But need we continue to look for it in the guise of a casual remark or an isolated proposition, devoid of philosophical connexion, in the works of philosophers or the lecture-rooms of the schools? Did it not simply form a part of the common thought which daily declares that the man who has made a thing knows it better than he who has not made it? Probably a little attention would reveal it in many and dissimilar treatises; and for my own part, while reading the _Chronicon_ of Otto of Freising the other day, I came across it in the introduction to the third book, where the chronicler, writing as is well known under the influence of St. Augustine's _Civitas Dei,_ is arrested by the objection that God's designs in history are inscrutable, and delivers himself of the following reflections: "What then shall we do? If we cannot understand, shall we hold our peace? Then who will reply to those who flatter, repel those who attack, and by the reason and might of his words confute those who would destroy the faith that is in us? So we cannot understand the secret counsels of God, and yet we are often compelled to give a reasonable account of these things. What? Shall we reason about things which we do not understand? We can give reasons, but human reasons, when yet we cannot understand the divine reasons. And thus it happens that when we speak of theological matters, lacking the right words for them, we being men use our own words; and in speaking of so great a God in human language, we use our words the more boldly _quo ipsum figmentum nostrum cognoscere non dubitamus,_ because we never doubt that we know the thing we have ourselves formed: _quis enim melius cognoscit quam qui creavit?_ for who knows a thing better than he who has created it?"[24] The logic of the Abbot of Freising at this point may be thought a trifle sophistical: but the fact remains that he refers to a common opinion that he knows things who has made them.