“I hold it as, in a manner, real.”

“I want a categorical answer—­Yes or No!”

“Distinguo! (I must qualify.)”

“I will have no qualifications.  A substance either is, or not.  Choose!”

To this challenge Abelard had the choice of answering Yes, or of answering no, or of refusing to answer at all.  He seems to have done the last; but we suppose him to have accepted the wager of battle, and to answer:—­

“Yes, then!”

“Good!” William rejoins; “now let us see how your pantheism differs from mine.  My triangle exists as a reality, or what science will call an energy, outside my mind, in God, and is impressed on my mind as it is on a mirror, like the triangle on the crystal, its energy giving form.  Your triangle you say is also an energy, but an essence of my mind itself; you thrust it into the mind as an integral part of the mirror; identically the same concept, energy, or necessary truth which is inherent in God.  Whatever subterfuge you may resort to, sooner or later you have got to agree that your mind is identical with God’s nature as far as that concept is concerned.  Your pantheism goes further than mine.  As a doctrine of the Real Presence peculiar to yourself, I can commend it to the Archbishop together with your delation of me.”

Supposing that Abelard took the opposite course, and answered:—­

“No! my concept is a mere sign.”

“A sign of what, in God’s name!”

“A sound! a word! a symbol! an echo only of my ignorance.”

“Nothing, then!  So truth and virtue and charity do not exist at all.  You suppose yourself to exist, but you have no means of knowing God; therefore, to you God does not exist except as an echo of your ignorance; and, what concerns you most, the Church does not exist except as your concept of certain individuals, whom you cannot regard as a unity, and who suppose themselves to believe in a Trinity which exists only as a sound, or a symbol.  I will not repeat your words, M. du Pallet, outside this cloister, because the consequences to you would certainly be fatal; but it is only too clear that you are a materialist, and as such your fate must be decided by a Church Council, unless you prefer the stake by judgment of a secular court.”

In truth, pure nominalism—­if, indeed, any one ever maintained it—­ afforded no cover whatever.  Nor did Abelard’s concept help the matter, although for want of a better refuge, the Church was often driven into it.  Conceptualism was a device, like the false wooden roof, to cover and conceal an inherent weakness of construction.  Unity either is, or is not.  If soldiers, no matter in what number, can never make an army, and worshippers, though in millions, do not make a Church, and all humanity united would not necessarily constitute a State, equally little can their concepts, individual or united, constitute the one or the other.  Army, Church, and State, each is an organic whole, complex