Here then was a first general quality of mediaeval thought: deference to authority. Now for the variances. Scarcely diverging, save in emphasis, from Augustine and Bonaventura, are the greatest of the schoolmen, Albert and Thomas. They defer to authority and recognize the primacy of faith, and yet they will, with abundant use of reason, deliminate the respective provinces of grace and human knowledge, and distinguish the absolute authority of Scripture from the statements even of the saints, which may be weighed and criticized. In secular philosophy, these two will, when their faith admits, accept the views of the philosophers--Aristotle above all--yet using their own reason. They are profoundly interested in knowledge and metaphysical dialectic, but follow it with deferential tempers and believing Christian souls. Outside the company of such, are men of more independent temper, whose attitude tends to weaken the principle of acceptance of authority in sacred doctrine. The first of these was Eriugena with his explicit statement that reason is greater than authority; yet we may assume that he was not intending to impugn Scripture. Centuries later another chief example is Abaelard, whose dialectic temper leads him to wish to prove everything by reason. Not that he stated, or would have admitted this; yet the extreme rationalizing tendency of the man is projected through such a passage as the following from his _Historia calamitatum_, where he alludes to the circumstances of the composition of his work upon the Trinity. He had become a monk in the monastery of St. Denis, but students were still thronging to hear him, to the wrath of some of his superiors. “Then it came about that I was brought to expound the very foundation of our faith by applying the analogies of human reason, and was led to compose for my pupils a theological treatise on the divine Unity and Trinity. They were calling for human and philosophical arguments, and insisting upon something intelligible, rather than mere words, saying that there had been more than enough of talk which the mind could not follow; that it was impossible to believe what was not understood in the first place; and that it was ridiculous for any one to set forth to others what neither he nor they could rationally conceive (_intellectu capere_).” And Abaelard cites the verse from Matthew about the blind leaders of the blind, and goes on to tell of the success of his treatise, which pleased everybody, yet provoked the greater envy because of the difficulty of the questions which it elucidated; and at last envy blew up the condemnation of his book, at the Council of Soissons, in the year of grace 1121.[425]