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Abelard, Peter, 1079-1142

"Historia Calamitatum"

Lord Bacon came to the same conclusion when he
wrote "Let men please themselves as they will in admiring and
almost adoring the human kind, this is certain; that, as an uneven
mirrour distorts the rays of objects according to its own figure
and section, so the mind ... cannot be trusted." And Hugh of St.
Victor himself, had written, even in the days of Abelard: "There
was a certain wisdom that seemed such to them that knew not the
true wisdom. The world found it and began to be puffed up, thinking
itself great in this. Confiding in its wisdom it became
presumptuous and boasted it would attain the highest wisdom. And it
made itself a ladder of the face of creation. ... Then those things
which were seen were known and there were other things which were
not known; and through those which were manifest they expected to
reach those that were hidden. And they stumbled and fell into the
falsehoods of their own imagining ... So God made foolish the
wisdom of this world, and He pointed out another wisdom, which
seemed foolishness and was not. For it preached Christ crucified,
in order that truth might be sought in humility. But the world
despised it, wishing to contemplate the works of God, which He had
made a source of wonder, and it did not wish to venerate what He
had set for imitation, neither did it look to its own disease,
seeking medicine in piety; but presuming on a false health, it gave
itself over with vain curiosity to the study of alien things.


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