' 954 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters . 
of fine-spun logic without beginning or end, without a purpose 
in life, and he notes with pity the fact that men who were spend¬ 
ing their whole lives in this fruitless occupation were neverthe¬ 
less consoled with the conceit of their fine distinctions and 
biting personalities. John himself had studied logic, and his 
Metalogicus is as effective a polemic as the writings of men 
who were giving their lives to dialectics. He was however 
too level headed to make that the object of his life. These 
dialecticians were opposing the study of the classics as a 
waste of time and it is against them that John pointed his 
keenest criticism. 1 
During his life scholasticism was becoming more and more 
in vogue. Born and educated in a time when the classics were 
largely studied John had made them an integral part of him¬ 
self. He had studied theology at the end of his early education 
and in his opinion excellence in theology required a thorough 
knowledge of the classics. To him the early Christian writing 
and doctrines of the Church were not the sole authority; but the 
great danger which he feared was that the authority of the 
classics might prejudice the pure reason as embodied in theology 
and Christian ethics. This attitude, his training, especially 
at Chartres, had taught him as the most natural one and, there¬ 
fore, when these scholastics, these misguided dialecticians, as¬ 
sailed the classics as a waste of time, he looked upon their at¬ 
tacks as the height of folly, and he fought them with all the 
powers of his wide learning. 2 
1 This is treated more fully on pp. 955-963. 
2 Migne, pp. 658-62. John’s statement that the classics should not he 
detrimental to the authority of pure reason has been treated by Poole: 
pp. 219-220. 
“He is speaking now of the study of the Classics, and warns us so to 
read them that authority do not prejudice to reason. Authority here is 
that of the masters of antiquity, and reason is the mental faculty con¬ 
sidered as educated and enlightened by Christianity. The typical op¬ 
posites have for the moment changed places; and the change is highly 
indicative of the regard in which the classics could now be'held even 
by men the correctness of whose religious character was no less assured 
than was that, let us say, of the arch-enemy of learning, the champion 
of a ‘rustic’ faith, Saint Peter Damiani, a century earlier. 
“The classical and anti-Cornifician atmosphere of the School of 
Chartres is described by Clerval in his ‘Les ficoles de Chartres au 
