Library of the Worlds Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 | Page 5

insertion by hand of an illuminated initial T.

ABÉLARD
(1079--1142)
BY THOMAS DAVIDSON
Pierre, the eldest son of Bérenger and Lucie (Abélard?) was born at
Palais, near Nantes and the frontier of Brittany, in 1079. His knightly
father, having in his youth been a student, was anxious to give his
family, and especially his favorite Pierre, a liberal education. The boy
was accordingly sent to school, under a teacher who at that time was

making his mark in the world,--Roscellin, the reputed father of
Nominalism. As the whole import and tragedy of his life may be traced
back to this man's teaching, and the relation which it bore to the
thought of the time, we must pause to consider these.
[Illustration: Abélard]
In the early centuries of our era, the two fundamental articles of the
Gentile-Christian creed, the Trinity and the Incarnation, neither of them
Jewish, were formulated in terms of Platonic philosophy, of which the
distinctive tenet is, that the real and eternal is the universal, not the
individual. On this assumption it was possible to say that the same real
substance could exist in three, or indeed in any number of persons. In
the case of God, the dogma-builders were careful to say, essence is one
with existence, and therefore in Him the individuals are as real as the
universal. Platonism, having lent the formula for the Trinity, became
the favorite philosophy of many of the Church fathers, and so
introduced into Christian thought and life the Platonic dualism, that
sharp distinction between the temporal and the eternal which belittles
the practical life and glorifies the contemplative.
This distinction, as aggravated by Neo-Platonism, further affected
Eastern Christianity in the sixth century, and Western Christianity in
the ninth, chiefly through the writings of (the pseudo-) Dionysius
Areopagita, and gave rise to Christian mysticism. It was then erected
into a rule of conduct through the efforts of Pope Gregory VII., who
strove to subject practical and civil life entirely to the control of
ecclesiastics and monks, standing for contemplative, supernatural life.
The latter included all purely mental work, which more and more
tended to concentrate itself upon religion and confine itself to the
clergy. In this way it came to be considered an utter disgrace for any
man engaged in mental work to take any part in the institutions of civil
life, and particularly to marry. He might indeed enter into illicit
relations, and rear a family of "nephews" and "nieces," without losing
prestige; but to marry was to commit suicide. Such was the condition of
things in the days of Abélard.
But while Platonism, with its real universals, was celebrating its ascetic,

unearthly triumphs in the West, Aristotelianism, which maintains that
the individual is the real, was making its way in the East. Banished as
heresy beyond the limits of the Catholic Church, in the fifth and sixth
centuries, in the persons of Nestorius and others, it took refuge in Syria,
where it flourished for many years in the schools of Edessa and Nisibis,
the foremost of the time. From these it found its way among the Arabs,
and even to the illiterate Muhammad, who gave it (1) theoretic
theological expression in the cxii. surah of the Koran: "He is One God,
God the Eternal; He neither begets nor is begotten; and to Him there is
no peer," in which both the fundamental dogmas of Christianity are
denied, and that too on the ground of revelation; (2) practical
expression, by forbidding asceticism and monasticism, and
encouraging a robust, though somewhat coarse, natural life. Islam,
indeed, was an attempt to rehabilitate the human.
In Abélard's time Arab Aristotelianism, with its consequences for
thought and life, was filtering into Europe and forcing Christian
thinkers to defend the bases of their faith. Since these, so far as
defensible at all, depended upon the Platonic doctrine of universals, and
this could be maintained only by dialectic, this science became
extremely popular,--indeed, almost the rage. Little of the real Aristotle
was at that time known in the West; but in Porphyry's Introduction to
Aristotle's Logic was a famous passage, in which all the difficulties
with regard to universals were stated without being solved. Over this
the intellectual battles of the first age of Scholasticism were fought.
The more clerical and mystic thinkers, like Anselm and Bernard, of
course sided with Plato; but the more worldly, robust thinkers inclined
to accept Aristotle, not seeing that his doctrine is fatal to the Trinity.
Prominent among these was a Breton, Roscellin, the early instructor of
Abélard. From him the brilliant, fearless boy learnt two terrible lessons:
(1) that universals, instead of being real substances, external and
superior to individual things, are mere names (hence Nominalism) for
common qualities of things as recognized by the human mind; (2) that