Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/203

Rh from Abailard: but it is impossible to conjecture in what particular branch of his faculty John of Salisbury heard him. Probably enough the lessons which John attended were merely concerned with the exposition of the Scriptures. At any rate the tone of the scholar's theology is manifestly derived from another source than that of the teachers mentioned. The spirit of humanism, in fact, which was the distinctive essence of the school of Chartres, he brought into alliance with a totally different spirit derived unmistakably from the mysticism of Hugh of Saint Victor. The union was no doubt exceptional, for the ethical theology of the Victorines was rather calculated to recommend the life of a recluse than to countenance the wide interests and the wide reading of a man like John of Salisbury; yet as his writings shew, it is this ethical principle far more than any metaphysical or dogmatic system, that ruled his thoughts. To this characteristic of him we shall revert hereafter: at the present moment we notice it, as John notices his theological studies, just incidentally. Besides there is no evidence that Hugh, whom John only refers to twice in all his works, was ever actually his teacher; the current may have been communicated as effectively by private association with Hugh or with fellow-members of the abbey.

John concludes the record of his school-studies in a curious epilogue, half-humorous, half-grave, which shews how far his sympathy had been withdrawn, through his later training, from the absorbing religion of Saint Geneviève into which he had entered with such breathless ardour twelve years previously. And so, he says, ''it seemed pleasant to me to revisit my old companions on the Mount, whom I had left and whom dialectic still detained, to confer with them touching old matters of debate; that we might by mutual comparison measure together our several progress. I found them as before, and where they were before; nor did''