The greatest dialectician of the early twelfth century felt no problems put him by the physical world. That did not attract his inquiry; it did not touch the reasonings evolved by his self-consciousness, any more than it impressed the fervid mind of his great adversary, St. Bernard. The natural world, however, stirred the mind of Abaelard’s contemporary, Hugo of St. Victor.[481] Its colours waved before his reveries, and its visible sublimities drew his mind aloft to the contemplation of God: for him its _things_ were all the things of God--_opus conditionis_ or _opus restaurationis_;[482] the work of foundation, whereby God created the physical world for the support and edification of its crowning creature man; and the work of restoration, to wit, the incarnation of the Word, and all its sacraments. Hugo was a Platonic and very Christian theologian. He would reason and expound, and yet was well aware that reason could not fathom the nature of God, or bring man to salvation. “Logic, mathematics, physics teach some truth, yet do not reach that truth wherein is the soul’s safety, without which whatever is is vain.”[483] So Hugo was not primarily a logician, like Abaelard; nor did he care chiefly for the kind of truth which might be had through logic. Nevertheless the productions of his short life prove the excellence of his mind and his large enthusiasm for knowledge. As Hugo was the head of the school of St. Victor for some years before his death, certain of his works cover topics of ordinary mediaeval education, secular and religious; while others advance to a more profound expression of the intellectual, or spiritual, interests of their author. For elementary religious instruction, he composed a veritable book of _Sentences_,[484] which preceded the Lombard’s in time, but was later than Abaelard’s _Sic et non_. Without striking features, it lucidly and amiably carried out its general purpose of setting forth the authoritative explanations of the elements of the Christian Faith. The writer did not hesitate to quote opposing views, which were not heralded, however, by such danger-signals of contradiction as flare from the chapter headings of the _Sic et non_.