Abelard’s character may be summed up in a few words.  He was one of the most brilliant and variously gifted men that ever lived, a sincere lover of truth and champion of freedom.  But unfortunately, his extraordinary personal beauty and charm of manner made him the object of so much attention and adulation that he soon became unable to live without seeing himself mirrored in the admiration and love of others.  Hence his restlessness, irritability, craving for publicity, fondness for dialectic triumph, and inability to live in fruitful obscurity; hence, too, his intrigue with Heloise, his continual struggles and disappointments, his final humiliation and tragic end.  Not having conquered the world, he cannot claim the crown of the martyr.

Abelard’s works were collected by Cousin, and published in three 4to volumes (Paris, 1836, 1849, 1859).  They include, besides the correspondence with Heloise, and a number of sermons, hymns, answers to questions, etc., written for her, the following:—­(1) ‘Sic et Non,’ a collection of (often contradictory) statements of the Fathers concerning the chief dogmas of religion, (2) ‘Dialectic,’ (3) ’On Genera and Species,’ (4) Glosses to Porphyry’s ‘Introduction,’ Aristotle’s ‘Categories and Interpretation,’ and Boethius’s ‘Topics,’ (5) ‘Introduction to Theology,’ (6) ‘Christian Theology,’ (7) ’Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans,’ (9) ‘Abstract of Christian Theology,’ (10) ‘Ethics, or Know Thyself,’ (11) ’Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian,’ (12) ‘On the Intellects,’ (12) ‘On the Hexameron,’ with a few short and unimportant fragments and tracts.  None of Abelard’s numerous poems in the vernacular, in which he celebrated his love for Heloise, which he sang ravishingly (for he was a famous singer), and which at once became widely popular, seem to have come down to us; but we have a somewhat lengthy poem, of considerable merit (though of doubtful authenticity), addressed to his son Astralabius, who grew to manhood, became a cleric, and died, it seems, as abbot of Hauterive in Switzerland, in 1162.

Of Abelard’s philosophy, little need be added to what has been already said.  It is, on the whole, the philosophy of the Middle Age, with this difference:  that he insists upon making theology rational, and thus may truly be called the founder of modern rationalism, and the initiator of the struggle against the tyrannic authority of blind faith.  To have been so is his crowning merit, and is one that can hardly be overestimated.  At the same time it must be borne in mind that he was a loyal son of the Church, and never dreamed of opposing or undermining her.  His greatest originality is in ‘Ethics,’ in which, by placing the essence of morality in the intent and not in the action, he anticipated Kant and much modern speculation.  Here he did admirable work.  Abelard founded no school, strictly speaking; nevertheless, he determined the method and aim of Scholasticism, and exercised a boundless influence,