Note 4 — JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON (continued 3)

It is interesting to compare these views with those of John of Salisbury who, writing almost two centuries before the time of Petrarch's letter says: "It seemed to me pleasant to revisit my old companions on the Mount [of St. Geneviève at Paris], whom I had left and whom dialectic still detained, and to confer with them touching the old subjects of debate, that we might by mutual comparison measure our respective progress. I found them as before, and where they were before; they did not appear to have advanced an inch in settling the old questions, nor had they added a single proposition. The aims that once inspired them inspired them still; they had progressed in one point only, they had unlearned moderation, they knew not modesty; and that to such an extent that one might despair of their recovery. So experience taught me a manifest conclusion, that, while logic furthers other studies, it is by itself lifeless and barren, nor can it cause the mind to yield the fruit of philosophy except the same conceive from some other source." Migne, Pat. Lat., vol. cxcix., p. 869.