A scientific, historical, and philosophical encyclopaedia of the thirteenth century surely deserves to find a place in the preface to the sixteenth.
After the encyclopaedist of the middle ages come, naturally, their philosophers.

They were numerous; and some of them have remained illustrious.

Several of them, at the date of their lives and labors, have already been met with and remarked upon in this history, such as Gerbert of Aurillac, who became Pope Sylvester II., St.Anselm, Abelard, St.Bernard, Robert of Sorbon, founder of the Sorbonne, and St.Thomas Aquinas.
[Illustration: St.Thomas Aquinas and Abelard----140] To these names, known to every enlightened man, might be added many others less familiar to the public, but belonging to men who held a high place in the philosophical contests of their times, such as John Scot Erigena, Berenger, Roscelin, William of Champeaux, Gilbert of La Poree, &c.

The questions which always have taken and always will take a passionate hold of men's minds in respect of God, the universe, and man, in respect of our origin, our nature, and our destiny, were raised and discussed, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, if not with so much brilliancy, at any rate with as much boldness and earnest thought, as at any other period.

The middle ages had, in France, their spiritualists, their materialists, their pantheists, their rationalists, their mystics, and their sceptics, not very clear or refined in their notions, but such as lacked neither profundity in their general view of the questions, nor ingenious subtilty in their argumentative process.