Krey—John of Salisbury and the Classics. 963 
ways. Anagogy tends, again and again, to endow literature 
not only with words but also with substance. In the liberal 
arts, however, where the meaning consists of the signification 
of the words he, who is not content with the sense of the words 
as they stand, seems to me to be either woefully mistaken or 
else to wish to lead his hearers from an understanding of the 
truth. Surely, I would consider Porphyriolus a fool if he 
had written so that his meaning could not be understood unless 
Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus were first read through. Anyone 
that was preparing me for any subject could introduce me with 
such a compendium, but I, indeed, would follow him who ex¬ 
plained the literature as is patent on the surface and taught me, 
so to speak, the historical sense.” 1 
Such is John’s description of an important phase of the 
scholastic movement, and the fact that modern criticism has 
arrived at the same conclusion—less graphically expressed per¬ 
haps, yet the same—speaks well for John’s surpassing insight. 
Hot content with preaching their own narrow doctrines, these 
dialecticians assailed the classical education and, as it seems, at¬ 
tacked John himself. He answered them not only in their 
personal charges but also in behalf of the classics. This answer 
is embodied in the four books of the Metalogicus, as perfect an 
example of a controversial essay as the best which his opponents 
could produce and one that illustrates well John’s doctrine that 
logic and dialectics should be a means to an end, not an end in 
themselves. 
In the Metalogicus, after a liberal supply of personal abuse 
for his opponents, John takes up a serious defense of the clas¬ 
sics. At the end of the first book he gives a brief account of 
the movement which has assailed the old system of the gram¬ 
mar and rhetoric schools and states his position in the matter. 
“It is not of the same man to serve alike letters and carnal vices ! 
To the form of this maxim my instructors in grammar, William 
of Conches and Richard, surnamed the Bishop, now archdeacon 
in Constance, a man famed for his temperate life and teaching, 
ever instructed their students. Later, however, instead of this 
opinion some men used this to bear prejudice to truth and men 
1 Migne, pp. 662-666. 
