As to William's doctrines and writings see Poole, pp. 124-30, 346-59. His authorship of one treatise is only latterly cleared up. In the work which under the title of Elementa Philosophiae is falsely ascribed to Bede, and under the title De Philosophia Mundi to Honorius of Autun (see Poole, pp. 340-42, 347 sq.), but which is really the production of William of Conches, there occurs the passage: "What is more pitiable than to say that a thing is, because God is able to do it, and not to show any reason why it is so; just as if God did everything that he is able to do! You talk like one who says that God is able to make a calf out of a log. But did he ever do it? Either, then, show a reason why a thing is so, or a purpose wherefore it is so, or else cease to declare it so." Migne, Patrolog. Latin. xc, 1139. It is thus an exaggeration to say of Abailard, as does Cousin, that "il mit de côté la vieille école d'Anselme de Laon, qui exposait sans expliquer, et fonda ce qu'on appelle aujourd'hui le rationalisme" (Ouvr. inédits d'Abélard, 1836, intr. p. ii). Abailard was not more explicit on concrete issues than this contemporary--who survived him, and studied his writings. If, indeed, as is said, he wrote that "a doctrine is believed not because God has said it, but because we are convinced by reason that it is so," [1401] he went as far on one line as any theologian of his time; but his main service to freethought seems to have lain in the great stimulus he gave to the practice of reasoning on all topics. [1402] His enemy, St. Bernard, on the contrary, gave an "immense impulse to the growth of a genuinely superstitious spirit among the Latin clergy." [1403] Dr. Rashdall pronounces Abailard "incomparably the greatest intellect of the Middle Ages; one of the great minds which mark a period in the world's intellectual history"; and adds that "Abailard (a Christian thinker to the very heart's core, however irredeemable (sic) the selfishness and overweening vanity of his youth) was at the same time the representative of the principle of free though reverent inquiry in matters of religion and individual loyalty to truth." (The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 1895, i, 56-57.) If the praise given be intended to exalt Abailard above John Scotus, it seems excessive.