John’s own training was in marked contrast to all this.  Instead of remaining in the schools “scarcely longer than the time within which young birds get their feathers,” he spent, as above noted, twelve years in study.  Instead of devoting himself to logic and disputation alone, he received an extensive training in the classics and in theology.  His first teacher at Paris was Abelard.

When I was a very young man, I went to study in France, the year after the death of that lion in the cause of justice, Henry [the First], king of England.  There I sought out that famous teacher and Peripatetic philosopher of Pallet [Abelard], who at that time presided at Mont St. Genevieve, and was the subject of admiration to all men.  At his feet I received the first rudiments of the dialectic art [logic], and shewed the utmost avidity to pick up and store away in my mind all that fell from his lips.  When, however, much to my regret, Abelard left us, I attended Master Alberic, a most obstinate Dialectician, and unflinching assailant of the Nominal Sect.  Two years I stayed at Mont St. Genevieve, under the tuition of Alberic and Master Robert de Melun.

Then follows a characterization of these teachers.  The statement that one of them went to Bologna for the further study of logic indicates that that place was eminent for its teaching of dialectics as well as for the study of law.

One of these teachers was scrupulous even to minutiae, and everywhere found some subject to raise a question; for the smoothest surface presented inequalities to him, and there was no rod so smooth that he could not find a knot in it, and shew how it might be got rid of.  The other of the two was prompt in reply, and never for the sake of subterfuge avoided a question that was proposed; but he would choose the contradictory side, or by multiplicity of words would show that a simple answer could not be given.  In all questions, therefore, he was subtle and profuse, whilst the other in his answer was perspicuous, brief, and to the point If two such characters could ever have been united in the same person, he would be the best hand at disputation that our times have produced.  Both of them possessed acute wit, and an indomitable perseverance, and I believe they would have turned out great and distinguished men in Physical Studies, if they had supported themselves on the great base of Literature, and more closely followed the tracks of the ancients, instead of taking such pride in their own discoveries.

All this is said with reference to the time during which I attended on them.  For one of them afterwards went to Bologna, and there unlearnt what he had taught:  on his return also, he untaught it:  whether the change was for the better or the worse, I leave to the judgment of those who heard him before and after.  The