of the school of Chartres—a description to which particular attention has been directed in a preceding chapter,—not to speak of his many personal reminiscences of its former head Bernard and of Gilbert of La Porrée,