or himself, had written, even in the days of Abelard: "There
was a certain wisdom that seemed such to them that knew not the
true wisdom. The world found it and began to be puffed up, thinking
itself great in this. Confiding in its wisdom it became
presumptuous and boasted it would attain the highest wisdom. And it
made itself a ladder of the face of creation. ... Then those things
which were seen were known and there were other things which were
not known; and through those which were manifest they expected to
reach those that were hidden. And they stumbled and fell into the
falsehoods of their own imagining ... So God made foolish the
wisdom of this world, and He pointed out another wisdom, which
seemed foolishness and was not. For it preached Christ crucified,
in order that truth might be sought in humility. But the world
despised it, wishing to contemplate the works of God, which He had
made a source of wonder, and it did not wish to venerate what He
had set for imitation, neither did it look to its own disease,
seeking medicine in piety; but presuming on a false health, it gave
itself over with vain curiosity to the study of alien things."

These considerations troubled Abelard not at all. He was conscious
of a mind of singular acuteness and a tongue of parts, both of
which would do whatever he willed. Beneath all the tumultuous talk
of Paris, when he first arrived there, lay the great and unsolved
problem of Universals and this he promptly made his own, rushing in
where others feared to tread. William of Champeaux had rested on a
Platonic basis, Abelard assumed that of Aristotle, and the clash
began. It is not a lucid subject, but the best abstract may be
found in Chapter XIV of Henry Adams' "Mont-Saint-Michel and
Chartres" while this and the two succeeding chapters give the most
luminous and vivacious account of the principles at issue in
this most vital of intellectual feuds.

"According to the latest authorities, the doctrine of universals
which convulsed the schools of the twelfth century has never
received an adequate answer. What is a species: what is a genus or
a family or an order? More or less convenient terms of classification,
about which the twelfth century cared very little, while it cared
deeply about the essence of classes! Science has become too complex
to affirm the existence of universal truths, but it strives for
nothing else, and disputes the problem, within its own limits,
almost as earnest