case with theologians-and so obvious that it could not have troubled
a scholar of fifteen. William stated a selected doctrine as old as
Plato; Abelard interposed an objection as old as Aristotle. Probably
Plato and Aristotle had received the question and answer from
philosophers ten thousand years older than themselves. Certainly
the whole of philosophy has always been involved in this dispute."

So began the battle of the schools with all its more than military
strategy and tactics, and in the end it was a drawn battle, in
spite of its marvels of intellectual heroism and dialectical
sublety. Says Henry Adams again:--

"In every age man has been apt to dream uneasily, rolling from side
to side, beating against imaginary bars, unless, tired out, he has
sunk into indifference or scepticism. Religious minds prefer
scepticism. The true saint is a profound sceptic; a total
disbeliever in human reason, who has more than once joined hands on
this ground with some who were at best sinners. Bernard was a total
disbeliever in Scholasticism; so was Voltaire. Bernard brought the
society of his time to share his scepticism, but could give the
society no other intellectual amusement to relieve its restlessness.
His crusade failed; his ascetic enthusiasm faded; God came no nearer.
If there was in all France, between 1140 and 1200, a more typical
Englishman of the future Church of England type than John of
Salisbury, he has left no trace; and John wrote a description of
his time which makes a picturesque contrast with the picture
painted by Abelard, his old master, of the century at its beginning.
John weighed Abelard and the schools against Bernard and the
cloister, and coolly concluded that the way to truth led rather
through Citeaux, which brought him to Chartres as Bishop in 1176,
and to a mild scepticism in faith. 'I prefer to doubt' he said,
'rather than rashly define what is hidden.' The battle with the
schools had then resulted only in creating three kinds of sceptics:--
the disbelievers in human reason; the passive agnostics; and the
sceptics proper, who would have been atheists had they dared. The
first class was represented by the School of St. Victor; the second
by John of Salisbury himself; the third, by a class of schoolmen
whom he called Cornificii, as though they made a practice of
inventing horns of dilemma on which to fix their opponents; as, for
example, they asked whether a pig which was led to market was led
by