Such a thought would naturally take shape during the course of the following twelve months. The only indication that Abélard gives us is to the effect that William was well disposed towards him at first, though there is no foundation in recorded fact for the assertion that William invited the youth to his house, but they were gradually involved in a warm dialectical encounter. Abélard was not only a handsome and talented youth (which facts he candidly tells us himself), but he was a practised dialectician. The lectures of those untiring days lasted for hours, and might be interrupted at any moment by a question from a scholar. Moreover, William was principally occupied with dialectics, and it would be quite impossible—if it were desired—to instruct youths in the art of disputing, without letting them exercise their powers on the hosts of problems which served the purpose of illustration. Hence the young Breton must have quickly brought his keen rapier into play. The consciousness of power and the adolescent vanity of exhibiting it, both generously developed in Abélard, would prepare the way for ambition. Question and answer soon led on to a personal contest.
But there was a stronger source of provocation, and here it will be necessary to cast a hurried glance at the great controversy of the hour. Cousin has said that the scholastic philosophy was born of a phrase that Boetius translated out of Porphyry. It is a good epigram; but it has the disadvantage of most epigrams—it is false. The controversy about genera and species is by no means of vital importance to the scholastic philosophy, as Abélard himself has said. However, there is much truth in the assertion that this celebrated controversy, as a specific question, may be traced entirely to Porphyry.
Boetius was the chief author read in the early mediæval schools. Amongst other works they had his Latin translation of Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle, and in one corner of this volume some roving scholastic had been arrested by the allusion to the old Greek controversy about genera and species. To put it shortly: we have mental pictures of individual men, and we have also the idea of man in general, an idea which may be applied to each and all of the individual men we know. The grave problem that agitated the centuries was, whether not only the individual human beings who live and move about us, but also this ‘general man’ or species, had an existence outside the mind. The modern photographer has succeeded in taking composite photographs. A number of human likenesses are super-imposed on the same plate, so that at length individual features are blended, and there emerges only the vague portrait of ‘a man.’ The question that vexed the mediæval soul was, whether this human type, as distinct from the individual mortals we see in the flesh, had a real existence.
In whatever terms the problem be stated, it is sure to appear almost childish to the non-philosophical reader; as, indeed, it appeared to certain scholars even of that time. John of Salisbury, with his British common sense and impatience of dialectical subtlety, petulantly spoke of it as ‘the ancient question, in the solution of which the world has grown grey, and more time has been consumed than the Cæsars gave to the conquest and dominion of the globe, more money wasted than Crœsus counted in all his wealth.’ But listen to another Briton, and one with the fulness of modern life outspread before him. Archbishop Roger Vaughan, defending the attitude of the enthusiasts in his Thomas of Aquin, says: ‘Kill ideas, blast theories, explode the archetypes of things, and the age of brute force is not far distant.’ And Rousselot declares, in his Philosophie du Moyen Age, that the problem of universals is ‘the most exalted and the most difficult question in the whole of philosophy.’ Poor philosophy! will be the average layman’s comment. However, though neither ancient Greeks nor mediæval formalists were guilty of the confusion of ideas and ideals which Dom Vaughan betrays, the schoolmen had contrived to connect the question in a curious fashion with the mystery of the Trinity.
When, therefore, Jean Roscelin began to probe the question with his dialectical weapons, the ears of the orthodox were opened wide. The only position which was thought compatible with the faith was realism—the notion that the species or the genus was a reality, distinct from the individuals that belonged to it, and outside the mind that conceived it. By and by it was whispered in the schools, and wandering scholars bore the rumour to distant monasteries and bishoprics, that Roscelin denied the real existence of these universals. Indeed, in his scorn of the orthodox position, he contemptuously declared them to be ‘mere words’; neither in the world of reality, nor in the mind itself, was there anything corresponding to them; they were nothing but an artifice of human speech. Europe was ablaze at once. St. Anselm assailed the heretic from the theological side; William of Champeaux stoutly led the opposition, and the defence of realism, from the side of philosophy. Such was the question of the hour, such the condition of the world of thought, when Pierre Abélard reached the cloistral school at Paris.
If you stated the problem clearly to a hundred men and women who were unacquainted with philosophic speculations, ninety-nine of them would probably answer that these universals were neither mere words nor external realities, but general or generalised ideas—composite photographs, to use the interesting comparison of Mr. Galton, in the camera of the mind. That was the profound discovery with which Abélard shattered the authority of his master, revolutionised the thought of his age, and sent his fame to the ends of the earth. He had introduced a new instrument into the dialectical world, common sense, like the little girl in the fairy tale, who was brought to see the prince in his imaginary clothes.[6] This, at least, Abélard achieved, and it was a brilliant triumph for the unknown youth: he swept for ever out of the world of thought, in spite of almost all the scholars of Christendom, that way of thinking and of speaking which is known as realism. I am familiar with the opinion of scholastic thinkers in this question, from the thirteenth century to the present day. It differs verbally, but not substantially, from the conceptualism of Abélard. The stripling of twenty or twenty-one had enunciated the opinion which the world of thought was to adopt.
We still have some of the arguments with which Abélard assailed his chief—but enough of philosophy, let us proceed with the story. Once more the swift and animated years are condensed into a brief phrase by the gloomy autobiographist; though there is a momentary flash of the old spirit when he says of the earlier stage that he ‘seemed at times to have the victory in the dispute,’ and when he describes the final issue in the words of Ovid,
‘… non sum superatus ab illo.’
He soon found the weak points in William’s armour, and proceeded to attack him with the uncalculating passion of youth. It was not long before the friendly master was converted into a bitter, life-long enemy; and that, he wearily writes, ‘was the beginning of my calamities.’ Possibly: but it is not unlikely that he had had a similar experience at Locmenach. However that may be, it was a fatal victory. Ten years afterwards we find William in closest intimacy and daily intercourse with Bernard of Clairvaux.
Most of the scholars at Notre Dame were incensed at the success of Abélard. In those earlier days the gathering was predominantly clerical; the more so, on account of William’s championship of orthodoxy. But as the controversy proceeded, and rumour bore its echo to the distant schools, the number and the diversity of the scholars increased. Many of the youths took the side of the handsome, brilliant young noble, and encouraged him to resist. He decided to open a school.
There was little organisation in the schools at that period—the university not taking shape until fully sixty years afterwards (Compayré)—and Abélard would hardly need a ‘license’ for the purpose, outside the immediate precincts of the cloister. But William was angry and powerful. It were more discreet, at least, not to create a direct and flagrant opposition to him. The little group of scholars moved to Melun, and raised a chair for their new master in that royal town. It was thirty miles away, down the valley of the Seine; but a thirty mile walk was a trifle in the days when railways were unknown, and