Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/204

186 ''they appear to have readied the goal in unravelling the old questions, nor had they added one jot of a proposition. The aims that once inspired them, inspired them still: they only had progressed in one point, they had unlearned moderation, they knew not modesty; in such wise that one might despair of their recovery. And thus experience taught me a manifest conclusion, that, whereas dialectic furthers other studies, so if it remain by itself it lies bloodless and barren, nor does it quicken the soul to yield fruit of philosophy, except the same conceive from elsewhere.''

Such on John's final judgement on the ruling passion of his time: he felt that he had outgrown logic when he advanced to the study of theology. Still throughout his life, though he esteemed theology as the noblest subject on which the mind could exercise itself, his sympathies ran even more strongly to yet another branch of learning, the study of the classics. The external events of his career hardly concern us, and may be briefly summarised. On the completion of his theological course he spent some time with his friend Peter, abbat of the Cistercian monastery of Moustier la Celle near Troyes, and after wards his own successor in the see of Chartres. Here in 1148 he had the opportunity of witnessing that council at Rheims in which saint Bernard failed to silence Gilbert of La Porrée, and of which we have John's record, pointed with characteristic shrewd criticism. Here too he must have been admitted to friendly intercourse with the redoubtable abbat of Clairvaux, who afterwards recommended him to the notice and favour of archbishop Theobald of Canterbury. The latter had also been present