as a key-stone to unite and perfect the structure, in itself
incomplete, of human knowledge. Nor would it be just
to deny the natural significance of the connexion in which
Abailard himself relates this passage in his life. He left
his school on Saint Genevieve in order to visit his home
in Brittany and to Hake leave of his mother who was
about to withdraw into a nunnery. I came back to France, he says, principally that I might cultivate divine learning,—maxime ut de divinitate addiscerem. He found his way clear before him: William of Champeaux was now bishop of Chalons, and Abailard might look with hopefulness to
a career of influence in the future undisturbed by the
evil eye, as he deemed it, of his enemy; rivals he had
long ceased to fear. Nevertheless the impression made
upon him by that last interview with his mother—we
cannot misread the words, although the inference appears
to have escaped the notice of his biographers—had taken
so fast a hold of his mind that, even in the auspicious
situation of affairs ready prepared, one would say, for him
in Paris, he could not bring himself to break a solemn
resolve. He passed through the capital and presented
himself, this mature philosopher of four and thirty, as a
disciple of the illustrious Anselm of Laon.
Abailard has so much faith in himself that he describes every incident in his life as the result of careful planning; he leaves no room for emotion or sudden inspiration:[1] and yet it is these very rapid transitions in his mind that determined the crucial events which give his history so marked an individuality. His self-confidence, if we will, his vanity,—was opposed by an irresolution, an infirmity of purpose, which was no less characteristic an element in him. He surrendered his prospects in obedience to a religious impulse: doubtless he may have foreseen a wider potentiality of sway in the new field to which he betook himself; still for the moment he sank from the dignity of a famous teacher to the level of his own pupils,
- ↑ Remusat, vol. 1. 49, has made a similar remark in connexion with another incident in Abailard’s life, on which see below, pp. 124 sq.
