Abelard having won a great dialectical victory, which brought as much fame as military laurels on the battlefield, established himself at St. Genevieve, just outside the walls of Paris, where the Pantheon now stands, which is still the centre of the Latin quarter, and the residence of students.  He now applied himself to the study of divinity, and attended the lectures of Anselm of Laon.  This celebrated ecclesiastic, though not so famous or able as Anselm of Canterbury, was treated by Abelard with the same arrogance and flippancy as he had bestowed on William of Champeaux.  “I frequented,” said the young mocker, “the old man’s school, but soon discovered that all his power was in length of practice.  You would have thought he was kindling a fire, when instantly the whole house was filled with smoke, in which not a single spark was visible.  He was a tree covered with thick foliage, which to the distant eye had charms, but on near inspection there was no fruit to be found; a fig-tree such as our Lord did curse; an oak such as Lucan compared Pompey to,—­Stat magni nominis umbra.”

What a comment on the very philosophy which Abelard himself taught!  What better description of the scholasticism of the Middle Ages!  But original and brilliant as was the genius of Abelard, he no more could have anticipated the new method which Bacon taught than could Thomas Aquinas.  All the various schools of the mediaeval dialecticians, Realists and Nominalists alike, sought to establish old theories, not to discover new truth.  They could not go beyond their assumptions.  So far as their assumptions were true, they rendered great service by their inexorable logic in defending them.  They did not establish premises; that was not their concern or mission.  Assuming that the sun revolved around the earth, all their astronomical speculations were worthless, even as the assumption of the old doctrine of atoms in our times has led scientists to the wildest conclusions.  The metaphysics of the Schoolmen, whether they were sceptical or reverential, simply sharpened the intellectual faculties without advancing knowledge.

Abelard belonged by nature to the sceptical school.  He delighted in negations, and in the work of demolition.  So far as he demolished or ridiculed error he rendered the same service as Voltaire did:  he prepared the way for a more inquiring spirit.  He was also more liberal than his opponents.  His spirit was progressive, but his method was faulty.  Like all those who have sought to undermine the old systems of thought, he was naturally vain and conceited.  He supposed he had accomplished more than he really had.  He became bold in his speculations, and undertook to explain subjects beyond his grasp.  Thus he professed to unfold the meaning of the prophecies of Ezekiel.  He was arrogant in his claims to genius.  “It is not by long study,” said he, “that I have mastered the heights of science, but by the force of my mind.”