Still, when Bernard says that faith does not discuss, but believes, he states a conviction of his mind, a conviction corresponding with an inner need of his own to formulate and express his thought. Only, with Abaelard the need to consider and analyse was more consciously imperative. He could not avoid the constant query: How shall I think this thing—this thing, for example, which is declared by revelation? Just as other questioning spirits in other times might be driven upon the query: How shall we think these things which are disclosed by the variegated walls of our physical environment? Those yield data, or refuse them, and force the mind to put many queries, and come to some adjustment. So experience presents data for adjustment, just as dogma, Scripture, revelation present that which reason must bring within the action of its processes, and endeavour to find rational expression for.
II
The greatest dialectician of the early twelfth century felt no problems put him by the physical world. That did not attract his inquiry; it did not touch the reasonings evolved by his self-consciousness, any more than it impressed the fervid mind of his great adversary, St. Bernard. The natural world, however, stirred the mind of Abaelard’s contemporary, Hugo of St. Victor.[481] Its colours waved before his reveries, and its visible sublimities drew his mind aloft to the contemplation of God: for him its things were all the things of God—opus conditionis or opus restaurationis;[482] the work of foundation, whereby God created the physical world for the support and edification of its crowning creature man; and the work of restoration, to wit, the incarnation of the Word, and all its sacraments.
Hugo was a Platonic and very Christian theologian. He would reason and expound, and yet was well aware that reason could not fathom the nature of God, or bring man to salvation. “Logic, mathematics, physics teach some truth, yet do not reach that truth wherein is the soul’s safety, without which whatever is is vain.”[483] So Hugo was not primarily a logician, like Abaelard; nor did he care chiefly for the kind of truth which might be had through logic. Nevertheless the productions of his short life prove the excellence of his mind and his large enthusiasm for knowledge.
As Hugo was the head of the school of St. Victor for some years before his death, certain of his works cover topics of ordinary mediaeval education, secular and religious; while others advance to a more profound expression of the intellectual, or spiritual, interests of their author. For elementary religious instruction, he composed a veritable book of Sentences,[484] which preceded the Lombard’s in time, but was later than Abaelard’s Sic et non. Without striking features, it lucidly and amiably carried out its general purpose of setting forth the authoritative explanations of the elements of the Christian Faith. The writer did not hesitate to quote opposing views, which were not heralded, however, by such danger-signals of contradiction as flare from the chapter headings of the Sic et non.
The corresponding treatise upon profane learning—the Eruditio didascalica—is of greater interest.[485] It commences in elementary fashion, as a manual of study: “There are two things by which we gain knowledge, to wit, reading and meditation; reading comes first.” The book is to be a guide to the student in the study both of secular and divine writings; it teaches how to study the artes, and then how to study the Scriptures.[486] Even in this manual, Hugo shows himself a meditative soul, and one who seeks to base his most elementary expositions upon the nature and needs of man. The mind, says he, is distracted by things of sense, and does not know itself. It is renewed through study, so that it learns again not to look without for what itself affords. Learning is life’s solace, which he who finds is happy, and he who makes his own is blessed.[487]
For Hugo, philosophy is that which investigates the rationes of things human and divine, seeking ever the final wisdom, which is knowledge of the primaeva ratio: this distinguishes philosophy from the practical sciences, like agriculture: it follows the ratio, and they administer the matter. Again and again, Hugo returns to the thought that the object of all human actiones and studia is to restore the integrity of our nature or mitigate its weaknesses, restore the image of the divine similitude in us, or minister to the needs of life. This likeness is renewed by speculatio veritatis, or exercitium virtutis.[488]
Such is a pretty broad basis of theory for a high school manual. Hugo proceeds to set forth the scheme, rather than the substance, of the arts and sciences, pausing occasionally to admonish the reader to hold no science vile, since knowledge always is good; and he points out that all knowledge hangs together in a common coherency. He sketches[489] the true student’s life: Whoever seeks learning, must not neglect discipline! He must be humble, and not ashamed to learn from any one; he must observe decent manners, and not play the fool and make faces at lecturers on divinity, for thereby he insults God. Yea, and let him mind the example of the ancient sages, who for learning’s sake spurned honours, rejected riches, rejoiced in insults, deserted the companionship of men, and gave themselves up to philosophy in desert solitudes, that they might be more free for meditation. Diligent search for wisdom in quietude becomes a scholar; and likewise poverty, and likewise exile: he is very delicate who clings to his fatherland; “He is brave to whom every land is home (patria); and he is perfect to whom the whole world is an exile!”[490]
Hugo has much to say of the pulchritudo and the decor of the creature-world. But with him the world and its beauty point to God. One should observe it because of its suggestiveness, the visible suggesting the invisible. Hugo has already been followed in his argument that the world, in its veriest reality, is a symbol.[491] Here we follow him along his path of knowledge, which leads on and upward from cogitatio, through meditatio, to contemplatio. The steps in Hugo’s scheme are rational, though the summit lies beyond. This path to truth, leading on from the visible symbol to the unseen power, is for him the reason and justification of study; drawing to God it makes for man’s salvation.
Hugo has put perhaps his most lucid exposition of the three grades of knowledge into the first of his Nineteen Sermons on Ecclesiastes.[492] He is fond of certain numbers, and here his thought revolves in categories of the number three. Solomon composed three works, the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles. In the first, he addresses his son paternally, admonishing him to pursue virtue and shun vice; in the second, he shows the grown man that nothing in the world is stable; finally, in Canticles, he brings the consummate one, who has spurned the world, to the Bridegroom’s arms.